"But he went to seminary, so I'll let him do the spiritual stuff"

"The primitive Church had no New Testament, no thought out theology, no stereotyped traditions. The men who took Christianity to the Gentile world had no special training, only a great experience-in which 'all maxims and philosophies were reduced to the simple task of walking in the light since the light had come."

-B.H. Streeter, Twentieth-Century English theologian and biblical scholar.

Will we ever know the answers?

Who says that the essential question has an answer? The essence of man is to be a question, and the essence of a question is to be without an answer?

But to say, "What is God? What is the World? What is my friend?" is to say that I have someone to talk to, someone to ask a question of.

The DEPTH, the meaning, the very SALT of man is his constant desire to ask the question ever deeper within himself, to feel ever more INTIMATELY the existence of an unknowable answer.

Eli Wiesel, The Town Beyond The Wall

If there is anyone in the world that has the justification to ask deep unanswerable questions of God and deserve a response, it is Eli Wiesel. The picture is of him at age 15, just before he was deported to Auschwitz.

What is wrong with the world?

"I am."

-G.K. Chesterton

Searching

Mahatma Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, he said "No". Then they asked where they could find some, and he responded by saying, "Ask the poor, they will tell you who the Christians are."

Freedom

A favorite poem of mine that's imagery has always spoke to my heart

"Long my spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature night. I difused the quikening ray, I woke the dungeon flammed with light, my chains fell my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee."

"Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.

Acts 13:38-39

God's Love

“I will love god because he first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept god’s love I cannot love him in return, and I cannot obey him. Self discipline will never make us fell righteous or clean; accepting God’s unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the Devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.”

-Donald Miller

What's the steeple really pointing to?

"The social location of the church meeting expresses and influences the character of the church. If you assume that where the church gathers is simply a matter of convenience, you are tragically mistaken. You are overlooking a basic reality of humanity. Every building we encounter elicits a response from us. By its interior and exterior, it explicitly shows us what the church is and how it functions."

Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity