I suppose I prefer to say “disciple” rather than “Christian”.  A disciple grows in love, not goodness, since the goodness is there, unshakable and awaiting fuller discovery.  Religion by nature is legalistic, but God isn’t.  Disciples know this in the depth of their soul. True disciples don’t live God-fearing lives, but God-seeing lives. In an age of cable news advancing loathing and fear, people of the Gospel have to be about loving and fearlessness.  God is compassion in everything. Gandhi decided to be a disciple of Jesus and never stopped being a Hindu.  Safe to say, he was a faithful disciple.  As disciples, we don’t want healing to be deferred.  Now is the time.  Here is the place.  These are the people with whom you can walk.  At Homeboy, a staging area of Church, it is precisely the culture of kindness, this soft place for hard conversations, that stimulates the body and soul to heal itself.  We see wholeness, and it helps us all to rewire – not just the traumatized, but every one of us.  Since we are all walking wounded, only tenderness is mutually transformational.  This is what leads to awakened hearts.

The words of Gregory Boyle.