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.

The promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.

[Jesus] invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion.

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.

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

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.

Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.