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.

Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.

By striving to prove how much they deserve God's love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is a gift from God to people who don't deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.

prayer, and only prayer, restores my vision to one that more resembles God's. i awake from blindness to see that wealth lurks as a terrible danger, not a goal worth striving for; that value depends not on race or status but on the image of God every person bears; that no amount of effort to improve physical beauty has much relevance for the world beyond.

God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.

And perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.

Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counterculture of ordinary pilgrims who insist living a different way. Unlike popular culture, we will lavish attention on the least "deserving" in direct opposition to our celebrity culture's emphasis on success, wealth, and beauty.