Quotes about People

The Bible is not a Christian owner's manual but a story—a diverse story of God and how his people have connected with him over the centuries, in changing circumstances and situations.

That's Jesus for you. Making people across time upset with him.

God adopted Abraham as the forefather of a new people, and in doing so he also adopted the mythic categories within which Abraham—and everyone else—thought. But God did not simply leave Abraham in his mythic world. Rather, God transformed the ancient myths so that Israel's story would come to focus on its God, the real one.

If there is any cure for thinking of the Bible as a once-told-forever-binding source of information about God and his people, Paul is it. For

Christ is the ultimate example of how God enters the messiness of history to save his people.

I believe these ancient people experienced the Divine. But how they experienced God and therefore how they thought and wrote about God were filtered through their experience, when and where they existed.

the ancient Israelites were an ancient tribal people.

In reading the Bible we are watching the spiritual journeys of people long ago.

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes.

And as people journeyed eastward, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

He retrieved all the goods, as well as his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the rest of the people.

The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people, but take the goods for yourself.”