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1 " [The] faith spoken of in the Bible is not a matter of intellectual belief, but a matter of connecting experientially and substantively with the person of Truth, Jesus. "
― Karla Perry , Back to the Future: Rebuilding America's Stability
2 " Neoclassical theology corrects misconceptions about God that are neither experientially true nor biblically grounded. If God were " omnipotent" in the sense of absolute determinism, then creation, and especially humans, would have no freedom. Freedom and absolute determinism negate one another. From the perspective of process metaphysics, if God were fully deterministic, then one could not speak of freedom of the will, the ability to choose to participate in God's creativity or not. God is in control, but God is not a control freak! God is not a " tyrant," puppeter, or robotic engineer! "
3 " Finally, the dirty little secret about sexual objectification is that it is an act that cannot be performed with any attention to its ethical meaning. Experientially —from the point of view of a man who is sexually objectifying—sexual objectification and ethical self awareness are mutually exclusive. A man cannot reflect on what he is doing and its real consequences for real people and at the same time fully accomplish the act of sexual objectifying. There's no way it can be done, because hos own subjective reality is too contingent upon the unreality of someone else. All that can be left " out there" in his field of awareness is the other person's sexedness—an abstract representation of a gender—in comparison with which his own sexedness may flourish and engorge. So it is that a man shuts off his capacity for ethical empathy—whatever capacity he may ever had—in order to commit an act of despersonalization that is " gratifying" essentially because it functions to fulfill his sense of an identity that is authentically male. "
4 " What is clear is that Scripture requires both head and heart, and you need to see it not just as a text but as the very words of God. This will encourage you to pay close attention to the very words he uses, but it will also compel you to feast on those words as light-shedding, wisdom-dispensing, and life-giving counsel from on high.For all your longing for God to speak, to make his will plain and his plan clear, you should be daily immersed in God's Word. This is his voice, his will, and his plan made known to you. Consider these words, " Make your face shine upon your servant, and teach me your statutes." God's face shines on you when you are learning - experientially - his Word. "
5 " We all know that parents do not make children but that children make parents…Authentic parenting is one long sacrificial act…parenting reveals the way that sacrifice at once diminishes our life as we knew it…while at the same time revealing to us larger and infinitely more fascinating forms of life…Parents know experientially that the very process which makes them suffer also makes them grow. "
― Luke Timothy Johnson , The Living Gospel (Icons)
6 " The character of Jesus can only be ultimately known experientially through the indwelling of His Spirit in union with us." ~" The character of Jesus can only be ultimately known experientially through the indwelling of His Spirit in union with us." ~R. Alan Woods [2013] "
7 " We are not only contingent beings, dependent on the love and will of a Creator whom we cannot know experientially except in so far as he reveals to us our personal relationship with him as his sons - we are also sinners who have FREELY REPUDIATED this relationship. We have rebelled against him. The spirit of rebellious refusal persists in our heart even when we try to return to him. Much could be said, at this point, about all the subtlety and ingenuity of religious egoism which is one of the worst and most ineradicable forms of self-deception. Sometimes one feels that a well-intentioned and inculpable atheist is in many ways better off - and gives more glory to God - than some people whose bigoted complacency and inhumanity to others are signs of the most obvious selfishness! Hence we not only need to recover an awareness of our creaturehood; we also must repair the injury done to truth and to love by this repudiation, this infidelity. But how? Humanly speaking, there is no way in which we can do this. "
― Thomas Merton , Contemplative Prayer
8 " Everything I have learned has not come from books, it has come experientially over time under pressure walking with Christ" .~ R. Alan Woods [2012] "
9 " What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true within limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are beliefs to be transcended. "
