The Christian sees the world as a transitional home badly in need of rehab, and we are active agents in that project.

I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.

Whoever desires to remain faithful to Jesus must communicate faith as he did, not by compelling assent but by presenting it as a true answer to basic thirst. Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change.

Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.

The church is, above all, a place to receive grace: it brings forgiven people together with the aim of equipping us to dispense grace to others.

When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.