Paintings With Bible Quotes

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Christians . . . ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. Great painting is not "photographic": think of the Old Testament art commanded by God. There were blue pomegranates on the robes of the priest who went into the Holy of Holies. In nature there are no blue pomegranates. Christian artists do not need to be threatened by fantasy and imagination, for they have a basis for knowing the difference between them and the real world "out there." The Christian is the really free person--he is free to have imagination. This too is our heritage. The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.
Francis A. Schaeffer (Art and the Bible: Two Essays (L'Abri Pamphlets))
Beautiful sunrise in the far away mountains, painting the wide horizon with vibrant warm colors, among the chill from the morning breeze. ☥
Luis Marques
First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. A glide of snake belly on branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. This forest eats itself and lives forever.
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
What is the place of art in the Christian life? Is art- especially the fine arts- simply a way to bring worldliness in through the back door? What about sculpture or drama, music or painting? Do these have any place in the Christian life? Shouldn't a Christian focus his gaze steadily on "religious things" alone and forget about art and culture? As evangelical Christians, we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the lordship of Christ over the whole man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives, and for our culture. The lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul, and redemption is for the whole man.
Francis A. Schaeffer (Art and the Bible: Two Essays (L'Abri Pamphlets))
Unfortunately, the ten-cent-store Jesus being preached now by many men is not the Jesus that will come to judge the world. This plastic, painted Christ who has no spine and no justice, but is a soft and pliant friend to everybody, if He is the only Christ, then we might as well close our books, bar our doors and make a bakery or garage out of our church buildings. The popular Christ being preached now is not the Christ of God nor the Christ of the Bible nor the Christ we must deal with finally. For the Christ that we deal with has eyes as a flame of fire. And His feet are like burnished brass; and out of His mouth cometh a sharp two-edged sword (see Rev. 1:14-16). He will be the judge of humanity. You can leave your loved ones in His hands knowing that He Himself suffered, knowing that He knows all, no mistakes can be made, there can be no miscarriage of justice, because He knows all that can be known... Jesus Christ our Lord, the judge with the flaming eyes, is the one with whom we must deal. We cannot escape it.
A.W. Tozer (And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John)
The Bible is not a painting to be looked at, but a window to be looked through, and through that window we see Jesus.
Bruxy Cavey (Reunion: The Good News of Jesus for Seekers, Saints, and Sinners)
it is impossible for any single painting, for example, to reflect the totality of an artist’s view of reality.
Francis A. Schaeffer (Art and the Bible)
Speak, breathe, prophesy, get behind a pulpit and preach, mark exam papers, run a company or a nonprofit, clean your kitchen, put paint on a canvas, organize, rabble-rouse, find transcendence in the laundry pile while you pray in obscurity, deliver babies for Haitian mothers in the midwifery clinic—work the Love out and in and around you however God has made you and placed you to do it. Just do it. Don’t let the lies fence you in or hold you back.
Sarah Bessey (Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women)
I picked up scallop shells in diverse colors and sizes — warm reds and yellows; cool, stippled grays — and reflected on the diversity of God’s creation, and what might be the use and meaning of his making so many varieties of a single thing. If he created scallops simply for our nourishment, why paint each shell with delicate and particular colors? And why, indeed, trouble making so many different things to nourish us, when in the Bible we read that a simple manna fed the Hebrews day following day? It came to me then that God must desire us to use each of our senses, to take delight in the varied tastes and sights and textures of his world.
Geraldine Brooks
When God intends a mercy for his people, he stirs up the spirit of prayer in them. Fervency unites the soul and directs the thoughts to the work at hand. It will not allow diversions and denies all foreign thoughts seeking to intrude. Pray fervently or you do nothing. Cold praying is no more prayer than a painting of fire is fire. How can prayers that do not even warm your own heart move God’s? A fervent prayer will never find a cold reception with God. Elijah’s prayer called fire down from heaven because it carried fire up to heaven.
William Gurnall
the disparity between Americans’ veneration of the Bible and their understanding of it, painting a picture of a nation that believes God has spoken in scripture but can’t be bothered to listen to what God has to say.
Stephen Prothero (Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't)
And although it was in a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her—it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it and MIllet and Breton—a light in the darkness, the brightness in the middle of a dark night. And so I hung a large etching after Rembrandt over it, the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by candlelight, while the great shadows cast a deep chiaroscuro over the whole room.
Vincent van Gogh (The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh)
Speaking of high-end shoe designers, in 2011 it was fascinating to see the design company of Christian Louboutin try to stop the company Yves Saint Laurent from producing high heels with red soles, claiming that Louboutin was the originator of the red sole. Louboutin lost, and I was glad. He was not the first person to paint a sole, and I am wary of patenting a color, like Tiffany blue. Why should we grant that entire history to Louboutin and say there are no predecessors and should be no successors?
Tim Gunn (Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible)
In attempting to say who Jesus is, the best we can do is to utter words provoked by the collective attempts to do so over the centuries-- a choral work we cannot possibly translate back into a few phrases, any more than we can assume that a concert is adequately described by its listing in the program, or that a painting is interchangeable with its title. Reading the program or the museum's catalogue, we have no notion of what actually was performed or displayed. We can extend the metaphor: a literal reading of the Bible amounts to little more than what we learn from a concert program, or even the score. It is the symphonic whole that bears the meaning that nothing less can remotely capture.
James P. Carse (The Religious Case Against Belief)
But how do you paint with pencil? Very patiently.
Alyona Nickelsen (Colored Pencil Painting Bible: Techniques for Achieving Luminous Color and Ultrarealistic Effects)
To judge God solely by the present world would be a tragic mistake. At one time, it may have been “the best of all possible worlds,” but surely it is not now. The Bible communicates no message with more certainty than God’s displeasure with the state of creation and the state of humanity. Imagine this scenario: vandals break into a museum displaying works from Picasso’s Blue Period. Motivated by sheer destructiveness, they splash red paint all over the paintings and slash them with knives. It would be the height of unfairness to display these works—a mere sampling of Picasso’s creative genius, and spoiled at that—as representative of the artist. The same applies to God’s creation. God has already hung a “Condemned” sign above the earth, and has promised judgment and restoration. That this world spoiled by evil and suffering still exists at all is an example of God’s mercy, not his cruelty.
