Home > Author > Nadia Bolz-Weber
181 " So my argument in this book is this: we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bodies and spirits of people, we should rethink those teachings. "
― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Shameless: A Sexual Reformation
182 " Because the holy things we need for healing and sustenance are almost always the same as the ordinary things right in front of us. "
― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People
183 " I keep making mistakes, even the same ones over and over. I repeatedly attempt (and fail) to keep God and my fellow humans at arm’s length. I say no when I should say yes. I say yes when I should say no. I stumble into holy moments not realizing where I am until they are over. I love poorly, then accidently say the right thing at the right moment without even realizing it, then forget what matters, then show tenderness when it’s needed, and then turn around and think of myself way too often. I simply continue to be a person on whom God is at work. "
184 " Oh hey, God told me to tell you something: Get over yourself. "
185 " New doesn’t always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming—never even hoped for—but ends up being what we needed all along. “It "
― Nadia Bolz-Weber , Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner Saint
186 " In the Jesus business, community is always a part of healing. Even though community is never perfect. "
187 " hoping perhaps that their virtues — their ability to have faith in God in the face of an oppressive empire or a failing crop or the blight of cancer — might become our own virtue, our own strength. "
188 " There’s a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference between good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way truth has. Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because, when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I’ve substituted being good (or appearing to be good) for truth. Very "
189 " Her relationship to God wasn’t doctrinal. It was functional. "
190 " Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is all about Jesus’s lavish blessing of the people around him on that hillside, blessing all the accidental saints in this world, especially those who that world — like ours — didn’t seem to have much time for: people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. "
191 " And the strangeness of the good news is that, like those in Matthew 25 who sat before the throne and said Huh? When did we ever feed you, Lord?, we never know when we experience Jesus in all of this. All that we have is a promise, a promise that our needs are holy to God. A promise that Jesus is present in the meeting of needs and that his kingdom is here. "
192 " I knew Catholics existed, with their saints and candles and rosaries, and all their other exotic ways of being wrong. "
193 " Sin is the self curved in on the self. "
194 " And anyway, it has been my experience that what makes us the saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather God’s ability to work through sinners. "
195 " Maybe we want the people who care for us and lead us to not be like us, to not struggle like us, because if we realize they, too, are hurting and needy, then maybe the spell — the illusion that we’re okay, that we’re in good hands — breaks. "
196 " makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin. "
197 " Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore. The "
198 " Personally, I think knowing the difference between a racist and a saint is kind of important. But when Jesus again and again says things like the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, and the poor are blessed, and the rich are cursed, and that prostitutes make great dinner guests, it makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin. Knowing what category to place hemlock in might help us know whether it's safe to drink, but knowing what category to place ourselves and others in does not help us know God in the way that the church so often has tried to convince us it does. "
199 " Sometimes God needs some stuff done, even though I can be a real asshole. There is absolutely no justice in the fact that Larry loved me and that church. But if I got what I deserved in this life, I'd be screwed — so instead, I receive that grace for what it is: a gift. "
200 " My outrage feels empty because what I am desperate for is to speak the truth of my burden of sin and have Jesus take it from me, yet ranting about the system or about other people will always be my go-to instead. Because maybe if I show the right level of outrage, it'll make up for the fact that every single day of my life I have benefitted from the very same system that acquitted George Zimmerman. My opinions feel good until I crash from the self-righteous sugar high, then realize I'm still sick and hungry for a taste of mercy. "