Quotes from Albert Nolan

Detachment, properly understood, means freedom, inner freedom. And, although it is not a word Jesus used, detachment expresses very well an important element in his spirituality: the ability to let go. In the Christian tradition this has been spoken of as "purity of heart" or as the process of becoming "poor in spirit.

The kingdom in which Jesus wanted his contemporaries to believe was a kingdom of love and service, a kingdom of human brotherhood and sisterhood in which every person is loved and respected because he or she is a person. We cannot believe in and hope for such a kingdom unless we have learned to be moved with compassion for our fellow-beings.

The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and identified himself with them. He became an outcast by choice.

The most certain and well-attested fact about Jesus of Nazareth is that he was tried, sentenced and executed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate on a charge of high treason. This does not make him unique. Many thousands of Jewish rebels and revolutionaries were crucified by the Roman rulers of Palestine during this period.

Jesus was immeasurably more human than other human beings

Another interesting way in which the mechanistic worldview is being transcended is through discoveries having to do with chaos theory. It seems that systems of various kinds often exist in a state of chaos or, as they say, "on the edge of chaos," and then suddenly and unpredictably there emerges something called a "strange attractor" that rearranges the chaos into some new order.

The system is a monster which devours people for the sake of its profits.

Organized religion has been of very little help in this crisis. In fact it has sometimes tended to make matters worse. The type of religion that emphasizes a supernatural world in such a way that one does not need to be concerned about the future of this world and all its peoples, offers a form of escape that makes it all the more difficult to solve our problems.