Responsibilites and expectations are the basis of guilt and shame and judgement, and they provide the essential framework that promotes performance as the basis for identity and value.

Did I hear God call me an idiot?

I give you an ability to respond and your response is to be free to love and serve in every situation, and therefore each moment is different and unique and wonderful.

I was raised in a tribal situation, among cannibal people.

Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.

In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerner's access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.

The ability to choose is at the essential core of our grandeur. Even evil exists because God respects our ability to choose.