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e709181
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And the Word that had most recently come from the mouth of God was, "This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased." Identity. It's always God's first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God's own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school--they all have a go at..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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49cd085
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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 ..
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labels
religion
church
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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d972b63
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sometimes the best thing we can do for each other is talk honestly about being wrong.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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acb4d8c
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The last shall be first and the first shall be last." This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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9e02bda
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Because in the end, we aren't punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6a9d7e5
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Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore.
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good-friday
sin
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c113b10
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she said, "I think I'm having a crisis of faith." To which I thought, What the hell does that look like for a Unitarian? "Yeah," she continued. "I think I believe in Jesus." Oh. That's what it looks like. "I'm so sorry," I replied. "But sometimes Jesus just hunts your ass down and there's nothing you can do about it."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c06915f
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Sometimes the fact that there is nothing about you that makes you the right person to do something is exactly what God is looking for.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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37e8030
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There are many reasons to steer clear of Christianity. No question. I fully understand why people make that choice. Christianity has survived some unspeakable abominations: the Crusades, clergy sex-scandals, papal corruption, televangelist scams, and clown ministry. But it will survive us, too. It will survive our mistakes and pride and exclusion of others. I believe that the power of Christianity -- the thing that made the very first dis..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6733350
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I started to imagine Mary tugging at the shirt of Jesus and saying, I will not keep silent. I will obey you and I will tell others to obey you but I will not keep silent. People are thirsty. In John's Gospel, Mary is not the young virgin pondering sweet things in her heart. In John's Gospel, Mary is not surrounded by singing angels... I started to see Mary in a long line of prophets who have not kept silent. The prophet Mary stands and says..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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b8cd4d5
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But inevitably, when I can't harm the people who harmed me, I just end up harming the people who love me. So maybe retaliation or holding on to anger about the harm done to me doesn't actually combat evil. Maybe it feeds it. In the end, if we're not careful, we can actually absorb the worst of our enemy and on some level even become them.
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retaliation
enemy
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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92309b5
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The Bible had been the weapon of choice in the spiritual gladiatorial arena of my youth. I knew how, wielded with intent and precision, the Bible can cut deeply, while on the one holding it can claim with impunity that "this is from God."
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spirituality
god
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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e0f46c3
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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.
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resentment
forgiveness
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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699734d
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Whenever people annoy me beyond reason, I can guarantee it's because they're demonstrating something I'd rather not see in myself.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c5d6040
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God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new. New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f252444
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The adjective so often coupled with mercy is the word tender, but God's mercy is not tender; this mercy is a blunt instrument. Mercy doesn't wrap a warm, limp blanket around offenders. God's mercy is the kind that kills the thing that wronged it and resurrects something new in its place. In our guilt and remorse, we may wish for nothing but the ability to rewrite our own past, but what's done cannot, will not, be undone. But I am here to sa..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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eaea36f
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Here's my image of Ash Wednesday: If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and we don't know the distance between the two, then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet. The water and words from our baptism plus the earth and words from our funerals have come from the p..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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81d8968
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And always, always, it is worth it to sing alleluia in defiance of the devil, who surely hates the sound of it.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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69a837a
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Those most qualified to speak the gospel are those who truly know how unqualified they are to speak the gospel.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2ef06c8
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Jesus brings a kingdom ruled by the crucified one and populated by the unclean and always found in the unexpected. I'd expected to look at the past and see only mistakes that I'd moved on from, to see only damage and addiction and tragic self-delusion. But by thinking that way, I'd assumed that God was nowhere to be found back then. But that's kind of an insult to God. It's like saying, 'You only exist when I recognize you.' The kingdom of ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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23e975e
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In the end, the only real love in the world is found when you let yourself be truly known.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c04ee47
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This is our God. Not a distant judge nor a sadist, but a God who weeps. A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us. Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross. Therefore what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering. This is a God who bears suffering. I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering; God transforms it.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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ec6192e
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The sting of grace is not unlike the sting of being loved well, because when we are loved well, it is inextricably linked to all the times we have not been loved well, all the times we ourselves have not loved others well, and all the things we've done or not done that feel like evidence against our worthiness.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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51345d1
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people have been fed spoonfuls of nonsense and told it was Jesus.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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452ce17
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it has been my experience that what makes us the saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather God's ability to work through sinners.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0ddce4c
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This desire to learn what the faith is from those who have lived it in the face of being told they are not welcome or worthy is far more than "inclusion." Actually, inclusion isn't the right word at all, because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing "them" to join "us"--like we are judging another group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don't own."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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e1ead6d
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And the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because if it's real it means we don't "deserve" it. ... And receiving grace is basically the best shitty feeling in the world."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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ca71f33
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God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word. My selfishness is not the end-all... instead, it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans as flawed beings and then a..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1655425
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Holiness is the union we experience with one another and with God. Holiness is when more than one become one, when what is fractured is made whole. Singing in harmony. Breastfeeding a baby. Collective bargaining. Dancing. Admitting our pain to someone, and hearing them say, "Me too." Holiness happens when we are integrated as physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and political beings. Holiness is the song that has always been sung, perhap..
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integrated
holiness
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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8899c74
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While we as people of God are certainly called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that whole "we're blessed to be a blessing" thing can still be kind of dangerous. It can be dangerous when we self-importantly place ourselves above the world, waiting to descend on those below so we can be the "blessing" they've been waiting for, like it or not."
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self-righteousness
service
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2db4f66
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There is a reason Mary is everywhere. I've seen her image all over the world, in cafes in Istanbul, on students' backpacks in Scotland, in a market stall in Jakarta, but I don't think her image is everywhere because she is a reminder to be obedient, and I don't think it has to do with social revolution. Images of Mary remind us of God's favor. Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are.
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virgin-mary
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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92d2100
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Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God..." he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God. So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is ..
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identity
god
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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b52ae48
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Smiley TV preachers might tell you that following Jesus is about being good so that God will bless you with cash and prizes, but really it's much more gruesome and meaningful. It's about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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45d971f
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I realized that I had been called to proclaim the Gospel from the place where I am and proclaim where I am from the Gospel.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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380d7a4
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God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and disturbing world.
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reality
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0af71c9
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What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that is.
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recovery
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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9b1ca6f
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Without higher-quality material to work with, God resorts to working through us for others and upon us through others. Those are some weirdly restorative, disconcerting shenanigans to be caught up in: God forcing God's people to see themselves as God sees them, to do stuff they know they are incapable of doing, so that God might make use of them, and make them to be both humble recipients and generous givers of grace, so that they may be pa..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c0cc1cc
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Sometimes help comes from unexpected places.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6a11053
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I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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9d7f09e
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It was in those first couple months that I fell in love with liturgy, the ancient pattern of worship shared mainly in the Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Episcopal churches. It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long after us. A stream that we get to swim in, so that we, like those who..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f4d4e9a
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My former bishop Allan Bjorberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn't yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn't necessarily know what to say or..
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christianity
jesus
faith
mary-magdalene
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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4feb2b4
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Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they're nothing but luxuries for people who've never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death - ideas present in so much of postmodern..
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loss
christianity
jesus
faith
mary-magdalene
platitudes
demons
grieving
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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245603e
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My Christian faith tells me that good news is only good if it is for everyone, otherwise it's just ideology.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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85d328c
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There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell you a truth you can only see from the underside of the psyche. At its best, comedy is prophesy and societal dream interpretation. At its worst it's just dick jokes.
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life
pastrix
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |