Galatians 5

What does freedom in Christ taste like?

To say creation is ex nihilo is to say that divine love is the only power at work in the creation of everything.

Blessed are those who read this wise and lovely book.

Luther said we can judge a tree by its fruit. He never said doing so would be easy.

Most social problems are rooted in the failure of the strong to be gentle with others.

On Shrove Tuesday 2010, I ate my last piece of golden, delicious sausage while listening to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” A Lenten practice of consuming no meat unfolded, followed by a turkey-less Thanksgiving, and an Advent with rice and beans.

There were two reasons for my going cold turkey as a vegetarian: survival in an interfaith marriage to a devout Hindu, and a spiritual exploration of what it might mean to practice nonviolence and environmental sustainability as a Christian vegetarian.

In two pages, you go from a simple devotional habit to being sucked into the vortex of global power plays. You must be reading Brueggemann.

It's easy to love Mr. C. It's not as easy to love Mrs. M., and it’s stone-cold not easy to love that guy down the street.

Growing up, I watched Saturday morning television cartoons in which a character was making a decision. On one shoulder an angel hovered, saying, "Do the right thing!" But on the other shoulder perched a devil urging the character to do the wrong thing. You already know what happened: as the angel looked increasingly anxious, the cartoon character chose to do the wrong thing.

Paul's Galatians didn't watch TV cartoons, but they probably had a similar model of decision making.

What makes kindness a distinctive mark of the new creation?

Most people think of politics as a regrettable but necessary business. Necessary, because we live in a world of scarce resources, there are many of us, and our needs, interests and desires conflict. We need agreements as to the fair distribution of these limited goods, and an established authority to ensure the policing of those agreements.In the fight over these scarce resources, each of us fears being revealed as greedy, insecure, envious and deceitful. But imagine a different kind of politics—a politics of love.