As you have often heard me say, if you do not transform your pain, you will most assuredly transmit it. Healthy religion on the practical level tells us what to do with our pain—because we will have pain. We can’t avoid it; it’s part of life. If we’re not...
We often confuse unconditional love with unconditional approval. God loves us without conditions but does not approve of every human behavior. God doesn’t approve of betrayal, violence, hatred, suspicion, and all other expressions of evil, because they all contradict...
I believe God dwells with those who make love their aim. And there is no sentimentality in this love; it is not endlessly pliable, always yielding. Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love...
Who, then, is the ultimately guilty one in this fiasco of the cross? Have we, even now, glimpsed the full dimensions of the crisis hanging over human history? …Clearly, as he hangs alone in desolation on the cross, and then is buried in the cold, malodorous...
Community is not easy. Somebody once said, “Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” In Jesus’ community of twelve apostles, the last name was that of someone who was going to betray him. That person is always in your...