Many choose to view God as distant. Observable. Manageable. Close enough to consider. Distant enough to never impose nor interfere. From a distance, no wonder is ever too wonderful, no power too powerful, no master ever too masterful.

In Paul's definition of the trash-people as the divine collective, the crap and the holy are joined together in a type of parallax similar to what we find in the wave-particle duality discovered by physicists.

We should have stopped trying by now. We should have thrown up our hands in despair and cried, "Enough." We should have relented by now, given up any hope that our lives would cease being punctuated by random violence. We should have stopped hoping for something different. But we haven't.

Few have realized there are two substantially different Easter stories embedded in our texts. The alternative tradition has no appearances of Jesus following the discovery of an empty tomb.

This Christianization phenomenon fueled anti-Semitism through the ages by strengthening the illusion that Jesus and Jews were of different ethnicities and religions.

What might a truly sustainable church (a "church in the green") look like? By sustainable, I don't mean, of course, what people usually mean when they say "self-sustaining." I'm talking about a radically intentional effort.

If we are being honest with ourselves, we must admit that our national histories, our ethnic histories, our religious histories, our family histories, our personal histories, all take precedence over the Bible.

The way of enemy love is not intuitive. The very idea of loving the person you would normally hate is an intentionally provocative idea. So how can we learn to have what Paul calls "the mind of Christ"?

The fundamental doctrinal tenets of Christianity can be traced back to Paul -- not to Jesus. In contrast, the original Christianity before Paul is somewhat difficult to find in the New Testament.

Alan Segal graced us for a while -- to teach and inspire, but, most of all to befriend those who shared his mortal journey. Whether or not he was conscious of it, he did his part to heal, repair and transform this world.

We can assume that a stout majority of evangelicals voted for Mitt Romney. Their candidate lost and today they almost assuredly wrestle with crushing disappointment. Perhaps intead of rising up, they need to kneel down. Maybe rather than protest they need to pray.

On Election Day, voters in Maine, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland will decide the future of same-sex marriage. Many of them will cast their vote based upon what they think the Bible teaches about same-sex marriage. But how many actually know?

Bodhisattvas must challenge the conservative ideology that the institution of marriage -- defined as a relationship between a man and a woman -- is unalterable.

In the midst of the wall-building that is going on all around, those of us who claim to be followers of Christ should be about the divine work of reconciling people, of tearing down the walls of hostility.

Most conservative scholars will view the money transaction through a mythical lens and argue that Paul's collection given to the Jerusalem Apostles was not a "bribe" but an attempt to unify the church. But is that all it was?

Paul is the "shadow behind all four of the Gospels" and the key light illuminating the Empty Tomb stories, a main source of revelation when there was no core understanding of Jesus.

For centuries, Scholars have debated Paul's mysterious "barb." It has been the source of much speculation, including Paul's lusts, sexual preference or physical ailments, including malaria and eye disease.

Paul, in his Galatians autobiography, identifies James as a man who replaced Peter as the head of the early Church. Additional apocryphal and secular sources assume James as heir to the church and rightfully so as his brother.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "To be great is to be misunderstood." If Emerson was right, then the Apostle Paul might be one of the greatest men to ever live. Few religious leaders have been as grossly misunderstood as Paul.

Had the Roman army not pulled his bloodied frame from the mob, Paul would have died. Even his ironic journey to Rome as a prisoner -- rather than apostle -- would not have occurred.

It is not that Luke lacks correct information about Paul. It is that he interprets all he has from the viewpoint of at least two generations after Paul.

How has Christianity come to be understood as the harbinger of traditional family values? Why do political parties still invoke Jesus as leader of these traditional ideas, when He, Paul and the other apostles never embraced them?

Love in the Bible, like love in our everyday lives, is important, complicated, and too powerful and mysterious to be fully defined or grasped by any of us.

My question is whether or not there is a way to read 1 Corinthians 9:9-10 that does justice to Paul while minimizing bias against nonhuman species among his readers?

During this holiday season, let's remember that ghostly sources are valued for how they help others. Messages from other worlds that lose sight of this are not a worthy source for peace on earth and goodwill to men.