Religious Trauma Quotes & Sayings

I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I see my discourse leaves you cold;
Dear kids, I do not take offense;
Recall: the Devil, he is old,
Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Religions are metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives. A spiritual life allows us to move beyond the ego into something more universal. Religious experience carries us outside of clock time into eternal time. We open ourselves into something more complete and beautiful. This bigger vista is perhaps the most magnificent aspect of a religious experience.
There is a sense in which Karl Marx was correct when he said that religion is the opiate of the people. However, he was wrong to scoff at this. Religion can give us skills for climbing up on onto a ledge above our suffering and looking down at it with a kind and open mind. This helps us calm down and connect to all of the world's sufferers. Since the beginning of human time, we have yearned for peace in the face of death, loss, anger and fear. In fact, it is often trauma that turns us toward the sacred, and it is the sacred that saves us. — Mary Pipher

Humans love sex. Both men and women are wired to be sexually responsive. Sex is the social glue of the human species. It takes heavy-handed training or trauma to kill a human's sex drive.
Religion has that power. Sexual training in guilt, shame, and fear begins virtually at birth by sexualizing nudity. The religious signal is that nudity is always sexual and the body must be covered for modesty. The Adam and Eve story is taught to young children even though they have no way to know what it means. — Darrel Ray

That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can. — J.D. Salinger

Jill had described this kind of religious upbringing as a form of mental abuse, and I returned to the point, as follows: 'You use the words religious abuse. If you were to compare the abuse of bringing up a child really to believe in hell . . . how do you think that would compare in trauma terms with sexual abuse?' She replied: 'That's a very difficult question . . . I think there are a lot of similarities actually, because it is about abuse of trust; it is about denying the child the right to feel free and open and able to relate to the world in the normal way . . . it's a form of denigration; it's a form of denial of the true self in both cases. — Richard Dawkins

When there is nothing to say about a book; we end up saying "Beautiful Story". — Crestless Wave

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen. — Carol Ann Duffy

I suppose the most daring thing I've ever done is try to water ski. And that was not successful. — Andre Leon Talley

People - Catholics and non-Catholics - are amazingly open to begin again in their walk with Jesus and in the Church when they hear clarity and honesty. What they don't put up with, thank God, is dishonesty and cover-up. And so I speak as openly as I possibly can about the difficulties of the Church because we shouldn't be afraid to call out an abuse of the wonderful gift God gives to us of the Church. When we - its members and its leaders - are imperfect we need to change. We need to begin again. That begins with honesty. — Jonathan Morris

Before I could catch it, my heart slammed straight down to my feet, leaving me with a massive hole in my chest. It was amazing how I could just be going along, doing okay, and then suddenly-wham-I missed her so much even my fingernails hurt. — Jenna Evans Welch

Her face was plastered with layers of powder and looked like a face of stone. And with her noble profile, she seemed, on the triangular, moss-covered pedestal hidden by her cape, like a crumbling goddess in a park. — Marcel Proust

As it relates to society in general, I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.' — Dan T. Cathy

Use-induced cortical reorganization, says Taub, "involves alterations different from mere learning and memory. Rather than producing just increased synaptic strength at certain junctions, which is believed to underlie learning, some unknown mechanism is instead producing wholesale topographic reorganization." And more: we are seeing evidence of the brain's ability to remake itself throughout adult life, not only in response to outside stimuli but even in response to directed mental effort. We are seeing, in short, the brain's potential to correct its own flaws and enhance its own capacities. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

I am tough but I have a soft side. — Bill Gross

A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers. — Seneca The Younger