281 Quotes by Rachel Held Evans

It’s not my job to change people,” Brian told me when I pestered him about it, “just love people.

We’ve got our way of dealing fairly with our enemies, and God has his. Our way involves retaliation and punishment; his way involves forgiveness. Our way involves equal justice; his way involves disproportionate grace. Our way is to make someone pay with blood; his way is to bleed. Even when Jesus hung on the cross, when God had been insulted to the highest degree imaginable, left naked, humiliated, beaten, and bruised, he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

Bible stories don’t have to mean just one thing. Despite what you may have heard from a pastor or Sunday school teacher along the way, faithful engagement with Scripture isn’t about uncovering a singular, moralistic point to every text and then sticking to it. Rather, the very nature of the biblical text invites us to consider the possibilities.

Faith’s not about finding the right bush. It’s about taking off your shoes.

I am a Christian,” I concluded, “because the story of Jesus is still the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.

Somewhere along the way, the gospel had gotten buried under a massive pile of extras: political positions, lifestyle requirements, and unspoken rules that for whatever reason came with the Christian territory. Sometimes Jesus himself seemed buried beneath the rubble.

But I can tell my own story, which studies suggest is an increasingly common one.

Frankly, the story makes Sarah look more like a potential cast member for The Real Housewives of Canaan County than a dutiful and submissive wife.

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