Theology in Motion

"Christian faith is at bottom, trust in and obedience to the free and gracious God made known in Jesus Christ. Christian theology is this same faith in the mode of asking questions and struggling to find at least provisional answers to these questions. Faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ sets an inquiry in motion, fights the inclinations to accept things as they are and continually calls in question unexamined assumptions about God, our world, and ourselves...Christian faith asks questions, seeks understanding, both because God is always greater than our ideas of God, and because the public world that faith inhabits confronts it with challenges and contradictions that cannot be ignored. Christian faith 'causes us to think'... When faith no longer frees people to ask hard questions, it becomes inhuman and dangerous…faith seeks understanding passionately and relentlessly or it languishes and eventually dies" ~ Daniel Migliore

A Great Counseling Motto

"Speak little; listen much; think far more of understanding hearts and of adapting yourself to their needs than of saying cleaver things to them. Show that you have an open mind, and let everyone see by experience that there is safety and consolation in opening his mind to you. Avoid extreme severity, and reprove, where necessary, with caution and gentleness. Never say more then is needed, but let whatever you ay be said with entire frankness. Let no one fear to be deceived by trusting you.
...You should become all things to all the children of God, for the sake of gaining every one of them. And correct yourself, for the sake of correcting others"
              ~ 17th century French Theologian Fenelon (from his book Spiritual Letters to Women)

Addictions

"As natural as it is for sentient being to avoid pain, sometimes going through pain is the only way to lift the pain, to grow and develop, or quite simply to reject the powers of pain to govern our entire life. The only way to break the stranglehold of an addiction is to feel the pain that it is a defense against, the pain that we are already feeling."

~ James Hollis from Why Good People Do Bad Things