What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage by David G. Myers, r. Oct. 2014

p. 7 The life of faith is a dance on the boundary between conviction and humility.

p. 7 Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure.

p. 14 [Past American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman] believes that depression is especially common among young Westerners because of the epidemic hopelessness that stems from the rise of individualism and the decline of commitment to faith and family. When facing failure or rejection, contends Seligman, the self-focused individual takes on personal responsibility for problems and has nothing to fall back on for hope. A well-connected person is a well-supported person. A lonely person is an unhappy person.

p. 21 As the Christian author C. S. Lewis said, "The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal."

p. 129 Many people we talk with are mystified by the intensity of the opposition to gay marriage. Whatever any of us may think, they tell us, we can probably agree that the Bible has little to say about same-sex behavior, certainly much less than what it has to say about God's concern for justice, the poor, and caring for creation.

p. 129 As the Scottish philosopher David Hume recognized long ago, reason is often the slave of passion. Moral reasoning aims to convince others of what we intuitively feel.

p. 135 Might we then come together in honest, open dialogue? In small groups, might we engage on another in the spirit of Christ? Perhaps we can keep these thoughts in mind as we struggle to love one another and be receptive to God's will: When torn between judgement and grace, let us err on the side of grace. When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err of the side of humility. When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love. In so doing, may we be more faithful disciples of the one who embodied grace, humility, and love in all he said and did. For "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10).

p. 183 I'm motivated to write, and to offer information to the public sphere, whenever I'm struck by the thought that "Hey, people ought to know about this!"