Do you belong to the one true church? You can easily think of churches who claim to be The One. Do you find such an attitude off-putting? Is any church entirely free from this? It is admirable when churches take steps to minimize this effect, but at the end of the day, or on Sunday morning, you pull into one parking lot rather than another for a reason. It is preferable to have a strong sense of community rather than a weak one. Can you maintain one without the other? Can you belong to a strongly bonded community that recognizes the validity of my body taken as a whole?

Does it seem to you that Christmas has become an entirely secular commercial holiday? Does it seem that it has lost its Christian distinctive when everyone celebrates it in about the same way? Christians present it as the arrival of the Messiah whose real work is yet to come, at the end of his life rather than at the beginning. Yet there is still much to celebrate at my arrival. I had to arrive before I could ascend. Do you see my coming into this world as fully human already validates the human experience even before the cross? Do you see aspects of redemption in the incarnation?

Some of my disciples struggled with the news that I had risen from the dead, despite the eyewitness testimony of their friends. Thomas in particular said that he would not believe until he put his hands in my wounds; hence the term, doubting Thomas. I did appear to him and he did believe. I pointed out that he had seen and believed, and said blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed. In which category are you? Do you know people with powerful testimonies of miracles and other supernatural acts they have observed?

Do you understand the difference between pride and dignity? Christians should be wary of pride which is condemned as sinful arrogance in the Bible, but dignity is different. Pride is grasping and demanding of external validation because it has no secure identity within. Dignity is internally generated and cannot be conferred by anyone else, but neither can anyone else take it away. Have you seen people with a well-developed sense of dignity? Are you amazed at how durable it is, holding up and even being strengthened by difficult adversity?