Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.

Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.

The Bible never belittles human disappointment ... but it does add one key word: temporary.

Pain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else.

My mother believed he would be healed. She counted on God, and the worst thing happened. The impact of that error in theology, in thinking, impacted my life from the very beginning.

Unless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.

The Cross of Christ may have overcome evil, but it did not overcome unfairness. For that, Easter is required.