Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.
We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them.
The Holy Spirit, thank God, often enables people to forgive even though they are not sure how they did it.
Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit.
Jesus said that we should render to the state what properly belongs to the state, and though he had taxes in mind, we might reasonably infer that giving the state the job of punishing wrongdoers is one way of giving the state its due.
In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account.
My father was only thirty-one when he died of a heart attack, much too young for a father to die and leave his young wife with five rambunctious little kids to take care of. I was the youngest. Only a couple of months old when he died.
Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.
As I read the New Testament, I find only one path to salvation - the path of an informed faith in Jesus Christ.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.
Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community.
You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.
God does not give us salvation because we believe. Our believing is only the normal way of receiving the salvation he freely gives.
It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.
When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
