Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
Arthur KoestlerRead
But theological change happens though selective quoting. Every religious person does it: You quote those verses that resonate with your own religious insights and ignore or reinterpret those that undermine your certainties. Selective quoting isn't just legitimate, but essential: Religions evolve through shifts in selective quoting.
Interpretation
Selective quoting allows individuals to shape religious beliefs based on personal insights while evolving the understanding of faith.
This quote highlights how individuals within religious contexts often focus on specific verses that support their beliefs while overlooking or reinterpreting those that contradict them. It suggests that this practice of selective quoting is not only common but also a necessary process for the evolution of religious thought, as it allows for personal interpretation and adaptation of faith over time.
In practice
In a discussion about religious beliefs, this quote can illustrate how individuals perceive their faith.
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World.
The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.
God is in all things, but so far as God is Divine and so far as He is rational, God is nowhere so properly as in the soul - in the innermost of the soul
My way of putting it is that Christians are called to live nonviolently not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but in a world of war as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent.
If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.
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