The bible is not a blueprint for every day of your life, it is an inspiration not a blueprint. That requires that we listen to one another and get challenged and grow by living with difference within the body of the church.
For those who unfairly lump Social Security in with Bernie Madoff, in all fairness, you should point out the difference. No one was ever legally required to pay money to Madoff.
So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.
But there's this one difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost, rendered worst than unavailing.
I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary. There are important differences which should be preserved, and in trying to do away with those differences we would lose something the same way as if we tried to make all religions one religion or all races one race. There is a cultural diversity that's very valuable, and it's valuable to have different ways of looking at the world.
You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion... different temperaments... differences in the capacity to comprehend.
The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?
The man who has been taught by the Holy Spirit will be a seer rather than a scholar. The difference is that the scholar sees and the seer sees through; and that is a mighty difference indeed.
We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the greeks received from it had for its basis difference; & the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights at seeing the difficulty overcome.