Please enjoy a sampling of thoughts from one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller.
“It is striking thought to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without a host of other people. We are relational indeed.” (67)
“How do you stop a war, I wonder?” (80)
“We are wired so that other people help create us, help make us who we are, and when deception is fed to us, we make bad decisions. War is complicated; it isn’t black and white.” (82)
“…it feels like there is a penalty for not being respected by other people, it feels like you are going to die unless you get some kind of respect and appreciation.” (107)
“In my own life, I notice I validate people who I like or validate me. When I say so-and-so is a nice person, what I really mean is so-and-so thinks I am a nice person.” (117)
“If you believe Jesus was God, and he came to earth to walk among us, the first thing you start considering is that He might actually care. Why else would something so great become something so small? He didn’t close himself off in a neighborhood with the Trinity; He actually left His neighborhood and moved into ours, like a very wealthy and powerful man moving to the slums of Chicago or Houston or Calcutta, living on the streets as a peasant.” (122)
“In reading the gospels of the Bible, I discovered that the personality of Christ was such that people who were pagans, cultists, money-mongers, broken, and diseased felt comfortable in His presence.” (123)
“Writing in scrolls, however, was not something that interested Jesus…Instead, he accumulated friends and allowed them to write about Him, talk about Him, testify about Him…I can’t imagine He would do this unless he actually liked people and cared about them. Jesus built our faith system entirely on relationships…” (127)
“Suppose I really and somebody?” (130)—quoting Maya Angelou
“I have sometimes wondered if the great desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.” (133)
“Becoming a Christian might look more like falling in love than baking cookies.” (155)
“Love creates rules, and forgives when they are broken.” (181)
“Morality, then, if you think about it, is the way we imitate God. It is the way we imitate the ways of heaven on earth.” (183)
“I think most Christians…want to love people and obey God but feel they have to wage a cultural war.” (189)
“Morality, in the context of a relationship with Jesus, becomes the voice the voice of love to a confused community, the voice of reason and calm in a loud argument, the voice of life in a world of walking dead, the voice of Christ in a sea of self-hatred.” (191)
“And I wonder about that, about how much of my faith I apply in a personal way, deep down in my heart on the level where I actually mean things.” (201)
“…fasting is mourning Him, baptism is identifying with Him, Communion is remembering Him.” (203)
“It is true that people need Jesus, not religion.” (206)
“This, I believe, is what the Bible means when it speaks of our oneness: It isn’t a technicality, it is an actual relationship.” (225)
And, finally, a toast: “Here is to Christ for making us, to Christ for rescuing us, and to Christ, who gives us hope for tomorrow.” (232)
Reason Breeds Insanity 