A Quote by Saint Augustine
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.
There are two gods. The god our teachers teach us about, and the God who teaches us. The god about whom people usually talk, and the God who talks to us. The god we learn to fear, and the God who speaks to us of mercy. The god who is somewhere up on high, and the God who is here in our daily lives. The god who demands punishment, and the God who forgives us our trespasses. The god who threatens us with the torments of Hell, and the God who shows us the true path.
There are two gods. A god who casts us off because of our sins, and a God who calls to us with His love.
From the Word of God I gather that damnation is all of man, from top to bottom, and salvation is all of grace, from first to last. He that perishes chooses to perish; but he that is saved is saved because God has chosen to save him.
When Death lurks at the door, the physician is considered as a God. When danger has been overcome, the physician is looked upon as an angel. When the patient begins to convalesce, the physician becomes a mere human. When the physician asks for his fees, he is considered as the devil himself.
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life, the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician.
It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.
Suffering can bend & break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us & through us, because suffering is fertile... it an grow new life.
Another hallmark of Christianity is that salvation is not individualistic-it's not something one person receives for himself or herself. Salvation is the reign of God. It is a political alternative to the way the world is constituted. That's a very important part of the story that has been lost to accounts of salvation that are centered in the individual. But without an understanding that salvation is the reign of God, the need for the church to mediate salvation makes no sense at all.
EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
The physician himself, if sick, actually calls in another physician, knowing that he cannot reason correctly if required to judge his own condition while suffering.
We must understand then, that even though God doesn't always give us what we want, He always gives us what we need for our salvation.
Some people say: "There is no God; because, if there was a God, God would stop all the suffering." Nonsense! God is oblivious to suffering. God is beyond suffering. That's what makes God, God, by definition.
By the grace of God we will never pluck unripe fruit. We will never press people to decision, because we'll lead them to damnation and not salvation.
My humble prayer is that all men everywhere may understand more fully the significance of the atonement of the Savior of all mankind, who has given us the plan of salvation which will lead us into eternal life, where God and Christ dwell.
Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.
Related Authors
Francis of Assisi Quotes
Italian
Saint
Hildegard of Bingen Quotes
German
Saint
John of Kronstadt Quotes
Russian
Saint
John of the Cross Quotes
Spanish
Saint
Mother Teresa Quotes
Albanian
Saint
Pope John Paul II Quotes
Polish
Saint
Saint Basil Quotes
Greek
Saint
Saint Teresa of Avila Quotes
Spanish
Saint
Sathya Sai Baba Quotes
Indian
Saint
St. Catherine of Siena Quotes
Dominican
Saint
Teresa of Avila Quotes
Spanish
Saint
Thérèse of Lisieux Quotes
French
Saint