John Shelby Spong Quotes

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

God is not a vending machine where if you put in enough prayer quarters we get a Reese's Pieces bag that pops out.

Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer. It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide people to follow His precepts - there is just too much misery and cruelty for that.

People ask me, 'Why pray if God is sovereign?' I respond, 'Why pray if He isn't?

Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The way to trouble God is not to come at all.

If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?

I can't bring myself to believe in a God with a personality like my own. I base that on the paucity of lightning attacks on people who deserve it.

If there were a god, don't you think he would have flicked Hitler's head off?

If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed.

The only instance of praying to saints, mentioned in the Bible, is that of the rich man in torment calling upon Abraham; and let it be remembered, that it was practised only by a lost soul and without success.

When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.

We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.

It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there.

If faith fails, prayer perishes.

If god really wanted people to be free of [wicked thoughts], he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I don't think that's the case.

It's a truly disgusting idea that the creator of the universe - capable of inventing the laws of physics and designing the evolutionary process - that this protégé of supernatural intellect couldn't think of a better way to forgive our sins than to have himself tortured to death.

The possibilities of prayer are found in its allying itself with the purposes of God, for God's purposes and man's praying are the combination of all potent and omnipotent forces.

If ever there was a time this country needed the intervention of God, it is now. We can and should pray for America as a whole, but remember that when God sets out to change a nation, He begins by changing people. It starts with individuals.

But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.

What discord should we bring into the universe if our prayers were all answered! Then we should govern the world, and not God. And do you think we should govern it better?

In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods.

It upset me that, five days after the hurricane hit down in New Orleans, the President's plan was for a day of prayer. I would have thought a truck of food. A day of prayer. Now, maybe I'm mistaken here and, again, I'm not a scientific expert, but isn't a hurricane officially an act of God? Isn't a day of prayer kind of redundant? Hasn't God already made up his mind on that sort of thing? So we do a day of prayer. The President has his stupid day of prayer. Three days later, Hurricane Rita hits. Somebody must have said something... something like, is that all you got?

The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me - the raving of insanity, superstition gone to seed! I want no part of such a God.

I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.