“I don’t have a problem with Jesus. But I do have a problem with the image Christians portray of him.” – A friend.

“I’ve always wondered why people who believe in total depravity say things to their kids like “good job” when they catch a baseball. Shouldn’t they say something like you caught the ball, but you still deserve to go to hell?”

Donald Miller

I love Donald Miller’s humor.  He always find a way to bring out the absurdity.

“In my opinion, multitudes of Christians find themselves in a real-life Milgram experiment these days. Their consciences are in conflict with their beloved religious authority figures on several key issues — ten of which I raise in my book — but they continue to press the punishment button when instructed to do so.”

Brian McLaren, Huffington Post

All I can say is, “Dooooooooh!”

A guy I follow offered the following quote from Bill Hybels.  I don’t have the exact source but I have to believe it is true.

“The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders.” – Bill Hybals

Do you buy that statement?

“We all have a hunger for certitude.  And the problem is the Gospel is not about certitude, it’s about fidelity.  So what we all want to do if we can is immediately transpose fidelity into certitude.  Because fidelity is a relational category and certitude is a flat mechanical category.  So we have to acknowledge our thirst for certitude, and then recognize if you had all the certitudes in the world, it would not make the quality of your life any better, because what we must have is fidelity.”

Walter Brueggemann – Emergent Conversation – 2004 – Day One Part One (16:55)

From the good bishop:

“Most of the passages in the New Testament which have been thought by the Church to refer to people going into eternal punishment after they die’ is not about Heaven and Hell at all. The great majority of them have to do with the way God acts within the world and history.”

NT Wright

Nathan Colquhoun has a great commentary and breakdown of hell this week.  All I can say is, “Dooooh!”

I don’t think the poor need us so much as much as we need them. Because they reveal something about us and to us that is very near and dear to the heart of God. Mike Hyatt paraphrasing Rich Stearns. (source)

“It seems to me the primary narrative of the Bible is this exile, this disconnect – we are always trying to come home, always struggling to find the Kingdom and yet most the time remain as Moses looking into the Promised Land we can see it but not quite enter.”

Gideon Addington