Ken Wilson Quotes & Sayings

While the Bible does speak clearly on many matters - you'd have to be deaf not to hear the condemnations of murder, stealing, adultery, greed, etc. - there are, in fact, many questions at the margins of each of these, for which there are not clear answers. If you are not a pastor it's easier to maintain the comforting illusion that these hard cases are rare. But they are not. — Ken Wilson

Get ready for some more mind-numbing detail that doesn't make for snappy, easy-to-digest sermons. — Ken Wilson

We so want to be right and so trust that our desire to be right is something that God would surely bless. Yet the desire to be right comes with a price: the fear of being wrong. And so, in a counter-intuitive way, this focus on being right seems to be the porridge we settle for when we exchange our birthright because we're famished and fear that father won't feed us. — Ken Wilson

We are supposed to listen to the voice within us that says, "Gosh, this just doesn't sound loving, even though it sounds correct!" Of course, there's much sorting to be done: what does love really call for in a given situation? Nevertheless, the warning in Scripture is there for a reason. — Ken Wilson

The rejection of all homosexual acts is rooted in a desire to uphold what is understood to be the meaning of the prohibitive Scriptures and the tradition of heterosexual marriage. It is an attempt to be careful to walk in faithfulness to God. The rejection of exclusionary practices aimed at gay and lesbian people is rooted in a desire to uphold Scripture by seeking to carefully understand its meaning in the original historical context and to apply Scripture's teaching carefully. It is an attempt to uphold Scripture's caution against religious zeal that unintentionally accepts harm of the neighbor or fails to love the neighbor well. Both positions are principled positions seeking to uphold important goods. — Ken Wilson

We can land on the "right" side of a controversy and keep that personified mystery of evil, called the devil, happy. So long as we cede the territory he is trying to occupy: that this moral concern deserves our attention more than all others, that one's position on this question determines one's belonging to or leaving a faith community. When we do this - and it is standard practice in many churches today - we stigmatize an entire group of people. We're not just singling "the issue" out. We are singling people out. This pleases the hater of humanity and grieves humanity's lover. — Ken Wilson

Over four decades of pastoral ministry - I got started early - you make mistakes. But the mistakes you most regret are the ones that obscure the gospel and hurt the people you love, by saying in effect, "You do not belong," to those for whom Christ died to provide a place of belonging. — Ken Wilson

If I say to some kids roughhousing in church, "Don't kill anyone," they know what concern I am addressing. They know I'm exaggerating for emphasis and not speaking in general terms - that I'm not, for example, commenting on the morality of military service. Stripped of the rich context we share, the mere words, "Don't kill anyone" could easily be understood to mean don't kill anyone, anytime, ever. — Ken Wilson

Today we have gay people whose relationships, until just recently, have been branded by society as extraordinarily shameful, as uniquely perverse - worse than incest. The cultural heritage of this view had the effect of driving them all underground, where sex is practiced surreptitiously, secretively, for fear of social ostracism, not to mention physical harm. And now, tired of the highway rest stops, tired of the back rooms in gay bars, many in that community have a longing to attempt what can only be regarded as modern marvel regardless of gender: two people willing to attempt lifelong fidelity to each other, come what may. This doesn't seem to me to be a "slippery slope." It seems to me that it might actually be instead, a redemptive trajectory. — Ken Wilson

In other words, the biblical writers were speaking to those who shared a rich cultural context, which shaped the way they communicated. I grew up in Detroit and share a rich cultural context with other Detroiters. When I say words like lions, tigers, and wings, I don't have to specify that I mean the professional football, baseball, and hockey teams. Fellow Detroiters get it because we share a rich cultural context. — Ken Wilson

If we have a hair trigger on the exclusion gun, shouldn't it be aimed at those who are using their power to abuse someone who is in a weaker, more vulnerable position? — Ken Wilson

RELIGION IS NO ESCAPE FROM THE MESSY BUSINESS OF HUMANITY. — Ken Wilson

Too many congregations look to their pastors for simple answers to problems that their pastors see as anything but simple. And too many pastors don't trust their congregations enough to say, "It's not that simple from my point of view and here's why. — Ken Wilson

