If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Albert Camus, ‘Summer in Algiers’
Author: Karl Möller
The wrong people
World War II sent the wrong people wandering. God’s curse on Cain was intended for murderers and not their victims.
Jonathan Wilson, Marc Chagall
No-one told them
A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to
Banksy, Wall and Piece
God visits us right where we are
Commenting on the story of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:11-22, Barbara Brown Taylor (in An Altar in the World: Finding the Sacred Beneath Our Feet) notes that
even though [Jacob’s] family had imploded, even though he had made his brother angry enough to kill him, even though he was a scoundrel from the word go – God decided to visit Jacob right where he was, though Jacob had not been right about anything so far and never would be.
God visiting us right were we are, no matter how messy our life may be, that’s what the gospel is all about. That’s why it’s called ‘good news’.
People in need of saving
We believed that God’s home was the church …, and that the world was a barren place full of lost souls in need of all the help they could get. […] The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do. … What if a lost soul strikes God as more reachable than a lifelong believer?
Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: Finding the Sacred Beneath Our Feet
God takes sides
God is a God who takes sides. God is God of the oppressed; God enters into their difficult, suffering situations to set things right. God is a God who is concerned to move people from slavery to freedom.
Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus
The marks of oppression
As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. … Once a situation of violence and oppression has been established, it engenders an entire way of life and behavior for those caught up in it – oppressor and oppressed alike. Both are submerged in the situation, and both bear the marks of oppression.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Brief thoughts & quotes … 