You don't take your newborn baby, put that baby on your lap, and say, "Now listen, kid, you … - John Shelby Spong

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Life is sort of a circle. You come back to a lot of the interests that you had early in life.

John Shelby Spong

You don't take your newborn baby, put that baby on your lap, and say, "Now listen, kid, you were born in sin, you're not worth anything, and you've got to pray for mercy. " That's not going to raise a healthy adult. And that's what we do Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

Baby, Kid, Kids, Listen, Raise, Sunday

Same Author Quotes

God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.

Buddhist, Christian, Created, God, Mystery, Walk

One of my great experiences in life was to be interviewed on a late-night talk show by a guy named Tom Snyder. He was interviewing me on a book I had written on the New Testament of the Bible called Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, and we talked about the dating of the books of the New Testament, and I said, "Well, the consensus is that the gospels were written some forty to seventy years after the crucifixion. " And he stopped me and said, "Wait a minute, Bishop, that means they couldn't have been written by eyewitnesses. "

Book, Eyewitnesses, Mean, Night, Stopped, Written

I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be.

Christianity, Daring, Eternity, Living, Religious, Rules

True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.

Doe, Journey, Religion, Toward, True

When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.

Dared, Differences, Dust, Order, Reward, Settles