Quotes about Status

Have I placed more value on my status or title than on my character? What perceptions do I have about myself, other people, and the world? Are they aligned with my purpose? Do they reflect the values I claim to have? What is my true nature, apart from my reputation? What values will I refuse to deny because, to do so, I would violate my ideals and ethics?

To embrace the ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.

Sin" is not just "doing things God has forbidden." It is, as we saw, the failure to be fully functioning, God-reflecting human beings. That is what Paul sums up in 3:23: all sinned and fell short of God's glory. He is referring to the glory that, as true humans, they should have possessed. This is the "glory" spoken of in Psalm 8: the status and responsibility of looking after God's world on his behalf.

One central biblical term to refer both to the divine covenant faithfulness and to the status of the covenant member is tsedaqah, in Greek dikaiosyn?, regularly (if potentially misleadingly) translated into English as "righteousness" or "justice.

The honest work of yesterday has lost its social status, its social esteem.

The Creator is being reimagined all the time and can be reimagined through the lens of any culture, of any time and place. No one culture, and certainly not the (largely white male affluent) Western culture I inhabit, can claim superior status for reimagining God once and for all. The Creator doesn't need any of us to sit atop the mountain and speak down to everyone else.

When Pharaoh summons you and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’

both low and high, rich and poor alike.

to seat them with nobles, with the princes of His people.

Luxury is unseemly for a fool—how much worse for a slave to rule over princes!

an unloved woman who marries, and a maidservant who supplants her mistress.

Folly is appointed to great heights, but the rich sit in lowly positions.