The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can't be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not.

And a lot of times, the religious discussion is almost a masquerade for the real question, is what stories that we tell ourselves and that we tell each other and what convictions and beliefs actually have the capacity to make us the kind of people who together can make the world the kind of world we all want it to be?

For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one.

God is bigger than the Christian faith.

For many, 'desire' is a bad word, something we're supposed to 'give up for God.' That kind of thinking can be really destructive because it teaches people to deny their hearts, their true selves.

To elevate abstract doctrines and dogmas over living, breathing, embodied experiences of God's love and grace, then, is going the wrong direction. It's taking flesh and turning it back into words.

Grace is when you know you're loved exactly as you are.