It is frightening and depressing when religion is misused to enslave and to rob the soul of its every freedom. How often does this happen! Nearly always and everywhere. It is the same with love. The noblest, purest and most divine becomes the lowest and meanest and most perishable, through the demonic powers that are released when this one area becomes a law to itself. God is freedom, deliverance from all slavery. We remain true to this watchword. It becomes ever clearer to me that all unfreedom is of the devil.
- Eberhard Arnold
- Eberhard Arnold, November 1918 From an EssayWhen poets describe their experience of the powers that move in their inmost hearts, then they speak about longing. If we allow only a few rays of hope from the poets to work upon us, we will be deeply moved by the indissoluble connection between mankind and longing. Even the smallest selection of the poetic outpouring of human longing will confront us with their deepest content: the longing for God and for unity with God. At the deepest level, they have recognized that the essence of all longing is the cry of the soul to God.
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The fact that we experience something is not what matters; whom and what we experience is alone decisive. Who God is and what He wills and does should become so great and exclusive that through it we forget the experience itself, that is, ourselves and our experience, and lose sight of it completely. The greatest experience completely reveals our own insignificance.
- Eberhard Arnold
The light shines on every human being that comes to this world. But only he who accepts it completely, and only as long as he accepts it completely, will receive power, strength and tasks.
- Eberhard Arnold