Truth without love is imperious self-righteousn ess. Love without truth is cowardly self-indulgence .

If we can't "love the sinner; hate the sin" then how can we relate to ourselves? Love who we are in Christ but still hate the sin remaining.

Jesus does not divide the world into the moral "good guys" and the immoral "bad guys". He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways. Even though both sons are wrong, however, the father cares for them and invites them both back into his love and feast.

Even if our own troubles are great, we should still serve. Jesus washed His disciples feet on the way to the cross.

If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice.

The Gospel is this: You're more sinful, evil and weak than you'd ever believe. But you're more valued, accepted and loved than you dared hope.

While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.