Quotes about Change

Pick up most books and articles on Washington from 1932 or earlier, and generally, with a few exceptions, you will read about George Washington the Christian. That began to change with the iconoclastic scholarship of the mid-twentieth century that sought to tear down the traditional understanding of our nation and its origins.

The honest work of yesterday has lost its social status, its social esteem.

The Bible is not a Christian owner's manual but a story—a diverse story of God and how his people have connected with him over the centuries, in changing circumstances and situations.

Still, shifting my thinking on the Bible did not mean I was losing my faith in God. In fact, I had the growing sense that God was inviting me down this path, encouraging it even.

God doesn't change, but God—being God—is never fully captured by our perceptions. As people continue to live and breathe and experience life, how they see God changes too.

a faith that remains open to the ever-moving Spirit and new possibilities, rather than chaining the Spirit to our past •?a faith that welcomes opportunities to think critically and reflectively on how we think about God, the world, and our place in it, rather than resting at all costs on maintaining familiar certainties

My commitment to follow through on my choice came with a cost. I tried very hard, for years, with complete transparency, to blend together old and new—the particular Christian tradition that birthed me and for which I had deep respect, and the bigger Bible I had come to know, was excited about, and could not deny without deceiving myself and others.

When we grab hold of "correct" thinking for dear life, when we refuse to let go because we think that doing so means letting go of God, when we dig in our heels and stay firmly planted even when we sense that we need to let go and move on, at that point we are trusting our thoughts rather than God. We have turned away from God's invitation to trust in order to cling to an idol.

Doubt means spiritual relocation is happening. It's God's way of saying, "Time to move on.

reality isn't what it used to be.

And here is the absolutely vital and life-changing take-home point for us: ancient and ambiguous laws, in order to remain relevant, needed to be adapted—which results in the diversity of the laws we see in the Old Testament.

adapting the past to speak to changing circumstances in the present.