Top 100 Rachel Held Evans Quotes

#1. The truth is, a man can choose to objectify a woman whether she's wearing a bikini or a burqa. We don't stop lust by covering up the female form; we stop lust by teaching men to treat women as human beings worthy of respect.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #12821
#2. Scripture doesn't speak of people who found God. Scripture speaks of people who walked with God.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #20541
#3. While the word charity connotes a single act of giving, justice speaks to right living, of aligning oneself with the world in a way that sustains rather than exploits the rest of creation.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #21277
#4. I know for a fact that a lot of my Christian friends have thoughtful reasons for interpreting the Bible the way they do and that the phrase "pick and choose" sounds far too arbitrary to describe the attentiveness and concern with which they approach the text.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #31695
#5. For two people to commit themselves not simply to marriage, but to a lifetime of mutual love and submission in imitation of Christ is so astounding, so mysterious, it comes close to looking like Jesus' stubborn love for the church.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #70452
#6. Millennials aren't looking for a hipper Christianity.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #77227
#7. You can't get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #84141
#8. Most of the people I've encountered are looking not for a religion to answer all their questions but for a community of faith in which they can feel safe asking them.

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#9. No step taken in faith is wasted, not by a God who makes all things new.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #94250
#10. The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God's name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #140008
#11. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels (13:2 NKJV).

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #146170
#12. They reminded me that Christianity isn't meant to simply be believed; it's meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can't be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.

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#13. A woman only loses herself when she stops looking, that no role is too confining or too grand for a woman of valor.

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#14. I don't respect my husband because he is the man and I am the woman, and it's my "place" to submit to him. I respect Dan because he is a good person, and because he has made me a better person too.

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#15. I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals.

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#16. So what did God say to me in the silence that morning? I'm not sure, but I think God said something like, Don't try so hard, little child, and, Hey, check out this cool turtle I made.

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#17. We cling to the letter because the spirit is so much harder to master.

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#18. Whenever we show others the goodness of God, whenever we follow our Teacher by imitating His posture of humble and ready service, our actions are sacred and ministerial. To be called into the priesthood, as all of us are, is to be called to a life of presence, of kindness.

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#19. He father told her, "What you promise when you are confirmed is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that this is the story you will wrestle with forever."65 Mine

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#20. In the company of these friends, questions and doubts were met with sympathy, not fear. No one felt the need to correct or understand or approve. We just listened, and it was sacred.

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#21. The church is God saying: 'I'm throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.

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#22. Baptism is done at the beginning of your faith journey, not the middle or the end. You don't have to have everything together to be baptized ... You just have to grasp God's grace. God's grace is enough.

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#23. Mine is a stubborn and recalcitrant faith. It's all elbows and motion and kicked-up dust, like cartoon characters locked in a cloudy brawl. I'm still early in my journey, but I suspect it will go on like this for a while, perhaps until my last breath.

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#24. As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.

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#25. This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #358979
#26. To Jesus, "by faith alone" did not mean "by belief alone." To Jesus, faith was invariably linked to obedience.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #372483
#27. Contrary to popular belief, we (millennials) can't be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #373122
#28. I'm a Christian because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition - that we're not okay.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #384180
#29. Our best answers in defense of Christianity have always been useless clanging symbols unless our lives have inspired the world to ask.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #384303
#30. For me, talking about church in front of a bunch of Christians means approaching a microphone and attempting to explain the most important, complicated, beautiful, and heart-wrenching relationship of my life in thirty minutes or less without yelling or crying or saying any cuss words.

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#31. But sometimes I think what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird.

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#32. Martha certainly wasn't the first and she won't be the last to dismiss someone else's encounter with God because it didn't fit the mold.

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#33. Sometimes I think what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird. There's no sense in sending her through the makeover montage of the chick flick when she'll always be the strange, awkward girl who only gets invited to prom on a dare.

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#34. I'm ready to stop waging war and start washing feet.

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#35. The Bible does not present us with a single model for womanhood, and the notion that it contains a sort of one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth.

