“In the caricature, God creates hell in order to torture sinners. But in the biblical story, we are the authors of hell’s fury. God does not create the power of hell; we do. God does not rape kids and murder… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share Image
“Jesus’ doctrine of hell levels the playing field. This is one of the things I have come to love about it. It does not… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“One of the problems with the ways we tend to talk about the power of hell is that we shift the blame for the… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“Jesus contrasts who blesses and curses. The sheep are blessed “by my Father.” We might assume, then, that the goats are inversely cursed by… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“Now, the Law is good, and God gives it to his people, but God’s primary purpose in bringing Israel to the mountain is not… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“When we reclaim the biblical story of God’s purpose to bless, reconcile, and heal the nations through his international, multiethnic kingdom, the subtopic of… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“Jesus calls us to holiness and justice. Holiness involves dealing with the spark, the poisoned well, the root in our own hearts. Justice involves… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“We’re invited not to set out and find God, but to stop running and be found.” — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“Sacrifice is not something we use to clean ourselves up so God can stand to be with us again. On the contrary, sacrifice is… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“But God beckons from our brokenness, breaks in through the back door, invites us to encounter him in our insecurities, sits in our suffering,… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“The extinction of desire stands in stark contrast to the redemption of desire.” — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“This is our salvation: to be indwelt by God within us (the Spirit), united to God before us (the Son), and embraced within the… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“The cross is not a mechanism we use to get to God, but the way God has come to find and raise us.” — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“A moralist looks at Jesus in the desert and immediately jumps to, We need to pony up, try harder, and be faithful under temptation!… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“Our problem is not that we’re reaching out for God and he’s refusing to be found. It’s the opposite: God’s reaching out for us,… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
“One wonders whether the loss of such ceremony has contributed to the Western world’s exaltation of the autonomous individual over the world—no longer seeing… — Joshua Ryan Butler Copy Share
