Eugene H. Peterson

Quotes

• “I have no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table. Given the...”
• “Action without prayer thins out into something very exterior. A prayerless life can result in effective action and accom...”
• “As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they a...”
• “Christian discipleship is a decision to walk in his ways, steadily and firmly, and then finding that the way integrates ...”
• “Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is not '...”
• “There is a long and well-documented tradition of wisdom in the Christian faith that any venture into leadership, whether...”
• “Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire in order to e...”
• “There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus ...”
• “That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state the...”
• “If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to q...”
• “When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, ...”
• “That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusi...”
• “The Holy Spirit's instruments have no consciousness of His purpose; if they imagine they have, it is a pretty sure token...”
• “We need alert listeners to give dignity to those stretches in our lives when we are not aware of participating in anythi...”
• “Apart from childhood and crisis, prayers have a way of being abstracted from the homely and distinctive details that are...”
• “Money and machines anesthetize neediness. They put us in charge, in control. As long as the money holds out and the mach...”
• “Cross and resurrection are the South and North polls, true gospel polarities, of a single, undivided, salvation world. R...”
• “My uncle Ernie didn't believe in God.At least that's what he said. But he alwaysWent to church on Christmas. Which I tho...”
• “Unlike mere action, prayer is not subject to immediate evaluation or verification. If we are addicted to "results" we wi...”
• “I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and...”
• “You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it ...”
• “Without stories we end up with stereotypes -- a flat earth with flat cardboard figures that have no texture or depth, no...”
• “Self-justification is a verbal defense for restoring the appearance of righteousness without doing anything about the su...”
• “The church is the primary arena in which we learn that glory does not consist in what we do for God but in what God does...”
• “Prayer is a way of language practiced in the presence of God in which we become more than ourselves while remaining ours...”
• “We do not become less needy, less dependent when we pray; we become more needy, more dependent, which is to say, more hu...”
• “There is nothing more common than for people who want to talk about God to lose interest in the people they are talking ...”
• “The temptations that use the raw material of good for evil can continue unrecognized for a long time without awareness.”
• “Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?”
• “The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind. Emily Dickinson”
• “Parables release the adrenaline of urgency into our bloodstream.”
• “The devil does some of his best work behind stained glass.”
• “Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence.”
• “Preaching reveals God in action here and now -- for ME.”
• “God uses language to create and command us.”
• “The end is where we start from. T.S. Eliot”