The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.

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?

Your life is a gift. Before anything else can be said about you, for some reason the universe (or God, or being, or force, or reality, or whatever you name it) chose to give you life.

Before anything else, you have received breath - the gift of life itself. The first word about you is GIFT.

The Bible itself is a book that constantly must be wrestled with and re-interpreted. ... Bible interpretation is colored by historical context, the reader's bias and current realities. The more you study the Bible, the more questions it raises. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says.

Your life is a gift and how you respond to it - what you do with it matters. That's where I start.

God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.