Quotes about Christ

Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

If God were to exist for the entire humanity, he would be profoundly vile, as he allows the existence of unfathomable sin, stupidity, madness, and misery for no reason than his own despicable enjoyment. God exists though, not for all humanity, but for a one chosen man - a philosopher - who is bound to answer the greatest philosophical question, the question about the nature of the questioner's existence, which progressively quenches the divine vanity.

I am a whole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through; listen to this music.  

The Christ within you is King....every particle, every cell of your body, is subject to the divine power and glory.  Realise the divine magical presence within you.  The Light overcomes all darkness.

Credo is the word with which the great creeds of early Chistendom begin.  “I believe. . .” we say.  The Latin credo means literally, “I give my heart.”  The word believe is a problematic one today in part because it has gradually changed its meaning from being the language of certainty so deep that I could give my heart to it, to the language of uncertainty so shallow that only the “credulous” would rely on it.  Faith, as we have seen, is not about propositions, but about commitment.  It does not mean that I intellectually subscribe to the following list of statements, but that I give my heart to this reality.  Believe, indeed, comes to us from the Old English belove, making clear that this too is meant to be heart language.  To say “I believe in Jesus Christ” is not to subscribe to an uncertain proposition.  It is a confession of commitment, of love.

Some important ideas from the book of early Christians which is called Philokalia:

Only when we rid ourselves of passions and lust and put the desires of flesh under the control of Spi­rit, only then we accept the cross and follow Christ.

And “withdrawal from the world” is nothing but the destruction of passions and manifestation of the innermost life in Christ.

Whatever you believe Christ was, great man, prophet or God, you can take comfort knowing that whatever Christ was to you, he chose to live as you do. He went through the same struggles that you do. In this, you are one with Christ and through you, Christ lives.

Christ is not the self, but that which remains when there is no self. He is the form (the vessel) that is identical with the substance, and he is not multiple forms, but one eternal form. Christ is the act, the manifestation and extension of God that is not separate from God. We cannot comprehend "that" which acts or "that" which smiles, but we all know the act - the smile that is Christ himself. Thus Christ turns out to be all that is knowable about God, because without his acts, God could not be known. Act itself is God's revelation and this revelation is not separate from God but is God himself. This I believe is what Christ would have us see; this is his completed message to man. But who can understand it?

Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God.

Whoever was responsible for the idea of dividing self into lower and higher parts committed a serious crime against humanity. This division has given rise to the notion that the lower (ego and immature) self must be overcome while the higher (unitive and whole) self must be sought as the goal of human realization. Out of ignorance, I too clung to this notion because I believed it was this higher self that would be united with God for all eternity. It took a long time before my experiences led me to doubt this conviction and, at the same time, let in the possibility that this was not the whole truth and that there was still further to go.

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only know who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.
What in fact I am, if only Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.
In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soup. Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the "yes" in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other sspiring and frustrated Manichees.
Conflicts and frustrations--the theme of all history and almost all biography. "I show you sorrow," said the Buddha realistically. But he also showed the ending of sorrow--self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed experience of Not-Two

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

I am philosophical Christ; crucified on the cross of ignorance for the sake of divine vanity.

... for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself but he sent me.

Christ, the historical Christ, was not crucified.... He had no intention of dying in that manner; but others felt that to fulfill the prophecies in all ways, a crucifiction was a necessity. Christ did not take part in it. There was a conspiracy in which Judas played a role, an attempt to make a martyr out of Christ. The man chosen was drugged and told he was the Christ - hence the necessity of helping him carry the cross (see Luke 23). He was one of those deluded who believed that he, not the historical Christ , was to fulfill the prophecies. ...Out of compassion Mary was present. The group responsible wanted it to appear that one particular portion of Jews had crucified Christ, and never dreamed that the whole Jewish people ould be "blamed."

May we catch enough of a vision of Christ that we will not be satisfied unless we know him more fully.

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

The tendency in our spiritual life but also our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on. And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't "feeling" Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, "Your happiness is all I want."

If our mission is to help Christ save the world, we must take seriously the enormity and complexity of the task.

Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today today, and is coming back tomorrow.

"Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism.  Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine" [Ephesians 4.14], seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times.  We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's ego and desires.

We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man.  He is the measure of true humanism.  An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature, adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ.  It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth."

Lord, make me a crisis man. Let me not be a mile-post on a single road, but make me a fork that men must turn one way or another in facing Christ in me.

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

I think if I found Jesus, [and] I didn't know he was lost in the first place, I don't think he would be all that different from me.

God, our Father, expects us to become perfect manifestations of His idea of perfect man.  This idea of perfect man is implanted within each individual and is the inner spiritual motivation for growing and developing the body, and for all of the conditions and circumstances in which he lives.  This is called the Son of God or Christ and is in every individual as the SEED IDEA, or pattern for growth and development.

“We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon”

In summary, Jung's emphasis on archetypal wholeness leaves us in search of the hidden God (deus absconditus) in the psyche and nature?' The either-or paradoxes of the moral life are sublated to the both-and paradoxes of archetypal wholeness. This leaves a serious lacuna in the formation of Christian faith and identity. The cross of Christ is "an icon of paradox."" It embraces both-and and either-or. It symbolizes God's identifying with the weak and bringing strength from weakness. Christ, in his crucifixion, fully embraced the darkness of sin and evil but in his resurrection gave to humanity a clear choice of new life over death, the profundity of which Nicodemus could not comprehend (John 3: 1 - 10). The either-or paradox of good and evil impressed upon us by the resurrected Christ places moral choice at the center of our becoming formed in the image of Christ. The eschatological hope is that in the end all humanity will choose the new life given by Christ. Until then, the Christ image will reflect a perfected creation or wholeness that is yet to come.

How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if he had taken a poll in the land of Israel? What would have happened to the Reformation if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn't polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong and leadership.