Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.

Resurrection is a belief and hope in restoring this world.

So this is reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross, he was reconciling "all things, in heaven and on earth, to God." All things, everywhere. ...This reality then isn't something we make come true about ourselves by doing something. It is already true. Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making.

When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter--they are all hell on earth. Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What's disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.

We can choose the way of compassion, the way of forgiveness, the way of generosity. Or we can choose other paths and those have very real consequences in the world. This is absolutely crucial.

Being a pastor for 20 years I realized that the labels, agnostic, atheist, believer, everybody's human and everybody wants to know what kind of universe we're living in, and everybody's living according to a story.

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.