God Is A Kooky God Who Can

Authentic Faith Leads Us To Treat Others With Unconditional Seriousness And To A Loving Reverence For The Mystery Of The Human Personality. Authentic Christianity Should Lead To Maturity, Personality, And Reality. It Should Fashion Whole Men And Women Living Lives Of Love And Communion. False, Manhandled Religion Produces The Opposite Effect. Whenever Religion Shows Contempt Or Disregards The Rights Of Persons, Even Under The Noblest Pretexts, It Draws Us Away From Reality And God.

What Makes Authentic Disciples Is Not Visions, Ecstasies, Biblical Mastery Of Chapter And Verse, Or Spectacular Success In The Ministry, But A Capacity For Faithfulness. Buffeted By The Fickle Winds Of Failure, Battered By Their Own Unruly Emotions, And Bruised By Rejection And Ridicule, Authentic Disciples May Have Stumbled And Frequently Fallen, Endured Lapses And Relapses, Gotten Handcuffed To The Fleshpots And Wandered Into A Far County. Yet, They Kept Coming Back To Jesus.

If We Maintain The Open-mindedness Of Children, We Challenge Fixed Ideas And Established Structures, Including Our Own. We Listen To People In Other Denominations And Religions. We Don't Find Demons In Those With Whom We Disagree. We Don't Cozy Up To People Who Mouth Our Jargon. If We Are Open, We Rarely Resort To Either-or: Either Creation Or Evolution, Liberty Or Law, Sacred Or Secular, Beethoven Or Madonna. We Focus On Both-and, Fully Aware That God's Truth Cannot Be Imprisoned In A Small Definition.

To Ignore, Repress, Or Dismiss Our Feelings Is To Fail To Listen To The Stirrings Of The Spirit Within Our Emotional Life. Jesus Listened. In John's Gospel We Are Told That Jesus Was Moved With The Deepest Emotions (11:33)... The Gospel Portrait Of The Beloved Child Of Abba Is That Of A Man Exquisitely Attuned To His Emotions And Uninhibited In Expressing Them. The Son Of Man Did Not Scorn Of Reject Feelings As Fickle And Unreliable. They Were Sensitive Antennae To Which He Listened Carefully And Through Which He Perceived The Will Of His Father For Congruent Speech And Action.

The Dominant Characteristic Of An Authentic Spiritual Life Is The Gratitude That Flows From Trust