Quotes about Perspective

We sometimes have the impression that the coronavirus is providing people with a megaphone with which to say, more loudly, what they were wanting to say anyway.

Whenever anyone tells you that coronavirus means that God is calling people—perhaps you!—to repent, tell them to read Job. The whole point is that that is not the point.

science takes things apart to see how they work, but religion puts things together to see what they mean.

This makes the rather obvious logical mistake analogous to that of a soldier who, receiving orders through the mail, concludes that the letter carrier is his commanding officer. Those who transmit, collect and distribute the message are not in the same league as those who write it in the first place.

No, insists Paul, once you learn the meaning of the gospel, you have to see everything inside out.

He does not here ask the different groups to give up their practices; merely not to judge one another where differences exist. As Paul well knew (though we sometimes forget), this is actually just as large a step, if not larger, than a change in practice itself. The move from regarding something as mandatory to regarding it as optional is vast, just as vast in fact as the move from regarding something as forbidden to regarding it as available.

If we spend time in the prayer of lament, new light may come, rather than simply the repetition of things we might have wanted to say anyway.

The much-discussed contemporary phenomenon of cultural and theological relativism is itself in this sense simply the dark side of positivism.

Put tradition first, and scripture will be muzzled and faded. Put scripture first, and tradition will come to new life. Better

It all becomes so complicated, people grumble—when what they really mean is, "I am so used to reading this passage one way that I find it hard to switch and consider other options.

Heaven is important, but its not the end of the world

Arguments about God are] like pointing a flashlight toward the sky to see if the sun is shining.