Dallas Willard Quotes

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

So much of what we are currently seeing as far as human suffering and misery comes from diseases that should have been preventable but were not.

One man’s exile is but a drop in the sea of human misery

They are playing politics at the expense of human misery.

But how to explain suffering because of a man? It's not explainable. With that kind of suffering, a person feels as if they're in hell, because there is no nobility, no greatness - only misery.

The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.

Classical theology defines sin as 'rebellion against God.' The answer is not incorrect as much as it is shallow and insulting to the human being. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity even if he or she is a 'rebellious sinner'.

It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.

Each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.

I have to move away from organized religion. The toxic confusion and anger I was feeling in church had become too great.

Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are.

Where we might think of sin as slip-ups or missteps, God views sin as a godless attitude that leads to godless action.

That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.

The world is full of religion, and full of misery and crime.

The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.

Miserable indeed is that religious teaching which calls itself Christian, and yet contains nothing of the cross.

Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?

You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.

It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity.

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.

If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.

If I were to speak of war, it would not be to show you the glories of conquering armies but the mischief and misery they strew in their tracks; and how, while they marched on with tread of iron and plumes proudly tossing in the breeze, some one must follow closely in their steps, crouching to the earth, toiling in the rain and darkness, shelterless themselves, with no thought of pride or glory, fame or praise, or reward; hearts breaking with pity, faces bathed in tears and hands in blood. This is the side which history never shows.