Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God.

We do our universities a disservice when we brand them as a lost cause. There are some frightfully honest students out there, and when their questions are respectfully dealt with, many admit their vulnerability.

I remember the time an older man asked me when I was young, "Do you know what you are doing now?" I thought it was some kind of trick question. Tell me," I said. You are building your memories," he replied, "so make them good ones.

Love is as much a question of the will as it is of the emotion. And if you WILL to love somebody, you can.

The single most important thread in working through your disappointments is that your heart and mind ponder and grasp what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. There is no pattern without the cross. There is no Good News without it. That is what the gospel is all about.

It is theoretically and practically impossible to build any community apart from love and justice. If only one of these two is focused upon, an inevitable extremism and perversion follow.

None of us like the concept of law because none of us like the restraints it puts on us. But when we understand that God has given us his law to aid us in guarding our souls, we see that the law is for our fulfillment, not for our limitation. The law reminds us that some things, some experiences, some relationships are sacred. When everything has been profaned, it is not just my freedom that has been lost- the loss is everyone's. God gave us the law to remind us of the sacredness of life, and our created legal systems only serve to remind us of the profane judgments we make.