Quotes about Humanity

Watching Knotcher torment Casey while the rest of us just sat and watched filled me not only with self-loathing, but with disgust for my whole species. If there were other civilizations out there, why would they ever want to make contact with humanity? If this was how we treated each other, how much kindness could we possibly show to some race of bug-eyed beings from beyond?

Maybe every time an intelligent species grew advanced enough to invent a global computer network, they would then develop some form of social media, which would immediately fill these beings with such an intense hatred for one another that they ended up wiping themselves out within four or five decades.

with humanity? If this was how we treated each other, how much kindness could we possibly show to some race of bug-eyed beings from beyond?

For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth.

life is like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. When you're born, you're given a randomly generated character, with a randomly determined name, race, face, and social class. Your body is your avatar, and you spawn in a random geographic location, at a random moment in human history, surrounded by a random group of people, and then you have to try to survive for as long as you can.

I would argue that masturbation is the human animal's most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. As if that weren't bad enough, they all have sinners for pastors.

One of the first things that strikes us about the men and women in Scripture is that they were disappointingly non- heroic. We do not find splendid moral examples. We do not find impeccably virtuous models. That always comes as a shock to newcomers to Scripture: Abraham lied; Jacob cheated; Moses murdered and complained; David committed adultery; Peter blasphemed.

We do not become less needy, less dependent when we pray; we become more needy, more dependent, which is to say, more human.

Treating souls for whom Christ died as numbers or projects or resources seemed to me something like a sin against the Holy Spirit.

Love is the most characteristic and comprehensive act of the human being. We are most ourselves when we love; we are most the People of God when we love. But love is not an abstract word defined out of a dictionary. In order to love maturely we have to live and absorb and enter into this world of salvation and freedom, find ourselves in the stories, become familiar with and follow the signposts, learn the life of worship, and realize our unique identity as the People of God who love.