Individuals and societies are not helpless victims of heredity. We have the power to change - not by looking "down" to nature but "up" to God, who consistently calls us forward to become the people we were designed to be. A confused world urgently needs a model of what that looks like. If Christians fail to provide that model, who will?

We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.

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.

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

Jesus tended to honor the losers of this world, not the winners. Our modern culture extravagantly rewards beauty, athletic skill, wealth, and artistic achievement, qualities which seemed to impress Jesus not at all.

Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.

The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.