Though It Is True That

Rome Is Burning, Jesus Says. Drop Your Fiddle, Change Your Life And Come To Me. Let Go Of The Good Days That Never Were - A Regimented Church You Never Attended, Traditional Virtues You Never Practiced, Legalistic Obedience You Never Honored, And A Sterile Orthodoxy You Never Accepted. The Old Era Is Done. The Decisive Inbreak Of God Has Happened.

Put Bluntly, The American Church Today Accepts Grace In Theory But Denies It In Practice. We Say We Believe That The Fundamental Structure Of Reality Is Grace, Not Works - But Our Lives Refute Our Faith.

I Am Deeply Distressed By What I Only Can Call In Our Christian Culture The Idolatry Of The Scriptures. For Many Christians, The Bible Is Not A Pointer To God But God Himself... God Cannot Be Confined Within The Covers Of A Leather-bound Book. I Develop A Nasty Rash Around People Who Speak As If Mere Scrutiny Of Its Pages Will Reveal Precisely How God Thinks And Precisely What God Wants.

I Knew There Was Only One Place To Go. I Sank Down Into The Center Of My Soul, Grew Still, And Listened To The Rabbi's Heartbeat.

The Outstretched Arms Of Jesus Exclude No One, Not The Drunk In The Doorway, The Panhandler On The Street, Gays And Lesbians In Their Isolation, The Most Selfish And Ungrateful In Their Cocoons, The Most Unjust Of Employers And The Most Overweening Of Snobs. The Love Of Christ Embraces All Without Exception.