At the heart of Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them.

The power of the gospel lies[...] in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun.

Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.

We cannot worship the suffering God today and ignore him tomorrow. We cannot eat and drink the body and blood of the passionate and compassionate God today, and then refuse to live passionately and compassionately tomorrow. If we say or sing, as we so often do, 'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit', we thereby commit ourselves, in love, to the work of making his love known to the world that still stands so sorely in need of it. This is not the god the world wants. This is the God the world needs.

It's not great faith you need; it is faith in a great God.

To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.

There's all the difference in the world between humbly saying "I want to find more light from Scripture than we have yet had" and saying "I'm going to prove the rest of the Church wrong and do something totally new!"