Marcus J. Borg QUOTES

1 " The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to the God who is already here. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

2 " The point is not that Jesus was a good guy who accepted everybody, and thus we should do the same (though that would be good). Rather, his teachings and behavior reflect an alternative social vision. Jesus was not talking about how to be good and how to behave within the framework of a domination system. He was a critic of the domination system itself. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

3 " Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored

4 " How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

5 " The spoken word has come to dominate many Protestant forms of worship: the words of prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, the sermon, and so forth. Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one’s mind. The spoken word tends to go to our heads, not our hearts. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

6 " God wills our liberation, our exodus from Egypt. God wills our reconciliation, our return from exile. God wills our enlightenment, our seeing. God wills our forgiveness, our release from sin and guilt. God wills that we see ourselves as God’s beloved. God wills our resurrection, our passage from death to life. God wills for us food and drink that satisfy our hunger and thirst. God wills, comprehensively, our well-being—not just my well-being as an individual but the well-being of all of us and of the whole of creation. In short, God wills our salvation, our healing, here on earth. The Christian life is about participating in the salvation of God. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

7 " Our central problem is not sin and guilt, as it is within the monarchical model. For the Spirit model, our central problem is “estrangement,” whose specific meaning of “separated from that to which one belongs” is most appropriate. ... For the monarchical model, sin is primarily disloyalty to the king, seen especially as disobedience to his laws. The metaphors used to express the Spirit model suggest something else. For the metaphor of God as lover, sin is unfaithfulness—that is, sin is going after other lovers. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

8 " The political vision of the religious right is for the most part an individualistic politics of righteousness, not a communal politics of compassion. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

9 " In a number of workshops, I have asked people whether they have had one or more experiences that they would identify as an experience of God and, if so, to share them in small groups. On average, 80 percent of the participants identify one or more and are eager to talk about them. They also frequently report that they had never before been asked that question in a church setting or given an opportunity to talk about it. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

10 " So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored

11 " When tradition is thought to state the way things really are, it becomes the director and judge of our lives; we are, in effect, imprisoned by it. On the other hand, tradition can be understood as a pointer to that which is beyond tradition: the sacred. Then it functions not as a prison but as a lens. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

12 " More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored

13 " But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak “Christian” fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored

14 " This book might also be seen as “a Christian primer.” A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book’s purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored

15 " The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus’s dying for our sins, and believing. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored

16 " A poem by Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States, captures the ache of loss at the end of childhood. Its title is significant: “On Turning Ten”: The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light— a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chickenpox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible By drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith

17 " the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

18 " But believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true. "

― Marcus J. Borg , Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

19 " When we read Paul, we are reading somebody else’s mail—and unless we know the situation being addressed, his letters can be quite opaque...It is wise to remember that when we are reading letters never intended for us, any problems of understanding are ours and not theirs. "

― Marcus J. Borg , The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon

20 " Salvation Is More About This Life than an Afterlife "

― Marcus J. Borg , Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most