#holiness — Public Fediverse posts

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

1 Peter 2:9 #Bible #JesusChrist #holiness

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

1 Peter 2:9 #Bible #JesusChrist #holiness

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

1 Peter 2:9 #Bible #JesusChrist #holiness

A quotation from Eric Hoffer

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 1, ch. 2, § 8 (1951)

More about this quote: wist.info/hoffer-eric/10594/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #cause #devotion #faith #holiness #sacred #selfblame #selfconfidence #selfdoubt #selfquestioning #selfreproach #truebeliever

Excommunicate Me

Excommunicate me, then.
Ring the bell if you have one. Draw the line in ash. Nail the notice to the chapel door. Speak my name in the flat voice reserved for weather, death, and disappointment. Tell the saints to avert their eyes. Tell the children not to ask questions. Tell the old women in the kitchen to lower their voices when I pass. I have grown used to doors closing with the gentleness of those who think themselves righteous.

Excommunicate me for loving too widely, for asking where the missing ones went, for lingering too long at the edge of the map where the heretics, addicts, doubters, dissidents, and queer-eyed prophets make their fires at night. Excommunicate me for saying that Christ still wanders there, coat smelling of smoke, hands warm from other people’s wounds. Excommunicate me for suspecting that the kingdom keeps being born in places your committees have not approved.

Cast me out for refusing to confuse your fences with holiness.
Cast me out for noticing how often your purity is purchased with somebody else’s loneliness.
Cast me out for believing that a table is still a table even when the wrong people find bread there first.

I know how this works. First comes the sorrowful meeting. Then the careful language. Then the phrases dressed in prayer like soldiers dressed in hymnals. We say discernment when we mean fear. We say order when we mean control. We say peace when we mean silence from those already bruised. We say love while measuring who may enter it. We say truth with our arms folded.

Excommunicate me because I cannot keep pretending that the wound in the Body is healed by cutting off another limb.

I have seen too much of the outside to fear it now. I have seen the banished making soup for one another. I have seen the condemned share coats in winter. I have seen those denied the sacraments become sacraments for each other: bread in famine, oil in sickness, a hand on the shoulder in the long vestibule of grief. I have heard better theology whispered on back steps than shouted from polished pulpits. I have watched the Spirit climb out the stained-glass window and go where she is not expected.

Excommunicate me, and I will go down among the unclaimed.
I will kneel beside the ones your footnotes could not save.
I will keep company with the mothers whose prayers embarrassed you, the children whose questions outgrew your answers, the men who wept when they were told to be strong, the women who spoke and were called dangerous, the wanderers who could not make your narrow gate into a home.

And if you shut me out from your sanctuary, I will make a sanctuary of the road.
If you deny me your blessing, I will learn the blessing of crows at morning, of rain on rusted tin, of strangers who still know how to share fire.
If you call me lost, I will answer that some of us were never meant to be found by empires.

Do not threaten me with the outer dark.
I have met God there.

Not the tidy god of minutes and motions, not the well-behaved deity who always sides with the CEO, but the God who haunts the threshold, who leaves the ninety-nine to go where the crying is, who touches the unclean and is not diminished, who slips through locked doors and still carries wounds, who keeps raising what the pious have buried.

Excommunicate me for this: I no longer believe belonging is yours to ration.
I no longer believe grace requires your seal.
I no longer believe heaven trembles when your vote is taken.
The veil was torn without your permission, and it has never been properly mended.

So do it.
Write me out.
Strike my name from the roll.
Erase me from the minutes.
Tell yourselves the garden is safer now that one more wild thing has been removed.

But listen: roots work in secret. Seeds pass through the beaks of birds and are planted in their shit. Wind ignores decrees. What you cast out does not always die. Sometimes it takes hold beyond the wall and flowers in the rubble, and those passing by say, I did not know beauty could grow here.

Excommunicate me, then.
I will go with Christ among the cast out.
I will go where the lepers still ring their bells, where the scapegoats stagger into the wilderness, where the rejected stone waits in the dust.
And when at last you come looking for God, breathless with your censures, your keys jangling at your side, do not be surprised to find us already inside the feast, the doors flung wide, the music loud, the wounded laughing, and every empty place at the table set for one more.

