I am a Christian resident of New York City. I simply read things the other Manhattanites read (NY Times, New Yorker magazine, Wall Street Journal, and many of the books they read) plus all my Christian reading. I don't do anything special to understand skeptics. I also talk to a lot of skeptics and read things they point to.

God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it.

If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.

God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.

The human race doesn't need more books telling them what to do. They need the power to do what they already know.

If we are deeply moved by the sight of his love for us, it detaches our hearts from other would-be saviors. We stop trying to redeem ourselves through our pursuits and relationships, because we are already redeemed. We stop trying to make others into saviors, because we have a Savior.

We only fully grasp the gospel when we understand, as Paul did, that we are the worst sinner we know