The Idolatry of God Quotes

“There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“What we see taking place in the church today is the reduction of God to an idol.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“In contrast we let go of existence, meaning, and the sublime as categories to describe the object “God.” Instead these become ways in which we engage with the world. Yet, as we affirm the world in love, we indirectly sense that in letting go of God we have, in fact, found ourselves at the very threshold of God.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking the Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction,”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“But the moment we experience the ground beneath our feet dissolving and feel the loss of all certainties is the moment we touch upon the experience of the Cross.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Truly embracing the fragility and tensions of life...brings with it the possibility of true joy.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“The excessive pleasure we imagine receiving from what we want most of all is fleeting at best.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“For when we genuinely look at how the other sees us, we are confronted with a distance that exists between the image we have of ourselves and the reality of our actions.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God.
I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe.
I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it).
Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows.
I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom.
Make of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks,
And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how?
Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits.
Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive...
He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time?
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this,
And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom...
The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church;
The Communion of saints; does this mean me?
LOVE
The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?)
The Resurrection of the body.
I believe in singing the body electric
And the life everlasting,
A life we find right here in our midst”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“However, we rarely see what happens after the hero grasps what is sought, for if we did, the impotence of the MacGuffin would be revealed and we would not get the feel-good fantasy of fulfillment that so much popular cinema offers. For example, a romantic film might end with a passionate kiss that symbolizes the beginning of a new relationship between two people who fought all obstacles to be together. It will not end with a scene that depicts the same couple, one year later, sitting uncomfortably in a restaurant, silently resenting each other because of some unresolved domestic issue.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“For in the figure of Christ we are confronted with an atomic event that does not destroy the world, but rather obliterates the way in which we exist within the world. In concrete terms, this means that the darkness and dissatisfaction that make their presence felt in our lives are not finally answered by certainty and satisfaction but are rather stripped of their weight and robbed of their sting.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God.
I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe.
I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it).
Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows.
I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom.
Maker of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks,
And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how?
Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits.
Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive...
He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time?
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this,
And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom...
The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church;
The Communion of saints; does this mean me?
LOVE
The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?)
The Resurrection of the body.
I believe in singing the body electric
And the life everlasting,
A life we find right here in our midst”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“our religious beliefs have not provided us what they seemed to promise.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“it can be said that God is not seen but is testified to in a particular way of seeing. Previously we saw how the Idol is experienced as existing, until we grasp it and discover that it doesn’t. Here God is felt not to exist, and yet by this act of calling everything into existence it seems that the moment we stop trying to grasp God the existence of God is indirectly testified to in the existence of everything we encounter.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“sinful activities are whatever we do with the goal of bringing us into proximity with that which we believe will fill the void in our existence.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction