To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
Faith is the first step to understanding. Either it's the Word of an infallible God, the fallible words of men, or faith in what you personally believe. You've got to have faith in something. Believe me.
So be it. God created profoundly fallible creatures on this earth, and human history is mostly the story of error and accident.
I quite enjoy fame, especially when you go to conventions in America where they treat you like a god with stretch limos and the whole fame thing, but then when you come back to Britain, you end up changing in a toilet in a theatre off West End and that's really good, because that is what it's about.
We can't solve modern problems by going back in time. Retreating to the safety of the familiar is an understandable response, but God has called us to a life of faith. And faith requires us to face the unknown while trusting Him completely.
You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything.
Near the gates and within two cities there will be scourges the like of which was never seen: famine within plague, people put out by steel, crying to the great immortal God for relief.
I've gotten books published. I've met famous people that are very nice. I look back and I say, 'Wow. Thank you, God, for giving me this gift. And thank you for helping me to keep going.'
A lot of stuff doesn't faze me. I think it's because I was brought up in a small town, and normally, when you're from a small town, when you see a famous person, you'd be like, 'Oh my god. This never happens,' but I've always kind of been like nonchalant.
It's weird because my parents don't really understand my business. I get fan mail all day long, but if a piece happens to get to their house, they're like, 'Oh, my God, you've got a fan! You have to write them back. You have to do it!'
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
It's really difficult for fanatic churchgoers to understand God can't help me. I'm the only one who can help me.
It turns out that the God whose word will stand forever does not exist to insure our fantasies that we will not have to die as individuals or as a species. Such a God, moreover, does not invite us to presume we can comprehend God's creation.
Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.
Everyone knows the beautiful story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. How this noble father led his child to the slaughter; how Isaac meekly submitted; how the farce went on till the lad was bound and laid on the altar, and how God then stopped the murder, and blessed the intending murderer for his willingness to commit the crime.
Through prayer, fasting, and studying, God will answer.
I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It's about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Amboyna seems to present the most favorable opening. Fifty thousand souls are there perishing without the means of life, and the situation of the island is such that a mission there established might, with the blessing of God, be extended to the neighboring islands in those seas.
