Quotes about Existence

The ease, lightness, and power of his Way we rarely enjoy, much less see, as the pervasive and enduring quality of our street-level human existence.

We can be sure that heaven in the sense of our afterlife is just our future in this universe. There is not another universe besides this one. God created the heavens and the earth. That's it. And much of the difficulty in having a believable picture of heaven and hell today comes from the centuries-long tendency to "locate" them in "another reality" outside the created universe.

Life in general can carry on within limits even though some of its specific needs are not adequately met. A plant or animal without the appropriate food, light, or space may lead a weakened and deformed existence, but one that is still a life. Human life is not what it could be, though it is still here, still going on. But the question is, what is human life being cut off from to leave it in such a sad and depleted condition?

Let us now be perfectly clear. Your life is not something from which you can stand aside and consider what it would have been like had you had a different one. There is no "you" apart from your actual life. You are not separate from your life, and in that life you must find the goodness of God. Otherwise, you will not believe that he has done well by you, and you will not truly be at peace with him.

The Trinity is the model of life as it is intended to be in human existence, the basis for Christian community.

Bodily habits are the primary form in which human evil exists in practical life.

We see the reality of Jesus risen, his actual existence now as a person who is present among his people. We find him in his ecclesia, his sometimes motley but always glorious crew of called-out ones.

it is good that you are alive: your life is good, it is good that you are who you are, and it is good that you do the work you do.

Evolution itself is an "order" that requires explanation if any order does, and it presupposes, as we have just seen, a vast scale of order and existence within which alone it can occur. Whether evolution occurs with regard to plant and animal species (which was Darwin's concern), that has no serious implications at all, taken by itself, for the existence of God.

So the kingdom of the heavens, from the practical point of view in which we all must live, is simply our experience of Jesus' continual interaction with us in history and throughout the days, hours, and moments of our earthly existence.

There are two Gods," Tolstoy once said. "There is the God that people generally believe in—A God who has to serve them (sometimes in very refined ways, say by merely giving them peace of mind). This God does not exist. But the God whom people forget—the God whom we all have to serve—exists, and is the prime cause of our existence and of all that we perceive."

Professing to believe has, sadly, played a large role in the practice of religion. It has profoundly stained our understanding of what religion is. Some people seem to profess belief in God "just in case" there is a God. But they neither are committed to nor believe in the idea that God exists.