But today, because we have so cruelly separated freedom from virtue, because we define freedom in a morally inferior way, a country is stalled in what Herman Melville called the dark ages of democracy, a time when, as he predicted, the New Jerusalem would turn into Babylon and Americans would feel the arrest of hope's advance.
* * * * *
What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love.
Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.
It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.
Because our value is a gift, we don't have to prove ourselves, only to express ourselves.
Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one — neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.
I also was persuaded that the woman most in need of liberation was the woman in every man just as the man most in need of liberation was the man in every woman.
To love is surely to support and to encourage — but not necessarily to approve. Quite the contrary! If we love one another we will help one another fight against our evil dreams.
Love is to make us more human, and that demands that we care so much for each other that we have not to be nice but to be honest. We have to be honest, for most real faults are hidden and therefore demand an outside revealer.
The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. The more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die.
* * * * *
Too many religious people make faith their aim. They think 'the greatest of these' is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine. These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart. If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive.
But what I am beginning to suspect is that most guilty people reject the possibility of forgiveness not because it is too good to believe, but because they fear the responsibility forgiveness entails. It's hell to be guilty, but its worse to be responsible.
The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than the flaws in the system.
But if we hate evil more than we love the good, we become damn good haters.... However deep, our anger, like that of Christ, must always and only measure our love.
Many of us overvalue autonomy, the strength to stand alone, the capacity to act independently. Far too few of us pay attention to the virtues of dependence and interdependence, and especially to the capacity to be vulnerable.
Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words.
In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.
To show compassion for an individual without without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.
If you lessen your anger at the structures of power, you lower your love for the victims of power.
Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.
There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country.
Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.
* * * * *
A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human.
We don't have to be "successful," only valuable. We don't have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.
Learning, and especially unlearning, can take place only in the absence of defensiveness.... We can drop our defenses only when we love and are loved.
No sermon on love can fail to mention love's most difficult problem in our time — how to find effective ways to alleviate the massive suffering of humanity at home and abroad. What we need to realize is that to love effectively we must act collectively.
In life you can either follow your fears or be led by your values, by your passions.
Dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.
Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race. . . Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. Let us love our country, but pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora and fauna and human life that it supports — one planet indivisible, with clean air,... soil and water; with liberty, justice and peace for all.
Human unity is not something we are called on to create — only something we are called on to recognize.
I asked an 85 year old professor, 'What makes you cry?' He said, 'Whenever I see or hear the truth.'
The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
For finally, we are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.
If your heart is full of fear, you won't seek truth; you'll seek security. If a heart is full of love, it will have a limbering effect on the mind.
Isn't that what growing up is all about — learning to outlast despair?
Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful.
— William Sloane Coffin
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