John McDowell, Presbyterian preacher, noted that oppression often looks quite respectable: lawsuits designed not to win justice but to exhaust the other party into surrender. One might say this still happens. Yet mention “oppression” in church and people gasp—as if the Bible itself hadn’t brought it up first. The question, then, is awkwardly simple: are we defending justice, or merely protecting our profits?

#presbyterian #reformeddoctrine #law #holiness

Martin Luther basically says every Christian hosts a daily argument between “Old Adam” and a conscience trained by Scripture. One wants holiness; the other wants snacks, shortcuts, and another pint. True faith trains the heart to praise Christ, serve neighbors, and stop cheating people. Beer optional. Moses still teaching.

#lcms #lutheran #holiness #neighbor #moses

Martin Luther basically says every Christian hosts a daily argument between “Old Adam” and a conscience trained by Scripture. One wants holiness; the other wants snacks, shortcuts, and another pint. True faith trains the heart to praise Christ, serve neighbors, and stop cheating people. Beer optional. Moses still teaching.

#lcms #lutheran #holiness #neighbor #moses

Martin Luther basically says every Christian hosts a daily argument between “Old Adam” and a conscience trained by Scripture. One wants holiness; the other wants snacks, shortcuts, and another pint. True faith trains the heart to praise Christ, serve neighbors, and stop cheating people. Beer optional. Moses still teaching.

#lcms #lutheran #holiness #neighbor #moses

Martin Luther basically says every Christian hosts a daily argument between “Old Adam” and a conscience trained by Scripture. One wants holiness; the other wants snacks, shortcuts, and another pint. True faith trains the heart to praise Christ, serve neighbors, and stop cheating people. Beer optional. Moses still teaching.

#lcms #lutheran #holiness #neighbor #moses

Martin Luther basically says every Christian hosts a daily argument between “Old Adam” and a conscience trained by Scripture. One wants holiness; the other wants snacks, shortcuts, and another pint. True faith trains the heart to praise Christ, serve neighbors, and stop cheating people. Beer optional. Moses still teaching.

#lcms #lutheran #holiness #neighbor #moses

Luther, peering at Psalm 14, says the real atheist isn’t the loud one but the numb one: the person who neither expects good from God nor seeks Him, and so grows hard, joyless, and oddly hostile—more inclined to wound than to help.

Now, if you look around and see people campaigning against kindness itself, that doesn’t exactly refute Luther.

So—how do you actually dwell on God’s goodness until it softens you?
#lutheran #holiness #growth #empathy #kindness #virtue #lcms

A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would address a communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
Lecture (1872-01-29), “The Gods,” Fairbury Hall, Fairbury, Illinois

More info about this quote: wist.info/ingersoll-robert-gre…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #robertingersoll #robertgreeningersoll #belief #Bible #damnation #divinegift #divineplan #doubt #God #gods #holiness #intelligence #questioning #reason #sacredness #scripture #understanding

A quotation from Ambrose Bierce

SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Scriptures,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

More info about this quote: wist.info/bierce-ambrose/1074/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #ambrosebierce #devilsdictionary #divineplan #faith #holiness #perspective #religion #religiousintolerance #revelation #sacredness #sanctity #scripture #writings

A quotation from Omar Khayyam

We dabble in the Qur’án now and then,
Read, and repent, yet fall from Grace again;
But in the goblet is engraved a text
That greets eternally the eyes of men.
 
قرآن که بهین کلام خوانند اورا
گه گاه نه بر دوام خوانند اورا
در خطِ پیاله آیتی روشن هست
کاندر همه جا مدام خوانند اورا

Omar Khayyám (1048-1123) Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer [عمر خیام]
Rubáiyát [رباعیات], Bod. # 6 [tr. Talbot (1908)]

Sourcing, notes, other translations: wist.info/omar-khayyam/77606/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #omarkhayyam #rubaiyat #cup #drinking #goblet #holiness #insight #Koran #meaning #popularity #reading #revelation #scripture #text #truth #wine #word

The Lord said to Moses, 2“Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

Leviticus 19:1-2 #Bible #Commandments #Holiness

#sacred #religion #organized #personal #spiritual #theology #dogma #scripture #prayer #God #gods #deities #ecstasy #enlightenment #visions #holiness