Religion Quotes by Eugene H. Peterson

Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.

— Eugene H. Peterson

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less…

— Eugene H. Peterson

I think pastors are the worst listeners. We're so used to speaking, teaching, giving answers. We must learn to be quiet, quit…

— Eugene H. Peterson

The vocation of pastor(s) has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.

— Eugene H. Peterson

“Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

— Eugene H. Peterson

That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“The gospel doesn't impose a way of life on us from without and tell us that we have to live up to…

— Eugene H. Peterson

One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which…

— Eugene H. Peterson

Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people…

— Eugene H. Peterson

The word 'christian' means different things to different people. To one person it means a stiff, upright, inflexible way of life, colorless…

— Eugene H. Peterson

If we don't understand how metaphor works we will misunderstand most of what we read in the Bible. No matter how carefully…

— Eugene H. Peterson

The gospel is never about everybody else; it is always about you, about me. The gospel is never truth in general; it's…

— Eugene H. Peterson

O God, when my faith gets overladen with dust, blow it clean with the wind of your Spirit. When my habits of…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“An interest in souls divorced from an interest in Scripture leaves us without a text that shapes these souls. In the same…

— Eugene H. Peterson

We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get…

— Eugene H. Peterson

If people don't know their pastor, it's easy to put the pastor on a pedestal and depersonalize him or her. It's also…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“Language is not primarily informational but revelatory. The Holy Scriptures give witness to a living voice sounding variously as Father, Son and…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“There are a thousand ways of being religious without submitting to Christ’s lordship, and people are practiced in most of them. We…

— Eugene H. Peterson

Like a child exploring the attic of an old house on a rainy day, discovering a trunk full of treasure and then…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“The Christian life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence—congruence between ends and means, congruence between what we…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“What is the most important thing you do in preparing to preach each Sunday?” I think we were all surprised by the…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“And so Psalm 121 says no. It rejects a worship of nature, a religion of stars and flowers, a religion that makes…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“Door: So spiritual direction is a slow process that looks idle and inefficient. Peterson: It's subversive. I'm a subversive, really. I gather…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“You seem disappointed that I am not more responsive to your interest in "spiritual direction". Actually, I am more than a little…

— Eugene H. Peterson

Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though,…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“the Bible, all of it, is livable; it is the text for living our lives. It reveals a God-created, God-ordered, God-blessed world…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, "deny yourself" congregation.”

— Eugene H. Peterson

Religion is a very scary thing, because a pastor is in a position of power. And if you use that power badly,…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“The power that the world acknowledges comes out of the mouth of a gun; the power that the person of faith respects…

— Eugene H. Peterson

There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners, necessarily followers, because we don’t know where we are…

— Eugene H. Peterson

The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do…

— Eugene H. Peterson

The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that…

— Eugene H. Peterson

The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders; in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, covetousness…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“Not that the study is not important. A Jewish rabbi I once studies with would often say, 'For us Jews studying the…

— Eugene H. Peterson

There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language,…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“No text can be understood out of its entire context. The most "entire" context is Jesus. Every biblical text must be read…

— Eugene H. Peterson

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus:…

— Eugene H. Peterson

“The core message of the gospel is that God invades us with new life, but the setting for this is most often…

— Eugene H. Peterson