Quotes about Identity

The example of this poor, dark-skinned man who turned the empire upside-down made a deep impression on the young Sadat. "I began to imitate him," he writes. "I took off all my clothes, covered myself from the waist down with an apron, made myself a spindle, and withdrew to a solitary nook on the roof of our house in Cairo.

She was made to stand in a garbage can for twelve hours, as the other detainees demanded that she confess her own "homosexual tendencies.

if the gospels had been identical to each other, word for word, this would have raised charges that the authors had conspired among themselves to coordinate their stories in advance, and that would have cast doubt on them.

The insights that freed Jud were similar to the ones that led to my own recovery from spiritual workaholism after being confronted by my boss years ago. I came to realize that God didn't love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God. I could stop working like a slave to justify myself; I just needed to recognize — and celebrate — my adoption as God's child.

If every birth is a rebirth, and if every life pays for the previous life, then what were you paying for in your first birth?

My mistakes didn't destroy the image of God that was inscribed in me, so my errors can't eliminate the reason why I have value in his eyes.

you are the sum total of all the life experiences you've gone through. You may wish you had chosen another path, but you didn't. You've been shaped by the many choices you've made, both the smart ones and the dumb ones. And here God is saying that he can take the raw material of who you are right now and customize a future of hope for you.

Grace liberates us. Our tendency toward performance imprisons us.

God didn't love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God.

even if I were to actually lose everything - my house, my finances, my friends, my reputation, my position - it really wouldn't matter in the end, because I would still have God's grace. I would still be the Father's adopted and beloved son. And that would be enough.

The church needs to be so clear about its identity as the body of Christ that everything it does generates a gravitational pull toward the heart.

The essential element of Christian truth is that the risen Christ is not something you mimic but someone you manifest.