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b2a443d
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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....Jesus could have hung out in the high-end religious scene of his day, but instead he scoffed at all that, choosing instead to laugh at the powerful, befriend whores, kiss sinners, and eat with all the wrong people. He spent his time with people for whom life was not easy. And there, amid th..
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christianity
jesus
faith
love
inspriational
christian
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f75eb5d
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Fear not, brothers and sisters, God, who is full of grace and abounding in steadfast love, meets us in our sin and transforms us for God's glory and the healing of God's world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, your sins are forgiven, be now at peace.
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religion
god
love
holy-spirit
grace
son
father
sin
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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5e0ac1e
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Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as "the blessing" -- like so many mission trips to help "those less fortunate than ourselves" -- can easily descend into a blend of benevolence and paternalism. We can start to see the "poor" as supporting characters in a big story about how noble, selfless, and helpful we are."
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poverty
self-centeredness
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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7ad7d2b
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we actually have the authority to remind each other of the gospel and defy the darkness of living in a broken world by pointing to the light of Christ. We all need to have our bruised, papery hands held while someone else says, "You are forgiven, and you are loved."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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3fa5058
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When what seems to be depression or compulsive eating or narcissism or despair or discouragement or resentment or isolation takes over, try picturing it as a vulnerable and desperate force seeking to defy God's grace and mercy in your life. And then tell it to piss off and say defiantly to it, "I am baptized" or "I am God's," because nothing else gets to tell you who you are."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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fd9c5d3
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Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union , and purity is about separation .
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6ae6f12
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When the forces that seek to defy God whisper if in our ears--if God really loved me, I wouldn't feel like this... If I really am beloved, then I should have everything I want... if I really belong to God, things in my life wouldn't suck--to remember that God has named us and claimed us as God's own. When what seems to be depression or compulsive eating or narcissism or despair or discouragement or resentment or isolation takes over, try pi..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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34c867d
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Which is exactly why our demons try to keep us from people who remind us how loved we are. Our demons want nothing to do with the love of God in Christ Jesus because it threatens to obliterate them, and so they try to isolate us and tell us that we are not worthy to be called children of God. And those are lies that Jesus does not abide.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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aae8a29
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Because sometimes the most holy thing we can say is: No. Not on my watch.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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cc6bbf7
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When I tell other Christians of my time with the goddess, I think they expect me to characterize it as a period in my life when I was misguided, and that I have now thankfully come back to both Jesus and my senses. But it's not like that. I can't imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can't imagine that God doesn't reveal God's self in countless ways outside of the symbol system of Christianity. In a way, I n..
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god
gender
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0640406
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Getting closer to God might mean getting told to love someone I don't even like, or to give away even more of my money. It might mean letting some idea or dream that is dear to me get ripped away.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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55df933
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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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99c7222
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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.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c7900b7
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The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane. The quotidian wrapped around the profound, like plain brown paper concealing the emotional version of an improvised explosive device. Then, in a single interminable moment, when we discover the bomb, absolutely everything changes. But when we recall it from our now forever-changed lives, when we start with the plain brown wrapping, it looks like every other package, every other mornin..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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3f2e333
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I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let's be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way, and when I have to bear witness to another human being's suffering despite my desire to be left alone, and when..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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4c183f4
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Usually when you are grieving and someone says something so senselessly optimistic to you, it's about them. Either they want to feel like they can say something helpful, or they simply cannot allow themselves to entertain the finality and pain of death, so instead they turn it into a Precious Moments greeting card.
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platitudes
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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8a46f7a
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If the quality of my Christianity lies in my ability to be more inclusive than the next pastor, things get tricky because I will always, always encounter people--intersex people, Republicans, criminals, Ann Coulter, etc.--whom I don't want in the tent with me. Always. I only really want to be inclusive of some kinds of people and not of others.
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inclusivity
judgment
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2516555
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I realized that 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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1970154
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Church is messed up. I know that. People, including me, have been hurt by it. But as my United Church of Christ pastor friend Heather says, "Church isn't perfect. It's practice." Among God's people, those who have been knocked on their asses by the grace of God, we practice giving and receiving the undeserved. And receiving grace is basically the best shitty feeling in the world. I don't want to need it. Preferably I could just do it all ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2a5e5bf
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what happens at the cross is a "blessed exchange." God gathers up all our sin, all our broken-ass junk, into God's own self and transforms all that death into life. Jesus takes our crap and exchanges it for his blessedness."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f547ae2
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When these kinds of things happen in my life, things that are so clearly filled with more beauty or redemption or reconciliation than my cranky personality and stony heart could ever manufacture on their own, I just have no other explanation than this: God." Nadia Bolz-Weber"
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f3b0d12
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Jesus says, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." He says, "The first shall be last and the last shall be first," and infuriating things like "if you seek to find your life you will lose it but those who lose their life will find it." And every single time I die to something--my notions of my own specialness, my plans and desires for something to be a very particular way--every single time I fight it and yet every single time I..
