Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar
Interpretation
The quote warns against the dangerous combination of organized religion and law enforcement, highlighting the risks of misinterpretation of divine will.
Barbara Brown Taylor's quote reflects a cautionary stance toward the intersection of authority—both legal and religious. It underscores the potential for misuse of power by those who believe they understand divine intentions and are willing to impose them forcefully. The reference to temple police and armed chaplains serves as a metaphor for how religious authority can become intertwined with state power, leading to oppression and conformity rather than genuine faith and spiritual freedom.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on the relationship between religion and politics.
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again.
The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.
Realists are, as a rule, only men in the rut of routine who are incapable of transcending a narrow circle of antiquated notions.
I was born into the world as the king of truth for the salvation of the world.
Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.
While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us.
To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.
Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.