When I get to those stories in the New Testament, I'm inclined to take the sophisticated approach and assume the people who had demons cast out of them were healed of mental illness of epilepsy...But lately I've been wondering if these something important out, something about the shape and nature of evil, which, as Alexander Schmemann puts it, is not merely an absence of good but "the presence of dark and irrational power.

But perhaps the most unsettling thing about a new church is the way the ghost of the old one haunts it. For better or worse, the faith of our youth informs our fears, our nostalgia, our reactions, and our suspicions.

In his testimony before his baptism, Andrew said, "I put off baptism because I felt like I was in a state of sin, like I wasn't good enough or fit enough to be baptized. But then I realized that baptism is done at the beginning of your faith journey, not the middle or the end. You don't have to have everything together to be baptized...You just have to grasp God's grace. God's grace is enough.

Looking back, I suspect their reactions had less to do with disdain for my doubt and more to do with fear of their own. As my mother tried to tell me a million times, they weren't rejecting me for being different, they were rejecting me for being familiar, for calling out all those quiet misgivings most Christians keep hidden in the dark corners of their hearts and would rather not name.

I was so lonely in my questions and so desperate for companionship, I tried to force the people I loved to doubt along with me. I tried to make them understand...I was reckless at times, and self-absorbed, and I'm still mending some relationships as a result.

Philip got out of God's way. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out, but who it lets in. Nothing could prevent the eunuch from being baptized, for the mountains of obstruction had been plowed down, the rocky hills had been made smooth, and God had cleared a path. There was holy water everywhere.

I'm a Christian," I said, "because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition-that we're not okay.

These were people who wore their brokenness on the outside, people whose indiscretions were so other, so uncommon, their entire personhood was relegated to the category of sinner. They were the people the religious loved to hate, for they provided a convenient sorting mechanism for externalizing sin...It's the oldest religious shortcut in the book: the easiest way to make oneself righteous is to make someone else a sinner.

I think it's safe to say we've missed the point when, of all the people in this account, we decide we're the most like Jesus. I think it's safe to say we've missed the point when we use his words to condemn and this story as a stone.