As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
Interpretation
People often act in harmful ways towards others when they believe they are defending their beliefs about God.
This quote by Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that the worst of human behavior often emerges in the name of religious or moral protection. When individuals feel justified by their beliefs in God, they may resort to actions that are cruel or harmful, obscuring the fundamental teachings of compassion and respect that many religions advocate.
In practice
During a discussion on the impact of religion in society, this quote could be cited to illustrate how misguided beliefs can lead to negative actions.
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar
I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again.
The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things.
I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.
America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
You cannot escape the results of your thoughts. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
I do not play chess β I fight at chess. Therefore, I willingly combine the tactical with the strategic, the fantastic with the scientific, the combinative with the positional, and I aim to respond to the demands of each given position.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
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