We shape our God, and then our God shapes us. - Rob Bell

When we don't throw ourselves completely into it and we hold back our best efforts because of what happened in the past, we are letting the past decide the future.

What we see in these passages is God meeting people, tribes, and cultures right where they are and drawing and inviting and calling them forward, into greater and greater shalom and respect and rights and peace and dignity and equality. It's as if human history were progressing along a trajectory, an arc, a continuum; and sacred history is the capturing and recording of those moments when people became aware that they were being called and drawn and pulled forward by the divine force and power and energy that gives life to everything.

Christian' makes a poor adjective