Philip Yancey (Where Is God When It Hurts?)
The biggest mistake abuse survivors make after leaving their relationship is to shrink. They wallow in sadness and allow the abuser to go on social media sites and post pictures of how wonderful their life is now that you left them. They allow the abuser to win again by showing people they are so over you. This is not okay! I hope every abuse survivor has a marketing campaign of glory and triumph. Don't let the abuser paint the image of you as someone they discarded. Post your comeback story on social media. Invite the world back into your life. The victory is yours. Show the world that you overcame a monster. Show them you won!
Shannon L. Alder (The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Bible)
In his book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer paints a brilliant picture of the value of Scripture stating, “As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.”3
Jed Jurchenko (Coffee Shop Conversations Psychology and the Bible: Live, Lead, and Love Well)
The image titled “The Homeless, Psalm 85:10,” featured on the cover of ELEMENTAL, can evoke multiple levels of response. They may include the spiritual in the form of a studied meditation upon the multidimensional qualities of the painting itself; or an extended contemplation of the scripture in the title, which in the King James Bible reads as follows: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” The painting can also inspire a physical response in the form of tears as it calls to mind its more earth-bound aspects; namely, the very serious plight of those who truly are homeless in this world, whether born into such a condition, or forced into it by poverty or war.
Aberjhani (Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love)
Whether in their policy of religious tolerance, devising a universal alphabet, maintaining relay stations, playing games, or printing almanacs, money, or astronomy charts, the rulers of the Mongol Empire displayed a persistent universalism. Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere. Without deep cultural preferences in these areas, the Mongols implemented pragmatic rather than ideological solutions. They searched for what worked best; and when they found it, they spread it to other countries. They did not have to worry whether their astronomy agreed with the precepts of the Bible, that their standards of writing followed the classical principles taught by the mandarins of China, or that Muslim imams disapproved of their printing and painting. The Mongols had the power, at least temporarily, to impose new international systems of technology, agriculture, and knowledge that superseded the predilections or prejudices of any single civilization; and in so doing, they broke the monopoly on thought exercised by local elites.
Jack Weatherford (Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World)
For Isaac’s protection he had a blue Turkish evil eye and a painted tin hand of Fatima hanging from the bedpost; a candle was always lit on his chest of drawers, next to Hebrew and Christian Bibles and a jar of holy water that one of the domestic staff had brought from the Shrine of Saint Jude.
Isabel Allende (The Japanese Lover)
It is impossible to describe the shock of return. I recall that I stood for the longest time staring at a neatly painted yellow line on a neatly formed cement curb. Yellow yellow line line. I pondered the human industry, the paint, the cement truck and concrete forms, all the resources that had gone into that one curb. For what? I could not quite think of the answer. So that no car would park there? Are there so many cars that America must be divided into places with and places without them? Was it always so, or did they multiply vastly, along with telephones and new shoes and transistor radios and cellophane-wrapped tomatoes, in our absence?
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
I'll keep in touch, says Lige, ain't going to let you go. This makes John Coke very quiet. John is a tall man and thin and maybe he don't have much painted on his face. He likes to make his decisions and then do a thing. He has my back and he wants the best world for Winona and he don't neglect his pals. When Lige Magan intimates his seeming love for him, John Cole does show something on his face though. Maybe remembers the old sick days when John Cole couldn't move a muscle and that Lige danced attendance. Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don't care about that. The world is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing is going on but the chicory drinking and whiskey and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We're strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain't saying no laws in Washington. We ain't walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don't believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain't in dominion. Bibles weren't wrote for us nor any books. We ain't maybe what people do call human since we ain't partaking in the bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light comes up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seeing a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering.
Sebastian Barry (Days Without End (Days Without End #1))
The power of loving a God whom religion paints as the most detestable of beings would, doubtless, be a proof of the most supernatural grace, that is, a grace the most contrary to nature; to love that which we do not know, is, assuredly, sufficiently difficult; to love that which we fear, is still more difficult; but to love that which is exhibited to us in the most repulsive colors, is manifestly impossible.
Paul-Henri Thiry (Letters to Eugenia; Or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices)
All of this tells us that the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament were a Black people like other aboriginal peoples of West Asia. It gives credibility to the many paintings of Black Christ and Madonna that can be found in the oldest churches of Europe and Asia Minor. All Black Bible-believers, non-believers and atheists should be aware of this information to fight the anti-Black brainwashing that we have all received.
Gert Muller (The Ancient Black Hebrews (Pomegranate Series Book 1))
Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting. Just read the Bible and the Gospel, that will start you thinking, thinking about many things, thinking about everything, well then, think about many things, think about everything, that will lift your thoughts above the humdrum despite yourself. We know how to read, so let us read!
Vincent van Gogh
I'll keep in touch, says Lige, ain't going to let you go. This makes John Cole very quiet. John is a tall man and thin and maybe he don't have much painted on his face. He likes to make his decisions and then do a thing. He has my back and he wants the best world for Winona and he don't neglect his pals. When Lige Magan intimates his seeming love for him, John Cole does show something on his face though. Maybe remembers the old sick days when John Cole couldn't move a muscle and that Lige danced attendance. Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don't care about that. The world is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing is going on but the chicory drinking and whiskey and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We're strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain't saying no laws in Washington. We ain't walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don't believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain't in dominion. Bibles weren't wrote for us nor any books. We ain't maybe what people do call human since we ain't partaking in the bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light comes up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seeing a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering.
Sebastian Barry (Days Without End (Days Without End #1))
The Bible is not a set of rules and regulations that must be followed to earn a place near God. It is a picture, painted over thousands of years, of God’s pursuit of mankind. It is the story of the bridegroom seeking his bride. Is he going to strike you with lighting or pull all his blessings from your life if you sin? Probably not. But he gave you his heart to protect. Religion prevents you from seeing in the spirit because it puts a wall of regulation and duty where God intended to put love. It makes you a slave when he’s looking for a son.
