True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.

We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of millions and millions and millions of years.

The God content of the past no longer sustains the contemporary spirit. We sense that our only hope is to journey past those definitions of a God who is external, supernatural, and invasive, which previously defined our belief. We must discover whether or not the death of the God we worshiped yesterday is the same thing as the death of God.

Some parts of the Bible are dreadful. In fact, my working title for The Sins of Scripture was "The Terrible Text of The Bible."

The thing that intrigues me about Matthew is that I don't believe anybody would read it if they aren't Jewish and understand it. And so to say that publicly as a Christian is kind of interesting.

The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.

Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies.