Some communities don’t permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church,...

Jesus is God’s way of refusing to give up his dream for the world.

When we deny the spiritual dimension to our existence, we end up living like animals. And when we deny the physical, sexual dimension to our existence, we end up living like angels. And both ways...

If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God.

The priest’s work, the priest’s service, was understood as an act of worship. This was God’s desire at Sinai – that everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God by serving...

If anybody didn’t have a messiah complex, it was Jesus

If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince...

We are only as sick as our secrets.

The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we’ll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of...

because God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.

The best team does not always win, it’s the team that plays the best.

As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn’t come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his...

It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you.

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to...

If we want hell, if we want heaven, they are ours. That’s how love works. It can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says yes, we...

It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you. (with reference to Matthew 5)

Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy.Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful.Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.

Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren’t opposites. Doubt is often...

When Isaiah predicted that spears would become pruning hooks, that’s a reference to cultivating. Pruning and trimming and growing and paying close attention to the plants and whether they’re getting enough water and if their...

Freedom is not having everything we crave, it’s being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.

You turn the light on, you get all kinds of bugs.

But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word “hell,” what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn’t his point. He’s often not talking about...

The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.

What we do comes out of who we believe we are.

It’s all—let’s use a very specific word here—miraculous. You, me, love, quarks, sex, chocolate, the speed of light—it’s all miraculous, and it always has been.

Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, “God, you don’t know what it’s like! You don’t...

Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.

As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so “simple” or “naive,” or “brainwashed” or whatever terms arise when we...