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What came clear to me as I worked on this book is that as much as throughout my career I have held up theology as essential, there is so much bad theology out there about why traumatic events happen and what God is supposedly accomplishing through these events that I believe we’ve reached a tipping point where we just need to keep our mouths shut and simply love people instead of offering explanations for the unexplainable.

While there is a diversity of opinion across our theological circles, research on mental health, spirituality, and well-being can guide us toward promoting the thriving and belonging of the nonbinary and transgender people within our homes, school, and faith communities. I experience a deep joy and abiding peace when I imagine an inclusive kingdom with a wide table of welcome. I’ve had glimpses of this in the here and now, and these snippets provide me with a strong motivation to…

It’s a long way from a short bridge on the Illinois Waterway to contemplation about synodical decisions on sexuality. We all seek connections to God’s truth the best we can. For me, this story about a bridge helped me think about the complex tension between tradition and change. One hard truth is that we all have 19-7 bridges in our lives.

Angels were very real to ancient believers and very significant. As we shall see, they were the embodiments of the love of God, and they depicted how this love flowed from the heart of God and gave life to the world. The story of Jesus’ birth cannot be meaningfully told without them. But angels are not real to believers living in the 21st century.

Don later pointed out to the neighbors, who over the years annually thanked him for the spectacle, that this event had accomplished something quite significant in the annals of his family history. Perhaps the lesson learned is too obvious to mention. To this day, not one of his three children—now sensible and judicious adults—has ever tried to set a Christmas tree on fire, indoors or out.

We are not individuals placed in the world to seek our own pleasure but members of a community bound together in love, which finds one of its highest and fullest expressions in marriage and the family. In our intimate relationships, as in larger settings such as the church, we should show love and respect and live in mutual submission to each other.

As Janet spoke, though, it came to me again that religion mangles the Gospel sometimes. It had, for example, taught both Janet’s and Chester’s parents a harsh script, and they had acted it out; it was Janet who bore the spiritual pain of that bad teaching.

One Israelite tradition, the dominant one, held that wisdom came with the experience of years and that the elders bore the responsibility of codifying and passing it on to children. ... The other tradition held that wisdom resided in children who saw the world afresh and often had a keener sense of God’s presence and purposes than their elders.

Too often the debate over same-sex marriage is reduced to trying to sidestep a few tangential passages or throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Instead, we need a comprehensive Reformed theology of marriage that honors the full arc of Scripture from creation to eschaton.