Quotes about Issues

If the root issues are not faced and resolved, growth will be stymied.

What we can control is where we're going. If we've been less than healthy, we can commit ourselves, as a spiritual exercise, to deal with the spiritual issues behind the physical problem.

If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.

Being in proximity makes a difference. Relationships make issues real and complicated and personal. Relationships move us from ideology to compassion. We can't love our neighbor if we don't know them. And once we are proximate, love requires us to take action, to stand up for life in tangible ways.

When we don't deal honestly with our lives and the losses we face, when we try to anesthetize the pain and move on, then the suppressed anger or fear or guilt will deal with us until we are ready to deal with those issues.

That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: "Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

Christians historically have believed wrong on issues. Take slavery: they believed wrong on that issue for generations, and it had, just, repercussions that were staggeringly negative for our culture and my community. So it is possible to be Christian and to believe wrongly and practice wrongly.

I read the Bible, I speak through issues, I see what I think is hypocrisy in the church and things that are wrong, and I speak to these things. But I could be wrong.

It is perhaps the most important civic duty of every citizen to inform themselves about the issues of the day and cast educated votes for people who truly represent their views.

It was funny that rank-and-file evangelicals were ahead of all the leadership. They saw for decades conservative Republicans had made promises to them on issues that were important to Christians and conservatives when they were running for office. But when they won, they didn't keep those promises.