Blake K. Healy (The Veil)
ON GETTING DRUNK: "Those who are Christians are to see to it that they are grateful for grace and redemption and conduct themselves modestly, moderately, and soberly, so that one does not go on living the swinish life that goes on in the filthy world...." "...In my time it was considered a great shame among the nobility [drunkenness]. Now they are worse than the citizens and peasants;...We preach, but who stops it? Those who should stop it do it themselves; the princes even more. Therefore Germany is a land of hogs and a filthy people which debauches its body and its life. If you were going to paint it, you would have to paint a pig. "This gluttony is inundating us like an ocean....We are the laughingstock of all the other countries, who look upon us as filthy pigs;...It is possible to tolerate a little elevation, when a man takes a drink or two too much after working hard and when he is feeling low. This must be called a frolic. But to sit day and night, pouring it in and pouring it out again, is piggish. This is not a human way of living. not to say Christian, but rather a pig's life." - Martin Luther
Martin Luther
We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.
Philip Yancey (Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?)
It is impossible to describe the shock of return. I recall that I stood for the longest time staring at a neatly painted yellow line on a neatly formed cement curb. Yellow yellow line line. I pondered the human industry, the paint, the cement truck and concrete forms, all the resources that had bone into one curb. For what? I could not quite think of an answer. So that no car would park there? Are there so many cars that America must be divided into places with and places without them? Was it always so, or did they multiply vastly, along with telephones and new shoes and transistor radios and cellophane-wrapped tomatoes, in our absence?
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
Humanae Vitae is important for yet another reason. Just as the National Socialists used nationalism and racism, among other levers, to overthrow Christian morality, in modern, liberal society the levers have been sexual liberation and consumerism. These two “freedoms to choose” have replaced objective morality with the dogma of whatever the customer, or the individual, wants is right. In opposing this attitude, the Church is often accused of being “opposed to sex.” Such an accusation reveals the incredible poverty of modern thought. Far from being opposed to sex, the Church affirms that sex is a definable thing: God made them man and woman. The Church affirms the twofold “unitive” and “procreative” purpose and virtue inherent in conjugal activity and cherishes the result: the bonding of man and wife and their commitment to raise their children. And as anyone remotely familiar with the paintings and sculptures in the Vatican can affirm, the Church celebrates the human body, celebrates the reality of sex and the erotic (in the same spirit as the Bible's Song of Solomon), and indeed celebrates marriage as a sacrament. It is modern, liberal secularists who are “opposed to sex” in that they attempt to blur the distinctions between male and female, ignore the objective meaning of sexual activity, and who think that its natural result should be freely and inconsequentially aborted if it cannot otherwise be prevented.
H.W. Crocker III (Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church)
Religious intolerance is an idea that found its earliest expression in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew tribe depicts itself waging a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian peoples to steal their land. They justified this heinous behavior on the grounds that people not chosen by their god were wicked and therefore did not deserve to live or keep their land. In effect, the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian peoples, eradicating their race with the Jew's own Final Solution, was the direct result of a policy of religious superiority and divine right. Joshua 6-11 tells the sad tale, and one needs only read it and consider the point of view of the Palestinians who were simply defending their wives and children and the homes they had built and the fields they had labored for. The actions of the Hebrews can easily be compared with the American genocide of its native peoples - or even, ironically, the Nazi Holocaust. With the radical advent of Christianity, this self-righteous intolerance was borrowed from the Jews, and a new twist was added. The conversion of infidels by any means possible became the newfound calling card of religious fervor, and this new experiment in human culture spread like wildfire. By its very nature, how could it not have? Islam followed suit, conquering half the world in brutal warfare and, much like its Christian counterpart, it developed a new and convenient survival characteristic: the destruction of all images and practices attributed to other religions. Muslims destroyed millions of statues and paintings in India and Africa, and forced conversion under pain of death (or by more subtle tricks: like taxing only non-Muslims), while the Catholic Church busily burned books along with pagans, shattering statues and defacing or destroying pagan art - or converting it to Christian use. Laws against pagan practices and heretics were in full force throughrout Europe by the sixth century, and as long as those laws were in place it was impossible for anyone to refuse the tenets of Christianity and expect to keep their property or their life. Similar persecution and harassment continues in Islamic countries even to this day, officially and unofficially.
Richard C. Carrier (Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism)
Make a List (or lists) • Make a list of all the things that you can look at and think: Why did we even bother to move that the last time? Now will be your last and best chance to give or throw away unwanted items until your next move (5-7 years on average). Give unwanted clothes, furniture, kitchen items, etc. to a charity that allows you to use your donation as a tax write-off. Yard sales are another option. • Make a list (and/or get one online) of household hazardous materials. These are common items in your home that are not or might not be safe to transport: flammables like propane tanks (even empty ones), gasoline or kerosene, aerosols or compressed gases (hair spray, spray paint), cleaning fluids in plastic containers (bleach, ammonia) and pesticides (bug spray) and herbicides (weed killer) and caustics like lye or pool acid. There is more likely to be damage caused by leakage of cleaning fluids-- like bleach--than there is by damage caused by a violent explosion or fire in your truck. The problem lies in the fact that any leaking fluid is going to drip its way to the floor and spread out--even in the short time span of your move and more so if you are going up and down hills. Aerosols can explode in the summer heat as can propane BBQ tanks. Gasoline from lawnmowers and pesticide vapors expand in the heat and can permeate everything in the truck. Plastic containers that have been opened can expand and contract with a change in temperature and altitude and crack.
Jerry G. West (The Self-Mover's Bible: A Comprehensive Illustrated Guide to DIY Moving Written by Professional Furniture Mover Jerry G. West)
To really understand it, you'll need to know a lot," he said. "To understand the stories of the Prophets in it, you need to know your Bible stories." I gulped. My knowledge of the Bible was cobbled together from Renaissance paintings and reading Paradise Lost in sophomore English. To understand the text, you need to understand the context, the Sheikh continued. To make sense of the rules it sets down, you need to understand Arab society during the age it was revealed: "So if you don't know the customs and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad's time, you can't make sense of it." My background in seventh-century Arabia was rudimentary, and my Arabic nonexistent. The Sheikh beamed as he reached for his coat. "And of course, if you're lazy, you can't make sense of it.
