“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can…" is not a Wesley quote — it appears nowhere in his sermons, journals, or letters — and its popularity is not harmless, because it replaces Wesley's actual first rule, "do no harm," with unconstrainted interventionism, and that reversal has theological consequences.

Christianity has produced at least five major theories of what the cross accomplished — Ransom, Christus Victor, Sacrifice/Access, Moral Influence, and Penal Substitution — spanning 2,000 years, and no ecumenical council has ever declared one of them "the" answer.

Christianity has produced at least five major theories of what the cross accomplished — Ransom, Christus Victor, Sacrifice/Access, Moral Influence, and Penal Substitution — spanning 2,000 years, and no ecumenical council has ever declared one of them "the" answer.

A trans woman wearing women's clothes is not pretending to be what she is not. She is being what she is. She is living authentically, not practicing deception. The entire framework of the prohibition — deception — does not apply to someone living their truth.

If "God doesn't make mistakes" means bodies should never be altered, then glasses, insulin, hearing aids, cleft palate repair, pacemakers, and heart surgery are all forbidden. We don't apply this logic to any other medical condition. Gender-affirming care is supported by every major medical organization as evidence-based, life-saving treatment.

And the empirical evidence is clear: trans youth in non-affirming environments have suicide attempt rates exceeding 50%. Those with accepting families experience an 82% reduction.

Even if you disagree theologically — use people's names and pronouns, tell them they're loved, don't kick them out. The stakes are measured in lives.

Spare the rod, spoil the child" comes from a 1662 satirical poem by Samuel Butler called Hudibras, not from anywhere in the Bible — and the Hebrew word for "rod" (shebet) is the same word used in Psalm 23:4 for the shepherd's staff that brings comfort

For 564 years of English Bible translation — from the first Wycliffe Bible in 1382 through 1945 — no translator used the word "homosexual," because the concept of sexual orientation as an innate identity did not exist in the ancient world and the Greek words in question don't mean that

he Bible was completed approximately 1,681 years before the United States existed — it says nothing about America, democracy, constitutional republics, or capitalism, and every verse cited for American exceptionalism is about ancient Israel, not a modern nation-state.**

The Bible mentions Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. It does not mention America. It could not, because the United States did not exist for another seventeen centuries after the last biblical text was written.

Pro-slavery preachers cited Leviticus 25:44-46, Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, and Philemon from American pulpits for two centuries — they had a biblical case that was technically grounded in specific verses, and they were still catastrophically wrong, because snapshot reading always loses to trajectory reading

Paul describes pagan idolatry in Romans 1 to get his audience nodding along in judgment — then catches them in Romans 2:1 with "therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others" — meaning that using Romans 1 to condemn people is literally the thing Paul condemns.

Romans is Paul's most carefully structured letter. It builds an argument across sixteen chapters. Pulling verses from chapter 1 without reading chapter 2 is like leaving a courtroom after the prosecution rests and assuming the trial is over.

No verse in the Bible connects skin color to divine punishment — the "Curse of Ham" theology was fabricated by European slaveholders in the 1400s-1600s to justify the Atlantic slave trade, and the text it claims to cite actually curses the Canaanites, says nothing about race, and says nothing about Africa

The teaching that suicide automatically sends someone to hell comes from Augustine (5th century) and was formalized by Thomas Aquinas (13th century). It was a theological conclusion, not a biblical citation. Even the Catholic Church's current Catechism has walked it back, acknowledging diminished responsibility and stating: "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives."

Romans 8:38-39: "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God."

Neither death. That means the method of death does not override God's love.

*If you are struggling right now:* you are not condemned. Call or text 988. There are doors out of suffering that are not death.