The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction
Peter Rollins
Top 10 Best Quotes
“There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams.”
“Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice.”
“Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.”
“Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego.”
“What we see taking place in the church today is the reduction of God to an idol.”
“This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction,”
“But the moment we experience the ground beneath our feet dissolving and feel the loss of all certainties is the moment we touch upon the experience of the Cross.”
“Truly embracing the fragility and tensions of life...brings with it the possibility of true joy.”
“The excessive pleasure we imagine receiving from what we want most of all is fleeting at best.”
“I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God. I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe. I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it). Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows. I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom. Make of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks, And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how? Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits. Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive... He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time? The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this, And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom... The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church; The Communion of saints; does this mean me? LOVE The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?) The Resurrection of the body. I believe in singing the body electric And the life everlasting, A life we find right here in our midst”
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Book Keywords:
inspirational-life, philosophy, love, doubts, confession, mystery, loss, truth, creed, broken-creed, emergent-church, death-of-a-loved-one
