I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. John Shelby Spong More Quotes by John Shelby Spong More Quotes From John Shelby Spong The primary message of the Christian Church is that we were born in sin and we need to be rescued; we cannot rescue ourselves, so God comes to our rescue, pays the price of our sin and transforms us through the death of Jesus. John Shelby Spong pay-the-price christian jesus I think I could make the case for any kind of organized religion, but I'm not an expert in those, so let me narrow my focus to talk about Christianity. John Shelby Spong focus experts thinking So much organized religion, in my opinion, ends up being life-denying. John Shelby Spong organized opinion ends I think human beings are almost, by definition, religious people,in the sense that we ask questions of meaning, we anticipate future events, we deal with the issues of mortality from the first time we see a dead bird as a little child. John Shelby Spong religious children thinking As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing. John Shelby Spong tradition tasks christianity When I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times. John Shelby Spong christian numbers looks Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. John Shelby Spong land prayer thinking Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I don't think that's the case. John Shelby Spong prayer people thinking I don't like to talk about it in those terms; it's impossible to describe who or what God "is." Suppose you were a horse, and you were asked to describe what a human being was like. You couldn't do it. John Shelby Spong horse like-you impossible The Protestant reformation was an attempt to recast the Christian faith in terms of the new learning of the 16th century, the enlightenment learning. It was the first time that the Christian church did not have the capacity to keep itself unified as it recast itself, so it split into Protestant and Catholic traditions. John Shelby Spong catholic church christian What happened in the Western world was that Plato ceased to be the way people thought. Aristotle was rediscovered, and the modern, educated world moved toward Aristotelian thinking. John Shelby Spong plato people thinking We were born in a Jewish world, as part of a Jewish faith tradition. We had to translate ourselves into the neo-Platonic thinking Greek world; that took us about 400 years. Then, finally a man named Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, recast Christianity in terms of neo-Platonic thought. John Shelby Spong men years thinking There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance. John Shelby Spong biblical church ignorance If you want to be a Roman Catholic scholar and write, you've got to write in such a way that nobody understands what you're saying, and then you're thought to be profound. John Shelby Spong catholic writing profound I'm not writing for fundamentalists. I'm writing for the people who have been repelled by that kind of thinking and yet who think there might be something they haven't yet discovered. John Shelby Spong writing people thinking I don't make that decision [what next book will be] until I've read enough to know that I've got something different to say and I know how to say it. John Shelby Spong next decision book Toward the end of his life, [Arnold] Toynby said the Christianity he saw developing was brittle, imperialistic and incapable of reforming itself. John Shelby Spong saws ends christianity I know that Arnold Toynby, the great historian, said he had always hoped the religions of the world would evolve until they began to bring the very best of each tradition into one tradition. He hoped that Christianity would be the one religion that finally incorporated the values of Hinduism and Buddhism, and enriched itself with them. John Shelby Spong buddhism would-be world We're either going to be driven to a whole new sense of radical interdependence where we are, in the Bible's words, our neighbor's keeper, or destroy ourselves. John Shelby Spong radical neighbor driven I know Jerry [Falwell] fairly well, and he's probably not bright enough to recognize all of the implications of what he said. John Shelby Spong wells enough said
