Nationalism keeps telling us Christians to take up our swords and make nations "Christian" by any means necessary. Jesus keeps calling us Christians to take up our crosses and be like him, serving the world through grace, humility, compassion, and self-sacrificial...
The Resurrection is not a single event, but a loosening of God’s power and light into the earth and into history that continues to alter all things, infusing them with the grace and power of God’s own holiness. It is as though a door was opened, and what poured out...
God is not a belief-system. Jesus is not a religion. Christianity is not a check-list. Church is not an address. The Bible is not a book of doctrines. Community is not a meeting. Grace has no exceptions. Ministry is not a program. Art is not carnal. Women are not...
When we think about the Annunciation, this scene between the angel Gabriel and Mary, we think of the faith it took for her to believe that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and that her son, the illegitimate child of an insignificant girl, really...
I know it’s easy to be cynical, to look at the disastrous effects of Christianity’s complicity with empire and want to give up on the whole endeavor, but I also want to proclaim that the flow of grace is a truly wonderful thing.
The gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase.
The most difficult part of personal growth is being willing to turn away from erroneous views from our past. Beliefs held for a long time tend to become sacred to us, even if they're wrong. It's naive to think that we gained a perfect, flawless understanding of truth....
There we'll all be, gathered around the banquet table, not just the perfect people but also the other 99.9 percent of humanity. The prodigal son and his hard-partying buddies, the joyful father; the oldest son, and his responsible friends too, they're all there along...
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are. from The Cost of Discipleship
They said that if I questioned a 6,000-year-old earth, I would question whether other parts of Scripture should be read scientifically and historically. They were right. I did. They said that if I entertained the hope that those without access to the gospel might...