Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education; it's just a matter of which one you get.

The relation of redemption and sanctification would be the ongoing relationship between the driver and God who is directing her. Now, if God isn't directing him, he may go wild and do all sorts of things criminal and crazy.

As Augustine say clearly, God being God offends human pride. If God is running the universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who isn't running the universe and does not get to have things as they please.

The core of the person is what he or she loves, and that is bound up with what they worship - that insight recalibrates the radar for cultural analysis. The rituals and practices that form our loves spill out well beyond the sanctuary. Many secular liturgies are trying to get us to love some other kingdom and some other gods.

Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.

God's aim in human history is the creation of an inclusive community of loving persons, with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.

There is no cure for the social battles that we fight in our culture - and there's so much grief around race, gender, and so forth - until you eliminate "withdrawal" and "attack" and replace them with "acceptance" and "help." Once you do that and not just talk about it, these other issues will fall into place quickly. They will not fall into place at all unless it is done this way.