Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

What Faith Feels Like...


Faith is the sight of seeing what's not there. Of discovering the knowledge that God is present through all the bad days and hours of suffering and the crap you get from living. In the difficult days when faith and God doesn't seem real. These are the days when faith begins to grow through the mighty swells and heavy waters of life's turbulent seas. When death's liquid mountains of dark despair become faith's best moments of courage knowing God is there whether it feels like it or not. That He will lift up underneath the seas of our disbelief. This is the gift of faith which makes the good moments of living fly over the waves of trouble and turmoil. To soar over the heavy waters propelling a living faith upwards over the dark surfs holding troughs and trolls. And there to know that God is real and life is a gift and without a Spirit-led faith we would've failed long ago. - re slater


Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan






Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan

Surfing @ 1000 Frames per Second, by Chris Bryan



As Christians, we have to recognize that Faith is perhaps the single most important aspect of Christianity. Without faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, we are are nothing. Faith in God, although it seems easy, will take a lifetime of effort to keep. It is the true Faith and what every Christian should aspire to have. Don't let your Faith waver when things in life don't go as planned. We should work hard every day to remember that Jesus Christ is our Savior and God is our Father - we should always have faith in Him.
Use these scriptures to reaffirm your faith in God. Meditating upon the Holy Bible can give you all kinds of insights... and helping you understand Faith in God is one benefit you can receive from reading the Bible. Reading the Bible might not mean the same thing to everyone, but every Christian should do it.
Just remember, you are not alone in this life - God is always with you. The Bible verses about faith should fill your soul with song - whenever you are feeling the least bit down, it is a good idea to read a Bible verse about faith.
Matthew 21:21 Jesus answered and said to them, Truly I say to you, If you have faith, and doubt not, you shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if you shall say to this mountain, Be you removed, and be you cast into the sea; it shall be done.
Luke 7:50 And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you; go in peace.
Luke 17:6 And the Lord said, If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say to this sycamore tree, be you plucked up by the root, and be you planted in the sea; and it should obey you.
Ephesians 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
1 Thessalonians 1:3 Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;
Philemon 1:6 That the communication of your faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
James 2:14 What does it profit, my brothers, though a man say he has faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
1 Peter 1:5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith to salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 Peter 1:21 Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.