(This is part of my “Top 10 Reasons I’m a Quaker” list…)
9. I believe no one has it all, and no one is a lost cause.
Some branches of Christ’s church are “too hot”- so full of prosperity promises and holiness hutzpah that I can’t really see how I could fit in…or how they have any need for God at all. Some branches are “too cold”- so full of despair about the futility of the human condition and preoccupied with predestination that I wonder why they even bother to get out of bed in the morning or how they have any hope of real change in their lives or in the world. At our best, Quakers bring the Goldilocks in me to say,”just right”- a healthy realism about my own laziness, flakiness, and sinfulness, joined to an irrepressible hope that God’s power is at work in even the worst serial killers, dictators, and pastors on the planet.