God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and disturbing world.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

God, please help me not be an asshole, is about as common a prayer as I pray in my life.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I can't imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can't imagine that God doesn't reveal God's self in countless ways outside the symbol system of Christianity. In a way, I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise, it can feel like I am worshiping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I cared about Ben, but I was never in love with him. I was in love with what it said about me that I had a boyfriend like Ben, and that's just different.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I carried a bravado about my drinking like I was a hero of debauchery. But on that Christmas Day, I felt like shit. I had a vague realization that I was just trying to keep up with some version of myself that I had decided was accurate.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I know that people who don't believe in God might scoff at the idea that the creator of the universe has the time or inclination to try incessantly (and with not much long-term success) to change my heart. I get it. Furthermore, I just have no other explanation.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if Jesus said "I was hungry, and you fed me," then Christ's presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but Christ's presence is in the hungry being fed. Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisoned but in the imprisoned being cared for. And to be clear, Christ does not come to us as the poor and hungry. Because, as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh-and-blood people know, the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of Christlike people. And those who meet their needs are not a romantic special class of Christlike people. We all are equally sinful and saintly as the other. No, Christ comes to us in the needs of the poor and hungry, needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of God might be known. ... No one gets to play Jesus. But we do get to experience Jesus in that holy place where we meet others' needs and have our own needs met.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Belief is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm responsible for what they hear — and hearing the gospel, the good news about who God is, slowly forms us over time.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber