“We don’t have a hard time realizing how messed up we are messed up we are. I know I’m broken. I know I’m deeply flawed. I know I’m not good enough. You don’t need to shout those things out at me from the corner of the street with your sandwich board–I already know them. But you tell me I have inherent worth and value based on who made me, not what I do and I think, Really? Are you sure? But…That’s subversive. In a culture that continually strips humans of dignity (homelessness, exploitation of the poor, objectifying women, abortion, euthanasia, and so forth), we have to return to shalom. We have to return to that special declaration God shouted over humans thousands of years ago in that wonderful garden–“So God created man in his own image.”

− Jefferson Bethke −