James P. Carse Quotes

Yes, I was mad at God because of the cancer diagnosis. I thought I should have been protected because of the work I do in the world.

Has God forgotten all I have done for Him.

In particular, I found praying very disturbing, like swimming with bricks tied to your feet. And yet I was drawn to it constantly.

The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God.

Believing in God is a very intense inner struggle of mine. It's something I worry about a lot, but which I don't have the answer to.

It cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least, by many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or received it in our childhood and have parted from it since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.

When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.

Unfortunately, many young believers - and some older ones, too - do not know that there will be times in every person's life when circumstances don't add up - when God doesn't appear to make sense. This aspect of the Christian faith is not well advertised.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

I've never had any religion. I'd prefer it if I did, really. Even as a boy I just couldn't make myself believe.

I was raised - and still consider myself to be - Catholic, though I'm non-practicing and haven't fulfilled my Easter duty since sometime during the Nixon years. I'm assailed by all kinds of stimulating doubts, but I do believe in God.

I have been contending all my life, and always with God.

My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.

I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.

God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.

I challenged God. I said, 'God, I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I won't probably have peace until You're in my heart. But I will not let You in my heart until You answer me, why? Why did you take my arms and legs? Why didn't You give me what everybody else has? God, until You answer me that question, I will not serve You.'

Because we don't see the evil destroyed now and thus experience the suffering that evil inevitably inflicts, we are tempted to doubt God's existence and goodness.

'Faith and Will' sprang from my personal experience with passing through a dark spiritual time.

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.

These last few days I've felt Godless. I've felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he's so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns-all silly and useless.

God sometimes you just don't come through, Do you need a woman to look after you?

She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang.

He was near tears, 'Who do I blame?' he kept asking me. 'There is no God.I can only blame myself.'" The Reb's face tightened, as if in pain. "That," he said, softly, "is a terrible self-indictment." Worse than an unanswered prayer? "Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there.