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.
Stanley HauerwasRead
Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Death challenges the meaning of our words and actions by instilling a fear that life might lack significance.
In this quote, Stanley Hauerwas reflects on the profound impact of the awareness of death on our communication and existential concerns. He suggests that the inevitable reality of death instills a fear that can render our words and lives futile, prompting a deeper reflection on the significance of our actions and how we choose to express ourselves in the face of mortality.
Themes
DeathSignificanceFearLifeExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a eulogy, to highlight the importance of cherishing our words and actions.
More from Stanley Hauerwas
All quotes βMy 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.
Stanley HauerwasRead
Advent is patience it's how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.
Stanley HauerwasRead
War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.
Stanley HauerwasRead
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.
Stanley HauerwasRead
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.
Stanley HauerwasRead
Similar quotes
When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated.
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Crossing over mountains, rivers, arid oceans, setting at naught, as it were, the obstacles of the distance of space and time, the blood of Indian thought has flowed, and is still flowing into the veins of other nations of the globe, whether in a distinct or in some subtle unknown way. Perhaps to us belongs the major portion of the universal ancient inheritance.
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The essential thing is to etch movements in the sky, movements so still they leave no trace. The essential thing is simplicity. / That is why the long path to perfection is horizontal.
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Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
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