71 Quotes by Brian Zahnd

The gospel is the beautiful story of how God is bringing the world out of bondage to sin and death through the triumph of Jesus Christ. If you don't know how to preach the gospel without making appeals to afterlife issues, you don't know how to preach the gospel!

In going to the cross, Jesus was not being practical; he was being faithful. Jesus didn’t take a pragmatic approach to the problem of evil; Jesus took an aesthetic approach to the problem of evil. Jesus chose to absorb the ugliness of evil and turn it into something beautiful—the beauty of forgiveness.

Failing to recognize the worth of beauty independent from utilitarian function is symptomatic of an abject poverty of the soul. It’s like saying that if we turned St. Peter’s Basilica into a parking garage, we would improve it by making it practical. There’s a word for this, and it is vandalism. We must not vandalize the faith in the name of pragmatism!

The majority is almost always wrong. The crowd is untruth. Scapegoating is demonic.

Jesus said his disciples would be known for their love, not for their placards of protest and angry letters to the editor.

Forgiveness here should be understood not as legal pardon but an invitation back into the human community.

The fall of communism had more to do with prayer meetings in Poland than bombs dropped on Cambodia. War is, among other things, impatience.

Most of us are scripted to think that life is a game and the purpose of life is to win. This is the way that seems right. But the divine truth is that life is a gift and the purpose of life is to learn to love well.

It’s so hard for us to let go of the sword and take the hand of the crucified one.