Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger.

Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.

The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament reflect the life of Jesus, what it means for us & what it means for the world.

The Quakers have a saying: "An enemy is one whose story we have not heard." To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me.

I have more appreciation for why the Bible avoids fuzzy psychologisms and says simply to the stealer, "Steal no more," and to the tempted, "Flee temptation." The Bible challenges us to look upward, not inward, for counsel at moments of crisis.

We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

We should feel dissonance; we are, after all, immortals trapped in mortal surroundings. We lack unity because long ago a gap fissured open between our mortal and immortal parts; theologians trace the fault line back to the Fall.