Being a Christian is not essentially about joining a church or being a nice person, but about following in the footsteps of Jesus, taking his teachings seriously, letting his Spirit take the lead in our lives, and in so doing helping to change the world from our...
02381 – Can I Choose My Neighbors?
If I could make my neighbors up, I could love them in a minute. I could make them in my own image, looking back at me with deep gratitude for how authentically human I am being to them—and they to me!—reading poetry to each other, admiring pictures of each other’s...
02368 – God Just Wants Us Home.
The beauty of Christian spirituality is that the God we are in relationship with is for us in Christ. Like the father in the prodigal son story, God is waiting with his eyes looking for us in the distance. He is waiting to embrace us. This image might take some...
02364 – A Question for Christians
Christians should regularly ask themselves, "Is my faith more a reflection of my political, cultural, and socio-economic values and actions, or a reflection of the values and actions of Christ?"
02322 – Christian Mission
My mission as a Christian is not "to convert the heathen" as we once asserted; it is rather to assist in the task of helping all people "to live fully, to love wastefully, and to be all that they are capable of being."
02223 – Using “Weapons of Grace”
The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the 'weapons of grace,' which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.
02158 – Seeking New Beginnings
Many of us today in the Western world are aware that the old order is not working—politically, socially, environmentally, religiously. Countless numbers of us from the Christian community have already lifted anchor and are sailing out of the harbor of our religious...
02097 – The Moral Demands of Faith
Jesus made it clear that the moral demands of the faith he taught centered on love, justice, and mercy. I believe that God is, here as everywhere, nudging Christians toward love—love for the Creator, love for other people, love for self, love for the world God has...
02081 – White Jesus?
Every church that has a white Jesus in its stained glass has...work to do. This is an explicit racialization of God. It's a statement of power, and it's about white Christian power.
02074 – We are Seasoning, Not the Main Course
We Christians are the salt of the earth according to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, which I take to mean seasoning, not the main course. The desire for power like God's is the desire to be more important than we are.