To love is to know God precisely because God is love. The emerging community, at its best, can teach us again that love must be the first word on our lips and also the last, and that we must seek to incarnate that sacred word in the world.

I recently heard a well-known speaker say that if faith does not cost us something, then it is nothing. Only much later could I respond: if faith does not cost us everything, it is nothing.

Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed, it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the “truth” with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us…that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it.

from How (Not) to Speak of God