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jesus
sacrifice
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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5783e7a
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there was something about hearing it that was so different than just imagining it to be true. To hear I was loved meant something very particular because of the context in which I heard it, as though Jay was saying, "You are a mess, and you are loved. You have a little issue with anger, and you are loved. I've not even known you that long, and you are loved. You think you are going through this alone but you are wrong, and you are loved. Th..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1b15c56
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It's about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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bd410e2
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But the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f1a270c
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the holy things we need for healing and sustenance are almost always the same as the ordinary things right in front of us.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0200d8f
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I can only look at the seemingly limited space under the tent and think either it's my job to change people so they fit or it's my job to extend the roof so that they fit. Either way, it's misguided because it's not my tent. It's God's tent.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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eb7905f
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But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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37f3ef9
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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. I realized in that coffee shop that I need the equival..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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93ee974
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Our identity has nothing to do with how we are perceived by others. But it's still tempting to believe. I mean, if Jesus was vulnerable to temptation, the rest of us certainly are, whether it be temptation to self-loathing or self-aggrandizement, depression or pride, self-destruction or self-indulgence. We are tempted to doubt our innate value precisely to the degree that we are insecure about our identity from, and our relationship to, God..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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b2f3e71
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I hate that this is God's economy. That the salvation of my enemy is tied up in my own. Which is why I sometimes say that the Gospel is like, the worst good news I've ever heard in my life.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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279e081
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Because in these healing texts, Jesus does not just cure people's diseases and cast out their demons and then say, "Mission accomplished." He's always after something more than that because the healing is never fully accomplished until there is a restoration to community."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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e9aa07e
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I stood the next day in the copper light of sundown in the parish hall where House for All Sinners and Saints meets and confessed all of this to my congregation. I told them there had been a million reasons for me to want to be the prophetic voice for change, but every time I tried, I was confronted by my own bullshit. I told them I was unqualified to be an example of anything but needing Jesus. That evening I admitted to my congregation th..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c6d08b8
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I wasn't sure what to say, so I asked my congregation. There was passion in their replies, and none of it had to do with how much they appreciate their preacher being such an amazing role model for them. Not one of them said they love all the real-life applications they receive in the sermons for how to have a more victorious marriage. Almost all of them said they love that their preacher is so obviously preaching to herself and just allow..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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d833f0c
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There's a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference between good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way truth has. Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because, when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I've substituted being good (or appearing t..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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8987e22
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The eunuch sought God despite the fact that he had heard that there was no love for him there.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c532647
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So often in the church, being a pastor or a "spiritual leader" means being the example of "godly living." A pastor is supposed to be the person who is really good at this Christianity stuff -- the person others can look to as an example of righteousness. But as much as being the person who is the best Christian, who "follows Jesus" the most closely can feel a little seductive, it's simply never been who I am or who my parishioners need me ..
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leadership
pastors
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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64b013b
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I know that people who don't believe in God might scoff at the idea that the creator of the universe has the time or inclination to try incessantly (and with not much long-term success) to change my heart. I get it. I just have no other explanation.
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god
change-of-heart
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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265a9e1
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Repentance in Greek means something much closer to "thinking differently afterward" than it does "changing your cheating ways." Of course repentance can look like a prostitute becoming a librarian, but it can also look like a prostitute simply saying, "OK, I'm a sex worker and I don't know how to change that, but I can come here and receive bread and wine and I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but Go..
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repentance
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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dc886f7
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Australia seems like a really faraway Canada, just with funnier animals.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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475b333
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From my father I heard only these words: "But you were born for such a day as this." He closed the book and my mother joined him in embracing me. They prayed over me and they gave me a blessing. And some blessings, like the one my conservative Christian parents gave to their soon-to-be-Lutheran pastor daughter who had put them through hell, are the kind of blessings that stay with you for the rest of your life. The kind you can't speak of w..
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seminary
support
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f0514b4
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But I cannot pretend, as much as sometimes I would like to, that I have not throughout my life experienced the redeeming, destabilizing love of a surprising God.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6a62107
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Being part of Christ's bizarro kingdom looks more like being thirsty and having someone you don't even like give you water than it looks like polishing your crown.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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4139fda
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Truth. It can make me hate the person speaking it. Until the point at which I want to kiss them for setting me free.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |