“Feeling offended is invigorating. Feeling offended is a reassuring sensation. It's easier than asking ourselves if the redeeming love of God is evident in the way we communicate with people.”

“If we've deluded ourselves into thinking that our angry mass emails or conversation-stopping talking points serve as a ministry or carry out the purposes of God, we need to slow down and take a breath.”

“Religion isn't best understood primarily as a collection of beliefs held by backward people with fear and trembling for most of human history (religion as brainwash). It is rather, among other things, a scriptorium of beleaguered witness, a record of collated information, both fragmentary and sometimes systematic, with which we may feel compelled to reckon as it somehow, across history, reckons with us, an inheritance, if you like, of difficult wisdom.”

“And for the sake of humility--a characteristic crucial to sacred questioning we might do well to confess that we're capable at any moment of such bad religion ourselves.”

“What the pundits call wishy-washiness, the Bible calls repentance.”

“Religion is born out of questions, not answers.”

“Certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.”