I just need the junkies and the liars and the thieves,_x000D_ _x000D_ I need the pimps, prostitutes and pushers out in the streets._x000D_ _x000D_ That's where I'm seeking God, cause that's where He found me.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the idea that divine presence is often found in the most marginalized and troubled parts of society.
Killer Mike emphasizes that instead of seeking God in traditional or sanitized places, he finds Him among those who are often deemed as society's outcasts—junkies, liars, thieves, and others living difficult lives. This speaks to the idea that redemption and spirituality can be found in the most unlikely places and that everyone, regardless of their circumstances, has the potential for connection with the divine.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about finding hope in urban communities.
I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I only have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all.
The way you start to break down systemic racism is to start building individual relationships with people who are not like you.
We have a responsibility to do better as black people in this country. I don't care how white people look at you - I care that we have a one-trillion-dollar spending base, and if you want to see change, you have to start to focus on, economically, how can we change our communities.
Government should fear the people, not the other way around.
I have hurt my community. I have to look myself in the mirror and know that, and I have to own that in order to grow past that.
For the people of Baltimore, I don't criticize rioting, because I understand it. But after the fires die down, organize, strategize, and mobilize.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom - go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present. This is one of the ways in which women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.
If you have a group of people come together around a vision for real discipleship, people who are committed to grow, committed to change, committed to learn, then a spiritual assessment tool can work.
People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.
In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.
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