All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.
Interpretation
Change is often resisted by people because it can be uncomfortable and challenging, especially when it comes to personal growth.
This quote by Flannery O'Connor speaks to the inherent resistance found within human nature towards the concept of grace, which symbolizes transformation and acceptance of change. The idea that this change can be painful highlights the struggle many experience when they confront the need to grow or adapt, indicating that such growth often requires a departure from our familiar selves, which can be a challenging process.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
These so-called extremists in Pakistan should be brought into the mainstream; if you marginalize them, you radicalize them.
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.
There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things.
I dream of Poland becoming a modern society that is defined not by the crippling nature of history, but by our individual achievements, a sense of our own self-worth and ideas for the future.
The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.
Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they'll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.