The tongue is a small member, but it does big things. A religious who does not keep silence will never attain holiness; that is, she will never become a saint. Let her not delude herself - unless it is the Spirit of God who is speaking through her, for then she must not keep silent. But, in order to hear the voice of God, one has to have silence in one's soul and to keep silence; not a gloomy silence but an interior silence; that is to say, recollection in God.
For, in truth, an image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman's hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone: God, who alone is truly God.
Trees are right at the heart of all the necessary debates: ecological, social, economic, political, moral, religious.
I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.
When we feel that old spirit of complaining start to bubble up in our hearts, we need to remind ourselves to take time to thank God for His blessings.
I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.
God is one among several hypotheses to account for the phenomena of human destiny, and it is now proving to be an inadequate hypothesis. To a great many people, including myself, this realization is a great relief, both intellectually and morally. It frees us to explore the real phenomena for which the God hypothesis seeks to account, to define them more accurately, and to work for a more satisfying set of concepts.
It might be said that religious freedom in the American sense, incorporating the separation of church and state, has been the pivotal concept of the national development of the United States of America.
We have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room for that kind of foolishness here.
It is not possible in this culture today to hold up to public pillory and ridicule any group - whether blacks, American Indians, women, homosexuals, Poles, or any of a number of other groups that have been discriminated against in the past. However, the one group you can hold up to public mockery and pillory without fear of reprisal is evangelical Christians.
To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.
Those may justly be reckoned void of understanding that do not bless and praise God; nor do men ever rightly use their reason till they begin to be religious, nor live as men till they live to the glory of God. As reason is the substratum or subject of religion (so that creatures which have no reason are not capable of religion), so religion is the crown and glory of reason, and we have our reason in vain, and shall one day wish we had never had it, if we do not glorify God with it.
Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love.
Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.
It is easy to be religious when religion is in fashion; but it is an evidence of strong faith and resolution to swim against a stream to heaven, and to appear for God when no one else appears for Him.
Yet, for I know thou art religious And hast a thing within thee called conscience, With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies Which I have seen thee careful to observe, Therefore I urge thy oath; for that I know An idiot holds his bauble for a god And keeps the oath which by that god he swears, To that I'll urge him: therefore thou shalt vow By that same god, what god soe'er it be, That thou adorest and hast in reverence, To save my boy, to nourish and bring him up, Or else I will discover naught to thee.
God tested Abraham. That is, he sent him afflictions for his benefit, not so that he could find out what sort of man he was, for God knows everything, but so that He give him the means to perfect his faith.
God does not ask your ability Or your inability. He asks only your availability.
It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents.
We must receive the one who curses us as a messenger from God, rebuking our hidden evil thoughts, so that we, seeing our thoughts with exactness, might correct ourselves. For we do not know how many hidden evils we have; Only a perfect man can understand all of his own shortcomings.