When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.
E. Stanley JonesRead
The purpose of religion is not so much to get us into heaven, or to keep us out of hell, but to put a little bit of heaven into us, and take the hell out of us. This has always been the greatest responsibility of religion.
Interpretation
Religion aims to improve our inner selves rather than merely focusing on the afterlife.
E. Stanley Jones emphasizes that the true purpose of religion transcends the traditional views of heaven and hell. Instead of being solely about gaining eternal reward or avoiding eternal punishment, religion should transform individuals, instilling a sense of peace, love, and goodness within, effectively making our earthly lives more heavenly while dispelling negativity and despair.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of spiritual growth, one could reference this quote to highlight the transformative power of religion.
When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.
A Johns Hopkins doctor says that 'we do not know why it is that the worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact.' But I, who am simple of mind, think I know we are inwardly constructed, in nerve and tissue and brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. Therefore, the need of faith is not something imposed on us dogmatically, but it is written in us intrinsically. We cannot live without it. To live by worry is to live against Reality.
Worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil.
An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost, the other a corpse.
To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.
Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.
Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.
I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice - if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state.
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius! If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then this parting was well made.
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