Christianity is not some ideal toward which we ought always to strive even though the ideal is out of reach. Christianity is not a series of slogans that sum up our beliefs.
Interpretation
Christianity is more about lived experience than unattainable ideals or mere slogans.
In this quote, Stanley Hauerwas emphasizes that Christianity should not be viewed as an unreachable ideal or a set of catchphrases. Instead, it should be understood as a dynamic, lived experience that influences how individuals engage with their faith and the world around them. This perspective invites a deeper, more authentic practice of faith, focused on real-life application rather than a theoretical benchmark.
In practice
During a sermon about the practical application of faith.
My way of putting it is that Christians are called to live nonviolently not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but in a world of war as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent.
Advent is patience it's how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.
War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.
To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take.
The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.
Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.
And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.
We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." —
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.
Mass communication--wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued--presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)
We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions.
The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.
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