Quotes about Worthiness

It seems harsh to many to think that God chooses some and rejects others, and does not consider men's worth, that by his own free will he chooses whom he pleases and moreover rejects others. But what is this scruple except a desire to call God to order and subject him to their judgment?

How childish is the attempt to meet this argument by the following sophism! "We were chosen because we were worthy, and because God foresaw that we would be worthy."

I have done one braver thingThan all the Worthies did;And yet a braver thence doth spring,Which is, to keep that hid.

May we all be faithful in doing the day-to-day, ordinary things that prove our worthiness, for they will lead us to and qualify us for great things.

Worship is the specific act of ascribing to God the glory, majesty, honor, and worthiness which are His.

Of course you are unworthy. But when do you hope to be worthy? You will be no more worthy at the end than at the beginning. God alone is worthy of Himself, He alone can make us worthy of Him.

It's a lie to think you're not good enough. It's a lie to think you're not worth anything.

There was such love as she had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it and cherishing the thought that she was worthy of it.

God does not decide to love, therefore, and God's love can never be determined by the worthiness or unworthiness of the object. But God is Love itself.4 God cannot not love, because love is the nature of God's very being.

As Dorothy Day once wisely said, "What the Gospel forever takes away from Christians is the right to judge between the worthy and the unworthy poor.

I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessary what we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what I mean by the "integration of the negative." Yet I believe this is the core of Jesus's revolutionary Good News, Paul's deep experience, and the central insight that Francis and Clare lived out with such simple elegance.

It is religion's job to teach us and guide us on this discovery of our True Self, but it usually makes the mistake of turning this into a worthiness contest of some sort, a private performance, or some kind of religious achievement on our part, through our belonging to the right group, practicing the right rituals, or believing the right things.