No doubt the objection may be raised that affirmation of nonviolence by the churches would be simplistic, that ethical judgments in the real world of the Powers are far too complex to adopt a fixed ethical stance. This objection, I must confess, was one of the main...
Opinion is really the lowest form off human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world.
When we limit our understanding of neighbor to our church, denomination, nationality, or religious persuasion, we take Jesus' name in vain. When we lift up this commandment of Jesus--to love our neighbors--we draw all people to God and one another. The chief...
The claim of John 14:6-7 becomes problematic when it is used to speak to questions that were never in the Fourth Gospel's purview. To use these verses in a battle over the relative merits of the world's religions is to distort their theological heart. It is a...
Harvard religion professor Diana Eck told about being asked once by an elderly friend in India: "Do you really believe that God came only once, so very long ago and only to one people?" She said, "The very idea that God could be so stingy as to show up only once, to...
Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn--and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
Why can’t we remember that his [Jesus’] last commandment was that we should love each other as he loved us? John, in his first epistle, tells us firmly that if we cannot love each other, love the people we know and have seen, we cannot love God whom we have not seen!...
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
Wisdom will be needed to encourage a congregation to be united over the music it uses. One result of the power of music is that people become deeply wedded to their personal preferences and find it difficult to recognize that the style of music is almost always a...
God supports diversity in our worship, not imply for the sake of including everyone, but so that we might understand and experience the truth more profoundly.