Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
The world doesn't want to be punished. It wants to remain in darkness. It doesn't want to be told that what it believes is false. If you also don't want to be corrected, then you might as well leave the church and spend your time at the bar and brothel. But if you want to be saved-and remember that there's another life after this one-you must accept correction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the discomfort of accepting the truth and the necessity of correction for personal and spiritual growth.
Martin Luther highlights the struggle between comfort in ignorance and the need for truth and correction for one's spiritual salvation. He suggests that many prefer to remain in familiar beliefs, even if they are false, rather than face the discomfort of being challenged or corrected. However, true enlightenment and the promise of another life necessitate an acceptance of correction, which can lead one out of darkness and into a more profound understanding.
Themes
TruthCorrectionIgnoranceSpiritualityBelief
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a discussion about personal growth and the challenges of accepting difficult truths.
More from Martin Luther
All quotes →Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, as I reflect that he is Lord over all things. ...God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
Martin LutherRead
It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and wellbeing, he may be enabled to labour, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfiling the law of Christ.
Martin LutherRead
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
Martin LutherRead
We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Martin LutherRead
In a mouse we admire God's creation and craft work. The same may be said about flies.
Martin LutherRead
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