The world is looking, not for Christians who are perfect, but for Christians who are honest and who are willing to be honest with some of our contradictions and hypocrisy.

It's unilaterally true that it costs more to maintain the death penalty than the alternatives to it, and we can leverage more resources to victims families. We can do all sorts of creative ways of healing the pain that people have done by channeling the energy and resources to other more redemptive forms of justice.

We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.

Rather than finding the devil "out there," we battle the devil within us. The revolution starts inside each of us.

To be nonpartisan doesn't mean we're nonpolitical.

We know the Church wasn't born 200 years ago. It's encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church.

We can ignore suffering no matter where we live. There are people who live a few miles from me who never see much poverty or the injustices that live on our doorstep.