Pride, by definition, is the exaltation of self above rightful authority. Small wonder that Christian theology has traditionally regarded pride as the deadliest of the deadly sins, for it alone among sins denies that God is God. Pride does not merely disobey God....
I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me.
The Church is God saying, "I'm throwing a banquet, and all the mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine."
According to Matthew, the whole grand experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph... The child is Joseph's until he says otherwise...the issue at stake is not a biological one but a legal one... Will he believe the impossible and give it a home or will he stick with...
Any love is ultimately love of God. No love can be in competition with love of God; it is merely a different expression of it . . . the deeper, the more passionate any love, the more truly it is the love of God.
Death and resurrection. It’s the impossibility around which every other impossibility of the Christian faith orbits. Baptism declares that God is in the business of bringing dead things back to life, so if you want in on God’s business, you better prepare to follow...
A person should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human...
There is no sense of absence where there has been no sense of presence. What makes absence hurt, what makes it ache, is the memory of what used to be there but is no longer. Absence is the arm flung across the bed in the middle of the night, the empty space where a...
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.’
I suspect that Western individualism has done more than any other single factor to anesthetize and even euthanize the power of the Gospel. Salvation, heaven, hell, worthiness, grace, and eternal life all came to be read through the lens of separate ego, crowding God's...