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Quote by Robert Jastrow

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The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe

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Robert Jastrow
Robert Jastrow

Robert Jastrow was an American astronomer and author known for his research on the origins of the universe and life. His book 'God and the New Physics' explored the relationship between science and religion, profoundly impacting public scientific awareness. more

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“Another version of the “Prosperity Gospel” or “Name It and Claim It” teaching has to do with finding a verse in the Bible and then “claiming” that verse. Proponents of this thinking believe that God must fulfill his promise to us in whatever verse we are “claiming” because what God says in his Word, the Bible, is true, and we can trust it to be true. So someone might pray: God, your Word says in Isaiah that by your stripes we are healed and I know you are not a liar and that your Word is true and I claim that Scripture in Jesus’s name and therefore I will be healed of this stomachache! We need to have faith in what the Bible says, but we have to be careful that we aren’t trying to force God to do what we want. That is arrogance rather than humility.God loves us, but we cannot demand things of him as though our faith is in charge rather than God. If someone believes it is our faith that heals us and forgets that it is God who does it, we should ask that person how much faith Lazarus had. Remember, he was decomposing in a tomb when Jesus raised him from death. His faith obviously didn’t matter. It was all God. It is God and God’s grace that heals, not our prayers and not our “faith.” Though we are exhorted by God to pray to him, we cannot compel him to do what we wish.”

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Book:Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life
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“The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness.”

GodChristianPrayerChristianityHuman NatureBibleCatholicComplainingScriptureCatholicismOld TestamentPsalmsKing DavidMonksMonasteryBenedictine
Book:Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
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“Even though prayers are not offered only to get a desired result, there is little doubt that most miracles are the result of prayer. God wants us to pray to him and ask him for things, just as any loving father and mother want their children to come to them with whatever is on their minds. But if our focus is solely on getting the outcome we want, the prayer will fail, precisely because our belief is placed in the wrong place. It’s a great irony. If all we care about is the result, then we are effectively making that result our God, rather than God himself. So if we are praying to our “God”—the God of results—rather than to God himself, then we are praying to a “God” who is not God, and who is therefore powerless to help us.”

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“But does contemptus mean 'contempt,' dear? Of course not. That would imply arrogance, superiority, pride. So much that we call worldly is actually just flawed or being seen through a cracked lens. Imperfect or imperfectly understood. Who are we to judge as contemptible a thing or person whose existence God sustains? Everything, however imperfect, has its purpose. No, Tony dear, contemptus mundi means 'detachment from the world,' seeing the world sub specie aeternitatis. Enduring or celebrating it, but never forgetting—even when it seems perfect and forever—that as the Bible says: 'all this shall pass like grass before the wind.”

GodChristianChristianityBibleCatholicScriptureCatholicismWorldlyDetachmentThingsThe WorldMonasteryBenedictineMonasticContemptus Mundi
Book:Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
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