Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.

Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.