The testimony is followed by another montage of Team Impact feats of strength. Ladies and Gentlemen, an amped up announcer voice a la Monster Truck Rally proclaims, We are Team Impaaaaact. Standing on...
The sting of grace is not unlike the sting of being loved well, because when we are loved well, it is inextricably linked to all the times we have not been loved well, all the times we ourselves have...
The Gospels are the canon within the canon. The Bible, as Martin Luther said, is the cradle that holds Christ. The point of gravity is the story of Jesus, the Gospel. The closer a text of the Bible is...
The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority.
Some would say that instead of the cross being about Jesus standing in for us to take the really bad spanking from God for our own naughtiness (the fancy theological term for this is substitutionary a...
So my argument in this book is this: we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bod...
Smiley TV preachers might tell you that following Jesus is about being good so that God will bless you with cash and prizes, but really it’s much more gruesome and meaningful. It’s about spiritual phy...
Shit, I thought to myself, I’m going to be late to New Testament class.
Nadia, the thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it. Damn.
I’ve squandered plenty of ink arguing against the notion that God had to kill Jesus because we were bad. But when Caitlin said that Jesus died for our sins, including that one, I was reminded again t...
I’ve never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors.
I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished fo...
I wonder if she’s ever encountered a Denver outreach worker with a bleach kit. Did she ever open a baggie from a clean-handed social worker and see a note under the tourniquet and sterile cooker that...
I recently was asked by an earnest young seminarian during a Q&A, Pastor Nadia, what do you do personally to get closer to God? Before I even realized I was saying it, I replied, What? Nothing. Sounds...
I need to be broken apart and put back into a different shape by that merging of things human and divine, which is really screwing up and receiving grace and love and forgiveness rather than receiving...
Holiness is the thing I never saw coming that makes me catch my breath because I know the sacred has interrupted my isolation.
God isn’t waiting for you to become thinner or heterosexual or married or celibate or more ladylike or less crazy or more spiritual or less of an alcoholic in order to love you. Also, I would argue th...
But then at two a.m. I was startled awake with what can only be described as a bitch slap from the Holy Spirit.
But that so rarely works. And if our hearts and brains don’t acknowledge these kinds of truths, they don’t just go away. They burrow into our bodies. For me, any truth I try to push aside seems to see...
Apparently, thousands of parents had been warned that their children would be exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women if we weren't uninvited. Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dan...