I’m so weary of the kind of Christianity that is so convinced it is going extinct that it is willing to abandon all the teachings of Jesus in order to “win” by “any means necessary.” This is not only a belief deeply rooted in fear, it is also a belief that deeply...
God has two binary commands. 1) Love God 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Two commands that encompass and encapsulate all. Not three, not five, not ten. Two binary commands. Yet, many Christians have added so much to these binary commands. Conditions, hate,...
The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
Our false selves counsel us to hide our true selves behind our performance, our caring for others, our intellectualism, our social savvy, our finances, our articulate presentations, our religiosity, or our skepticism. But our true selves long to see and be seen, to...
To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God, the more we see our need and the more we desire...
The word faith is often understood as accepting something you can’t understand. People often say: “Such and such can’t be explained, you simply have to believe it.” However, when Jesus talks about faith, he means first of all to trust unreservedly that you are loved,...
When Jesus was taken to be executed on the cross, 11 of the 12 men abandoned him, but the women stayed. When Jesus’ body was buried, the women were the first ones at his grave. When Jesus rose from the dead, the men were hiding, so the women announced his...
Christianity is like a grand old mansion with many, many rooms. Fundamentalist Protestantism is just one of those rooms, one of the least spacious, creative, and gracious. It can be abandoned for other rooms.
What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves...
We must be the ones that invest in abandoned places. In abandoned people. Because when the world says that there is no future there, we are the ones who know better. We believe in a God that restores.