Quotes about Redemption

It has been acceptable for some time in America to remain wound identified (that is, using one's victimhood as one's identity, one's ticket to sympathy, and one's excuse for not serving), instead of using the wound to redeem the world, as we see in Jesus and many people who turn their wounds into sacred wounds that liberate both themselves and others.

God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object.

The Risen Christ is the standing icon of humanity in its final and full destiny. He is the pledge and guarantee of what God will do with all of our crucifixions. At last, we can meaningfully live with hope. It is no longer an absurd or tragic universe. Our hurts now become the home for our greatest hopes.

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!

The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey.

The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It's not the gathering of the saved.

the Twelve Steps, however, believes that sin and failure are, in fact, the setting and opportunity for the transformation and enlightenment of the offender

The Crucified One is God's standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God's promise that it will not have the final word. The Risen One is God's final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering.

What we call Original Sin in Genesis perhaps could, in a sense, be better called Original Shame, because Adam and Eve describe themselves as feeling naked. Some of the first words of God to these newly created people are, "Who told you that you were naked?" (Genesis 3:11). Next, in a lovely maternal image, God as seamstress sews leather garments for them (3:21). The first thing God does after creation itself is cover the shame of these new creatures.

The healthy do not need a doctor, but sick people do. I have not come to coddle the comfortable, but to set trapped people free for a new life." Luke 5:31—32

The breathing into Adam (Genesis 2:7) has become the breathing out of Jesus (John 20:22)