Carla Power (If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran)
As a commissioner (delegate) to the Old School Presbyterian General Assembly in 1845, Thornwell wrote to his wife, “I have no doubts but that the Assembly, by a very large majority, will declare slavery not to be sinful, will assert that it is sanctioned by the word of God, that it is purely a civil relation with which the Church, as such, has no right to interfere, and that abolitionism is essentially wicked, disorganizing, and ruinous.”7 In an 1850 sermon Thornwell painted a clear picture that Christians supported slavery and atheists opposed it: “The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground—Christianity and atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity the stake.”8
Jack Rogers (Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, Revised and Expanded Edition: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church)
God is found in the collection of Many . . . rather than in the One. “Elohim,” Langdon said suddenly, his eyes flying open again as he made an unexpected connection. “I’m sorry?” Katherine was still gazing down at him. “Elohim,” he repeated. “The Hebrew word for God in the Old Testament! I’ve always wondered about it.” Katherine gave a knowing smile. “Yes. The word is plural.” Exactly! Langdon had never understood why the very first passages of the Bible referred to God as a plural being. Elohim. The Almighty God in Genesis was described not as One . . . but as Many. “God is plural,” Katherine whispered, “because the minds of man are plural.” Langdon’s thoughts were spiraling now . . . dreams, memories, hopes, fears, revelations . . . all swirling above him in the Rotunda dome. As his eyes began to close again, he found himself staring at three words in Latin, painted within the Apotheosis. E PLURIBUS UNUM. “Out of many, one,
Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3))
In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith.
Criss Jami (Healology)
Which got Thomas thinking. What religious book was any better? The Holy Bible, full of power and poetry, was also filled with tall tales. Thomas had found them enthralling, but in the end they were all just stories, less important than the Sky Woman story, the manidoog at creation, the Nanabozho stories. To them all, especially the humorless book Elnath and Vernon had left, Thomas preferred their supernatural figure Nanabozho, who fooled ducks, got angry at his own butt and burnt it off, created a shit mountain to climb down when stuck high in a tree, had a wolf for his nephew, and no conscience at any time, who painted the kingfisher lovely colors and by trickery fed his children when they starved, who threw his penis over his shoulder and his balls to the west, who changed himself to a stump and made his penis look like a branch where the kingfisher perched, who killed a god by shooting its shadow, and created everything useful and much that was essential, like laughter.
Louise Erdrich (The Night Watchman)
My honors thesis project was my first interactive exhibit, in which two facing chairs were activated by a motion sensor when the viewer walked by. One was a cofortable armchair of plush red velvet, with a dildo sticking out of a hole in the seat. When activated, the dildo moved up and down and a strobe light pulsed. The facing chair was hard and uncomfortable, with spikes protruding from the seat, and when the viewer walked by it a dog would bark. The juxtaposition of the two chairs was meant to represent how forces of repression censor the desire for liberation. In that same exhibition, I showed a handmade box in the shape of a cross, decorated with a beautiful painting of the Holy Trinity. The viewer was encouraged to open the box, where they would find a dildo wrapped in the American flag and nailed to a cross-- this was meant to symbolize the hypocrisy and repression that is hidden under the attractive facade of organized religion. The dildo was surrounded by pages from the Bible, which were themselves surrounded by images of the sickness and starvation caused by the embargo in Iraq, a comment on the effects of imposing one culture and religion on another.
Wafaa Bilal (Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun)
So look out a window. Take a walk. Talk with your friend. Use your God-given skills to paint or draw or build a shed or write a book. But imagine it—all of it—in its original condition. The happy dog with the wagging tail, not the snarling beast, beaten and starved. The flowers unwilted, the grass undying, the blue sky without pollution. People smiling and joyful, not angry, depressed, and empty. If you’re not in a particularly beautiful place, close your eyes and envision the most beautiful place you’ve ever been—complete with palm trees, raging rivers, jagged mountains, waterfalls, or snow drifts. Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you. At last, you’re with the person you were made for, in the place you were made to be. Everywhere you go there will be new people and places to enjoy, new things to discover. What’s that you smell? A feast. A party’s ahead. And you’re invited. There’s exploration and work to be done—and you can’t wait to get started.
Randy Alcorn (Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide to Everything the Bible Says About Our Eternal Home (Clear Answers to 44 Real Questions About the Afterlife, Angels, Resurrection, ... and the Kingdom of God) (Alcorn, Randy))
When the white man came to Africa he studied us. Our way of living and he was amazed by our way of living. The Blackman didn’t have the sense of ownership but what the Blackman had was sharing living together. The Blackman was the richest Man on the planet. Poverty drove the white man to Africa. If the white man had everything why travel? When the white man saw the Blackman he saw God himself. Imagine a white man looking at a Blackman lifting heavy loads. The resistance to the hot weather. The Blackman was not afraid of the white man. The Blackman welcomed the white man. The white man took advantage and thought that he was more clever than the Blackman. Studied us day and night till he got the formula. Here is the formula what is it a Blackman values the most? “Life” Blackman knew they were something bigger than himself. The easy way is to brainwash give him what he believes in a white man form. Jesus Christ is just the same as our Ancestors. Proof Blackman never prayed to the Creator direct but used their Ancestor's spirit to connect. Ancestors mean we had different Ancestors but did the same thing. Jesus was introduced Son of the Creator! Blackman can talk to the Creator through the Creator's Son. Better than our Ancestors because we can talk to the Creator through his Son. The Bible was or is the proof that Jesus once existed and now he is in spirit form like our Ancestors. The Blackman has stories written on stones not curved into the stone but painted with high-quality paint. Time is being used to brainwash the whole world. Our forefathers and our future generations will be waiting for Jesus Christ because no time limit is set. What the whole world knows is One Day he will come. Just like the Blackman knows one day his Ancestors will come to guide his future generation.
