“Through love, Paul said, you should make yourselves slaves to one another. Thus freedom and slavery are not simply mutually exclusive terms; they stand in the closest possible relationship to one another and can only be adequately defined in terms of object and goal: what we are slave to and what we are free for.”
“God is the God of the entire cosmos; God has to do with every creature, and every creature has to do with God, whether they recognize it or not.”
Source: God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
“[T]hese people lived close to the ground, if you will, and the natural world filled their lives. Creation was a lived reality for them prior to the development of specific ideas about creation.”
Source: God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
“[C]reation" is not simply viewed as a matter of origination or a divine activity chronologically set only "in the beginning.”
Source: God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
“God works creatively with already existing realities to bring about newness. This understanding also entails the idea that the present (and future) is not wholly determined by the past; God does bring the "new" into existence. [...] God also creates in and through creaturely activity.”
Source: God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
“[T]he creativity of the human creature is such that genuinely new realities are regularly brought into being.”
Source: God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
“No one can claim to be culturally literate without an understanding of the Bible, since it has influenced, directly or indirectly, nearly all of Western literature and art.”
Source: Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals
“In this Age of Awakening, millions of people can move into Spiritual Enlightenment.
Wouldn’t you prefer to be one of them?”
Source: Seeking Enlightenment in the Age of Awakening: Your Complete Program for Spiritual Awakening and More, In Just 20 Minutes a Day
“The first motivation could be called political: If you can't or won't understand the Bible, others surely will interpret it for you. The second could be called cultural or literary: Within this culture you can't be fully literature or creative, artistically or rhetorically, without an acquaintance with the Bible. But now we come to the third and most personal reason: You also can't be spiritually mature or wise simply by rejecting the Bible as oppressive. The oppressive uses of the Bible are real, but unless you learn to understand that there are other readings possible, the Bible will, indeed, simply continue to be a source of oppression for you, and not a source of inspiration, liberation, creation, and even exultation as you understand anew for yourself, at a deep and less literal level.”
Source: Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals
“I write this book not as a testimony to vanity, but rather as a humble hope to inspire or move others to greater kindness, sensitivity, and commitment to our world and to the precious people we call our family and our extended brothers and sisters in this life.”
Source: A Walk in the Twilight: A Librarian searching for questions