Never do I see Jesus lecturing people on the need to accept blindness or lameness as an expression of God's secret will; rather, he healed them.

Jesus announced a great reversal of values in His Sermon on the Mount, elevating not the rich or attractive, but rather the poor, the persecuted, and those who mourn.

Jesus was a master of grace: he attracted sinners and moral outcasts even as he offended the religious and responsible people of his day.

[...]women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

There is an "offense" to the Gospel no matter how graciously we present it. It includes the message that God, not humanity, is the ultimate judge of right and wrong, and that the choices we make here have eternal consequences.

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.