The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Quote for today

Evangelical Universalism
#622

Now this is a provocative claim:

" Underlying The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart is the conviction that the structure of personal experience witnesses to the reality of God. God is not a stranger to us. If he seems to be so, this is only because we have squelched the immediate knowledge of his presence. “God is not only the ultimate reality that the intellect and the will seek,” explains Hart, “but is also the primordial reality with which all of us are always engaged in every moment of existence and consciousness, apart from which we have no experience of anything whatsoever” (p. 10).

#623

“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”-- Herophilus

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#624

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back the soonest is the most progressive." - CS Lewis

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#625

“The change we have been striving after is not to be produced by any more striving after. It is to be wrought upon us by the molding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the cooperation of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature under invisible pressures from without.” - Henry Drummond-

“Vibrate at the highest frequency possible.” -Anonymous-

#626

“If angels made merry, would that be so odd?
Must they always be solemn, to stay friends with God?”
Goeffrey A. Landis

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#627

“I’m pretty sure that eating chocolate keeps wrinkles away because I have never seen a 10-year-old with a Hershey bar and crow’s feet.”-- Amy Neftzger

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#628

“I believe the hour has come when God is initiating another major recovery. This time it is not just a truth, but the restoration of something so imperative that it will give the ultimate perspective to all truth.”

“Believers may not often realize it, but even as believers we are either centered in man, or centered in God. There is no alternative. Either God is the center of our universe and we have become rightly adjusted to Him, or we have made ourselves the center and are attempting to make all else orbit around us and for us. When the truth dawns, we are amazed to discover how the snare of making all things to revolve around man has been the bane of most of our preaching and teaching. This is true even of the area of teaching which is considered to be of the deeper life emphasis. As long as men are victims of this wrong philosophy and approach to truth, they cannot avoid reckoning from a self-center. When the center is wrong, then everything in our reckoning is wrong.” -Devern Fromke (The Ultimate Intention)”

1 Like
#629

“Be persuaded, timid soul, that He has loved you too much to cease loving you.” -François Fénelon-

#630

“I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.”-- Rabih Alameddine

#631

Your tombstone?

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#632

“While there is a wonderful simplicity in God, much about Him has been obscured by the traditions of men. We are surrounded with things difficult to understand. The way most people take is to look away, lest they should find out they have to understand them.” -George MacDonald-

1 Like
#633

“Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit it allows you to serve others from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.”-- Eleanor Brownn

#634

“If one detects sadness or suffering in another, they have just received an assignment. It is to uplift the other and to help alleviate the suffering.”

“When I am in the cellar of affliction I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.” -Samuel Rutherford-

#635

“In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;… down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.” -C.S. Lewis-

#636

“As long as there is any hate in us we are not ready for heaven, not as long as we’re shutting the golden doors on anyone else…the heavenly banquet cannot begin until we are all there, and I can greet with love…everybody who has caused me pain, and call out a welcome to them all. The heavenly banquet cannot begin until all those whom I have hurt are ready to welcome me, in all my flawed and contradictory humanness… Belief in hell is lack of faith because it attributes more power to Satan than to God…but it is God who has the last word! God is not going to abandon creation, nor the people up for trial in criminal court, nor the Shiites, nor the communists, or the warmongers, nor the greedy and corrupt people in high places, nor the dope pushers, nor you, nor me. Bitter tears of repentance may be shed before we can join the celebration, but it won’t be complete until we are all there.” -Madeleine L’Engle-

Religious beliefs

L’Engle was an Episcopalian and believed in universal salvation, writing that “All will be redeemed in God’s fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.” As a result of her promotion of Christian universalism, many Christian bookstores refused to carry her books, which were also frequently banned from Christian schools and libraries. At the same time, some of her most secular critics attacked her work for being too religious.

Her views on divine punishment were similar to those of George MacDonald, who also had a large influence on her fictional work. She said “I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love.”

In 1982, L’Engle reflected on how suffering had taught her. She told how suffering a “lonely solitude” as a child taught her about the “world of the imagination” that enabled her to write for children. Later she suffered a “decade of failure” after her first books were published. It was a “bitter” experience, yet she wrote that she had “learned a lot of valuable lessons” that enabled her to persevere as a writer.

#637

What an elegant way of stating that truth.

1 Like
#638

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”-- Anne Frank

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#639

"The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. -A.W. Tozer-

1 Like
#640

“What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God’s love, a love we don’t even have to earn.” -Madeleine L’Engle-

#641

“But grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” -Madeleine L’Engle-

1 Like