So what are we inviting ourselves and others into? For those who’ve been out for a while, what are we inviting them back to? ...When we can step out of our institutional concerns, reconnecting with the essence of our faith, we remember the Way of life to which Jesus...
Jesus made it clear that the moral demands of the faith he taught centered on love, justice, and mercy. I believe that God is, here as everywhere, nudging Christians toward love—love for the Creator, love for other people, love for self, love for the world God has...
The Good Samaritan story is not just a good example of compassionate spirituality. It is a critique against religious passivity. If "church people" won't work for justice and mercy, God will find some other people who will.
Often hell is portrayed as a place of punishment and heaven as a place of reward. But this concept easily leads us to think about God as either a policeman, who tries to catch us when we make a mistake and send us to prison when our mistakes become too big, or a Santa...
Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.
If we seek a God we can handle, that will be exactly what we get: a God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy we've cut down to size. Is there another way for us?
We need some Christians who are as crazy as the Lord. Crazy enough to love like Jesus, to give like Jesus, to forgive like Jesus, to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God--like Jesus. Crazy enough to dare to change the world from the nightmare it often is into...
Jesus' parable, therefore, shatters the stereotypes of social boundaries and class division and renders void any system of religious quid pro quo. Neighbors do not recognize social class. Neither is mercy the conduct of a calculating heart, nor eternal life the reward...
In returning to ourselves, in contemplating the compassion of Jesus and realizing that "This means me," we come under the Mercy and qualify for the nametag "blessed." In urging us to compassionate caring for others, Jesus invites us to have compassion for ourselves....
To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And, like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is, it is...