In the deepest, most central place of our being, we don't want to cross God and our not wanting to is the beginning of wisdom. — Ken Wilson

But Jesus also had a way of reading Scripture that was surprising, unconventional, and paradoxical. This is part of what first fascinated me about Jesus in the gospels. His reading of Scripture got him into trouble. Getting into trouble is not a goal in our reading of Scripture (with whom and for what?) but we cannot rule it out as a possible consequence at times. Perhaps for this reason I've always been attracted to movements (the Jesus movement, the charismatic renewal movement, and the Vineyard) that began, for their time and context, with non-traditional readings of Scripture. This has left me open (one might say vulnerable) to considering such readings. — Ken Wilson

I love you, but I hate your overeating" doesn't help a marriage. It's not helpful because hatred is a powerful emotion (a posture, really) that is not easy to wield or maintain carefully. Hatred is more a bludgeon than a scalpel. Our ability to distinguish sin from sinner, especially in others, is so limited, so vulnerable to our own unexamined subjectivity. — Ken Wilson

in A Moral Vision of the New Testament. Hays says, "This means that for the foreseeable future we must find ways to live within the church in a situation of serious moral disagreement while still respecting one another as brother and sisters in Christ. If the church is going to start practicing the discipline of exclusion from the community, there are other issues far more important than homosexuality where we should begin to draw a line in the dirt: violence and materialism, for example." [117] I am convinced that how the biblical prohibitions apply to monogamous gay relationships is indeed a disputable matter and that the teaching of Romans 14-15 should guide our response. — Ken Wilson

I've been working for years in my local congregation to undermine the idea that the conservative-liberal divide is reliable shorthand for "faithful to God" vs. "unfaithful to God. — Ken Wilson

For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of electoral politics. The rest of us are expected to line up with our team just as soon as they show their colors. — Ken Wilson

Virtually every church tradition, by theology, interpretive strategies, or pastoral practice, makes accommodations for divorced people who seek to remarry. These accommodations permit divorced people to enter unions that are outside the rule laid down in the Bible. But we can't have it both ways. We can't apply a strict "biblical marriage" rule to gay people and not apply it to those who are divorced and remarried. — Ken Wilson

The demands of acceptance require us to maintain a relationship of honor and respect with those with whom we may ardently disagree. We accept the fact that our convictions on this matter differ, and those with whom we differ hold their convictions, as we do, unto the Lord. Inasmuch as this is not easy for us to do, we commit ourselves to bearing it as part of the disciple's cross. We don't agree to disagree by diminishing the importance of the question or by insisting that people care less about the issue. — Ken Wilson

Just saying "celibacy is the solution" doesn't make it so. People have to be able to do it. Paul, a huge proponent of celibacy, knew this. The difficulty that divorced people have maintaining lifelong celibacy was part of the pastoral dilemma that forced us to take a closer look at our very restrictive policies regarding remarriage, policies that most contemporary pastors are unfamiliar with because it was the controversy of an earlier era. — Ken Wilson

I have learned that there's no way to open yourself to the experience of God while retaining your cool, your sense of ironic detachment. — Ken Wilson

we have to be thoughtful about the burdens we insist that other people carry, especially when we don't have to carry those same burdens ourselves. — Ken Wilson

But sometimes the quest for the right answer keeps us from testing a variety of good ones. In search of the right answer, we assume every answer other than the one we've settled on must be wrong. Forgetting that some things have more than one good answer. I'd like to think for example, that the question, "How can I love Ken?" might have many good answers, rather than one right one. — Ken Wilson

This informal "pre-exclusion" is probably the more powerful and widely exerted form in many churches. It is in my denomination. As the divorced and remarried don't seek communion at a Roman Catholic parish, gays and lesbians don't seek to participate in most evangelical churches. — Ken Wilson

The words of an old hymn come to mind: But we make His love too narrow By false limits of our own; And we magnify His strictness With a zeal He will not own. For the love of God is broader Than the measure of the mind; And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind. -- - Frederick William Faber 1814-1863 — Ken Wilson

The conscience is a communal organ - a way of knowing that we do with others formed always in reference to others. — Ken Wilson