Quotessence
Home / Authors / Rachel Held Evans
Rachel Held Evans

Rachel Held Evans Quotes

Columnist

Filter quotes by topic

AllChurchBibleJesusChristianityPeopleChristianGodNeedsWayMillennialsThinkingFaithIfsWantHolyHumansKnowsMeanMenScripture

Famous Rachel Held Evans Quotes

“I'm in no rush to patch up these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don't want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don't think he wants me to either. There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that leave you with an open wound. I'm still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn't let go of me yet.”

WarGodViolenceBibleOld Testament
Book:Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
Create image

“What I love about the Bible is that the story isn't over. There are still prophets in our midst. There are still dragons and beasts. It might not look like it, but the Resistance is winning. The light is breaking through. So listen to the weirdos. Listen to the voices crying from the wilderness. They are pointing us to a new King and a better kingdom.”

BibleResistanceDragonsKingdom Of HeavenProphets
Book:Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
Create image

“This understanding of themselves as a people who wrestle with God and emerge from that wrestling with both a limp and a blessing informs how Jews engage with Scripture, and it ought to inform how Christians engage Scripture too, for we share a common family of origin, the same spiritual DNA. The biblical scholars I love to read don’t go to the holy text looking for ammunition with which to win an argument or trite truisms with which to escape the day’s sorrows, they go looking for a blessing, a better way of engaging life and the world, and they don’t expect to escape that search unscathed.”

GodChristianityBlessingBibleIsraelScripture
Book:Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
Create image

“At the heart of the incarnation is the stunning claim that Jesus is what God is like. "No one has ever seen God," declared John in his gospel, "but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known". The New American Standard Bible says, "The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him". So to whatever extent God owes us an explanation for the Bible's war stories, Jesus is that explanation. And Christ the King won his kingdom without war.”

WarGodJesusBibleKingdom
Book:Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
Create image

“The good news is as epic as it gets, with universal theological implications, and yet the Bible tells it from the perspective of fishermen and farmers, pregnant ladies and squirmy kids. This story about the nature of God and God's relationship to humanity smells like mud and manger hay and tastes like salt and wine...It is the biggest story and the smallest story all at once--the great quest for the One Ring and the quiet friendship of Frodo and Sam.”

BibleGood NewsLotr
Book:Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
Create image

“Invariably, I will be referred to Gleason Archer's massive Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound explanations for every conceivable puzzle found within the Bible - from whether God approved of Rahab's lie, to where Cain got his wife. (Note to well-meaning apologists: it's not always the best idea to present a skeptic with a five-hundred-page book listing hundreds of apparent contradictions in Scripture when the skeptic didn't even know that half of them existed before you recommended it.)”

SpiritualityAnswersChristianityBibleSkeptics
Book:Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions
Create image