Jesus is challenging that when addressing "who is your neighbor" and he has a lot of hard things to say about family, "unless you hate your own family you are not going to be a disciple." He is challenging the limits of our compassion and our love as if someone's kid suffers it should be as devastating to us as if it were our own kid. That is what the early church said.

For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.

There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

In the Bible, God uses brothel owners, pagan kings, murderers and mercenaries as instruments of good; at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey.

We don't actually have rich and poor together instead we have a family. What does it mean? If you have resources, you hold them with open hands. The mark of the early church was that they began sharing and it said there were no needy persons among them. They ended poverty as they created this new loving community.