Carolina QuotesIn [the story of Jesus] I found ... a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years.
John Shelby Spong Carolinian
Source
This Hebrew Lord (1974), p. 13
- year
- 1974
- locator
- p. 13
Cite this record
“In [the story of Jesus] I found ... a center for my being. B…” John Shelby Spong. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-D033F4E08F. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/d033f4e08f
More from John Shelby Spong
The Christian story did not drop from heaven fully written. It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years. That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. Christianity has always been an evolving story. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story.
There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrow-minded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. 23:17). ... How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25:30)?
Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth.