Redeem Quotes & Sayings

The deaf who deny they are deaf will never hear; the sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem. — Fulton J. Sheen

Only the Lord Jesus can redeem the soul that is steeped in guilt and shame. This baggage weighs us down until we accept Jesus' gift - the gift that liberates souls from sin's power. — Billy Graham

If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power. — E.A. Bucchianeri

One of the reasons I still do stand-up is because it was so hard in the beginning that I feel like it would be such a shame not to redeem it that it's all fun. — Bill Maher

By Revolution, we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars. — Bhagat Singh

It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it ... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
[Letter to William Short, 13 April 1820] — Thomas Jefferson

When you become a Christian, you are not on earth to fight for Jesus; God needed only one battle to redeem the souls of humanity. It was the cross. — Felix Wantang

We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor. — Anton Chekhov

I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me. — Anne Bronte

Because of Christ, our suffering is not useless. It is part of the total plan of God, who has chosen to redeem the world through the pathway of suffering. — R.C. Sproul

There is a measure needing courage to adopt and enforce it, which I believe to be of virtue sufficient to redeem the nation in this its darkest hour: one only; I know of no other to which we may rationally trust for relief from impending dangers without and within. — Robert Dale Owen

The appropriate response to this gospel proclamation is to rethink everything in the light of the risen and ascended Christ and live accordingly. We rethink our lives (which is what it means to repent) not so we can escape a doomed planet, but in order to participate in God's design to redeem the human person and renovate human society in Christ. Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project! — Brian Zahnd

It took me six months to redeem myself at least to have another chance to at least have her get to know me and let her know I was at least a decent guy and to give me a shot. And here we are, we've been married seven years. — Drew Brees

The good news, as Jesus proclaims it, is not just an evacuation plan to rescue people from earth or the sufferings of the afterlife, transporting them to heaven. Rather, it is a revolutionary strategy to redeem the sufferings of earth by putting the rule and reign of heaven inside of people. — Ronnie McBrayer

This fair homestead has fallen to us, and how little have we done to improve it, how little have we cleared and hedged and ditched! We are too inclined to go hence to a "better land," without lifting a finger, as our farmers are moving to the Ohio soil; but would it not be more heroic and faithful to till and redeem this New England soil of the world? — Henry David Thoreau

Christ desires nothing so much as to redeem His heritage from the dominion of Satan. But before we are delivered from Satan's power without, we must be delivered {175} from his power within. The Lord permits trials in order that we may be cleansed from earthliness, from selfishness, from harsh, unchristlike traits of character. He suffers the deep waters of affliction to go over our souls in order that we may know Him and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, in order that we may have deep heart longings to be cleansed from defilement, and may come forth from the trial purer, holier, happier. Often we enter the furnace of trial with our souls darkened with selfishness; but if patient under the crucial test, we shall come forth reflecting the divine character. When His purpose in the affliction is accomplished, "He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." Ps. 37:6. — Ellen G. White

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. — Edmund Burke

Our lives on earth aren't just placeholders until we go to heaven. We are to create, cultivate, and redeem while we're here. The misconception, I've realized, has come from a lack of knowledge of why we were created. — Jefferson Bethke

The Jews looked for a special savior, a messiah, who was to redeem mankind by the agreeable process of restoring the fabulous glories of David and Solomon, and bringing the whole world at last under the firm but benevolent Jewish heel. — H.G.Wells

It's a scary thing, a life-changing, paradigm-shifting thing, to honestly ask yourself this question: Am I moving with God to rescue, restore, and redeem humanity? Or am I clinging fast, eyeteeth clenched, to an imperfect world's habits and cultural customs, in full knowledge of injustice or imperfections, living at odds with God's dream for his daughters and sons? — Sarah Bessey

A man who struggles long to pray and study Torah will be able to discover the sparks of divine light in all of creation, in each solitary bush and grain and woman and man. And when he cleaves strenuously to God for many years, he will be able to release the sparks to unwrap and lift these particular shreds of holiness, and return them to God. This is the human task: to direct and channel the spark's return. This task is tikkun, restoration.
Yours is a holy work on earth right now, they say, whatever that work is if you tie your love and desire to God. You do not deny or flee the world, but redeem it, all of it - just as it is. — Annie Dillard

I have time, Lord; help me to redeem it, that I may serve You. I — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

In the long run, the power of kindness can redeem beyond the power of force to destroy. There is a vast reservoir of kindness that we can no longer afford do disregard. — John MacAulay

I believe in the inherent good of people. I believe that someone can make a mistake and live to redeem themselves another day. Maybe that's why I don't believe in the death penalty. It forecloses all possibilities. — Carsen Taite

Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow. — Jay-Z

the reason Israel's story matters is that the creator of the world has chosen and called Israel to be the people through whom he will redeem the world. — N. T. Wright

Only the Truth of God can redeem humankind. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It has been acceptable for some time in America to remain "wound identified" (that is, using one's victimhood as one's identity, one's ticket to sympathy, and one's excuse for not serving), instead of using the wound to "redeem the world," as we see in Jesus and many people who turn their wounds into sacred wounds that liberate both themselves and others. — Richard Rohr

Love is about control and loss of control. In love, we give ourselves up to each other. We lose control or, rather, we cede control to another, trusting in a way we would never otherwise trust, letting the other person hold the deepest part of our being in their hands, with the capacity to hurt it mortally. This cession of control is a deeply terrifying thing, which is why we crave it and are drawn to it like moths to the flame, and why we have to trust it unconditionally. In love, so many hazardous uncertainties in life are resolved: the constant negotiation with other souls, the fear and distrust that lie behind almost every interaction, the petty loneliness that we learned to live with as soon as we grew apart from our mother's breast. We lose all this in the arms of another. We come home at last to a primal security, made manifest by each other's nakedness ...
And with that loss of control comes mutual power, the power to calm, the power to redeem, and the power to hurt. — Andrew Sullivan

I am perhaps more proud of having helped to redeem the character of the cave-man than of any other single achievement of mine in the field of anthropology. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

Without out suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption. All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed. And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God. — Mother Teresa

The only thing more difficult than being a God is being Thom Yorke. Thom Yorke has all these responsibilities, to save the planet. To save the world. To redeem Thom Yorke. — Thom Yorke

Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it. — Walter Kaufmann

In as much as Christ's mission was to bring all things into submission to God, and to restore not only humanity, but also the whole creation to its proper purposes, to make straight what is crooked, and to redeem both humanity and the creation from the curse of sin, then herein can be found the possibility for a full and wholesome realization of human artistic activity. — John Walford

Anticipated rents, and bills unpaid,
Force many a shining youth into the shade,
Not to redeem his time, but his estate,
And play the fool, but at the cheaper rate. — William Cowper

The man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness - he must come one day. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I find it inordinately hard to speak about my other brother. He is a mere shadow in the background of my richest and most detailed recollections. It is one of those lives that hopelessly claim a belated something
compassion, understanding, no matter what
which the mere recognition of such a want can neither replace nor redeem. — Vladimir Nabokov

ROA, KONRAD LORENZ'S RAVEN, raided clotheslines to steal ladies' underwear. Roa had been exploring a neighbor's laundry hung on the line just when he was called. He came, taking a small transportable item with him, a pair of panties. When he got a reward of tasty food, he made the association of panties and food. Henceforth, as expected according to classical conditioning theory, he brought these items on his own to redeem them for savory snacks. — Bernd Heinrich

God makes no bones about His willingness in extreme cases to take a child home if that's the only way to stop them from destruction. Complete forgiveness and restoration is ours - even usefulness in the Body of Christ and lives of faithful service! God can work everything together for good and redeem our failures. He will gladly be strong in our weaknesses and show us His gracious favor. He can plunder the enemy and take back what Satan stole from us. — Beth Moore

I created you in my own image to make for myself a glorious name. You were clean at the beginning, but you defiled yourselves with sins and became sons of the darkness. However, I am gracious and compassionate. I will redeem my people and establish my kingdom. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of my glory, as the waters cover the sea. — Zhang Yun

Imagine if you took it on in yourself to reorient your life trajectory toward your divinity. Your divinity: I so loved the world, that I gave it all of myself. Imagine your birth as an act of pouring yourself forth into life as a loving means of redemption. Imagine your human life as what you have come to redeem. And when you've fully awakened to all of it, then you've fully redeemed your human incarnation. — Adyashanti

Children don t read to find their identity to free themselves from guilt to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology ... They still believe in God the family angels devils witches goblins logic clarity punctuation and other such obsolete stuff ... When a book is boring they yawn openly. They don t expect their writer to redeem humanity but leave to adults such childish illusions. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Ah, well, during the Middle Ages, religion was often able to redeem art. Today, however, art is about the only thing that can redeem religion, and the clerics will never forgive us for that. — Samuel R. Delany

Hedge funds are investment pools that are relatively unconstrained in what they do. They are relatively unregulated (for now), charge very high fees, will not necessarily give you your money back when you want it, and will generally not tell you what they do. They are supposed to make money all the time, and when they fail at this, their investors redeem and go to someone else who has recently been making money. Every three or four years they deliver a one-in-a-hundred year flood. They are generally run for rich people in Geneva, Switzerland, by rich people in Greenwich, Connecticut. — Cliff Asness

When our Heavenly Father placed Adam and Eve on this earth, He did so with the purpose in mind of teaching them how to regain His presence. Our Father promised a Savior to redeem them from their fallen condition. — Ezra Taft Benson

To redeem your territory for the kingdom is to identify your territory — Sunday Adelaja

Christians are called to redeem entire cultures, not just individuals. — Charles Colson

You needn't play, Mr. Weston," Emma said. "I only agreed to play for Lizzie's sake, so . . ." "Oh, come, Miss Smallwood. Please tell me you don't shun all things athletic as you did as a girl." A teasing light shone in his eyes. "Afraid you'll lose?" Emma huffed. "I am not afraid to lose. I know I shall. This isn't chess, after all." One eyebrow rose. "Oh, ho! A shot to the heart. The lady recalls soundly trouncing me, I see. Then you must give me a chance to redeem myself." He set aside his hat and adopted a ready stance, bouncing lightly from foot to foot. He looked fifteen years old all over again. Emma felt a grin lift a corner of her mouth. "Oh, very well. But promise not to laugh too hard." "I promise. — Julie Klassen

Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So we renounce our resistance, our noncooperation, our stubborn refusal to enter life as it is. We renounce our fantasy of a beautiful past and an exciting future we can cherish and hold on to. Life just isn't like this. Life, time, is letting go, moment after moment. Life and time redeem themselves constantly, heal themselves constantly, only we don't know this, and much as we long to be healed and redeemed, we refuse to recognize this truth. This is why the sirens' songs are so attractive and so deadly. They propose a world of indulgence and wishful thinking, an unreal world that is seductive and destructive. (142) — Norman Fischer

We keep on going, he continued, fostering all kinds of crazy hopes. To redeem the lost, some sliver of personal revelation. It's an addiction, like playing the slots, or a game of golf. - It's a lot easier to talk about nothing, I said. He didn't outright ignore my presence, but he did fail to respond. - Well, anyway, that's my two cents. - You're just about to pack it in, toss the clubs in a river, when you hit your stride, the ball rolls straight in the cup, and the coins fill your inverted cap. — Patti Smith

Christ, as the ultimate Imago Dei is alluded to in scripture as being without external beauty in the Classical sense, and should better be thought of as one who passed through all the slime and mire of a fallen and sinful creation in order to redeem it. His own body is to be remembered for the marks it bears-even in resurrection-of the scars of his sacrificial death. For the Christian, a theory of beauty might better begin at this point. — John Walford

A Roman soldier ... thrust a spear into Jesus' side and out came blood and water. Physicians say that a mixture of blood and water indicates that Jesus died of a broken heart. He poured out the last ounce of His blood to redeem us. — Billy Graham

If you pledge yourself to the Inquisition, to me, and swear to use your powers and your knowledge to send malfettos back to the Underworld, I will give you everything you've ever wanted. I can grant your every desire. Money? Power? Respect? Done." He smiles. "You can redeem yourself, change from an abomination in the gods' eyes to a savior. You can help me fix this world. Wouldn't it be nice, not having to run anymore?" He pauses, and for a moment, a note of real, painful tragedy enters his voice. "We are not supposed to exist, Adelina. We were never meant to be." We are mistakes. — Marie Lu

Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. — Henry David Thoreau

Maybe what we are faced with in our own day is a similar challenge: to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all. — N. T. Wright

Greater is Your Spirit in me than anything else that tries to bring me down (1 John 4:4). You redeem my life from the pit and crown me with love and compassion (Psalm 103:4). — Stormie O'martian

It is a Bush administration official on the moment when torture breaks a victim:
The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.
From Neil Gaiman's account of a torturer in hell:
We will hurt you. And we are not sorry. But we do not do it to punish you. We do it to redeem you. Because afterward, you'll be a better person ... and because we love you. One day you'll thank us for it.
War is peace. Torture is freedom. In the end, you love Big Brother. — Andrew Sullivan

I did not find Liverpool ugly. Her stately public buildings, broad streets, public squares, and noble statues redeem her from the charge. — M. E. W. Sherwood

Redeem soul, resurrect spirit. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Advertizing, television and film all wield mighty powers to visually seduce us, while much fine art leaves us indifferent, confused or, at worst, repulsed. There is a desperate need for creative Christians to redeem the visual arena from both forms of excess, cutting through all the false glamour, tawdry baseness and dense obfuscation. — John Walford

There is no regret God cannot redeem. — Mark Batterson

We grow crisp and crotchety, fully half our organs ignore our commands
whistling to themselves, as it were, while we struggle to bring them to attention
but to balance the ledger we are allowed to dwell on the past, revisit the sites of our old humiliations, reread (without the aid of spectacles) our own misjudgments. And we do, believing that it was there, in our past, that our last best chance for happiness lay hidden; that somewhere in that thicket, now dense with self-recrimination and foolishness, trickled a freshet of joy powerful enough to redeem us. — Mark Slouka

We are trying to find something to feel the void. It is only God who can fill the void. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Love alone allows man to forget himself ... it alone can still redeem even the darkest hours of the past since it alone finds the courage to believe in the mercy of the holy God. — Karl Rahner

Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? - Thus Spake Zarathustra — Irvin D. Yalom

The more clearly we see the infinite chasm between God's glory and our sinful falling short thereof, the greater will be our appreciation of His grace and love in bridging that gulf to redeem us. — Dave Hunt

You possess a non-renewable resource, which is headed toward total depletion and that resource is time. You can either invest your life or let it dribble through your fingers like sand in an hour glass. If there is ever a time to redeem every second, every minute it is now. You may never have tomorrow. You can't count your days, but with the Lord as your Savior you can make your days count. — Billy Graham

We built a coalition of conscience, and that we can do it again, and we can go forward, and help redeem the soul of America. — John Lewis

Corporatism trying to redeem itself through charity is akin to a serial killer offering to pay a fine for his crimes. — Dean Cavanagh

especially his relationship with creation. The thought of an infinite God stooping low to relate to and redeem a broken people rightfully leaves our minds reeling - or at least it should. — J. Ryan Lister

Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother. — Pat Conroy

It supported participatory governance in both friendly and adversarial countries; it played a leading role in articulating new humanitarian principles, and since 1945 it has, in five wars and on several other occasions, spent American blood to redeem them in distant corners of the world. No other country would have had the idealism and the resources to take on such a range of challenges or the capacity to succeed in so many of them. American idealism and exceptionalism were the driving forces behind the building of a new international order. — Henry Kissinger

He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise. And like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause. — Bram Stoker

O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all father- and forefather-lands! Your children's land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility - the undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search. In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past. — Friedrich Nietzsche

As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young. — Henry Ward Beecher

Christ, therefore, died for our sins, in order to redeem or separate us from the world. — John Calvin

Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices — Ayn Rand

Who can redeem us from our sins? ONLY the Saviour, Jesus Christ. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Christians who understand biblical truth and have the courage to live it out can indeed redeem a culture, or even create one. This is the challenge facing all of us in the new millennium. — Charles W. Colson

Of all the great world religions, Christianity should value the body most. After all, it taught that God had in some sense taken a human body and used it to redeem the world; everything about the physical should have been sacred and sacramental. But that had not happened. instead, the churches had found it almost impossible to integrate the sexual with the divine and had developed a Platonic aversion to the body - particularly the bodies of women. — Karen Armstrong

To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame; to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine men. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? — Ayn Rand

The disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, tell of a dream he had. In the dream, the very incarnation of the Evil Impulse appears in the form of a sinister heart. The Baal Shem Tov seizes the heart and pounds it furiously. He would destroy evil and redeem the world. As he pummels it, he hears an infant's sobbing emitted from the heart. He stops beating it. In the midst of evil is a voice of innocence; there is goodness entangled in evil. — Harold M. Schulweis

We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell
the hell of your own meanness. — Charlotte Bronte

Thus it takes the imminence of an infinite calamity to redeem the human adventure. On this level our age testifies to a narcissism of malediction that rips it out of its insignificance and reaffirms its centrality: by designating itself as damned, it merely emphasizes its singularity while apparently depreciating itself: 'Our period is not accidentally ephemeral; ephemerality is its essence. It cannot pass into another period but only collapse' (Anders, La Menace nucleaire, pag. 100).
What a relief to know that we are not living in a little province of time but in the historic moment when time itself is going to be engulfed! What presumption, and what naivite, to believe that we are the pinnacle of history! This self-abasement is a form of vainglory. If we can't be the best, we can still be the worst. Behind their lamentations, the catastrophists are bursting with self-importance. — Pascal Bruckner

Christ became one of us to redeem all of us. — Max Lucado

I want women to know God can use everything the enemy meant for evil in their lives for good. He can take their stories of shame and redeem them-- first for their own freedom and then to help others.
I want women to know that they are not less than, weaker, second, or not enough. They are created in God's image-- greatly valued, loved, chose, wanted and adored by the Creator of the universe. — Christine Caine

As another aside, it has occurred to various people, including Robert Graves in his epic novel King Jesus, that poor Judas Iscariot has received a bad deal from history, given that his 'betrayal' was a necessary part of the cosmic plan. The same could be said of Jesus' alleged murderers. If Jesus wanted to be betrayed and then murdered, in order that he could redeem us all, isn't it rather unfair of those who consider themselves redeemed to take it out on Judas and on Jews down the ages? — Richard Dawkins

Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it. — Richard J. Foster

Los Angeles is a sprawl of broken dreams and lost opportunities, disconnected souls and entertainment junkies. The sunny skies and graceful palms don't redeem jammed roadways to nowhere. — Carolyn Hart

I'm not wicked." "Jensen, you've spent three years lying low, trying to make everything right. But you can't redeem yourself. You can't make yourself and your life whole again. God can. — Susan May Warren

You've never gone too far that God can't redeem you, restore you, forgive you, and give you a second chance. — Lysa TerKeurst

Christians can trust God to redeem even the greatest of tragedies and the most desperate of situations. — Franklin Graham

My life for yours: it may mean three seconds of my time to redeem some thoughtless bit of self-indulgence on the part of someone else, or it may mean, or did mean, Golgotha, where My Life for Yours was supremely dramatized and entails our eternal joy. — Thomas Howard

Landsman doesn't buy that. Bina never stopped wanting to redeem the world. She just let the world she was trying to redeem get smaller and smaller until at one point, it could be bounded in the hat of a hopeless policeman. — Michael Chabon

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance — Jawaharlal Nehru

Ministry. Sadly, there has never been a city on earth that is not saturated with human sin and corruption. Indeed, to paraphrase a Woody Allen joke, cities are just like everywhere else, only much more so. They are both better and worse, both easier and harder to live in, both more inspiring and oppressive, than other places. As redemptive history unfolds, we begin to see how the tension of the city will be resolved. The turn in the relationship between the people of God and the pagan city becomes a key aspect of God's plan to bless the nations and redeem the world. In the New Testament, we find cities playing an important role in the rapid growth of the early church and in spreading the gospel message of God's salvation. — Timothy Keller

Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow