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
I have no doubt that for some to become a Christian may involve an experience of ecstasy. Yet I do not think such an experience is necessary for someone to be a Christian.
Interpretation
An ecstatic experience is not essential to being a Christian.
In this quote, Stanley Hauerwas emphasizes that while some individuals may find their faith through profound and ecstatic experiences, such feelings are not a prerequisite for being a Christian. Instead, he argues that the essence of Christianity can be embraced without the need for overwhelming emotional experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the diversity of faith experiences.
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.
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.
He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.
You need to rebel to see the other options and to get a much richer, fuller sense of the world. And it's only once you've worked through that and seen through that that you can come back and accept who you are. You have to try all the other options.
Most animals are pragmatic about mysteries: If they run across something they don't understand, all they care about is whether it's edible and whether it's dangerous. Humans, on the other hand, are drawn to the mystery for its own sake.
Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
We are the creators and creatures of each other, _x000D_ causing and bearing each other's burden.
And I think that, at some point, I am, as John Lewis and many others, are a bridge-builder. The goal is to bring America together and Americans. We are a great nation. But we must become a greater nation.
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