Jesus Shock Quotes & Sayings

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes. — Peter Kreeft

I could put up with heartbreaks and abortions and busted romances, but I had to have something under my belt to carry on, and I wanted something nourishing, something appetizing. I felt exactly like Jesus Christ would have felt if he had been taken down from the cross and not permitted to die in the flesh. I am sure that the shock of crucifixion would have been so great that he would have suffered a complete amnesia as regards humanity. I am certain that after his wounds had healed he wouldn't have given a damn about the tribulations of mankind but would have fallen with the greatest relish upon a fresh cup of coffee and a slice of toast, assuming he could have had it. — Henry Miller

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting. — Peter Kreeft

All the accounts of the burial of Jesus are somber, laced through with the silence of grief, the shock that violence does to one's soul, even experienced vicariously in the body of another who is loved. They are written as though they are dirges, laments hidden in the silences and spaces between the words. — Megan McKenna

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable. — Peter Kreeft

Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia. — Peter Kreeft

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with. — Peter Kreeft

If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with your tear ducts, which connect to the heart, as well as with your ears, which connect to the brain. Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning. — Peter Kreeft

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love. — Peter Kreeft

Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Jesus isn't a slight man with fair hair and eyes who looks as if a strong breeze could knock him down, as he is sometimes depicted in art and film. I see him as sturdy, with a thick frame, powerful legs, and muscular arms. He has a shock of curly black hair and an untrimmed beard, his face tanned and lined from working in the sun. And his hands - hands that pounded nails, sawed lumber, drew in the dirt, and held the children he beckoned to him. Hands that washed his disciples' feet, broke bread for them, and poured their wine. Hands that hauled a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem and were later nailed to it. Those were some man hands. — Cathleen Falsani

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us. — Peter Kreeft

He worried that too much alone time was a bad thing. Socializing was therapeutic and was a cure for most mental issues in the world. Of course, I argued so was a double dose of Adderall, a personal phone call from Jesus and electric shock therapy. However, soon after, my cell phone died and the jumper cables for my car went missing. — Shannon L. Alder

We will suffer a sharp painful disullisionment before we fully surrender. When people really see themselves as the Lord sees them, it is not the terribly offensive sins of the fleshthat shock them, but the awful nature of the pride of their own hearts opposing Jesus Christ. When they see themselves in the light of the Lord, the shame, the horror, and desperate conviction hit home for them. — Oswald Chambers

Hope doesn't float. Hope is an anchor forged from the nails that pierced Him and the iron-will that held Him to the cross, made Him stay the course, and drove Him to live out His extreme devotion to His Father's will. His back became the anvil on which God forged our redemption. Jesus is our only hope. — Lori Stanley Roeleveld

The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son. — Peter Kreeft

Jesus reveals a God who comes in search of us, a God who makes room for our freedom, a God who is vulnerable. Above all, Jesus reveals a God who is love. Those raised in a Christian tradition may miss the shock of Jesus' message, but in truth love has never been a normal way of describing what happens between human beings and their God. Not once does the Koran apply the word love to God. Aristotle stated bluntly, "It would be eccentric for anyone to claim that he loved Zeus" - or that Zeus loved a human being, for that matter. In dazzling contrast the Christian Bible affirms, "God is love," and cites love as the main reason Jesus came to earth: "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. — Philip Yancey

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love. — Peter Kreeft

So why don't we have a go? There are two of us.'
Little Mike realized that his friend was actually serious. 'Two of us? Father Hillary had God Almighty helping out, and look where it got him.'
'I know. But we're a team. For years, since primary. Batman and Robin.'
'Robin got killed,' said Mike.
Christy was shocked. 'He did not, did he? Jesus, I didn't hear about that.'
'Yeah. It was a big shock. The Joker kilt him.'
'That fuckin' Joker. I didn't see that coming.' ("Taking on PJ") — Eoin Colfer

Most Christians believe that Jesus IS God, that Jesus is the same jealous and angry God that abhorred homosexuals and condemned them as "an abomination." He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves and the same divine Creator that suggested the stoning of non-believers and disobedient children. You have to accept the good along with the bad ... after all, he came not to abolish the Hebrew laws, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). — David G. McAfee

This can come as a shock to those Christians who are so used to hearing that Jesus is the solution to sin that they assume that the remedy started with the death of Jesus. — Doug Pagitt

