Religion is a very scary thing, because a pastor is in a position of power. And if you use that power badly, you ruin people's lives, and you ruin your own life.
Eugene H. PetersonRead
Every call to worship is a call into the Real World.... I encounter such constant and widespread lying about reality each day and meet with such skilled and systematic distortion of the truth that I'm always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of spiritual truth over societal misconceptions and personal identity.
Eugene H. Peterson reflects on the challenges of discerning reality amidst pervasive falsehoods in society. He asserts that true reality is found in one's faith and relationship with God, defining identity and sustenance through spiritual practices rather than secular frameworks. This perspective highlights the need for grounding in spiritual truth to navigate a world filled with confusion and deception.
Themes
TruthFaithIdentitySpiritualityRealityDeception
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon about faith, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of staying grounded in spiritual truth.
More from Eugene H. Peterson
All quotes →When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us.
Eugene H. PetersonRead
If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything.
Eugene H. PetersonRead
Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.
Eugene H. PetersonRead
Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?...'I will do my best with what is here.'
Eugene H. PetersonRead
The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being. If we cultivate a lively sense of our origin and nurture a sense of continuity with it, who knows, we may also acquire humility.
Eugene H. PetersonRead
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The reason why we want to remember an image varies: because we simply 'love it,' or dislike it so intensely that it becomes compulsive, or because it has made us realize something about ourselves, or has brought about some slight change in us. Perhaps the reader can recall some image, after the seeing of which he has never been quite the same.
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Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair.
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Man is nothing: he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will and to do his good pleasure.
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I felt that chess... is a science in the form of a game... I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.
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I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.
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...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.
Gottfried LeibnizRead