God does not give us salvation because we believe. Our believing is only the normal way of receiving the salvation he freely gives.

Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.

I believe that we should, on biblical grounds, tell all parents of mentally disabled children that God loves their children, regrets terribly that they are disabled, and will, when they die, carry them gently into a heavenly life where every person is forever whole.

When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.

True, the apostles did not expressly say that people will be saved only if they repent, believe, and confess. But most evangelicals assume - with good reason - that this is what the apostles implied.

When we have been badly injured and clearly wronged, we make an instant caricature of the person who did it to us. We define him totally by the one wrong he did.