Gauteng Handyman
It was 1996, and the word “appropriation” never occurred to either of them. They were drawn to these references because they loved them, and they found them inspiring. They weren’t trying to steal from another culture, though that is probably what they did. Consider Mazer in a 2017 interview with Kotaku, celebrating the twentieth-anniversary Nintendo Switch port of the original Ichigo: kotaku: It is said that the original Ichigo is one of the most graphically beautiful low-budget games ever made, but its critics also accuse it of appropriation. How do you respond to that? mazer: I do not respond to that. kotaku: Okay…But would you make the same game if you were making it now? mazer: No, because I am a different person than I was then. kotaku: In terms of its obvious Japanese references, I mean. Ichigo looks like a character Yoshitomo Nara could have painted. The world design looks like Hokusai, except for the Undead level, which looks like Murakami. The soundtrack sounds like Toshiro Mayuzumi… mazer: I won’t apologize for the game Sadie and I made. [Long pause.] We had many references—Dickens, Shakespeare, Homer, the Bible, Philip Glass, Chuck Close, Escher. [Another long pause.] And what is the alternative to appropriation? kotaku: I don’t know. mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures. kotaku: That’s an oversimplification of the issue. mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don’t you? I’m terrified of that world, and I don’t want to live in that world, and as a mixed-race person, I literally don’t exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Koreatown, Los Angeles. And as any mixed-race person will tell you—to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing. And, by the way, I don’t own or have a particularly rich understanding of the references of Jewishness or Koreanness because I happen to be those things. But if Ichigo had been fucking Korean, it wouldn’t be a problem for you, I guess?
Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
In the Bible, Jesus says more than anyone else about Hell. He refers to it as a literal place and describes it in graphic terms. Jesus taught that in Hell the wicked suffer terribly, are fully conscious, retain their desires and memories and reasoning, long for relief, cannot be comforted, cannot leave their torment, and are bereft of hope. The Savior could not have painted a bleaker picture.
Randy Alcorn (Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Heaven: A Portable Leatherlike Gift Book of Solid Biblical Answers to More than 100 Questions about God, Heaven, ... (Inspired by the Full-Length Book Heaven))
For years I painted a beautiful picture of my homeland. I smudged the bigotry, ostracism, and narrow-mindedness of the Bible Belt and brightened it with colorful glasses of sweet tea, fresh, country hillsides, and southern hospitality. I erased the whiskey, the vitamin force-feeding, and the screaming fights that sent me crying and fleeing. I replaced them with sketches of a loving daddy who charitably tolerated me. I plastered tough love atop emotional indifference and neglect. I painted Mom with the unconditional nurturing that would wash away with the first light rainfall.
Maggie Georgiana Young (Just Another Number)
The Bible alone gives a true and faithful account of man. It does not flatter him as novels and romances do; it does not conceal his faults and exaggerate his goodness, it paints him just as he is.
J.C. Ryle (Old Paths)
The Bible is the great treasure for the curious sinner, fresh water for thirsty painting soul, the revealed truth for the true seeker or worship per,the unrevealed truth for the wrong seekers, a guide to the blind and eternal food for the hungry soul.
Ikechukwu Joseph
I’d attend church meetings on Sunday and hang out with my Christian friends. I’d go to a Bible study on Tuesday night and hang out with my Christian friends — again. Then, I’d go out Friday night and hang out—once again—with my Christian friends. This new world of Churchland was sort of like a retreat into some sort of cozy Christian cocoon. We did good things for other people sometimes, like an annual trip to Mexico to build homes for needy families. A couple of times each year, we helped out at the local homeless shelter, serving meals and cleaning and painting the facility. We were also involved in getting help for local families each Christmas, providing meals and gifts for the parents to give to their children. But after we had finished these projects, we headed back to the suburbs to hang out with our Christian friends again. It happened so subtly, but the more I was immersed in Churchland, the more disconnected I felt from the world around me.
Dan Kimball (Adventures in Churchland: Finding Jesus in the Mess of Organized Religion)
This development—moving away from the view that God causes evil (rape, famine, sickness, war), towards a view that such evil is demonic—can be seen much earlier within Judaism in the intertestamental book of Jubilees (ca. 100 BCE) which revises the biblical narratives found in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. The book of Jubilees takes many passages, which in the Old Testament books are attributed to God, and instead states that these were in fact the work of “Mastema,” the prince of demons. For example, while Exodus says that God killed the firstborn children in Egypt (Exod 11:4), the later book of Jubilees instead attributes this to “the powers of Mastema” which literally means in Hebrew “the powers of Hate” (Jubilees 49:2). This illustrates the shift in thinking that was occurring within Judaism at the time which recognized the obvious moral difficulty in attributing acts of evil to God. We can see a similar revisionism as well in the canonical books of the Old Testament itself. 2 Samuel describes God telling David to take a census, and then punishing him for it: “Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go and take a census of Israel and Judah’” (2 Sam 24:1). David then subsequently recognizes that this was a sin: “David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done’” (v. 10). God then punishes David for this: “So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died” (v. 15). This obviously paints a morally problematic picture of God, which is revised in the parallel account in the later book of 1 Chronicles, which instead states, “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel” (1 Chron 21:1). Instead of God deceiving David and inciting him to sin, this is now presented as the work of Satan.
Derek Flood (Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did)
Mr. Leavitt did put a stop to it, but Fiske kept on with his meetings until Charley Douglas put an end to his career in the Glen. Mrs. Charley had been out in California all winter. She’d been real melancholy in the fall—religious melancholy—it ran in her family. Her father worried so much over believing that he had committed the unpardonable sin that he died in the asylum. So when Rose Douglas got that way Charley packed her off to visit her sister in Los Angeles. She got perfectly well and came home just when the Fiske revival was in full swing. She stepped off the train at the Glen, real smiling and chipper, and the first thing she saw staring her in the face on the black, gable-end of the freight shed, was the question, in big white letters, two feet high, ‘Wither goest thou—to heaven or hell?’ That had been one of Fiske’s ideas, and he had got Henry Hammond to paint it. Rose just gave a shriek and fainted; and when they got her home she was worse than ever. Charley Douglas went to Mr. Leavitt and told him that every Douglas would leave the church if Fiske was kept there any longer. Mr. Leavitt had to give in, for the Douglases paid half his salary, so Fiske departed, and we had to depend on our Bibles once more for instructions on how to get to heaven.
L.M. Montgomery (Anne's House of Dreams (Anne of Green Gables, #5))
Consider how political campaigns are designed to appeal relentlessly to our personal preferences. Candidates and parties woo crowds with promises of a better life for you and your children. With an air of nationalistic pride, electioneers paint a picture of a superior and more prosperous country in which you can achieve all your individual dreams. As voters, we are inundated with messages about our rights, our opportunities, all the privileges we are entitled to possess, and all the comforts we deserve to enjoy. But do we ever stop to wonder if these election messages are actually dangerous for our souls? After all, where in the Bible does Jesus beckon us with all the privileges we are entitled to possess and all the comforts we deserve to enjoy? Where does Jesus woo us with promises of everything we want in this world? When does Jesus ever encourage us to promote our nation as superior or prioritize our preferences as supreme?
David Platt (Before You Vote: Seven Questions Every Christian Should Ask)
Hey!” It was Sukey, at the base of the tree. Others. Umbrellas and hooded ponchos and raincoats. Upturned faces. Rafe, Terry, Dee, Low, Juicy. “We’re moving out here!” shouted Sukey. “You don’t want to,” I called down. “It’s cold and wet!” “Don’t care!” yelled Low. “It’s vile in there!” THEY STRAPPED UP the tarps from the beach to extend our roof cover. They found a stash of paint-spattered groundsheets and swarmed over the canopy, lashing the bright-blue vinyl to the treehouse posts. They stretched them between platforms, over nets and ladders. I felt restless. If they didn’t want to go back to the house, whatever, but I did. I wanted the fireplace and the cabinets packed with snack cakes and miniature powdered donuts. The indoor plumbing. I asked Dee, then Terry, then Rafe what the deal was, but they refused to talk about it. It was only when Sukey finished setting up her sleeping bag, weighing it down with rocks, that I got a straight answer: during the night the older generation had dosed itself with Ecstasy. No one knew if it had been a plan or covert action, but they’d promptly ascended new heights of repulsive. It was true Juicy and Terry had watched them fool around from behind slatted doors at the beginning—even Low had done it. Out of a sense of desperate boredom, soon after the phones were taken away. Also vengeance. And scorn. Now they regretted it. Maybe they’d had had stronger stomachs, back then. “Plus that was just like, normal old-people sex,” said Juicy. “How would you know?” said Rafe. “Like, couples,” said Juicy. “This is . . . like, everything.” “They’re walking around butt naked,” said Low. “I saw two fathers and Dee’s mother in a three—” started Juicy.
Lydia Millet (A Children's Bible)
The Interpreter then began to explain the meaning of the painting. “The man you see in this picture is one in a thousand. He can produce children,36 labor in birth pains,37 and nurse them himself when they are born. And do you see his eyes looking to heaven, the Bible in his hands, and the law of truth on his lips?” Christian nodded, listening intently to the Interpreter’s every word. “This is to show you that his work is to know and expose dark things to sinners, even as you see him standing there pleading with men. “And where you see the world behind him and the crown that hangs over his head, that’s to show you that he despises the things of this world for the love that he has for doing God’s work. He will surely receive his reward in glory.
John Bunyan (The Pilgrim's Progress: A Readable Modern-Day Version of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (The Pilgrim's Progress Series Book 1))
In Christianizing these Pagan temples, free use was made of the sculptured and painted stones of heathen monuments. In some cases they evidently painted over one name, and inserted another. This may be seen from the following Inscriptions Formerly in Pagan Temples. and Inscriptions now in Christian Churches. 1. To Mercury and Minerva, Tutelary Gods.   1. To St. Mary and St. Francis, My Tutelaries. 2. To the Gods who preside over this Temple.   2. To the Divine Eustrogius, who presides over this Temple.
Thomas William Doane (Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations ... Considering also their Origin and Meaning)
You do not make your own cross, although unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making; neither are you permitted to choose your own cross, although self-will wants to be lord and master. But your cross is prepared and appointed for you by divine love, and you must cheerfully accept it; you are to take up the cross as your chosen badge and burden, and not to stand complaining. This night Jesus bids you submit your shoulder to His easy yoke. Do not kick at it in petulance, or trample on it in pride, or fall under it in despair, or run away from it in fear, but take it up like a true follower of Jesus. Jesus was a cross-bearer; He leads the way in the path of sorrow. Surely you could not desire a better guide! And if He carried a cross, what nobler burden would you desire? The Via Crucis is the way of safety; fear not to tread its thorny paths. Beloved, the cross is not made of feathers or lined with velvet; it is heavy and galling to disobedient shoulders; but it is not an iron cross, though your fears have painted it with iron colors; it is a wooden cross, and a man can carry it, for the Man of Sorrows tried the load. Take up your cross, and by the power of the Spirit of God you will soon be so in love with it that like Moses you would not exchange the reproach of Christ for all the treasures of Egypt. Remember that Jesus carried it; remember that it will soon be followed by the crown, and the thought of the coming weight of glory will greatly lighten the present heaviness of trouble. May the Lord help you bow your spirit in submission to the divine will before you fall asleep tonight, so that waking with tomorrow’s sun, you may go forth to the day’s cross with the holy and submissive spirit that is fitting for a follower of the Crucified.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening: A New Edition of the Classic Devotional Based on The Holy Bible, English Standard Version)
See, you do care about him! Sarah, what Nolan Walker needs is a good wife to encourage him, to see that he eats properly, make sure he gets his rest.” The picture Prissy had painted of Sarah as devoted wife, caring for Nolan, was a very appealing one. But she couldn’t dwell on it, because Prissy wasn’t done. “When are you going to get off your lofty perch and let yourself love him?” she went on. “That excuse that he’s a Yankee’s wearing a little thin by now, don’t you think?” Sarah stared at her as they had reached their little cottage and went in. She hung up her coat with a sigh, then took Prissy’s coat and hung it up, too. “Dr. Walker and I have become friends. But how can he and I be anything more if he’s not a believer? The Bible warns about being unequally yoked, you know.” Prissy groaned exasperatedly. “Sarah Matthews, if you gave that man the slightest bit of encouragement, he’d be sitting in the front pew every Sunday morning, and you know it.
Laurie Kingery (The Doctor Takes a Wife (Brides of Simpson Creek, #2))
Zechariah paints a wonderful picture in this song, that of a visitation from on high. In verse 78, he describes it as being like a wonderful sunrise, bringing light into darkness, banishing the fearful shadows of death and bringing instead lasting peace. The depiction is of God turning his face and the light of his countenance upon this world in mercy. This is in the very nature of the God of the Bible.
