Grace frees you to be honest about what you've always known to be true about yourself: that you're weaker & more afraid than you want to be.

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours.

The people who tend to be the most gracious are those who know how badly they need grace

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.

God's acceptance of us cannot be gained by our successes nor forfeited by our failures.

God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up.

The desperate addict is closer to the heart of grace than the devout moralist.

Here's one way I can know that I've forgotten the gospel of grace: when your sin bothers me more than my sin.

Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.

Nothing makes me want to obey more than knowing that God unconditionally loves me and forgives me even when I disobey.

China has no choice but to emulate the power of America’s founding ideas and its journey through the universal values of democratic freedom and individual rights.

It's easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper.

Western farmers were individualists cheifly in their dreams.

What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.

I wake my wife up at 3 a.m. and say, "Listen to this!"

A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.

My view of Christianity is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind. So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions.

Socrates wrote nothing. Christ wrote nothing.

I don't want to be shut out from the truth. If they ban books, they might as well lock us away from the world.

I am forever grateful for Cheers.