I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, spirituality pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has...
When we Christians become convinced that we are the only authority on truth, that anyone who opposes us is evil, and that things will only get better if we are in charge of all positions of power, that is when we know that we are no longer worshiping God. We are...
Reverence is the pivot of the world,reverence for nature,for fellow human beingsand for God.
Jesus lived by moral commands which he believed came from God and yet he never lost sight of the big picture--the reign of God, the deliverance of the oppressed, the priorities of justice, mercy, and love.
The first step for church leaders (one meant to represent God) to regain trust by those damaged by the church is not to ask for itbut to genuinely ask them questions about their experience. “I want to know what this has done to you, how it affects you . . .” is where...
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...
My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all...
One of the gifts of the Old Testament is how faithful Israel was in recording their unfaithfulness. Israel could've erased all their sins, but they recorded their idolatry, oppression of others, and when they put words in God's mouth. Erasing a nation's sins isn't...
Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.
I, too, am tired of the tame God and boxed-in-Christ, distorted by control-seeking humans who use religion to maintain the status quo. I'm yearning for a wild God that compels me to full participation in this miraculous dance of life, deepening the meaning in a core...