Humanity has a natural desire to be “in the know” and to be part of a community. Often the two go together. I can join a “secret club” if I agree to beliefs of this club, particularly the things others don’t know or are “unable to understand.” Add in a culture in our churches that already believes in a mysterious God and supernatural occurrences and mix in a belief that religious oppression is inevitably coming from a world getting evermore evil and gravitating to grandiose conspiracies becomes an even greater temptation.

Jesus didn't make the woman at the well feel shame. In fact, her responses were downright snarky, and Jesus seemed to say "I like this woman!"

Could it be that "go and sin no more" actually means "you no longer have to consider yourself a 'sinner' as you've been told you are by those religious zealots?"

"Show me in the Bible where it says a desperate young person making the best decision they know how to make is a sin.” Becky found Joseph too good to be true, yet she couldn’t deny he’d just told her things about her life he couldn’t have known on his own. Joseph had shared her deepest secret with so much kindness, it had flipped on a light switch deep inside.

Why would a good god give a prophetic message to a preacher to share from the pulpit on a Sunday morning, and not spend the week telling that same pastor to stop molesting a child or to not abuse a woman in their church?

So many in American culture are sad, dissatisfied, hopeless and even willing to harm themselves or others. We’re made to believe that life is a race to a finish line, rather than a never ending journey. But then, at the finish line, we catch our breath, the race workers all go home, the confetti that was so exciting in the sky is now trash on the ground and we are forced to say “now what?” We then realize the striving did create a moment of great accomplishment, but now the striving must start all over again.

Saul sincerely believed ridding his country of these "law breakers" would hasten the appearance of a messiah to overturn the Roman government and would "make Israel great again." Saul was absolutely sincere in his beliefs and studies, yet was sincerely wrong in his conclusions.

Being freed from that "Old Time Religion” (we used to sing a song that said 'it's good enough for me’???) I was able to deal with self hatred in a way I could not have imagined before. I headed down to the San Joaquin River for a ritual of letting a self-hating part go — with the gratitude of my system and D.I.D. parts.

if we hold onto the folly of innerancy, we not only set ourselves up to abuse Hebrew and Christian sacred texts, we make it super easy for the rest of the world to believe we are delusional and dissonant, denying the obviously provable. And that does not serve the message of Jesus, at all.