Quotes from Gregory Boyd

The radically countercultural and revolutionary movement that Jesus birthed has, in our country (as in every other "Christian" country), been largely reduced to little more than a preservation society for a national civil religion.

Teaching is not for a teacher simply to persuade students of his or her own perspective. Rather, the goal is to broaden students' minds by helping them empathetically understand a variety of perspectives while training them to think critically for themselves.

In a community that gets life based on appearances, problems tend to be diagnosed in terms of how things appear.

Many people have trouble passionately loving and living for God because they have a mental picture of him that inspires anything but passion.

The love demonstrated on Calvary is the center of the gospel, for it reveals the beauty of God himself.

We tend to become the decisions we make. The more we choose something, the more we become that something. We are all in the process of solidifying our identities by the decisions we make. With each decision we make, we pick up momentum in the direction of that decision.

Love must be chosen. It must be free, and it must be from the heart, without external motivations. But, quite frankly, it's very difficult for an all-powerful God to behave in such a way that love can occur with these qualities.

This is what we are called to be: a community characterized by radical, revolutionary, Calvary-quality love; a community that manifests the love of the triune God (John 17:21—26); a community that strives for justice not by conquering but by being willing to suffer; a community that God uses to transform the world by providing it with an alternative to its own self-centered, violent way of existing.

As the New Testament and the church tradition teach, the life of God is nothing other than the perfect love that eternally unites the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this Triune God spoke creation into being with the ultimate goal of inviting humans to share in this life. This is what God created us to long for!

It is important that we never separate our love for God from our love for others. For loving our neighbors as ourselves is one central way we love God.

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture?"

What kind of holiness does the Western Church manifest today? To answer this, we need only ask: Are the prostitutes and tax collectors of our day attracted to us or repelled by us?