37 Quotes by Walter Wink

The issue is not, "What must I do in order to secure my salvation?" but rather, "What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?" It is not, "How can I be virtuous?" but "How can I participate in the struggle of the oppressed for a more just world?"Otherwise our nonviolence is premised on self-justifying attempts to establish our own purity in the eyes of God, others, and ourselves, and that is nothing less than a satanic temptation to die with clean hands and a dirty heart.

Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact.

History belongs to the intercessors - those who believe and pray the future into being.

The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.

The 'peace' the gospel brings is never the absence of conflict, but an ineffable divine reassurance within the heart of conflict; a peace that surpasses understanding.

Divine judgment is intended not to destroy but to awaken people to the devastating truth about their lives.

Personal redemption cannot take place apart from the redemption of our social structures.

for God's sake, let's be done with the hypocrisy of claiming "I am a biblical literalist" when everyone is a selective literalist, especially those who swear by the antihomosexual laws in the Book of Leviticus and then feast on barbecued ribs and delight in Monday-night football, for it is toevali, an abomination, not only to eat pork but merely to touch the skin of a dead pig.

So many people, if the truth were known, live their lives on two levels. The principles they fight about are often at odds with the complicated and often frustrated lives they live. This is why there is so much intensity.