For us who are Christians, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof positive that love is stronger than hate, that life is stronger than death, that light is stronger than darkness, that la...
Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.
Contrary to nature’s rule of survival of the fittest, we humans measure civilization by how we respond to the most vulnerable and the suffering.
Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, h...
Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, I don't need to sin. I need another sinner.
Christians should not compromise in hating sin, says Lewis. Rather we should hate the sins in others in the same way we hate them in ourselves: being sorry the person has done such things and hoping t...
Christians obscured the good news by their efforts to restore morality to the broader culture?
Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.
Christianity is not a purely intellectual, internal faith. It can only be lived in community.
Bear one another’s burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But...
Be careful, warned Nietzsche, lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon. I
As a Jewish rabbi put it, A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, I am but dust and ashes.' On the other, For my sake was the world created.' And he should use each...
Alcoholics Anonymous discovered long ago that the path toward cure involves more than a quick-fix solution based on increased knowledge. In fact, it involves a change that seems more theological than...
A curious law of reversal seems to be at work in the Gospels: faith appears where least expected and falters where it should be thriving.
When I turn from church history and examine myself, I find that I too am vulnerable to the Temptation. I lack the willpower to resist shortcut solutions to human needs. I lack the patience to allow Go...
The healthiest body is the one that feels the pain of its weakest parts. In
The New Testament holds up the model of a church whose activities exist primarily for the sake of outsiders. What keeps us from becoming the church God had in mind?
Senseless. I prefer the word buzzed, following the brain/amplifier analogy.
[...]women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?
Will Christians turn once again toward an approach that imposes its will on the rest of society? By doing so we would betray our founder, who resisted a temptation to authority over all the kingdoms o...