Religious Image Quotes

The Christian is a [person] of joy... A gloomy Christian is a contradiction of terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces.

Assassination, kidnappings and suicide attacks have become too much the standard operating procedure in the Islamic world. So much so that the name of Islam itself has been diminished in the eyes of many people. It is the responsibility of all of us, and particularly those in the Islamic world who care about their religion, to rescue it from its increased association with violence.

People expect someone with the name 'Israel Horovitz' to be a little old man with sideburns carrying a Torah.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you're a Christian you've got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It's no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that's going to go, 'Yeah, give me some of that?'

It is tragic that many in America think of us - Christians - as being people who hate others.

If Jesus had known that his image would end up on Justin Bieber's calf, he would've never started Christianity.

We want to tell people how great Islam is yet we are not great Muslims.

People are very surprised to hear me say that a lot of my values are Christian values. I think that's part of my shock. I just don't like the way that Christianity combined with the influence of television has bred a nation of weakness. (Christian television do get the facts wrong sometimes and the image they portray turns most people off.)

All Jesus' pictures are falsifications; they cannot be about the real Jesus. This real man must have been totally different, because we know he enjoyed drinking - it is impossible to think of a person who enjoys drinking and not laughing. He enjoyed women - it is difficult to think of a man who enjoys women and not laughing. He was friendly, almost in love, with a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. It is difficult to move with a prostitute - he was not moving with a Catholic monk, not with a priest, not with the Pope... with a prostitute! These were the condemnations against him.

If you give them a God made in their own image, I guarantee they'll accept Him. But He won't be the God who saves.

All gods are better than their reputation.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

A personal selfish prayer is bad whether made before an image or an unseen God.

When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world

There's this idea supposedly that we preachers are supposed to walk about with sandals and ride bicycles. That's nonsense.

The biggest danger of this terrorism and extremism is the tarnishing of the reputation of our beloved religion... We will not allow this to happen.

Is it possible that the portrait of the divine Son of God is an exaggeration, at best, or a complete fabrication, at worst, of the original Jesus?

I get the sense people sort of imagine that in my personal religious life I must be an intense rigorist wearing a hair shirt under my clothes while scourging myself. And, really, I'm not a rigorist by temperament.

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. The cross, crucified, and that turned into victory. Mohammad was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.

It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.

Often, it seems, we're [Christians] perceived more as guilt dispensers than as grace dispensers.

What preoccupies us, then, is not God as a fact of nature, but as a fabrication useful for a God-fearing society. God himself becomes not a power but an image.

They are scared that the BBC or CNN may call them radicals, so they remain soft instead. The problem lies there, with the Muslim leaders, not the Muslim masses.

I think what turned me off of Christianity as a kid, and what I think turns other people off, is the thought that you have to sacrifice being cool to believe in God.