Kim, here's my question to you: What do you think is the ultimate goal of a relationship between two people who are of different faiths?

I remember reading this back in June. Thanks for posting it again. I needed this in my life.

A line that really struck me today was that even all of our good deeds are extensions of our own selfishness. Thus Isaiah 64:6, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags."

In Matthew 9:13, Jesus says to the pharisees, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." The beauty of it is that God doesn't require mercy of us in order to gain favor with him. We're called to do it because he showed us mercy first.

Thanks for the chance to think about how beautiful the gospel is.

Man, I'm sorry it took me so long to see this. I just wanted to say it's an honor to have gotten a reply from Max's dad. You must be so proud of your boy. :)

There's nothing fair about the God of the Bible. He is just, but he is not fair. The fact that he died for us while we were still his enemies was not fair. In fact, it was and is scandalous. Beautifully scandalous.

I think the question here now is...what *is* a good man?

A friend of mine told me once, "You deserve a man who's gonna love Jesus more than he's ever gonna love you."

Personally, I think she was spot on.

Max, I hope you enjoy the crap out of that breakfast, man.

My first thought looking at this was, "Hold up, there's a battery life widget!?"

So yeah, I have a battery life widget on my home screen now. Thanks, Wes!

Max, when are you publishing a book? Because I would buy five copies as soon as it went up for pre-order.

"Don't be too upset when you see the poor kicked around, and justice and right violated all over the place. Exploitation filters down from one petty official to another. There's no end to it, and nothing can be done about it." Ecclesiastes 5:8 (MSG)

I used to let my blood pressure spike over social injustice, poverty, etc., pretty often (and it still does from time to time), but there are times when I just gotta rest in what the Pundit/Preacher/Solomon says about the kind of stuff that goes down in the world.

I'm not saying it's good to be apathetic towards social injustice and the like, but I don't see much sense in losing a whole lot of sleep over it, either. We do the best we can to love others, and that's all we can do.

And it's good to confront others to remind them of what Jesus commissioned us to do. However, it's not good to guilt people into "doing what's right."

Sorry if this post doesn't flow very well. I figure my GPA won't be affected by this, so I'll leave it as it is.