Quotes About God

The worst fear that I have about this people is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and his people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and go to hell. This people will stand mobbing, robbing, poverty and all manner of persecution, and be true. My greater fear for them is that they cannot stand wealth; and yet they have to be tried with riches, for they will become the richest people on this earth.

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

I have known a great many men who have left this Church for whom there is no chance whatever for exaltation, but if their blood had been spilled, it would have been better for them. The wickedness and ignorance of the nations forbid this principle's being in full force, but the time will come when the law of God will be in full force.

A God all mercy is a God unjust.

The course of Nature is the art of God.

What angels guard, no longer dare neglect, Slighting thyself, affront not God's respect.

I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.

We've created a theology in the West of a God who is fundamentally self-centered. The imagery of God as distant, unapproachable, unreachable -- that's not a God who is relational. It is a God that gets to declare or judge when he gets pissed off. But there is no basis for love and relationships if God is a fundamentally self-centered being.

And when you learn, over the course of your life, that it's not about pleasing God, it's about learning how to trust God. That's a huge watershed, because trust is a whole different ballgame than appeasement or pleasing.

Um, I made 15 copies [of The Shack] at Office Depot. It did everything I ever wanted it to do -- in those 15 copies. All of the rest of this is, I think, you know, is part of God's great sense of humor. And I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had -- Plato's white grandfatherly god -- because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids.

I grew up fundamentalist, evangelical, Protestant. Those are my roots, and they are good roots. But it means the Pharisees are my people. I grew up with an image of God that was not helpful -- largely the face of my father expanded.

You are the root, and only God knows that the flower will be.

Words you will never hear God say, "I have a quota."

The intricacy and the inherent beautiful fragility of the human soul is such that it is uniquely damaged and only God knows how to heal it, and it's going to take time.

The living and the dead, The awake and the sleeping, The young and the old are all one and the same. When the ones change, they become the others. When those shift again, they become these again. God is day and night. God is winter and summer. God is war and peace. God is fertility and famine. He transforms into many things. Day and night are one. Goodness and badness are one. The beginning and the end of a circle are one.

In a big city, there are always fires somewhere. And there are always crimes somewhere, too. God, despairing of burning away crime with fire , perhaps distributed crime and fire in equal quantities. Thus crime is never consumed by fire, while innocence can be burned up. That's why insurance companies prosper. My guilt, however--in order that it might become a pure thing immune to fire, must not my innocence first pass through the fire?

Ibn Ata' Allah said: "God may open up for you the gates of obedience, but without opening up for you the gates of acceptance. On the other hand, He may Allow you to fall into disobedience which happens to lead you to the right path. DISOBEDIENCE that teaches you HUMILITY is better than PIETY that fills you with VANITY and ARROGANCE.

All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell.

So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.

Voltaire said about God that 'there is no God, but don't tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night'. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don't tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.

Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning; modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. They are all equally delusional.

More than a century after Nietzsche pronounced Him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a mirage. God is dead – it's just taking a while to get rid of the body.

monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.