71 Quotes by Brian D. McLaren

Too often we see the Bible through whatever lens we get from our culture.

God is not the tribal deity of one group of “chosen” people. God is not for us and against all others. God is for us and for them, too. God loves everyone everywhere, no exceptions.

If your goal is to produce firefighters and rescue workers, you have to produce people willing to enter burning buildings.

Comfort and power can become great enemies of true spirituality, which explains why we often say that the prophets come not only to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable.

To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall.

Can you imagine Jesus saying, “Believe that I am the only way. Why? Because I said so, that’s why! And if you don’t believe, then you’re going straight to hell!” But isn’t that how we present him through our slogans?

The cross calls humanity to stop trying to make God’s kingdom happen through coercion and force, which are always self-defeating in the end, and instead, to welcome it through self-sacrifice and vulnerability.

If a spiritual community only points back to where it has been or if it only digs in its heels where it is now, it is a dead end or a parking lot, not a way.

Jesus faithfully and courageously represented the nonviolent and loving heart of God. Jesus and his way of nonviolent, self-giving love, the text suggests, will earn the trust of all humanity. We will ultimately migrate, in other words, toward the way of Jesus.