We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Corrective Love

A Step Towards The Stars

drp via Compfight

Kathy Escobar posted the other day about providing “corrective experiences” to those who have been hurt in the past. How many of us have approached Christians with our wounds and have been offered more of the same instead of the love and acceptance we’re longing for? How beautiful it would be if the church could become a place where we could reveal ourselves in all of our messy realness and receive the gift of a love that counters what we might expect. Let’s commit to being that for one another and for those who tip-toe into our places of worship.

From Kathy’s blog post:

it gets me all fired up about what could be if we focused less on programming and more on relationship. less on theological correctness and more on practice. less on the surface and more on the deep places of our hearts.

yeah, my dream is that the body of Christ was widely known as an army of healers, people who…

blow minds and hearts away with Jesus’ radical love and acceptance.

spark some freaky feeling inside hurting people where they go “huh, that’s weird, i thought christians were judgmental”

ignite a flicker of a flame inside that says “maybe God does love me”

restore dignity where it’s been stripped.

build worth and value where it’s been destroyed.

are safe and healthy and embody what so many of us didn’t get in our broken families.  

may we play our small part in creating corrective experiences where others feel God’s love, hope, mercy, dignity, justice, and heart for them through us–his flawed but willing ambassadors this side of heaven.

Related Reading

Who You Are Reflects the Kind of God You Worship

We always reflect the mental picture of God that we envision, for better or worse. If you have a fear-based picture of God, it will even affect the structure of your brain. You become the kind of person that you worship. If you have a threatening picture of God, you become threatening. If you have a…

Sermon Clip: Extravagant Forgiveness, Extravagant Love

Greg Boyd had the wonderful opportunity to guest speak at a great church in Carlisle, PA called Carlisle BIC. He spoke on the topic of forgiveness and love. In this short clip, Greg describes how a prostitute was being judged by the Pharisees, but Jesus came to her rescue. You can listen to the full…

God is Different Than You Think

The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God to be. In this light, we can discern the thematic centrality of the cross in Jesus’ many teachings that reverse…

Are we called to suffering?

What does it mean when we say we’re called to suffering? Does it mean that we should allow ourselves to be victimized or that God approves when we are abused? Here are Greg’s thoughts on this topic.

On Mental Illness and Jumping from a Burning Building

 seyed mostafa zamani via Compfight Ann Voskamp wrote this piece in the wake of the suicide of Rick Warren’s son. It’s disheartening to hear so many thoughtless and cruel comments by other Christians when tragedies like this strike. But here is a voice of knowing and compassion. Here is love. From Ann’s blog post: I…

Where is Human Free Will in the Bible?

The Bible is emphatic on its teaching that humans possess free will and are capable of originating evil. Notice, for example, that in the very first chapter of the Bible God commands humans to be fruitful and exercise dominion over the animal kingdom and the earth (Gen. 1:26). The fact that God must command us…