Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder. N. T. Wright More Quotes by N. T. Wright More Quotes From N. T. Wright Such debates [about the nature of Scripture], in my view, distract attention from the real point of what the Bible is there for. Squabbling over particular definitions of the qualities of the Bible is like a married couple squabbling over which of them loves the children more, when they should be getting on with bringing them up and setting them a good example. The Bible is there to enable God's people to be equipped to do God's work in God's world, not to give them an excuse to sit back smugly, knowing they possess all God's truth. N. T. Wright couple real children The power of the gospel lies[...] in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun. N. T. Wright powerful lying jesus It shouldn't be difficult, then, to make the transposition at this point into the early Christian vision of Jesus and the Spirit and the way in which the material world is both celebrated and renewed through their work. The Jewish basis for the early Christian patterns of belief and behavior is clear. It is important that God's people are embodied, because God made this world and has no intention of abandoning it. The material of creation is a vessel made to be filled with God's new life and glory, even though the transformation may involve suffering, persecution, and martyrdom. N. T. Wright christian people jesus Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then an absent landlord, then he becomes simply absent. N. T. Wright produce atheism firsts The very metaphor Paul chooses for this decisive moment in his argument shows that what he has in mind is not the unmaking of creation or simply its steady development, but the drastic and dramatic birth of new creation from the womb of the old. N. T. Wright stewardship development mind The resurrection gives you a sense of what God wants to do for the whole world. N. T. Wright want giving world I feel about John's gospel like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her. N. T. Wright my-wife wife claims To pray 'your kingdom come' at Jesus' bidding meant to align oneself with his kingdom movement. N. T. Wright bidding movement jesus Jesus, to be sure, often spent long times alone in prayer. But he was also deeply at home where there was a party, a kingdom party, a celebration of the fact that God was at last taking charge. N. T. Wright party prayer jesus Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call "myself. N. T. Wright easter christian reality ...we will arrange for 'religion' to become a small subdepartment of ordinary life; it will be quite safe - harmless, in fact - with church life carefully separated off from everything else in the world, whether politics, art, sex, economics, or whatever. N. T. Wright church sex art But the voice goes on, calling us, beckoning us, luring us to think that there might be such a thing as justice, as the world being put to rights, even though we find it so elusive. We're like moths trying to fly to the moon. We all know there's something called justice, but we can't quite get to it. N. T. Wright voice moon thinking At the heart of Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them. N. T. Wright humility christian character Swords don't glorify the creator-God. Love does. Self-giving love, best of all. N. T. Wright giving-love creator-god love-is Death is a monster; death is horrible. N. T. Wright horrible monsters People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor, and means Jesus died and was glorified - in other words, he went to Heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that. N. T. Wright mean people jesus Of course there are people who think of 'heaven' as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that's a problem as old as the human race. N. T. Wright race dream thinking It's very easy for a church just to slide along from week to week, taking it for granted that we do our services like this and that, and we celebrate the sacraments like this and that. N. T. Wright granted slides church I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies. N. T. Wright biblical discipline writing Easter is about Jesus: the Jesus who announced God's saving, sovereign kingdom. N. T. Wright saving easter jesus
