Skye Jethani Quotes

69 Sourced Quotes

The personification of institutions in our culture means the institutional church, rather than the flesh-and-blood people of God, has become the vehicle of God's mission in the world. This is salvation via institution, paradise via programs.

Skye Jethani
Whether by trials of circumstance or by disciplines of choice, we cannot escape our calling to suffer with Christ.

Skye Jethani
Wanting to obey Christ but lacking his imagination, we reinterpret the mission of the church through the only framework comprehendible to us—the one we've inherited from our consumer culture.

Skye Jethani
Consumerism is the dominant worldview of North Americans. As such, it is competing with the kingdom of heaven for the hearts and imaginations of God's people.

Skye Jethani
We must learn to exist in a consumer empire but not forfeit our souls at its altar.

Skye Jethani
In a commodity culture we have been conditioned to believe nothing carries intrinsic value. Instead, value is found only in a thing's usefulness to us, and tragically this belief has been applied to people as well.

Skye Jethani
Maybe God is waiting for us to be silent long enough so he may begin painting a new picture in our imaginations, to begin transforming our image of a manageable deity into one that can truly inspire.

Skye Jethani
How might our perception of God be changed if we turned off the radio station for a few minutes and walked in a thunderstorm?

Skye Jethani
The abundance of our definitive words about God shows that we don't view him as a great mystery anymore, but as a sterile calculation without ambiguity or obscurity.

Skye Jethani
Jesus says God isn't like a gumball machine; he's more like the wind: unpredictable, uncontrollable, no more containable than wind in a bottle.

Skye Jethani
Although the forces of consumerism would have us remain forever in Neverland by running after every product promising to satisfy our desire and alleviate our suffering, the invitation of Christ is precisely the opposite.

Skye Jethani
History has shown syncretism to the culture is a chronic ailment of the church.

Skye Jethani
Silence can shatter the trivialized deity that has occupied our imaginations and provide God the canvas to begin a new work in our souls.

Skye Jethani
Ministries that focus on manufacturing spiritual experiences may actually be retarding spiritual growth by making people experience-dependent.

Skye Jethani
Properly understood, the church is not an institution. It is the community of Jesus' followers on earth - men, women, an children filled with God's Spirit, living in communion with him, one another, and the world.

Skye Jethani
Consumer Christianity, while promising to strengthen our souls with an entertaining faith, has left us malnourished with an anemic view of God, faith, church, and mission.

Skye Jethani
It is recognizing God's eternality that liberates our minds from their consumer inclination to reduce him to a commodity.

Skye Jethani
The god of Consumer Christianity does not inspire awe and wonder because he is nothing more than a commodity to be used for our personal satisfaction and self-achievement.

Skye Jethani
We live, and move, and have our being in a consumer cosmos. The global economy and interconnection of markets and resources means every time we eat a meal, listen to music, put on clothing, or read a book, we are being consumers.

Skye Jethani
In a consumer culture "incarnating Christ" no longer carries an expectation of Christians loving God and their neighbors; but rather the perpetual consumption of Christian merchandise.

Skye Jethani
We need to see beyond our culture; we need to peer through the bars of commodification and alienation and catch a glimpse of a God far larger than our circumstances.

Skye Jethani
Our spiritual imaginations have fallen asleep on the comfortable mattress of the consumer culture, and before any remedy for the church can be prescribed our dormant imaginations must be stirred from their slumber.

Skye Jethani
Our imaginations can throw off the shackles of consumerism if we start to feel the infinite once again.

Skye Jethani
Commodification has led most people to view God as a device to be used rather than an all-powerful Creator to be revered.

Skye Jethani
Scripture champions contentment and self-control, not the endless pursuit of personal desires. Teaching and modeling these increasingly un-American values is not a high priority in most churches.

Skye Jethani
In less than a century, Christians have gone from opposing over-consumption at Christmas to demanding it be done in Christ's name alone.

Skye Jethani
We've been conditioned to avoid silence at all costs lest we be confronted with our own inner chaos.

Skye Jethani
Disciplines teach us to overcome the temptation to gratify our immediate desires so that we may attain a higher one.

Skye Jethani
In a culture that insists on making God small, we can counteract the trend by focusing our imaginations on what is big.

Skye Jethani
Consumer Christianity seeks to construct programs to capture God's power and produce predetermined outcomes, rather than surrender to the mysterious movement of God's grace which, like the wind or fire, is beyond our control.

Skye Jethani