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#36. We are people who stand totally exposed before evil and death and declare them powerless against love.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #495307
#37. One of the most destructive mistakes we Christians make is to prioritize shared beliefs over shared relationship, which is deeply ironic considering we worship a God who would rather die than lose relationship with us.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #502202
#38. All in all, the Song of Songs struck me as surprisingly liberating this time around.

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#39. We knew what atheists and humanists and Buddhists believed before we actually met any atheists or humanists or Buddhists, and we knew how to effectively discredit their worldviews before ever encountering them on our own.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #531501
#40. That's when I realize that if anyone's an oxymoron, it's me. Or maybe it's anyone who claims to follow Jesus.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #545214
#41. Madeleine L'Engle said, "the great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."58 I think the same is true for churches. Each one stays with us, even after we've left, adding layer after layer to the palimpsest of our faith.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #546315
#42. It seems those most likely to miss God's work in the world are those most convinced they know exactly what to look for, the ones who expect God to play by the rules.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #570032
#43. I'm not exactly sure how all this works, but I think, ultimately, it means I can't be a Christian on my own. Like it or not, following Jesus is a group activity, something we're supposed to do together.

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#44. When [Jesus] wanted fully to explain what his forthcoming death was all about He didn't give a theory. He didn't even give them a set of Scriptural texts. He gave them a meal.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #601713
#45. No coffee shops or fog machines required [for church].

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #620173
#46. I hadn't yet learned that you tend to come out of the big moments - the wedding, the book deal, the trip, the death, the birth - as the exact same person who went in, and that perhaps the strangest surprise of life is it keeps on happening to the same ol' you.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #660694
#47. Those who say that having childlike faith means not asking questions haven't met too many children.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #697861
#48. I scrutinized the lyrics to every worship song, debated the content of every sermon. I rendered verdicts regarding the frequency of communion and the method of baptism. I checked the bulletins for typos. In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride.

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#49. Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.

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#50. But there is a difference between curing and healing, and I believe the church is called to the slow and difficult work of healing. We are called to enter into one another's pain, anoint it as holy, and stick around no matter the outcome. In her

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#51. I am writing because sometimes we are closer to the truth in our vulnerability than in our safe certainties,

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#52. For the children of Israel, the essence of religion was experiencing God to the fullest during this lifetime, not merely preparing for the next.

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#53. What a comfort to know that God is a poet.

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#54. God's ways are higher than our ways not because he is less compassionate than we are but because he is more compassionate than we can ever imagine.

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#55. To be a priest,' writes Barbara Brown Taylor, 'is to know that things are not as they should be and yet to care for them the way they are.

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#56. When we require that all people must say the same words or subscribe to the same creeds in order to experience God, we underestimate the scope and power of God's activity in the world.

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#57. God and the Gay Christian is a game changer. Prepare to be challenged and enlightened, provoked and inspired.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #861525
#58. Doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves.

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#59. Poems were never meant to be forced into commands.

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#60. Isn't it a little suspicious that the only true religion is the one with which we happened to grow up?

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#61. I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven't actually read it.

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#62. The gentle Rabbi reminds us that few things really matter and only one thing is necessary ... Martha found it in the gentle reminder to slow down, let go, and be careful of challenging another woman's choices, for you never know when she may be sitting at the feet of God.

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#63. THE FIRST THING THE WORLD KNEW ABOUT CHRISTIANS was that they ate together.

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#64. Somewhere along the way, the gospel had gotten buried under a massive pile of extras: political positions, lifestyle requirements, and unspoken rules that for whatever reason came with the Christian territory. Sometimes Jesus himself seemed buried beneath the rubble.

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#65. Like a garish conch shell, my cynicism protected me from disappointment, or so I believed, so I expected the worst and smirked when I found it.

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#66. I don't know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don't know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life.

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#67. As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion. - PROVERBS 11:22

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#68. Through touch, God gave us the power to injure or to heal, to wage war or to wash feet. Let us not forget the gravity of that. Let us not forget the call.

