Yoder Quotes & Sayings

What we need is more money back in the hands of Americans of any economic standing and so raising taxes right now doesn't make sense. — Kevin Yoder

He who was not legalist at any other point, and who was ready without hesitation to pardon prostitutes and disreputable people, was nonetheless extremely strict upon one point: only one who practices grace can receive grace. — John Howard Yoder

As John Howard Yoder has said, If in society we believe in the rights of employees, then the church should be the first employer to deal with workers fairly. If in the wider society we call for the overcoming of racism or sexism or materialism, then the church should be the place where that possibility first becomes real. — Scot McKnight

To go from chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the Kansas Legislature to one of 50 on the Appropriations Committee and one of 435 in the whole House, it is more difficult to directly impact policy here. — Kevin Yoder

For some people though, the typical American lifestyle just doesn't cut it. They want something else, something different, and that in itself is pretty scary. Breaking away from what's normal can be absolutely terrifying (and exciting) because there is just no way of knowing how it will pay off. It's higher risk, and hopefully higher reward. — Stephanie Yoder

The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately — John Howard Yoder

There are times when a society is so totally controlled by an ideology that the greatest need is that someone simply identify a point where he can say a clear no in the name of his loyalty to a higher authority. We have no right to say that those who refused to enroll in the racist crusade of Adolf Hitler should first have been obligated practically or morally to propose an alternative social strategy before they had the right to refuse. — John Howard Yoder

All evil seems to arise from the desire to dominate others. Most men in our society are taught from a very early age to try to dominate. It isn't something that they think about consciously. It operates at a subconscious level. They are taught by the adults around them and their peers. Someone dominates them and they in turn try to dominate others. They do it without even realizing it and they do it without even thinking about why. It is without question. In their conscious awareness they may aspire to grandiose ideals but their actions speak for what really motivates them from a subconscious level. — Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez

The relationship between the obedience of Gods people and the triumph of Gods cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection. — John Howard Yoder

We have witnessed in the 20th century a tremendous phenomenon: the birth of the modern State of Israel. ...God is at work with His ancient chosen earthly people. We ought to pay attention to what is going on for behind the movement of nations is the hand of God. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

I love the Capitol rotunda. It's just so big and so grand, and I love being in the Capitol at night when it's empty, and you can go stand in the Capitol rotunda and bask in the silence of history. You can sort of imagine all of the things that have happened inside that Rotunda from presidents lying in state to other important events. — Kevin Yoder

Jesus did not define the kingdom as being in the hearts of the Pharisees or anyone else. The kingdom is an objective reality when the King is present. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

There's an issue with the Medicare doctor reimbursement rates where at the end of the year every doctor that folks in this country use that provide Medicare services is going to get a 30 percent salary cut. — Kevin Yoder

Certainly in the Capitol you do get moments were you sort of take a deep breath and think of all the historic figures who have been in that building, like Abraham Lincoln, who have stood right in those same rooms to make the landmark decisions. — Kevin Yoder

Unfaithfulness to the marriage vow can never be justified. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political implications; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-Man whose divine status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e., promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships. — John Howard Yoder

The divine order of human society from primeval days was based upon certain rights conveyed by the Creator. The right of position, next to God; the right to procreate, in order to be in charge; the right to procure, in order to survive. These rights of necessity required man to maintain a meaningful and submissive relation to God who bestowed them. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

Traditionally, common social location meant that the two partners used the same family name. In recent years alternative patterns of naming have been developed, for reasons which are more convincing to feminists than they are to genealogists or to mail carriers. — John Howard Yoder

When you're in elected office, you always have to operate under the assumption that you're in a dog fight for re-election. It's when you don't prepare for a tough battle, when you're caught flat-footed, that you're vulnerable. — Kevin Yoder

When we begin to think like everybody else thinks, that is dangerous. Individualism is part of our divine endowment. God made us as individuals and we are responsible before Him. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

Raising taxes doesn't create jobs, and this is a common sense thing. Washington doesn't get it. They believe if they take more money and send it to Washington, D.C. somehow they create wealth. It doesn't work. — Kevin Yoder

In the current law we're seeing Social Security dwindle. And so what we're saying is if we're going to reduce taxes we just want to make sure that there are things within the law that pay for it. — Kevin Yoder

Incarnation' does not originally mean (as it tends to today in some theologies of history, and in some kinds of Anglican today) that God took all of human nature as it was, put his seal of approval on it and thereby ratified nature as revelation. The point is just the opposite; that God broke through the borders of man's definition of what is human, and gave a new, formative definition in Jesus. — John Howard Yoder

There's a Zen proverb that states "If you're too busy to sit still for 10 minutes, you need to sit still for an hour. — J.D. Yoder

True Christianity cuts across all other religions and creates its own culture. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

How much verbal garbage there is going out across the air waves and across the pulpits of our land because preachers do not believe the Gospel; do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only way. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

The Creator did not speak man into existence as He did all else which He made, but He began with previously made material. So in the restoration process He did not speak the restoration into reality by fiat. Rather He began the process through a series of connected acts and events. And certainly no act of the Eternal Creator would ever be without purpose or reason. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

The measure of a man is not so much how tall he stands but how low he kneels. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross must be, like his Lord's, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of the path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther's or Thomas Muntzer's or Zinzendorf's or Kierkegaard's cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come. — John Howard Yoder

Any man's measure is determined by what he will do when he is faced with his own deep need. Not how high he may reach but how low he may kneel. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

The measure of a man is determined by how he responds to the truth of God. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not soberly weighted the prima facie presumption that any violence is wrong until the case for an exception has been made. — John Howard Yoder

We move much too fast, and too frequently, to pause to savor landscapes or avoid disfiguring clutter. — Edwin M. Yoder Jr.

When the term Christian or even Protestant is used, it seldom refers to any particularly evangelical doctrine or way of life. More often it refers to a religion accepted by the large majority, which assures them that God is not so much a Lord who demands obedience as a handyman who is available whenever we need help. — John Howard Yoder

Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated. — John Howard Yoder

From Adam's day until now men everywhere have tried to find their own way to meet God's standard of holiness. Has anyone been successful? No! — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

If we read the text alone, assuming that the word 'cross' can only derive its meaning from the later death of Jesus, then its appearance in the text must be an anachronism read back into the story after the crucifixion. This conclusion becomes unnecessary if the cross, being the standard punishment for insurrection or for the refusal to confess Caesar's lordship, already had a clear definition in the listener's awareness. 'Take up your cross' may even have been a standard phrase of Zealot recruiting. The disciple's cross is not a metaphor for self-mortification or even generally innocent suffering; 'if you follow me, your fate will be like mine, the fate of a revolutionary. You cannot follow me without facing that fate. — John Howard Yoder

Every man's measurement is determined by his responses when he is on his knees before God. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

-Truly, freeing oneself in one's own mind is only the first step on a path of freedom.- — Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez

The church seeks to help form people who can risk being peaceful in a violent world, risk being kind in a competitive world, risk being faithful in an age of cynicism, risk being gentle among those who admire the tough, risk love when it may not be returned, because we have the confidence that in Christ we have been reborn into a new reality. — John Howard Yoder

The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come. — John Howard Yoder