Christianity is not some ideal toward which we ought always to strive even though the ideal is out of reach. Christianity is not a series of slogans that sum up our beliefs.
Interpretation
Christianity is more about lived experience than unattainable ideals or mere slogans.
In this quote, Stanley Hauerwas emphasizes that Christianity should not be viewed as an unreachable ideal or a set of catchphrases. Instead, it should be understood as a dynamic, lived experience that influences how individuals engage with their faith and the world around them. This perspective invites a deeper, more authentic practice of faith, focused on real-life application rather than a theoretical benchmark.
In practice
During a sermon about the practical application of faith.
My way of putting it is that Christians are called to live nonviolently not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but in a world of war as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent.
Advent is patience it's how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.
War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.
To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take.
The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.
Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.
In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. . . .
If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.
It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence.
Because animals are property, we consider as "humane treatment" that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans.
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.