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Five Famous Quotes Everyone Thinks Are From the Bible But Actually Aren’t

Some might surprise you

Paul Combs
5 min readJul 23, 2022
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’ve mentioned in previous articles that my muse, at least for fiction, is an angry Valkyrie with a love of Norwegian Death Metal music. It seems that somewhere along the way I picked up a second muse, this one being sometimes surly but always prophetic Canadian writer Patrick Metzger. His muse-ing is, I’m sure, quite unintentional, but this is now the second time he’s inspired an article and thus deserves to be acknowledged (you can find the first one here).

His article that inspired today’s piece carries the provocative title “No, God Often Gives Us More Than We Can Handle.” It’s a thoughtful article that deftly skewers what he calls “bumper sticker Christianity,” and you should definitely read it. The specific bumper sticker phrase that he writes about (as you may guess from the title) is the ever-popular “God never gives you more than you can handle.

It’s a pithy little quote that you can indeed see on bumper stickers and faux-weathered wood home decor signs in Hobby Lobby stores across the country. What immediately caught my attention is the fact that many people, Christian and non-Christian, believe this is a direct quote from the Bible. It is not.

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Paul Combs
Paul Combs

Written by Paul Combs

Writer, bookseller, would-be roadie for the E Street Band. My ultimate goal is to make books as popular in Texas as high school football...it may take a while.

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