Quotes about God

Thus the teaching of Jesus attests to the possibility of God that the world has long since taken to be impossible. That is what is wonderful about his teaching.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns." Isa. 52:7

Idolatry consists in harnessing God for our purposes, regarding Yahweh as a reliable ally in our interests, so that God finally becomes useful to us.11 That usefulness is a temptation of all zealous religion, conservative or liberal.

Thus the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is an act of trust in the subversive, exodus-causing God of the first commandment, an act of submission to the restful God of commandments one, two, and three. Sabbath is a practical divestment so that neighborly engagement, rather than production and consumption, defines our lives.

Along with anger, God makes a second response to our guilt. Anger at the throne is compounded by God's utter anguish at having hoped and been betrayed, at having yearned and failed. The

paraphrasing 1 Cor. 1:25) that the fictions of God are truer than the facts of men.13

The two commandments go beneath social performance and social appearance to the deep, elemental, defining issue of "God versus the gods.

to domesticate God and so to curb the freedom that belongs to this erupting God (Exod. 20:4

The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord. Notice that I suggest for the prophet in a really numbed situation a quite elemental and modest task.

God has defied the purity laws! In doing so the God of the trance has violated Israel's definition of chosenness. All of the old certitudes about chosenness are coming unglued. There is no distinction between pure and impure, clean and unclean. So is there no distinction any longer between chosen and unchosen?

Sabbath is a big no for both; it is no to the worship of commodity; it is no to the pursuit of commodity. But it is more than no. Sabbath is the regular, disciplined, visible, concrete yes to the neighborly reality of the community beloved by God.

Where there is no speech we must live in despair. And exile is first of all where our speech has been silenced and God's speech has been banished. But the prophetic poet asserts hope precisely in exile.