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all. — Peter Kreeft

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked. — Peter Kreeft

Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons. — Peter Kreeft

(after asking Christ into his heart) I waited. And then, true to His promise, He came into my heart and my life. The moment was more than remarkable; it was the most realistic experience I'd ever had. I'm not sure what I expected; perhaps my life or my sins or a great white light would flash before my eyes; perhaps I'd feel a shock like being hit by a bolt of lightning. Instead, I felt no tremendous sensation, just a weightlessness and an enveloping calm that let me know that Christ had come into my heart. — Louis Zamperini

Not all who listen, believe. If you call the Gospel a crazy fairy tale, a far-too-good-to-be-true myth, an insane extension of wishful thinking, or even a blasphemous lie, I will respect you and argue with you. But if you call it a platitude, I can only pity you, for that means you have never listened to it. — Peter Kreeft

I want everyone out there in TV land to touch the TV. Touch the back of the TV and get a shock for Jesus. — Robin Williams

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. — Peter Kreeft

She looked for the deposition transcript she had dropped, she turned around and
- the entire audience in the galley cried out in shock.
Unbeknownst to Payton, when she had fallen her skirt - those damn slim-fit skirts she liked so much - had torn at the seam and now gaped open, and sweet Jesus, she was wearing a thong and two tiny white butt cheeks peeked out from between the folds of her skirt
J.D.'s jaw nearly hit the floor. — Julie James

Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts. — Peter Kreeft

Jared glared balefully at the old man, his eyes full of the shock and pain of the betrayed. I had only human comparisons for such a look. Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas. — Stephenie Meyer

Pilate's skeptical sneer "What is truth?" was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world's stupidest question was three words; God's profoundest answer was one Word. — Peter Kreeft

No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze. — Peter Kreeft

In The Lost Message of Jesus I claim that penal substitution is tantamount to 'child abuse - a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.' Though the sheer bluntness of this imagery (not original to me of course) might shock some, in truth, it is only a stark 'unmasking' of the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind such a theology. — Steve Chalke

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction. — Peter Kreeft

And the centurion who stood by said:
Truly this was a son of God.
Not long ago but everywhere I go
There is a hill and a black windy sky.
Portent of hill, sky, day's eclipse I know;
Hill, sky, the shuddering darkness, these am I.
The dying at His right hand, at His left,
I am - the thief redeemed and the lost thief;
I am the careless folk; I those bereft,
The Well-Belov'd, the women bowed in grief.
The gathering Presence that in terror cried,
In earth's shock in the Temple's veil rent through,
I; and a watcher, ignorant, curious-eyed,
I the centurion who heard and knew — Adelaide Crapsey

No story is more beautiful than the Gospel, even though it is a story full of pain and nails and hate and blood and sin and murder and betrayal and forsakenness and unimaginable agony and death. It is the story of what happens to the most beautiful thing, Perfect Love, when it enters our world: it comes to a Cross, to the crossroad between good and evil. All our most beautiful stories are like the Gospel: they are tragedies first, and then comedies; they are crosses and then crowns. They are crosses because they are conflicts between good and evil. That is the fundamental plot of every great story. To say "that story is beautiful" means "that story resembles the Gospel." If you are bored by the Gospel, that puts no black eye on the Gospel, but on you. Most likely, it means you have never listened to it. You must have heard it, but hearing is far from the same thing as listening ... — Peter Kreeft

Love gives you eyes. — Peter Kreeft

Jesus will turn your sorrow into joy. One can only imagine the shock and bewilderment the Apostles felt when the Lord told them he must go away. Though they could not understand it at the time, his departure was for their benefit. The same is true of the unexpected setbacks and tragedies we experience in this life ... When I consider the times when I have been confounded by events that seemed so contrary to what I thought God wanted for me, I should be mindful that they were permitted by the Lord's inscrutable providence for my own good, as difficult as that might be to fathom. — Patrick Madrid

He called her'daughter of Abraham,' which likely sent a shock wave through the room; it was the first time the phrase had ever been spoken. People had only ever heard 'sons of Abraham'
never daughters. But at the sound of Jesus' words daughter of Abraham, he gave her a place to stand alongside the sons, especially the ones snarling with their sense of ownership and exclusivity over it all, watching. — Sarah Bessey

The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man's head because she turns his heart. — Peter Kreeft

It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively. — Peter Kreeft

It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else. — Peter Kreeft

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them," Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes not only with the return of the prodigal son, but also with the resentful elder son. It must have come as a shock to these dutiful religious people. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is the absoluteness of meaninglessness that Christianity, as I understand it, inhabits and inflects, the shock and stark violence of the cross that discloses the living Christ. Revelation, like creation, arises not merely out of nothingness but by means of it. — Christian Wiman