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#69. In fact, it seems that most of the Bible's instructions regarding modesty find their context in warnings about materialism, not sexuality ...

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#70. Caring for the poor, resting on the Sabbath, showing hospitality and keeping the home - these are important things that can lead us to God, but God is not contained in them.

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#71. Church isn't some community you join or some place you arrive. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground; God is here.

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#72. Ours is indeed a culture that tends to assign value to a woman based on her sex appeal rather than her character, and that's something we must work to change.

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#73. Its best, the church administers the sacraments by feeding, healing, forgiving, comforting, and welcoming home the people God loves. At its worst, the church withholds the sacraments in an attempt to lock God in a theology, a list of rules, a doctrinal statement, a building. But our

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#74. We're (millennials) looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity.

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#75. Cynicism is a powerful anesthetic we use to numb ourselves to pain, but which also, by its nature, numbs us to truth and joy.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #1052449
#76. Faith," she says, "is a catch-and-release sport. And standing at the altar receiving the bread and wine is the release part.

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#77. But as nearly every denomination in the United States faces declining membership and waning influence, Christians may need to get used to the idea of measuring significance by something other than money, fame, and power. No one ever said the fruit of the Spirit is relevance or impact or even revival

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#78. Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.

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#79. I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one's beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubt (questioning God). When we know how to make a distinction between our ideas about God and God himself, our faith remains safe when one of those ideas is seriously challenged.

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#80. More often than not, this backfires, and our attempts to be different result in uniformity, our attempts to be plain draw attention to ourselves, our attempts to temper sexuality inadvertently exploit it, and our attempts to avoid offense accidentally create it.

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#81. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground, God got up.

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#82. Evolution means letting go of our false fundamentals so that God can get into those shadowy places we're not sure we want him to be. It means being okay with being wrong, okay with not having all the answers, okay with never being finished.

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#83. I don't know why Christians keep fighting over which is better-singleness or marriage-when it seems rather obvious, both from Scripture and from Church history, that both can glorify God.

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#84. It is hard for us to recognize it now, but Peter and Paul were introducing the first Christian family to an entirely new community, a community that transcends the rigid hierarchy of human institutions, a community in which submission is mutual and all are free.

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#85. What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

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#86. It's strange that Christians so rarely talk about failure when we claim to follow a guy whose three-year ministry was cut short by his crucifixion.

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#87. Even here, in the dark, God is busy making all things new.

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#88. We long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable.

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#89. I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren't welcome at the table, then we don't feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people.

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#90. When we refer to 'the biblical approach to economics' or the biblical response to politics' or 'biblical womanhood,' we're using the Bible as a weapon disguised as an adjective.

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#91. Church attendance may be dipping, but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about resurrection.

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#92. (I should mention I attended a Christian elementary school where "my dad's hermeneutic can beat up your dad's hermeneutic" served as legit schoolyard banter.)

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#93. We tend to take whatever's worked in our particular set of circumstances (big family, small family, AP, Ezzo, home school, public school) and project that upon everyone else in the world as the ideal.

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#94. Faith isn't about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time.

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#95. It is a tragic and agonizing irony that instructions once delivered for the purpose of avoiding needless offense are now invoked in ways that needlessly offend, that words once meant to help draw people to the gospel now repel them.

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#96. The Christian versions of the household codes were clearly progressive for their time, but does that mean they have the last word, that Christians in changing places and times cannot progress further?

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#97. Remember how God became one of us? Remember how God ate with us and drank with us, laughed with us and cried with us? Remember how God suffered for us, and died for us, and gave his life for the life of the world? Remember? Remember?

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#98. Cynicism may help us create simpler storylines with good guys and bad guys, but it doesn't make us any better at telling the truth, which is that most of us are a frightening mix of good and evil, sinner and saint.

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#99. (About changing faith) At our best, Christians embrace it, leaving enough space within orthodoxy for God to surprise us every now and then.

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#100. My interpretation can only be as inerrant as I am, and that's good to keep in mind.

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Rachel Held Evans Quotes #1486490

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