Quotes about Belief

An act of faith in the biblical tradition is always undertaken in an environment of knowledge and is inseparable from it.

As I often point out to folks, today we are not only saved by grace, we are paralyzed by it. We will preach to you for an hour that you can do nothing to be saved, and then sing to you for forty-five minutes trying to get you to do something to be saved. That is confusing, to say the least.

A thoughtless or uninformed theology grips and guides our life with just as great a force as does a thoughtful and informed one.

So we do not have the strength we should have, and Jesus' commandments become overwhelmingly burdensome to us. In fact, many Christians cannot even believe he actually intended for us to carry them out. So what is the result? His teachings are treated as a mere ideal, one that we may better ourselves by aiming for but know we are bound to fall glaringly short of.

Concretely, we intend to live in the kingdom of God by intending to obey the precise example and teachings of Jesus. This is the form that trust in him takes. It does not take the form of merely believing things about him, however true they may be. Indeed, no one can actually believe the truth about him without trusting him by intending to obey him.

The governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be "Christians" forever and never become disciples.

The damage done to our practical faith in Christ and in his government-at-hand by confusing heaven with a place in distant or outer space, or even beyond space, is incalculable. Of course God is there too. But instead of heaven and God also being always present with us, as Jesus shows them to be, we invariably take them to be located far away and, most likely, at a much later time—not here and not now. And we should then be surprised to feel ourselves alone?

Jesus and his words have never belonged to the categories of dogma or law, and to read them as if they did is simply to miss them.

No known religions are the same; they teach and practice radically different things. You only have to look at them to see that. To say they are all the "same" is to disrespect them. It is a way of claiming that none really matter, that their distinctives are of no human significance.

Belief cannot reliably govern life and action except in its proper connection with knowledge and with the truth and evidence knowledge involves.

We can receive the things we do not want—or give up the things we do want—if we have decided, by the grace of God, that we can trust God to take care of us.

Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not. And law is what you must do, whether it is good for you or not.