Marcus Borg famous quotes

03-25-2025

Imagine that itâ€™s not about the self and its concerns, about â€˜whatâ€™s in it for me,â€™ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life.
-- Marcus Borg

#Blessed #Self #Afterlife
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 Borg

#Christian #Believe #Heart
Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.
-- Marcus Borg

#Goal #World #Christianity
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 Borg

#Mean #Afterlife #Needs
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 Borg

#Hands #Judging #Directors
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 behaviour 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 Borg

#Jesus #Teaching #Talking
God loves us already and has from our very beginning. The Christian life is not about believing or doing what we need to believe or do so that we can be saved. Rather, it's about seeing what is already true Â– that God loves us already Â– and then beginning to live in this relationship. It is about becoming conscious of and intentional about a deepening relationship with God.
-- Marcus Borg

#Christian #Believe #Needs
How can women be in the image of God if God cannot be imaged in female form?
-- Marcus Borg

#Female #Form #God Image
Reality is permeated, indeed flooded, with divine creativity, nourishment, and care.
-- Marcus Borg

#Creativity #Reality #Care
Godâ€™s dream for us is not simply peace of mind, but peace on earth.
-- Marcus Borg

#Dream #Mind #Earth
Imagine that Christianity is about loving God,
-- Marcus Borg

#Imagine #Christianity #Loving God
The Bible is true, and some of it actually happened.
-- Marcus Borg
The Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things
-- Marcus Borg

#Religious #Saws #Ancestor
Some people find the experience and practice of compassion as a spiritual discipline to be a more direct route to the transformation of the heart than prayer. It is not that prayer does not or should not play a role in their lives, but their way to the opening of the heart lies through deeds of compassion. "Just do it" summarizes this path of transformation.
-- Marcus Borg

#Spiritual #Prayer #Lying
'Believing' cannot tip the scales in making a historical judgement about whether something really happened. I can choose to believe that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock, but my believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether or not he really did do it. So also with the story of Jesus walking on water: Believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether he really did do it. 'Belief' cannot be the basis for historical conclusions; it has no direct relevance.
-- Marcus Borg

#Faith #Jesus #Believe
Jesus disclosed that God is compassionate. Jesus spoke of God that way: "Be compassionate, as God is compassionate." Compassion is the primary quality of the central figures in two of his most famous parables: the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. And Jesus himself, as a manifestation of the sacred, is often spoken of as embodying compassion.
-- Marcus Borg

#Jesus #Father #Son
One of God's central qualities is compassion, a word that in Hebrew is related to the word for "womb." Not only is compassion a female image suggesting source of life and nourishment but it also has a feeling dimension: God as compassionate Spirit feels for us as a mother feels for the children of her womb. Spirit feels the suffering of the world and participates in it. . . .
-- Marcus Borg

#Mother #Children #Compassion
Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them... 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 Borg

#Wise #Reading #Understanding

You may also like:

Barbara Brown Taylor
Priest
Bart D. Ehrman
Professor
Brian D. McLaren
Pastor
Diana Butler Bass
Author
Don Cupitt
Writer
Elaine Pagels
Professor
Jack Kornfield
Author
John Dominic Crossan
John Shelby Spong
Author
Karen Armstrong
Author
Luke Timothy Johnson
Scholar
N. T. Wright
Bishop of Durham
Richard Dawkins
Ethologist
Richard Rohr
Priest
Rob Bell
Author
Ron Kind
U.S. Representative
Sam Harris
Author
Walter Brueggemann
Theologian
Walter Wink
Activist
Robert W. Funk