James Wheeler

“Colorblind ideology is the twenty-first-century continuation of white Christian silence to racism.”
― Drew G.I. Hart, Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism

“What I’ve learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“Have you ever sat with someone unlike you, being grace and truth to them? Have you ever listened, trying to understand what it is like to be them rather than trying to correct them and make them like you? So often we listen just long enough to convince another to be more like us or to instruct them about how to “get over” whatever has happened. It is an egocentric approach. Jesus’s presence with us was not and is not like that. He listened and responded to the individual. Have you ever been struck by the fact that he healed all blind people in unique ways? Let us watch Jesus and see who he was with others who were utterly unlike him. Let us watch and see who he was with “them.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“The abundance of the gifts of the Spirit . . . does not mean that the believer will be transferred from a struggling faith to a purely triumphant faith but that the believer will become a participant, by the Spirit, in the glorification of Christ,” a glorification, we recall, that entails a Cross.”
― Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary