“Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx — my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me — we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!).”

The Moviegoer (1961)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a gr…" by Walker Percy?

Walker Percy55

Southern philosophical novelist 1916–1990

Related quotes

“Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Look at us, Binx — my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me — we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!
The Moviegoer (1961)

“Once someone gave me a book of the Christians. I asked him to read it to me. It talked about nothing but sin. Sin is the only thing one hears at your Brahmo Samaj too… He who says day and night, ‘I am a sinner, I am a sinner’, verily becomes a sinner… Why should one only talk about sin and hell, and such things?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

October 27, 1882, to Keshub Chunder Sen. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Volume 1, Madras, 1985, p. 138. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters Ch.13
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942)

“We're not punished for our sins, lad. We're punished by them.”

Jennifer Donnelly book The Tea Rose

Source: The Tea Rose

“We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart.”

Jerry Bridges (1929–2016) American writer

Source: The Pursuit of Holiness

“By nature, we're Adam's children - not God's. Because of Adam's sin, his kids became sinners, and spiritually children of the devil.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Why Should I? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1079/1079_01.asp" (2012)

“This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Sickness unto Death (July 30, 1849), pp. 114 - 115

“My friends, look to Christ, and not to yourselves. That is what is the matter with a great many sinners; instead of looking to Christ, they are looking at the bite of sin.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 391.

“We're talking about the novel, right? But maybe we're not. We're talking about ourselves. And I guess that's what can start to happen when you talk about a book.”

Meg Wolitzer (1959) American writer

Source: Belzhar

“I’d also like to say to our priests: we can’t fail to talk to our people about these real sins that affect the lives of our people. If we talk about sins they don’t commit, of what good is that?”

Joseph Fred Naumann (1949) Catholic archbishop

Archbishop Naumann: “If the Church is silent on the destruction of life, we’re being negligent” https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/12/04/archbishop-naumann-if-the-church-is-silent-on-the-destruction-of-life-were-being-negligent/ (December 4, 2017)

“Sin is man’s destruction. Only the rust of sin can consume the soul-or eternally destroy it. For here indeed is the remarkable thing from which already that simple wise man of olden time derived a proof of the immortality of the soul, that the sickness of the soul (sin) is not like bodily sickness which kills the body. Sin is not a passage-way which a man has to pass through once, for from it one shall flee; sin is not (like suffering) the instant, but an eternal fall from the eternal, hence it is not ‘once’, and it cannot possibly be that its ‘once’ is no time. No, just as between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom there was a yawning gulf fixed, so is there also a yawning distinction between suffering and sin. Let us not confuse it, lest talk about suffering might become less frank-hearted, because it had also sin in mind, and this less frank-hearted talk might be boldly impudent inasmuch as it is talking this way about sin. This precisely is the Christian position, that there is this infinite distinction between evil and evil, as they are confusedly named; this precisely is the Christian characteristic, to talk of temporal sufferings ever more and more frank-heartedly, more triumphantly, more joyfully, because Christianity regarded, sin, and sin only, is destructive.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Christian Discourses

Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, The Joy of it – That We Suffer Only Once But Triumph Eternally. P. 108 Lowrie Translation 1961 Oxford University Press
1840s, Christian Discourses (1848)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Walker Percy55

Related quotes

Related topics