Norbu's thread got me thinking about the definition of religion. I had a look in the Bible, but only found two passages that were relevent. Then i looked at Mary Baker Eddy - and oh gosh, there were over 200 (which explains why there are so many below.) Then I had a look at [DLMURL] http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_religion.html [/DLMURL] and added some from the dozens there. I have compiled all my favourites into Smiles, Real Religion, Christianity and The Counterfeit of Religion.
Hope you enjoy them!
Love and peace,
Judy
😀Smiles😀
G. K. Chesterton:
I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
Rebecca West:
Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.
😉Real religion:😉
The Bible: James 1
26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious (piously observant of the external duties of his faith) and does not bridle his tongue but deludes his own heart, this person's religious service is worthless (futile, barren).
27 External religious worship [religion as it is expressed in outward acts] that is pure and unblemished in the sight of God the Father is this: to visit and help and care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and need, and to keep oneself unspotted and uncontaminated from the world.
A. Powell Davies:
Religion is not something separate and apart from ordinary life. It is life -- life of every kind viewed from the standpoint of meaning and purpose: life lived in the fuller awareness of its human quality and spiritual significance.
Mary Baker Eddy
The truth is the centre of all religion. It commands sure entrance into the realm of Love.
Mary Baker Eddy
...our ideas of divinity form our models of humanity.
Mary Baker Eddy
The epoch approaches when the understanding of the truth of being will be the basis of true religion.
Mary Baker Eddy
Nothing is worthy the name of religion save one lowly offering--love.
Mary Baker Eddy
God is universal; confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect.
Albert Einstein:
True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
Albert Einstein:
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals. Strength enters just as much as the moral element prevails.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions.
Thomas Jefferson:
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Florence Nightingale
The true feeling of God in us, which led to the belief in one incarnation, ought to be extended to the incarnation in all of us’ If people thought more of this, a greater God would be found and a better gospel would be preached.
Florence Nightingale:
God gives us the noble privilege of working out His work. He does not work for us. He gives us the means to find the way we should go. An eternal course is before us. Jesus was the perfect prototype for humanity.
🙂Christianity🙂
Mary Baker Eddy
This age is reaching out towards the perfect Principle of things; is pushing towards perfection in art, invention, and manufacture. Why, then, should religion be stereotyped, and we not obtain a more perfect and practical Christianity?
Mary Baker Eddy
Bear in mind always that Christianity is not alone a gift, but that it is a growth Christward; it is not a creed or dogma,--a philosophical phantasm,--nor the opinions of a sect struggling to gain power over contending sects and scourging the sect in advance of it. Christianity is the summons of divine Love for man to be Christlike--to emulate the words and the works of our great Master.
Mary Baker Eddy
Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all. His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and he left his legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport of philosophy, religion, or science; rather is it the pith and finale of them all.
Mary Baker Eddy
The question now at issue is: Shall we have a practical, spiritual Christianity, with its healing power, or shall we have material medicine and superficial religion?
Mary Baker Eddy
Fasting, feasting, or penance,--merely outside forms of religion,--fail to elucidate Christianity: they reach not the heart nor renovate it; they never destroy one iota of hypocrisy, pride, self-will, envy, or hate. The mere form of godliness, coupled with selfishness, worldliness, hatred, and lust, are knells tolling the burial of Christ.
Mary Baker Eddy
If the religion of to-day is constituted of such elements as of old ruled Christ out of the synagogues, it will continue to avoid whatever follows the example of our Lord and prefers Christ to creed.
Mary Baker Eddy
If that Godlike and glorified man (Jesus) were physically on earth to-day, would not some, who now profess to love him, reject him? Would they not deny him even the rights of humanity, if he entertained any other sense of being and religion than theirs?
C. S. Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
Florence Nightingale
Jesus did not teach ecclesiastical pomp, church hierarchy, or celibate orders, for that matter! Do we not see that God is incarnate in every man. We think he was incarnate in only one. We make the trinity, God. Christ and the Holy Ghost — instead of making it God and man, and such manifestation OF God as man is able to comprehend.
😡Fundamentalism😡
Salman Rushdie:
Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Henry Sacks
I define fundamentalism as the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world. And what really lies behind it is fear – a profound insecurity, that makes you feel when you meet somebody who’s not like you, or doesn’t agree with you, that that challenges and threatens your very being.
🙁The counterfeit of real religion🙁
Mary Baker Eddy
Whatever is not divinely natural and demonstrably true, in ethics, philosophy, or religion, is not of God but originates in the minds of mortals.
Mary Baker Eddy
Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man's spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.
Mary Baker Eddy
There was never a religion or philosophy lost to the centuries except by sinking its divine Principle in personality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
Aldous Huxley:
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
Howard Nemerov:
Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.
Florence Nightingale
God had become a God of Sunday’s.. .not the God of weekdays, our business and our play, our politics and our science, our home life and our social life.