My experience as a pastor is lots of people have really toxic, dangerous, psychologically devastating images of God in their head, images of a God who's not good.

When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.

Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.

Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.

What we do comes out of who we believe we are.

The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.

Well, I affirm orthodox Christian faith. I affirm the Nicene Creed. I don't think I'm doing anything terribly new.

The life that you want begins the moment you embrace the life you have because all of it is a miracle.

Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god, either.

If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

That breath that you just took, that's a gift!

People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.

Story should be a descent -- the feeling that there is an intense gravity to the narrative that draws you down, down, down.

When you make a child happy, the best gift you will ever get will be the smile of that child!

What else does anxiety about the future bring you but sorrow upon sorrow?

Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that counts.

Hallelujah! Amen! Christianity is so inherent in western story-telling, you can't really get around it. But it wasn't something that drew me to it more or less.

The tools used by the surgeons must be adapted to the task and where the human brain is concerned they cannot be too refined.

I've had soccer moms come up and tell me they can relate when I say that I want to throw my baby in the trash.

I said to a girl I'd been seeing, come home with me, honey, and I'll show you where it's at. She said, You'd better, because the last time I could'nt find it.

Real optimism knows the difficulties but believes they can be overcome.