Peter Rollins Quotes & Sayings

What if the church should be less concerned with creating saints than creating a world where we do not need saints? A world where people like Mother Teresa and MLK would have nothing to do. — Peter Rollins

The problem with so much religious communication is that it aims at changing our minds. The result is that we can hear the message of the preacher without necessarily heeding the message; we can listen to the "truth" and agree with it, yet not change in response to it. — Peter Rollins

Our religious beliefs have not provided us what they seemed to promise. — Peter Rollins

Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice. — Peter Rollins

What if Jesus was not offering his followers an ethical system to follow, but rather was inviting them to enter into a life of love that transcends ethics, a life of liberty that dwells beyond religious laws? The difference between following an ethical system and being consumed by love can be seen in the way that ethical systems seek to provide a way to work out what needs to be done so that it can be carried out. In contrast, love is never constrained, it never sits back, it always seeks to do more than what is demanded of it. — Peter Rollins

For in the figure of Christ we are confronted with an atomic event that does not destroy the world, but rather obliterates the way in which we exist within the world. In concrete terms, this means that the darkness and dissatisfaction that make their presence felt in our lives are not finally answered by certainty and satisfaction but are rather stripped of their weight and robbed of their sting. — Peter Rollins

The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind. — Peter Rollins

In contrast we let go of existence, meaning, and the sublime as categories to describe the object "God." Instead these become ways in which we engage with the world. Yet, as we affirm the world in love, we indirectly sense that in letting go of God we have, in fact, found ourselves at the very threshold of God. — Peter Rollins

This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction, — Peter Rollins

Christianity can be described as a theological materialism: It is that which transforms our material existence. If our faith does not throw us into the arms of the world, if it does not lead to our experience of responsibility, love, celebration, and our commitment to transformation, then, whatever we call it, we have nothing but an empty shell. — Peter Rollins

The point then is to help break the false distinction between the idea that there are those who are whole and those who have a lack. For the true distinction is between those who hide their lack under the fiction of wholeness and those who are able to embrace it. — Peter Rollins

There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams. — Peter Rollins

What if one of the core elements of a radical Christianity lay in a demand that we betray it, while the ultimate act of affirming God required the forsaking of God? And what if fidelity to the Judeo-Christian scriptures demanded their renunciation? In short, what if the only way of finding faith involved betraying it with a kiss? — Peter Rollins

The incoming of God as expressed in the incarnation represents a beautiful expression of this simultaneous revealing and withdrawal, for in the Incarnation the mystery of God is not dissipated but rather deepened. The mystery is not unmasked, but rather dwells with us, in our midst. The mystery is thus not overcome in the Incarnation but rather encountered there. — Peter Rollins

Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think ...
I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.
However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed. — Peter Rollins

I deny the resurrection every time I turn my back on the poor or become a cog in a system of injustice — Peter Rollins

The evidence of "forgiveness of sin" is not found in a profession of belief, but in a life freed from self-destructive pursuits, scapegoating, and violence. — Peter Rollins

Truly embracing the fragility and tensions of life ... brings with it the possibility of true joy. — Peter Rollins

In other words, the claim I believe in God is nothing but a lie if it is not manifest in our lives, because one only believes in God insofar as one loves. — Peter Rollins

Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world. Because the actual existing church has reduced the Crucifixion and Resurrection to religious affirmations held by a certain tribe, rather than expressions of a type of life, the event they testify to has been almost completely eclipsed. — Peter Rollins

If you cannot speak your brokenness, your brokenness will speak for you. — Peter Rollins

The excessive pleasure we imagine receiving from what we want most of all is fleeting at best. — Peter Rollins

What we see taking place in the church today is the reduction of God to an idol. — Peter Rollins

That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking. — Peter Rollins

A faith that can only exist in the light of victory and certainty is one which really affirms the self while pretending to affirm Christ, for it only follows Jesus in the belief that Jesus has conquered death. Yet a faith that can look at the horror of the cross and still say 'yes' is one that says 'no' to the self in saying 'yes' to Christ. — Peter Rollins

In contrast, the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain). — Peter Rollins

Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself. — Peter Rollins

The church is a place where we make our prejudice sacred. — Peter Rollins

Your job is to take notes, my job is to make that impossible. — Peter Rollins

Whatever you believe, be open to being wrong — Peter Rollins

To believe is human to doubt is divine. — Peter Rollins

A true Christian militant attacks systems of oppression and fights for a better world even though that new world might negatively affect their own position of power. — Peter Rollins

This is not about the mere extension of life along a horizontal plane, but about the deepening of life along a vertical plane. Mere longevity cannot render life meaningful any more than brevity has the power to make it meaningless. — Peter Rollins

When confronted with inner conflicts, we are tempted to obscure them by externalizing the antagonisms - something that is done through the hatred of others and/or the hatred of the self (a method in which the scapegoat mechanism is turned inward). The more difficult, courageous, and ethical path involves attempting to face and tarry with the antagonisms. — Peter Rollins

It is natural for us to think that our present discontent arises as a result of something we currently do not have. We imagine there might be a way of abolishing the feeling if only we had the money, fame, job, or health that currently evades us. But people from all walks of life seem to experience the same kind of dissatisfaction that we do, even when they have the very things we believe would make our lives whole. And on the occasions when we gain the thing we believe will make us happy, we find that the satisfaction we experience is at best partial and at worst utterly unfulfilling. — Peter Rollins

Not only this, but churches are ideological in that they create their own constellation of beliefs and practices that tell their congregants how to think and behave. A denomination, for instance, will offer dogmas, doctrines, and rituals that to a greater or lesser extent let everyone know how to interact with the world. — Peter Rollins

Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego. — Peter Rollins