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When Everything's on Fire: Faith Forged from the Ashes
Brian Zahnd
Top 10 Best Quotes
“suppose if I did get to have my fantasy lunch with Nietzsche, I’d have to tell him the bad news that his dreamed-of Übermensch turned out to be a monster and that his dreaded last man seems to be the inevitable end of his philosophical trajectory. It would probably be an awkward lunch. Maybe I don’t want to have that lunch with Nietzsche after all—it would be just too sad.”
“greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13: 13). Paul’s conversion wasn’t from Judaism to Christianity—Paul wouldn’t have seen it like that. Paul’s conversion was from the zeal of religious violence to the loyalty of cosuffering love. Paul was converted from violence to nonviolence.”
“When your biblical foundation requires you to defend the sin of slavery, it’s time to get a new foundation!”
“When we follow the Jesus way, embrace the Jesus truth, and live the Jesus life, we are on the road to the Father’s house, the house of love. And do I believe that some, drawn by the Holy Spirit, are on this holy way without yet knowing the name of the way? Absolutely. They are what Karl Rahner called “anonymous Christians.”
“When I speak with former Christians who have become atheists, I often ask them to describe the God they don’t believe in, and almost always I’m able to say, “I don’t believe in that God either.” If they say, “I can’t believe in a God who would eternally torture the vast majority of humanity just because they didn’t believe the right things,” I say, “I can’t believe in that God either, and I don’t believe that God exists.”
“Very often Protestant Christians (especially evangelicals) are taught that the foundation for Christian faith is the Bible. This is nearly a universal truism in the evangelical world, evidenced by how most evangelical statements of faith begin with the Bible. Subsequently, if the Bible is the foundation for Christian faith, then the Bible must be defended at all costs—and it tends to be an inerrant, literalist reading of the Bible that must be defended. In this system, a flaw in the Bible is a crack in the foundation that can lead to a catastrophic collapse. This is the anxiety that fuels the sham apologetics of the Ken Ham variety. 4”
“Unlike the zealous new atheists, Nietzsche didn’t say “Hooray! We’ve got rid of God! Now everything will get better!” Nietzsche was much more sober and feared that life in a world that had abandoned God would become petty and pointless. Nevertheless, Nietzsche was ready for the world to take the bold step and move on without God.”
“The theologian who writes about God but never utters Oh, God in prayer is not a theologian I’m interested in.”
“The reason I cannot be a cynic, the reason I refuse to despair, the reason I hold on to hope despite everything being on fire is that, along with the apostle Paul, I too am “convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8: 38-39). And so I say it without embarrassment: everything is going to be all right.”
“The incarnation is the intervention that saves the world. When everything is on fire, my greatest comfort is the assurance that the world will be saved. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world. Yes, the world will be saved by the intervention of God.”
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