William J.U. Philip (Songs for a Saviour's Birth: Journey through Advent with Elizabeth, Mary, Zechariah, the Angels, Simeon and Anna)
Later Protestants especially drew attention to the fate of the Czech reformer John Hus (ca. 1372–1415), who, after agitating from his Prague pulpit for spiritual reforms as well as more local church autonomy, was lured to Constance by the offer of safe conduct. After being interviewed by church authorities there, however, Hus’s safe conduct was revoked, under the troubling principle that it was not necessary to keep one’s word to a heretic. And for his “heretical” views (which included a concentration more on the Bible than on church authority as well as a willingness to question the dicta of church decrees), Hus was burned at the stake. This eighteenth-century painting shows Luther as the one who helped free the light hidden under a bushel (Matt.
Mark A. Noll (Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity)
Butterflies, waterfalls, bottlenose dolphins, praying mantises, kangaroos—they are all God’s idea. This magnificent world is like an interactive, hands-on museum displaying God’s artistic genius. All that follows in the Bible reinforces the clear message of Genesis 1: Behind all of history, there is God. Every helium atom, every spiral galaxy, every living creature exists because God wants it to. Think of Genesis 1–3 as an artist’s signature on a painting; God is saying, “This is mine.
Philip Yancey (NIV, Student Bible)
Like the iconic song by the Beatles, the journey of faith is a "long and winding road" and not a straight path. Faith isn't monolithic or one-size-fits-all. It isn't linear, but is instead sinuous. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. God is a great artist and the Bible tells us he is painting a masterpiece and we are his canvas; except he isn't finished yet. Thus, we might not be able to connect the dots in our lives just yet, since dots often only make sense in reverse.
Sam D. Kim (A Holy Haunting: Why Faith Isn't a Leap But a Series of Staggers from One Safe Place to Another)
She screams my name like a prayer, and she’s the only religion I will ever believe in. I’ve said it before―Jane is my fucking bible. My beautiful revelation.
Dolores Lane (Painting with Blood (The Blood Duet))
Jane must be my fucking bible because she felt like a revelation when she allowed me to look inside of her soul. Maybe I can be a believer, after all.
 But it doesn’t change the fact of what I am. And if she ever found out the truth about me, she would run for the hills and never return.
 She would see me only as a monster.
 And I know that’s all I ever will be.

Dolores Lane (Painting with Blood (The Blood Duet))
Pick a passage. You can do this randomly (my favorite method) or look up a passage that suits your concerns of the day, or go to your favorite book of the Bible. Still your mind and invite God, the Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call the Divine, to speak to you through your reading. You can say this out loud or within. ​“Then, read the passage until a word or phrase jumps off the page. You may have to read one verse, several verses, or just a few words until this happens. Use your heart to sense it, not your mind. Don’t analyze or think, ‘Oh, I know the origin of that word, I’ll choose that one.’ Let the words do the work of jumping. ​“When the word jumps, take it into your heart. Let it work in there until you start to hear or see something. Let the words or pictures flow in your imagination. Try not to let your analytical mind hijack the flow. Let the words paint the images or realizations via the subconscious, or whatever you want to call that intuitive part of you. When the flow slows or stops, grab your journal and write. Write fluidly as if you are letting the flow continue. Don’t judge your words or ideas. That’s not your job here. You are a pen in God’s hand. Write what comes.
Pamella Bowen (Labyrinth Wakening: a spiritual journey novel)
Nonc looks out on the city. It looks like one of those end-times Bible paintings where everything is large and impressive, but when you look close, in all the corners, some major shit is befalling people.
Adam Johnson (Fortune Smiles)
Yo mama is so fat… she put on her lipstick with a paint roller.
Johnny B. Laughing (Yo Mama Jokes Bible: 350+ Funny & Hilarious Yo Mama Jokes)
The country youth, on the other hand, is in the midst of a perpetual miracle. He can not open his eyes without seeing a more magnificent painting than a Raphael or a Michael Angelo could have created in a lifetime. And this magnificent panorama is changing every instant.
Napoleon Hill (The Prosperity Bible: The Greatest Writings of All Time on the Secrets to Wealth and Prosperity)
Holding a bible or wearing a badge doesn’t offer you absolution from your own inhumanity either.
S.T. Abby (Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck, #5))
In The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobias' Family, Rembrandt leaves dirt on the shadowed soles of Raphael's feet as he flies off, illuminated in glory. Passing by the painting, one sees the dramatic action, the melodramatic emotions, and the re-created narrative events of the Bible. Slowed down a bit, the viewer sees light across a large muscular calf, a strong and sharply shaped ankle, and then dirty feet. The angel who tells us he only pretended to eat - this to explain away all traces of his apparent earthliness as a fallen creaturely being - is here on the canvas with dirty feet, carrying soil, the created, to the creator. Van Gogh had rightly said there are mysteries in these paintings. They are mysteries of device and design, not of messianic significance. They require a docent and not a priest, a creative critic to guide the view of specific images, not a guardian of mysteries and master of their enigmatic authority. Dirty feet on the soles of an archangel famous for his annunciations give the viewer a point of view on the inescapably human nature of the narrated God. Raphael may no eat. He may believe he creates an illusion to satisfy the religious desire for mythological consistency, but even archangels deceive themselves as well as others. Humans sometimes do the same in inventing the transcendence they need or think they want - creating a regime from which the priestly classes rule, even theorizing the alienation of the divine. Deceit is an essential device of cultural adaptation. It constructs needed beliefs that at high and low levels of thought or action complement their existence with modes of self-defense, which protect them from not only needed analysis but also the importance of failure.
Paul A. Bové (Love's Shadow)
Workers who used radioactive materials to hand-paint the first “glow in the dark” watches licked their paintbrushes to get a fine tip; their supervisors said they would gain sex appeal. Instead, they got cancer. The introduction of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants increased the amount of radioactive material being handled. Gradually scientists realized: If you are going to use the atom, you must adopt procedures to fit its power.
Zondervan (NIV, Student Bible)
Through our examination of the rituals and terminology of biblical sacrifice, three key metaphors have emerged: sacrifice as food, sacrifice as aroma, and sacrifice as gift. They all revolve around building relationships: attracting God with inviting scents and deepening ties with Him through shared sustenance and a generous rivalry in meaningful gifts. These metaphors paint a picture of sacrifice that is opposed in every way to the modern idea of sacrifice as suffering.
