The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right

Living in a climate of deep insecurity, Jesus, faced with so narrow a margin of civil guarantees, had to find some other basis upon which to establish a sense of well-being. He knew that the goals of religion as he understood them could never be worked out within the then-established

He has said to me time and time again that in his tradition the people have too often been “sacramentalized” but not “evangelized.” That is, they’ve gone through baptism and some even attend church but may not have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ.

It has everything to do with understanding human renewal as the beginning, the pointer toward, and even the means of, God’s eventual eradication of evil from the world and the bringing to birth of the new creation itself. Thus, so the early Christians believed, God’s word was at work by the Spirit within the community, to put Jesus’s achievement in

The gospel is a stark message, and it intrudes into the world’s thinking and priorities with sharp, bracing truths.