Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that creating a personal image of God that aligns with oneβs own prejudices indicates a flawed understanding of divinity.
Anne Lamott's quote points to the idea that when people mold their conception of God to reflect their own biases and dislikes, it reveals not only a lack of true understanding of the divine but also the potential for moral failure. The quote challenges individuals to reflect on their beliefs and urges them to consider whether these beliefs stem from genuine spirituality or self-serving narratives.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about religious tolerance and the dangers of projecting personal biases onto religious beliefs.
More from Anne Lamott
All quotes βOr you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
Similar quotes
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.
It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless.
Thus the right of nullification meant by Mr. Jefferson is the natural right, which all admit to be a remedy against insupportable oppression.
Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!
I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society.