Erwin McManus Quotes

Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

Recounting of a life story, a mind thinking aloud leads one inevitably to the consideration of problems which are no longer psychological but spiritual.

The teenage years are the years to examine faith - the need to be independent and the need to be anchored. Who made all this? And what do I have to do with it?

When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That's what my music was about. It wasn't to entertain.

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that's my religion.

A lot of people have questioned how yoga and their own spiritual beliefs can come together. Yoga actually pre-dates religion.

I'd been raised Mormon, but there comes a time where you are not following what you've been taught, but discovering for yourself if it's true.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

People think of science as rolling back the mystery of God. I look at science as slowly creeping toward the mystery of God.

Every worldview I chose, it seemed, edged me toward belief.

It seems essential to try to find some meaning to life and I guess Jungian philosophy is the one that's helped me understand myself and the world more than anything else.

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.

My father instilled in me - of utmost importance and innate in me is the yearning to determine for myself - to define God, to define holiness for myself.

I have a much wider, freer view about spirituality. I feel that people need to pursue it on their own, personally. You know, let it be theirs - a personal relationship with their soul, or their God, or with their church.

My family was Jehovah's Witnesses, which is a really tough religion. It kind of deterred me from religion for a long time. They still practice, but I don't. But I always remained spiritual, and had a belief that there is a God. I'm trying to find my way, you know?

I want to know why I'm alive. I want to understand. It's like exploration; it's like someone being interested in a place and its history, digging into the earth and looking for it, searching - it's a passion.

What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic.

I think God has blessed each of us with at least one gift. So I think it's a matter of do we find it within our lifetime.

I am not a conventionally religious man, but in the wilderness I have come closest to finding myself and knowing the universe and accepting God - by which I mean accepting all that I don't know.

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired.

My entire life changed when I became a mother - my priorities, my understanding, appreciation of life, and my relationship with God.

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning.

I believe in God and a higher power. I'm still not the religious type per se because religion tore my family apart. I'm still a little scared and skeptical being one with any faith.