Jeremy Davis (Welcoming Gifts: Sacrifice in the Bible and Christian Life)
Did you learn to love?” This is the question. That is the one thing you are responsible for. It is the only thing that God cannot work out for you. No matter what miraculous things God is doing around you and through you, you must never lose sight of this priority. All the signs, wonders, gifts, and supernatural events in the world do not prove that you are connected heart-to-heart with God. Jesus warned about the last days when people will come to Him and ask, “Didn’t I prophesy the paint off the wall? Didn’t I do amazing things in your Name?” and hear Him say, “I never knew you.”5 Do you want Jesus to know you? Do you want to know Him? Then love Him and love others. The Bible couldn’t be more clear about this: “But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.”6 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”7 People who really know God can do shocking things. They can do powerful things. They can love people that many would declare unforgiveable and impossible to love.
Danny Silk (Keep Your Love On: Connection Communication And Boundaries)
We are not God. The earth was here before and it has been given to us. This allows us to respond to the charge that Judeo-Christian thinking, on the basis of the Genesis account which grants man "dominion" over the earth, has encouraged the unbridled exploitation of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by nature. This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the church.
Pope Francis
After the fall of Atlantis and Lemuria, the elements of civilization were brought by survivors to the British Isles and Scandinavia, which, along with the Arctic, make up the remnants of what had once been. Due to the devastating after-effects of the Age of Catastrophe, the inhabitants of Britain were forced to vacate their habitats and flee for safety to the eastern climes. They crossed the land-bridge between Britain and Scandinavia, and ventured into lands less affected by the great cataclysm. Southward and eastward they went, taking their customs, religious rites, technology, language, art, music and symbolism. However, because these forced emigrations occurred before the official dates posited for civilization's rise, they have been deliberately ignored. Nevertheless, in 2008, new found evidence revealed that Egypt was indeed colonized by Westerners over fifteen thousand years ago. Wall paintings dating from this remote period have been found in southern Egypt bearing a striking resemblance to those found in the caves of Lascaux, France. As Comyns Beaumont said, this artwork is Nordic in origin. It belongs to travelers from the North-West who desperately sought refuge from the cataclysm that made their own homelands uninhabitable. The races of Egypt, Libya and India knew these handsome visitors as “Men of Gold,” “God Men,” “Good Men,” “Goat Men,” and “Stag Men.” In the Bible they are cryptically referred to as “Edomites” or "Red Men." This title - attributed to early Egyptians - simply denotes sunburn. Red is the color a fair Caucasian man’s skin turns when exposed to intense equatorial heat. It is singular to find a white
Michael Tsarion (The Irish Origins of Civilization, Volume One: The Servants of Truth: Druidic Traditions & Influence Explored)
We probably started painting our nails Immoral Coral after everybody sensible had already gone on to pink, but heck, at least we were all behind the times together.
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
On the other hand, the art of an artist who never paints the head of Christ, never once paints an open tomb, may be magnificent Christian art. For some artists there is a place for religious themes, but an artist does not need to be conscience stricken if he does not paint in this area. Some Christian artists will never use religious themes. This is a freedom the artist has in Christ under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Francis A. Schaeffer (Art and the Bible)
Yo mama is so ugly… they had to feed her with a Frisbee! Yo mama is so ugly… when she watches TV the channels change themselves! Yo mama is so ugly… she looks like she has been bobbing for apples in hot grease! Yo mama is so ugly… they passed a law saying she could only do online shopping! Yo mama is so ugly… she looked in the mirror and her reflection committed suicide! Yo mama is so ugly… even homeless people won’t take her money! Yo mama is so ugly… she’s the reason blind dates were invented! Yo mama is so ugly… even a pit-bull wouldn’t bite her! Yo mama is so ugly… she scares the paint off the wall! Yo mama is so ugly… she scares roaches away! Yo mama is so ugly… she looked out the window and got arrested! Yo mama is so ugly… she had to get a prescription mirror! Yo mama is so ugly… bullets refuse to kill her! Yo mama is so ugly… for Halloween she trick-or-treats on the phone! Yo mama is so ugly… when she plays Mortal Kombat, Scorpion says, “Stay over there!” Yo mama is so ugly… I told her to take out the trash and we never saw her again! Yo mama is so ugly… even Hello Kitty said goodbye! Yo mama is so ugly… even Rice Krispies won't talk to her! Yo mama is so ugly… that your father takes her to work with him so that he doesn't have to kiss her goodbye. Yo mama is so ugly… she made the Devil go to church! Yo mama is so ugly… she made an onion cry. Yo mama is so ugly… when she walks down the street in September, people say “Wow, is it Halloween already?” Yo mama is so ugly… she is the reason that Sonic the Hedgehog runs! Yo mama is so ugly… The NHL banned her for life. Yo mama is so ugly… she scared the crap out of a toilet! Yo mama is so ugly… she turned Medusa to stone! Yo mama is so ugly… her pillow cries at night! Yo mama is so ugly… she tried to take a bath and the water jumped out! Yo mama is so ugly… she gets 364 extra days to dress up for Halloween. Yo mama is so ugly… people put pictures of her on their car to prevent theft! Yo mama is so ugly… her mother had to be drunk to breast feed her! Yo mama is so ugly… instead of putting the bungee cord around her ankle, they put it around her neck. Yo mama is so ugly… when they took her to the beautician it took 24 hours for a quote! Yo mama is so ugly… they didn't give her a costume when she tried out for Star Wars. Yo mama is so ugly… just after she was born, her mother said, “What a treasure!” And her father said, “Yes, let's go bury it!” Yo mama is so ugly… her mom had to tie a steak around her neck to get the dogs to play with her. Yo mama is so ugly… when she joined an ugly contest, they said, “Sorry, no professionals.” Yo mama is so ugly… they had to feed her with a slingshot! Yo mama is so ugly… that she scares blind people! Yo mama is so ugly… when she walks into a bank they turn off the surveillance cameras. Yo mama is so ugly… she got beat up by her imaginary friends! Yo mama is so ugly… the government moved Halloween to her birthday.
Johnny B. Laughing (Yo Mama Jokes Bible: 350+ Funny & Hilarious Yo Mama Jokes)