William P. Young Quotes
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Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.
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Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want.
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Once you have hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.
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It grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.
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You need boundaries... Even in our material creations, boundaries mark the most beautiful of places, between the ocean and the shore, between the mountains and the plains, where the canyon meets the river.
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There is only one race ... and it is human!
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If you and I are friends, there is an expectancy that exists within our relationship. When we see each other or are apart, there is an expectancy of being together, of laughing and talking. The expectancy has no concrete definition; it is alive and dynamic and everything that emerges from our being together is a unique gift shared by no one else.
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I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.
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Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.
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Perhaps there is supranatural: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.
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Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive.
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Truth will set you free. And Truth has a name.
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I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.
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Healing is as incremental and mysterious as the damage ... what took time, takes time.
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Does that mean," asked Mack, "that all roads will lead to you?" "Not at all," smiled Jesus..."Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.
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I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.
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I don't see the Father pouring out his wrath on the Son. I see the human race pouring out their wrath on the Son. So I see the only hope for the entire cosmos is what the Son chooses to accept, crawling upon the instrument of our greatest wrath. He met us at the deepest, darkest place.
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You cannot heal yourself. You cannot heal anybody else. We're designed to do this in community because we were created inside community for community by community.
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I think one of the greatest losses to humanity was the domination of women. I think every religious system has found ways to be kind to them in a kind of subordinate way. Very patronizing, very colonial. But if you start looking at the fabric of society, even religious systems, they would fall apart if it wasn't for the embedded ability of the women who are involved.
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Part of my journey is to say that the soul of the human being must be a massively intricate, wonderful creation that God has a respect for in ways that we do not and that leaves a huge amount of space to go explore.
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Why do children love to hide and seek? Ask any person who has a passion to explore and discover and create. The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life.
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It seems like -- especially in religious circles and Christian circles, we want to first talk about the things we're opposed to. That means we have to categorize that person. We can call them emergent or neo orthodox or someone who feminizes scripture. There's the category, let's stick them in the category then just blow up the box and him along with it.
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It's always been you know, religion that has been the primary impediment to actual relationship with God, because it creates a mythology about performance -- that you can perform your way into the appeasement of the deity. And you know, when you're born inside the cultural framework that I was, and you're born inside the religious traditions that I was, that becomes your understanding of spirituality: That it's about trying to please God. So, it's really not about God at all; it's about our ability to perform according to whatever the expectations are.
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City and country -- each has its own beauty and its own pain. Some of the smallness of small towns -- cattiness, everybody knowing everybody's business -- that can be challenging. And cities can be challenging, because no one can connect except electronically.