Stanley Hauerwas Insure Quotations

At least one reason for trying to live lives that make a difference is that by so living, we hope we will not be forgotten by those who benefit from our trying to make a difference. Yet to try to insure we will not be forgotten too often results in desperate manipulative strategies that are doomed to fail.

Most of us believe that we possess some aspect of eternity that will insure some kind of survival beyond death. The only problem with those strategies is they forget that only God is eternal. We are finite.

It turns out that the God whose word will stand forever does not exist to insure our fantasies that we will not have to die as individuals or as a species. Such a God, moreover, does not invite us to presume we can comprehend God's creation.