He loves His children just as much when they are bad as when they are good. Therefore any good behavior that springs out of fear of punishment from him, or out of or due to hope of a reward from him, comes out of the wrong motives any good behavior that springs out of fear of his punishment or hope for his reward is not properly motivated. God does not make special efforts in behalf of his children when they’re good and withhold His blessings from them when they’re bad. Jesus put it his reign falls on the just and the unjust. In fact, the New Testament seems to indicate that if God makes any special effort on any of his children, it is in behalf of those who are lost in the lost sheep parable of the Good Shepherd. The shepherd left the 99 safe sheep in the fold and went out to make a special effort on the lost one. I have a son most of you know and I love him. 

Evil is the misuse of that good. If God is the Creator of all things and is totally good, then He is incapable of creating evil. Everything God made is good. Evil exists only in the misuse of that good. Everything in God’s creation is potentially good. There are no bad keys on a piano. Now, if I sit down to play, there would seem to be some bad keys on the piano, but put the right person on the stool, and there are no bad keys 

The first Adam demonstrated the potential failure of all people. The second Adam demonstrates the potential success of all people. Jesus is what God intended Adam to be. He never asked us to worship him, but to follow him.

This is the reason Jesus could say that which I. Do you can do and greater things you will do. I believe Jesus. I can almost hear him sometimes say, stop worshiping Me. He never asked us to worship him, but to follow him.  The reason is that lip service is so much easier than daily living, Like a husband who speaks adoringly of his wife and then is repeatedly unfaithful to her, he worships her and destroys her. I have a feeling that Christ would much rather be an elder brother or a guide than a God.

He never asked that we worship him. He asked that we be like him.

This means some scripture is more inspired than others. It means that the truths that are scripture in the Bible, are in the Bible because they are true and not true because they are in the Bible. And there’s a big difference between these. It means that myth nearly always contains more truth than historic fact.

At some moment in my life, I faced a lonely fact that the only God I have is the God I have experienced. It must be my own, and no one can prescribe what that experience of God might do to me… The only real test for that experience is, does it make me love God with all my heart and my neighbor as myself.

The main trouble with the Second Coming preaching of many fundamentalists of this kind is it is just not true. Jesus said there are those standing here who will not taste death until they enter the kingdom. I do not believe that Jesus had the grossly mistaken idea that they would still be alive after His crucifixion and his resurrection and His Second Coming. We cannot separate God’s part and man’s part in bringing the kingdom, because apparently one cannot do so without the other. I would say God is a long way ahead on doing his part than we are on doing ours. The kingdom is not waiting for God to get ready. The kingdom is waiting for man to get ready.

’nuff said.

It is not in some penitence, penitence on our part. It is not in some payment of debt on the part of Jesus. For us, they beat him. They stripped him. They put a crown of thorns on his head. They stripped the clothes off of him and put a ragged robe on him. They put the cross on his shoulder and made him carry to the top of the hill, and they nailed Him to it. And when he wouldn’t die quick enough, they put the spear in his side, and with the last ounces of energy draining out of his body, he looked down upon them, and he said, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. And at that moment, he becomes our savior in that perfect revelation of the total. Love of God, with which he loves us and when and with his help, we can love each other.