Quotes

Quote, Religion and Spirituality

Thomas Merton on God Cannot be Loved or Felt without Human Feelings

Quote Leave a comment

If we are without human feelings we cannot love God in the way in which we are meant to love Him—as men. If we do not respond to human affection we cannot be loved by God in the way in which He has willed to love us—with the Heart of the Man, Jesus Christ Who is God, the Son of God, and the anointed Christ.[1]

[1] Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (Dell Publishing Co., Inc.: New York, 1961), 26.

Thomas Merton, (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968)

An American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk, as commonly referred to as, was a poet, social activist, and ecumenist. He was ordained to the priesthood and later given the name Father Louis in 1949. He While he was at the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady Gethsemane, he wrote a book that is “both about meditation and a meditation in itself.”

Advertisement
Christian Living, Quote

Quote: Oswald Sanders on Love God with Mind

Quote 1 Comment

The flame of our love for God and our fellow men must be fed by fuel provided by the mind. Our love for and worship of God must not be merely intuitive. We must put intelligence into it. Paul says, “I shall pray with the spirit and I shall pray with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15).

J. Oswald Sanders, Enjoying Intimacy with God (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Books, 2000), 90.

Quote, Religion and Spirituality

Sabbatum Excerpt: Adam and Eve, the First Self-Declared Humanists

Quote Leave a comment

In Genesis 3 we hear the insolent suggestion by Satan that God has no right to make statements about truth or morality: “Has God indeed said?” The sequel to this question shows that its goal was to undermine the confidence of the first human pair that anything certain could be known about God or His word. For that matter the entire universe could be a projection of one’s own state of mind – a universe as he or she wanted it to be! And this was precisely the option Adam and Eve chose: “You will be like God.” Man would henceforth “create” his own reality according to his own desire and conception. So Adam and Eve were the first self-declared humanists. The self-existent God would no longer be permitted to interfere in the affairs of a secular man. Consequently, god-less man has been miserable in the real world that was designed by its Creator for a society that loved God and kept His commandments.

Kenneth Boa, Cults, World Religions, and the Occult (SP Publications: Colorado, 1990), p. 246

Quote

Martin Luther King Jr. On Loving Your Enemies

Quote Leave a comment

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.

===================

from “Loving Your Enemies” sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on 17 November 1957.

Related articles
Apologia, Quote, Religion and Spirituality, Terminology

Ravi Zacharias: The Intolerance Test

Quote 2 Comments

I frequently hear people say Christianity is intolerant. After all, it calls all people – no exceptions – to think and to act as God commands. It requires all people to bow to Jesus alone. Yet in that sense, all religions are intolerant. Every religion requires people to follow what it says is true and right.

“Believe like I do” is easy to spot as an intolerant or “exclusive” claim. But other statements sound more accepting, like “You have to let people believe what they want.” But you can put the plea for openness to this test: Ask yourself, “What does the person mean by ‘You must be open to everything’?” What it almost always means is, “You must be open to everything that I am open to an disagree with anything I disagree with.”

The person who sounds tolerant will never leave you free to believe as you wish. That’s intolerance – and the worst kind of intolerance, because it is intolerance that doesn’t admit it is being intolerant!

Ravi Zacharias and Kevin Johnson, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Truth of the Christian Message, Youth edition (W Publishing Group, Nashville: Tennessee, 2000), 9.

Related articles