281 Quotes by Rachel Held Evans

The good news is as epic as it gets, with universal theological implications, and yet the Bible tells it from the perspective of fishermen and farmers, pregnant ladies and squirmy kids. This story about the nature of God and God's relationship to humanity smells like mud and manger hay and tastes like salt and wine...It is the biggest story and the smallest story all at once--the great quest for the One Ring and the quiet friendship of Frodo and Sam.

How could I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength while disengaging those very faculties every time I read the Bible?

You can't get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.

My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think she's right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)

I don't know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don't know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life.

I'm afraid that just as wealth and privilege can be a stumbling block on the path to the gospel, theological expertise and piety can also get in the way of the kingdom. Like wealth, these are not inherently bad things. However, they are easily idolized. The longer our lists of rules and regulations, the more likely it is that God himself will break one.

(About changing faith) At our best, Christians embrace it, leaving enough space within orthodoxy for God to surprise us every now and then.

It was the 80s, so all my earliest memories of Jesus smell like hairspray.

We tend to take whatever’s worked in our particular set of circumstances (big family, small family, AP, Ezzo, home school, public school) and project that upon everyone else in the world as the ideal.