The ancient sages said the words of the sacred text were black letters on a white page—there’s all that white space, waiting to be filled with our responses and discussions and debates and opinions and longings and desires and wisdom and insights.

Our eschatology shapes our ethics. Eschatology is about last things. Ethics are about how you live.

Nor did John, Peter, James, or the woman who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. So if that’s it, if that’s the point of it all, if that’s the ticket, the center, the one unavoidable reality, the heart of the Christian faith, why is it that no one used the phrase until the last hundred years or so?

who grew up in a Christian church and then walked away when they got older? Often pastors and parents and brothers and sisters are concerned about them and their spirituality—and often they should be. But sometimes those individuals’ rejection of church and the Christian faith they were presented with as the only possible interpretation of what it

So when we hear that a certain person has “rejected Christ,” we should first ask, “Which Christ?”

When people use the word “Jesus,” then, it’s important for us to ask who they’re talking about. Are they referring to a token of tribal membership, a tamed, domesticated Jesus who waves

Or are they referring to the very life source of the universe

That’s why wealth is so dangerous: if you’re not careful you can easily end up with a garage full of nouns.

the flag and promotes whatever values they have decided their nation needs to return to? Are they referring to the supposed source of the imperial impulse of their group, which wants to conquer other groups “in the name of Jesus”? Are they referring to the logo or slogan of their political, economic, or military system through which they sanctify