Quotes about Belief

Bonhoeffer was simply saying that if we wished truly to live, we must be prepared to die. And this was not bad news at all, but rather was the very best of good news imaginable. In fact it is called the good news or the gospel, and it is simply that Jesus has purchased for us a passage to eternal life, something so outrageous and unbelievable that most people really don't believe it and therefore ignore it.

Thus," he said, "the Christian message is basically amoral and irreligious, paradoxical as that may sound".

What made him stand out, to some as an inspiration, to others as an oddity, and to others as an offense, was that he did not hope that God heard his prayers, but knew it.

You have learned from him to honor the will of God in everything God gives and in everything God takes away.

Just ten years ago, probably the most prominent atheist of the twentieth century, Antony Flew, concluded that a God must have designed the universe.

As long as we let the word be our only armor we can look confidently into the future.

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence... Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Bonhoeffer was not interested in intellectual abstraction. Theology must lead to the practical aspects of how to live as a Christian.

He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive. It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets. It had everything to do with living one's whole life in obedience to God's call through action.

When he said they needed to humble themselves and listen to God's commands and obey them, he was not posturing. He wanted to impart this vision of God and was saying that one must utterly trust God now and must know that hearing him is indeed all that matters.

Real faith is never something that can be forced by the state. It's something that either be encouraged and smiled upon or discouraged and frowned-upon.

If you take God and faith and morality out of the equation, everything inevitably falls apart.