It is not the task of the church to "Make America Great Again." The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again. And once we untether Jesus from the interests of empire, we begin to see just how countercultural and radical Jesus'...
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.-from To Kill a Mockingbird (Atticus Finch...
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
The mind that opens up to a new idea never returns to its original size.
There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition, there is no...
When the average American hears the word "justice," I think very often--unless they have been taught otherwise--the first idea they have is punishment, and that's unfortunate. Biblical justice is always restorative. The point is never simply punitive; the point is to...
We are all hypocrites to some degree — passionately promoting ideas we have not ourselves fully lived, taking others to task for frailties and failures not that dissimilar from our own. Knowing this, we should all be more gentle, more hopeful, more merciful with one...
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...
Listen to the people who are talking about how to fix what's wrong, not the ones who just work people into a snit over the problems. Listen to the people who have ideas about how to fix things, not the ones who just blame others.
It is far too easy to be critical. It is far harder to have a better idea.