Quotes About Transformation

Raise the question of what do we want to create together, even for an established institution.

It is a shame that we so quickly lose that ability to believe in things; it limits the opportunities we have to transform ourselves, to save ourselves, for it puts the awful burden of transforming and saving ourselves on ourselves. Once you stop believing, you cannot pray, or make sacrifices or pilgrimages, or light candles. You are stuck with yourself, in a world without miracles.

The contrast between a patient depressed and a patient recovered is the contrast between absence and presence.

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old

Jesus was God's climax to Israel's story, but he was not bound to that story. He pushed at its boundaries, transformed it, and at times left parts of it behind.

Doubt is God's instrument, will arrive in God's time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.

God doesn't change, but God—being God—is never fully captured by our perceptions. As people continue to live and breathe and experience life, how they see God changes too.

God adopted Abraham as the forefather of a new people, and in doing so he also adopted the mythic categories within which Abraham—and everyone else—thought. But God did not simply leave Abraham in his mythic world. Rather, God transformed the ancient myths so that Israel's story would come to focus on its God, the real one.

judging by how the Bible actually behaves—God did not design scripture to be a hushed afternoon in an oak-paneled library. Instead, God has invited us to participate in a wrestling match, a forum for us to be stretched and to grow.

Two great critiques of modernity by biblical scholars are Walter Brueggemann's Texts Under Negotiation and Walter Wink's The Bible in Human Transformation.

reimagining

Following Jesus isn't like a burden we carry on our shoulders. It's an internal process so radical and painful that the best way to describe it for people of that day is as the act of being bound and nailed like a criminal to a piece of wood lifted above the ground where you are left hanging in naked humiliation and intense pain until you suffocate.

We have to die, and the choice is ours. If we don't, we are still holding on to something. And if we are holding on, we aren't really following. Just sort of following. Standing around. [Oh God, what did I sign up for? This Christianity thing is hard. Deep breath . . .] The apostle Paul chimes in, too: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:19–20)

And all this talk of dying and being crucified and hidden doesn't describe a one-time moment of conversion when we "become Christians," as if that's final. If things were only that easy—a one-time transaction of "accepting Jesus" and then it's over. Dying describes a mode of existence we agree to once we enter the holy space of being a follower of Jesus—surrendering control, dying, all the time.

my disruptive experiences are not outside impositions to or an attack on my faith, but are the soil out of which my faith matures and takes shape.

Being "saved" by God is an ongoing process of growth and transformation, of dying and rising, of being "conformed to the image of his [God's] Son," as Paul puts it (Romans 8:29). Following Jesus means experiencing the taste of resurrection and ascension now—whether doing laundry, paying bills, or leading nations.

Getting there is all about dying, and each cycle of dying and rising we come to in our lives brings us, I believe, to greater insight into our deep selves, where Christ lives "in us" and our lives are "hidden" in God.

Of course, we all know that dying, rising again, Christ in me, hidden in God, seated in heaven are metaphors—the use of common language to grasp the uncommon, a reality too deep and thick for conventional vocabulary. Following Jesus is an inside-out transformation so thorough that dying and coming back to life is the only adequate way to put it.

Doubt signals that this process of dying and rising is underway. Though God feels far away, at that moment God may be closer than we realize—especially if "know what you believe" is how we're used to thinking of our faith.

Doubt is sacred. Doubt is God's instrument, will arrive in God's time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.

adapting the past to speak to changing circumstances in the present.

This theme has a lot of moving parts. The bottom line is that when God saves Israel, it is an "act of creation"—or perhaps better, "an act of re-creation." To save is to re-create because to be saved is to start anew.

Christians should not search through the creation stories for scientific information they believe it is important to see there. They should read it, as the New Testament writers did, as ancient stories transformed in Christ.

Paul transforms a tribal story, of kings, land, and the purity of one group of people, into a global story of God's grace and peace to all nations. As famously confusing as Paul's letters are, if we keep this in mind, a lot of what Paul says will make more sense—such as the following.