Ideals
Christ-based Individualism
Manning teaches a message of individualism within a context of Christ. "When I accept in the depth of my being that the ultimate accomplishment of my life is me -- the person I've become and who other persons are because of me -- then living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is ... a way of life." When a person accepts himself as loved by God, he is liberated from conceptions of "the blood line, the nation, the church, money, ego, entitlement, sexual muscle, security, violence, and the paltry gods of modern life." He rejects the idea of teaching the love of God with limits. "I cling to the God of my experience, whose love beggars belief."
The Church as Mystery
Manning presents the Roman Catholic Church's treatment of married priests. After citing examples, he says that he is "dismayed, infuriated, and heartbroken over its travesty of tenderness." He asserts that "church abuse isn't limited to one denomination." The institutional church, which exists to serve the people of God," he states, "is never to be confused with the church as mystery...". The Church as Mystery, according to Manning is everyone who is Christ-centered, faithful to the Bible, tender and compassionate. It consists of those "who walk the talk.".
Jesus is the Human Face of God
Manning contrasts the brutality of the institutional church with Jesus treatment of the adulterous woman of John 8:1-11 and of his meeting of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17). He proclaims Jesus as "the human face of God."
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Famous quotes containing the word ideals:
“You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)
“A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The old ideals are dead as nails—nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect union with a woman—sort of ultimate marriage—and there isn’t anything else.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)