Karen Armstrong Quotes

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, the in your imagination God suppose to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

I believe in God. It's a big part of my life. You can bring it up and talk about it without being 'Christian Rocker.'

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

One of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change.

We need to understand that Christianity is about changing; it is not about a religion.

Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

What you believe about God has the greatest potential for good or harm in your life.

Let us realize the state we are in. Let us learn what needs to be learnt. Religion and God demand it.

The men of moral and religious earnestness were bent on some measure of fresh reform. A spirit was abroad which could not be put down, and which would not be quiet. The old idea of an authoritative Church was outgrown, and yet no religious system had come in its place which provided for a free personal approach to God Himself.

I don't have a religion. I believe in a God. I don't know what it looks like but it's MY god. My own interpretation of the supernatural.

I never found much comfort in overly organized religion of any sort.

God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

If there's something in your life that you know needs changing, make sure you change it before God's got to change it. Because if God's got to change it, you ain't going to like it.

I am persuaded that the chief reason why we do not enjoy religion is that we do not try to enjoy it.

I don't claim to know what it means to say that we are made in the image of God, but I profoundly and instinctively believe it and all that it implies.

I speak to God every day.

He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.

I believe in God, absolutely.

For Christians, they need to access the power of Jesus and not look at Christianity as a religion. It is our Lord Jesus that makes you change, and Christians need to actualize it and put it into practice.

I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. I went to an Episcopal high school. I went to a Baptist college. I've taken every comparative-religion course that was available. God? I have no idea.