Youth Ministry Initiative

Anthology: Book

Author 
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Year of Publication

1874

From Charles Finney, How to Overcome Sin," The Independent of New York (January 1, 1874):

Later published as chapter 10 in Power From on High (1944): “Now, what is resolved against in this religion of resolutions and effort to suppress sinful and form holy habits? Do we produce love by resolution? Do we eradicate selfishness by resolution? No, indeed. To eradicate selfishness from the breast by resolution is an absurdity. All our battling with sin in the outward life, by the force of resolution, only ends in making us whited sepulchers. All our battling with desire by the force of resolution is of no avail and will only end in delusion…Away with this religion of resolution! It is a snare of death.”

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Subjects 

From Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship at pages 89-90:

It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”

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Year of Publication

2003

From Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity (2003) at page 109:

For Mark [and Matthew and Luke,] the way, the path of personal transformation, is the path of death and resurrection.

Author 
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Year of Publication

2006

From Harold Masback, World Turned Upside Down" (April 16, 2006):

It was, well, revolutionary – a reversal of the very order of things so stunning that jaws dropped and eyes glazed over in mute incomprehension. Lord Cornwallis’ mighty British army had been defeated, trapped on the Yorktown peninsula between the Continental army on one side and the French fleet on the other. Legend has it that the British band saluted the inconceivable turn of events by playing “The World Turned Upside Down”:

If buttercups buzz’d after the bee
If boats were on land, churches on sea,
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,
If the mamas sold their babies
To the gypsies for half a crown
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside down.

Author 
Source 
Subjects 
Year of Publication

1969

From Rollo May, Love and Will (1969) at page 30:

When inwardy life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible. This is one aspect of the well-known relationship between sexual feelings and crimes of violence. To inflict pain and torture at least proves that one can affect somebody.”

Author 
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Year of Publication

1949

From Reinhold Niebuhr The Nature and Destiny of Man (1949) at page 182:

Reinhold Niebuhr locates the root of one’s inability to accept God’s forgiveness in human anxiety: In short, man being both free and bound, both limited and limitless is anxious. Anxiety is the inevitable concomitant of the paradox of freedom and finiteness in which man is involved. Anxiety is the internal precondition of sin. It is the inevitable spiritual state of man, standing in the paradoxical situation of freedom and finiteness…The ideal possibility is that faith in the ultimate security of God’s love would overcome all immediate insecurities of nature and history.”

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Year of Publication

1984

From Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology and Western Religion, Psychotherapists or the Clergy" (1984) at page 207:

“We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. … If a doctor wishes to help a human being he must be able to accept him as he is. And he can do this only when he has seen and accepted himself as he is. Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ — all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself — that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved — what then? … Had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.”] Carl Jung put it this way, “Acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all . . . are within me and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, . . . .Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is then no more talk of love and long suffering; we say to the brother within us,”Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves.” RefMgr field[17]: Princeton: Princeton University Press

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From Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge at pages 133-134:

Even Martin Luther agonized in his monastic cell that he had never spent even a single day entirely loving his God or neighbor as himself.

Author 
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Year of Publication

2006

From Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper, 1956), pg. 8:

As Erich Fromm wrote, The deepest need of man, then, is to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness, . . . .to achieve union.” And union requires love – love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self.

Author 
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From St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, Chapter III:

St. Teresa of Avila made clear that God is prepared to use all the tools in the spiritual tool box, his appeals come through the conversations of good people, or from sermons, or through the reading of good books; and there are many other ways of which you have heard, in which God calls us. Or they come through sicknesses and trials, or by means of truths which God teaches us at times when we are engaged in prayer, however feeble such prayers may be.”

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