Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.
N. T. WrightThe whole point of the kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek.
N. T. WrightIt is faith alone that justifies, but faith that justifies can never be alone, though one is justified by faith alone, the faith which justifies is never in fact alone.
N. T. WrightJust as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire...decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.
N. T. WrightIf you don't have properly constituted civic authorities you will encourage vigilantism and solo efforts at retributive justice - which is anarchy, and God doesn't want his world to be anarchic.
N. T. WrightThe Psalms offer us a way of joining in a chorus of praise and prayer that has been going on for millennia and across all cultures. Not to try to inhabit them, while continuing to invent non-psalmic 'worship' based on our own feelings of the moment, risks being like a spoiled child who, taken to the summit of Table Mountain with the city and the ocean spread out before him, refuses to gaze at the view because he is playing with his Game Boy
N. T. Wright