Lionel Blue Quotes

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Lionel Blue

Profession : Clergyman

Birth : February 6, 1930

I began to see that my problems, seen spiritually, were really my soul's plusses.

Lionel Blue

I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.

Lionel Blue

The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me.

Lionel Blue

At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming.

Lionel Blue

For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God.

Lionel Blue

Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.

Lionel Blue

For a Christian, Jesus is the unique and only way that God has fully revealed himself. For a Jew this cannot be.

Lionel Blue

Someone gave me a New Testament. I had never before read it systematically. Some parts made sense, some parts shocked me.

Lionel Blue

Some of the parables of the Kingdom made wonderful sense, but the exclusivity in the New Testament put me off.

Lionel Blue

Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic.

Lionel Blue

I was not comfortable worshipping another Jew.

Lionel Blue

So many plusses, so many minuses.

Lionel Blue

I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version.

Lionel Blue

It is not possible to unknow what you do know - the result of that is fanaticism.

Lionel Blue

I still go to a Christian priory for retreats.

Lionel Blue

I have begun to sympathetically understand Paul, though I don't like him much.

Lionel Blue

I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open society continues and there is no return to political anti-Semitism, then this encounter, deeper than any theology, may happen.

Lionel Blue

For a devotee or lover, the being, worshipped or loved, will always be the only one for her or him.

Lionel Blue

My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston.

Lionel Blue

My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I've had it good and am crumbling nicely.

Lionel Blue