Eugene H. Peterson quotes

One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus. (Eugene H. Peterson)
American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we've ever had because it is so materialistic and it's so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just, it's just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do with individuals, not in the abstract. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
People are not problems to be solved. They are mysteries to be explored. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love. (Eugene H. Peterson)
There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
If people don't know their pastor, it's easy to put the pastor on a pedestal and depersonalize him or her. It's also easy for pastors, who don't know their congregations, simply to classify congregants as saved or unsaved, involved or not involved, tithers or non-tithers. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
People learn to shop for churches; there is no loyalty to the church. They're consumers being attracted to one product or another. I think it's sacrilege, to tell you the truth, it really is. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
Religion is a very scary thing, because a pastor is in a position of power. And if you use that power badly, you ruin people's lives, and you ruin your own life. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
The Spirit works through community. Somebody will have a stupid, screwy idea. That's okay. The point of having creeds and confessions and traditions is to keep us in touch with the obvious errors. (Eugene H. Peterson)
I cannot fail to call the congregation to worship God, to listen to his Word, to offer themselves to God. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
Spirituality is no different from what weve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. Its just ordinary stuff. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson
There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. View quote
Eugene H. Peterson