Nadia Bolz-Weber quotes:

Matthew once said to me, after one of my more finely worded rants about stupid people who have the wrong opinions, Nadia, the thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it. Damn.

It would seem that when we are sinned against, when someone else does us harm, we are in some way linked to that sin, connected to that mistreatment like a chain. And our anger, fear, or resentment doesn't free us at all. It just keeps us chained.

Jesus taught us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" not forgive us and smite those bastards who hurt us.

As a teenager, I began to question the Great Christian Sorting System. My gay friends in high school were kind and funny and loved me, so I suspected that my church had placed them in the wrong category... Injustices in the world needed to be addressed and not ignored. Christians weren't good; people who fought for peace and justice were good. I had been lied to, and in my anger at being lied to about the containers, I left the church. But it turns out, I hadn't actually escaped the sorting system. I had just changed the labels.

It happens to all of us, I concluded that Easter Sunday morning. God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.