Quotes about Christianity

We Christians are called to use the "weapons of grace," which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.

Where did Christians get the reputation as life-squelchers instead of life-enhancers? Jesus himself promised, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. What keeps us from realizing that abundant life?

Christianity has a principle, "Hate the sin but love the sinner," which is more easily preached than practiced. If Christians could simply recover that practice, modeled so exquisitely by Jesus, we would go a long way toward fulfilling our calling as dispensers of God's grace.

To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion

Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.

Over time Christians learned that the faith grows best from the bottom up rather than being imposed from the top down.

do worry about the recent tendency for the labels "evangelical Christian" and "religious right" to become interchangeable. Increasingly Christians are perceived as rigid moralists who want to control others' lives.

Christians tend to be Augustinian in theory but Pelagian in practice. They work obsessively to please other people and even God.

the gospel of Jesus was not primarily a political platform. In all the talk of voting blocs and culture wars, the message of grace—the main distinctive Christians have to offer—tends to fall aside. It is difficult, if not impossible, to communicate the message of grace from the corridors of power.

Grace is Christianity's best gift to the world, a spiritual nova in our midst exerting a force stronger than vengeance, stronger than racism, stronger than hate. Sadly, to a world desperate for this grace the church sometimes presents one more form of ungrace.

In the Christian scheme of things, this world and the time spent here are not all there is. Earth is a proving ground, a dot in eternity — albeit an important dot, for Jesus said our destiny depends on our obedience here.

That stance of openness to receive is what I call the "catch" to grace. It must be received, and the Christian term for that act is repentance, the doorway to grace.