That the zeal for God's honor is also a dangerous passion, that the Christian must bring with him the courage to swim against the tide instead of with it...accept a good deal of loneliness, will perhaps be nowhere so clear and palpable as in the church, where he would...
Money has power out of all proportion to its purchasing power. Because the children of this world understand this, they can use money for non-economic purposes. And use it they do! Money is used as a weapon to bully people and to keep them in line. Money is used to...
To truly love is to work for a just equity of power between nations, races, and genders, and in our day-to-day relationships and transactions. It is to oppose all patterns of power over another. This is why [Simone] Weil appeals again and again to the ancient symbol...
We shouldn’t limit ourselves to major key songs! The Psalms reveal that much of the Christian life might be spent in a minor key, and it’s time that the church became honest about this reality as well. The church needs to be able to lament together, and minor key...
I wonder if in the rush of creative planning and the desire to see people enjoy our worship gatherings in the modern church, we have pushed to the sidelines what we are supposed to be doing… In the emerging church, we need to make sure we view our worship services as...
All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for...
I fear that attempting to satisfy personal preferences may honor selfishness while further destroying the unity of the church. Further, I fear that gearing the “worship service” toward unbelievers who may be present will perpetuate the revivalistic confusion between...
To pretend homage to God and intend only the advantage to myself is rather to mock God than to worship Him. When we believe we ought to be satisfied rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves and imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage....
The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by tremendous yearning.
There is also a legend that Mary was not the first young woman to whom the angel came. But she was the first one to say yes. And how unsurprising it would be for a fourteen-year-old girl to refuse the angel. To be disbelieving. Or to say: “Are you sure you mean—but...