Quotes About God

God seems to have chosen to manifest the invisible in what we call the "visible," so that all things visible are the revelation of God's endlessly diffusive spiritual energy. Once a person recognizes that, it is hard to ever be lonely in this world again.

Surely God does not exist so that we can think correctly about Him — or Her. Amazingly and wonderfully, like all good parents, God desires instead the flourishing of what God created and what God loves — us ourselves. Ironically, we flourish more by learning from our mistakes and changing than by a straight course that teaches us nothing.

As I'm coming to realize more and more, God holds everything together in a mysterious quantum entanglement. With each breath we participate in the life-death-life pattern that always ends in resurrection. My hope is that each of us will choose to participate consciously, aware of this privilege and delight in being co-creators with God. Just pray that I can do whatever God wants me to do.

There is no straight line to Goodness, to Love, or to God. And thank God, Grace is always retroactive.

God resists our evil and conquers it with good, or how could God ask the same of us?! Think about that. God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change. Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free. You would think Christian people would know that by now, but it is still a secret of the soul.

We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing humanity.

In many ways what we're seeing as we explore the Bible is an observing of the development of human consciousness and human readiness for God. That's why we do see some difference between the earlier and later Scriptures: There's been a development in consciousness. In

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity but to change the mind of humanity about God. It is "simple and beautiful;" as Einstein said great truth would always have to be.

the eyes with which you will look back at God will be the same eyes with which God first looked at you.

The spiritual man in mythology, in literature and in the great world religions has an excess of life, he knows he has it, makes no apology for it, and finally recognizes that he does not even need to protect or guard it. It is not for him. It is for others. His life is not his own. His life is not about him. It is about God.

Over time, we move beyond a dualistic view of God being "up there" while we are "down here" to a vision where God is up there, down here, in others, and within ourselves, all at the same time. "We are all en Cristo" (page 43). In taking this view, we start to see that all things are sacred, including the masks we wear, the shadows we seek to hide, the wounds we carry, and the parts of ourselves we consider profane. Every thing is sacred.

A true believer is eating what he or she is afraid to see and afraid to accept: The universe is the Body of God, both in its essence and in its suffering.

God is not bound by the human presumption that we are the center of everything, and creation did not actually demand or need Jesus (or us, for that matter) to confer additional sacredness upon it.

I further believe that a free and loving God would create things that continue to recreate themselves, exactly as all parents desire for their children.

Organized religion is an accountability system that holds your feet to the fire long enough to know what the issues really are, who God might just be, and what your own limitations might also be.

Faith in any religion is always somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so, then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too.

Until you meet a benevolent God and a benevolent universe, until you realize that the foundation of all is love, you will not be at home in this world.

God's greatest ally is reality itself. God's greatest revelation is what is (see Romans 1:20)—not what we want it to be, and not even what it should be—not abstract theories but concrete encounters.

The self that begins the journey is not the self that arrives at the Gospel. The self that begins is the self that we think ourselves to be, the superior self we want to be. This is the self that dies along the way— until 'no one' is left. This is the true self that all Great Religion talks about, the self bigger than death yet born of death, a different self than the private I, a self transformed by God and transformed in God.

God can help you get what you want, which is still a self-centered desire, instead of God's much better role—which is to help you know what you really desire (Luke 11:13; Matthew 7:11).

God can never be experienced apart from your best interests being involved.

Remember, it is not the brand name that matters. It is that God's heart be made available and active on this earth.

Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world. To allow what God for some reason allows—and uses. And to suffer ever so slightly what God suffers eternally. Often, this has little to do with believing the right things about God—beyond the fact that God is love itself.

Good religion keeps God free for people and keeps people free for God. You cannot improve on that.