Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.

Retributive justice is one that says clobber him or clobber her because they clobbered me. So it emphasizes punishment.

The heart of the Christian Gospel is precisely that God is the all holy One; the all powerful One is also the One full of mercy and compassion. He is not a neutral God inhabiting some inaccessible Mount Olympus. He is a God who cares about His children and cares enormously for the weak, the poor, the naked, the downtrodden, the despised. He takes their side not because they are good, since many of them are demonstrably not so. He takes their side because He is that kind of God, and they have no one else to champion them.

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

Our parents will maybe sometimes when they are upset with us and we have been troublesome say something like "Mommy really doesn't like a naughty child." And we think that we have to earn the approval, earn the love of our parents. And then we transfer it to God and think we have to earn... We don't have to earn it! God loves us.

To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo.

Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?