“I love everyone, but I don’t have to like them.” I first heard a woman say this in a church in Charlotte and I was shocked. The sentiment I heard behind the words she spoke was a distancing of herself from anyone that she didn’t want to get to know. It’s a very convenient sentiment […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be in this world, but not of the world.[John 17:14-19] And I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what that would mean to you or me. First, let’s talk about what it doesn’t mean: 1. What it is not about is us being above […]

As we in the Christian church regroup in an era where the church has lost much of its authority in our country, I think we need to look deeply within for why we have turned so many people off in the last forty years. From the scandals of the Catholic priests to the Protestant politicians […]

For a while my son-in-law owned a trailer park in Florida. He said that inevitably each month at least one of his tenants would come in to pay off part of another’s rent for that month. The reason: “He’s short this month,” or “she needs some help.” People who work with the poor would say […]

We are so steeped in the culture, we don’t even know where the culture ends and we begin. So much of the culture slipped in under the radar of our pre-cognitive brains when we were small children that we can’t see what in us belongs to the culture and what belongs to our self. This […]

If there is one thing that is deeply embedded in the American psyche it is this: I alone am responsible for my life. I have to make it happen—whatever the “it” is. I am on my own in this thing called life. Even within the context of family and partnerships we can feel totally alone […]

  What God requires of us is really so very simple: “act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. “[Micah 6:8 NIV] And yet nothing in our lives is more challenging of the culture in which we live and our attachment to it. It is the most challenging task we face and the lesson […]

Willingness. Commitment. Surrender. These three attitudes of openness are the keys to our growth into a deeper relationship with God. He does not wrestle or command or even grab us away from our personal trajectory or take away our free will. She knows better than to make us a draggee by trying to convince us […]

How might we summarize Jesus’ teachings and the life he modeled? We need a guide, a condensed version, a rule to compare ourselves to, a standard. Jesus said so many things, but he saw them all as fulfilling the law of the Old Testament which is about love. So in this essay I will endeavor […]

“Imaginary friend in the sky. Delusional. Sad,” commented one of my Facebook readers recently on a day I was writing about surrendering to God. What he wrote caused me to think about how I would describe God. The picture of God he painted is the one I had as a child: an angry God, a […]