31 Quotes by Terryl L. Givens

If God can transform cosmic entropy and malice alike into fire that purifies rather than destroys, how much more can He do this with the actions of well-intentioned but less-than-perfect leaders. In other words, it is reasonable to believe that in His infinite wisdom, God anticipates not only the devices and strategies of the wicked but also the foreseeable range of His leaders’ errors – and appoints them with those limitations already considered.

In most of life’s greatest transactions, where the stakes are the highest, it is to the heart that we rightly turn, although not in utter isolation from the rational and reasonable. p16.

Catholics espouse papal infallibility, but no Catholic believes in it. Joseph Smith espoused prophetic fallibility, but no Mormon believes in it.

There are many kinds of silences and not all signify absence or vacancy... Those moments are but temporary ebbs before the flow of meaning rushes in to fill the space... God may be speaking ’in ways we have yet to recognize as speech.

The gospel Christ taught was spectacularly designed to unsettle and disturb, not lull into pleasant serenity.

The English historian Thomas Carlyle defined a person’s religion as the set of values evident in his or her actions, regardless of what the individual would claim to believe when asked.

Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand To hold the Ark, although it seem to shake Through th’ old sinnes and new doctrines of our land. Onely, since God doth often vessels make Of lowly matter for high uses meet, I throw me at his feet. – George Herbert1.

Voltaire, “To believe in God is impossible; but not to believe is absurd.

Holiness is found in how we treat others, not in how we contemplate the cosmos.