quotes: Stanley Hauerwas

"Jesus is Lord, and everything else is bullshit."

"To be poor does not mean you lack the means to extend charity to another. You may lack money or food, but you have the gift of friendship to overwhelm the loneliness that grips the lives of so many."

"The courageous have fears that cowards never know."

"The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works, but rather who God is."

"We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is... learning to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married." 

"I asked her to marry me. She thought I was crazy. She pointed out that I had no idea who she was. I responded that of course I did not know who she was. But I knew she was a Christian. I loved and lusted after her. The rest we could work out."

"Writing is hard and difficult work because to write is to think. I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it. The expression is the idea. So I write because writing is the only way I know how to think."

"Beware when you hear a Methodist minister quote his twelve year old. When that happens you know you're fixin' to hear some bullshit."

"If you ever think you've got it right, you probably don't."

"The church doesn't have a social strategy, the church is a social strategy."

"I say I'm a pacifist because I am a violent son of a bitch. I'm a Texan. I can feel it in every bone I've got. And I hate the language of pacifism because it's too passive. But by avowing it, I create expectations in others that hopefully will help me live faithfully to what is true. But that I have no confidence in my own ability to live it at all."

"When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it's interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn't about whether you're in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years."