Quotes by Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

“I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors....Jesus could have hung out in the high-end re...”

“God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and di...”

“Church isnt perfect. Its practice.”

“What makes us saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather Gods ability to work through sinners.”

“There is a reason Mary is everywhere. I've seen her image all over the world, in cafs in Istanbul, on students' backpacks in Scotland, in a market stall in Jakarta, but I don't think her image is e...”

“I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Beliefis going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm ...”

“We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our ...”

“That's the crazy thing about Christianitythe idea that the finite can contain the infinite. After all, what is the incarnation if not that? So there's an incredible physicality to the spiritual wit...”

“So often in the church, being a pastor or a "spiritual leader" means being the example of "godly living." A pastor is supposed to be the person who is really good at this Christianity stuffthe pers...”

“When all of it is given meaning in the larger story of Jesus Christ, it destroys us, then pours our melted selves back into another form that still bears the marks of how we got there. Then we beco...”

“So are demons forces that are totally external to us who seek to defy God? Are they just the shadow side of our own souls? Are they social constructions from a premodern era? Bottom line: Who cares...”

“While we as people of God are certainly called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that whole "we're blessed to be a blessing" thing can still be kind of dangerous. It can be dangerous when we...”

“I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if Jesus said "I was hungry and you fed me," then Christ's presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but ...”

“Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as "the blessing"like so many mission trips to help "those less fortunate than ourselves"can easily descend into a blend of benevolence and paternalism...”

“And the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because ifit's real it means we don't "deserve" it. ... And receiving grace is basically the best shitty feeling in the world.”

“I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished...”

“I often think that the effort we put into trying to pretend something about us is truethat we are less than we are or more than we are or that one aspect of ourselves is the whole storyis based in ...”

“Church isn’t perfect. It’s practice.”

“What makes us saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather God’s ability to work through sinners.”

“That's the crazy thing about Christianity — the idea that the finite can contain the infinite. After all, what is the incarnation if not that? So there's an incredible physicality to the spiritual ...”