The time has come for evangelical Christians to rethink their faith. I grew up with a Christianity that centered mostly on the teachings of Paul; most sermons I heard as a teenager were derived from Paul’s letters. If a Gospel text was used, almost invariably it was taken from the Gospel of John. I can’t tell you how many sermons I heard from Paul on the subject of being saved by faith and from John on the subject of being born again. I don’t think my experience was that unusual. Traditional, evangelical Christianity has typically kept its theological emphasis on Paul or the Gospel of John.

The problem with focusing on Paul is that Paul’s letters largely concentrate on the particular problems, issues, questions, and challenges faced by the churches he either founded or planned on visiting at the time. Paul’s letters are our earliest New Testament documents, but they are slanted toward the troubling issues in the Pauline churches. Paul shows no interest in expounding on the life and teachings of Jesus in his letters. Pauline scholars explain this in various ways. It is conceivable for Paul to have instructed the churches in his initial, core teaching, or it could be that Paul’s interest was elsewhere. A substantial case can be made that Paul gave center stage to the development of a theology of corporate participation in the death and resurrection of Christ.

John’s Gospel reflects a kind of theological synthesis of Jewish and Greek ideas and beliefs about Jesus that emerged as Christianity made inroads into the larger world. It contains little of what Jesus actually said and did, reflecting more of what the church, close to a century later (possibly in Ephesus), had come to believe about Jesus. Even a casual reading of John makes obvious that the Jesus of John’s Gospel talks and acts differently than the Jesus in the other Gospels. I am not suggesting that the Gospel of John is not true; rather, its truth is in its theological presentation of the Jesus story, not in its historical portrayal of Jesus.

My approach is to focus on the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke (commonly called the “Synoptic Gospels” because they share much material in common). I will work on the basis of the nearly unanimously accepted thesis that Mark’s Gospel was the first Gospel to be written, possibly around AD 70, just prior to or after the destruction of Jerusalem. It is believed that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written ten to twenty years after Mark and that their authors used Mark’s Gospel as they wrote. It is also believed that Matthew and Luke shared a common written source , as well as having access to their own unique oral and written materials in composing their accounts.

Without question, each of the Synoptic Gospels is unique in their theological presentation of the Jesus story, and yet they share much theology in common. My focus in this book is generally on what they share in common, though it will be necessary from time to time to elaborate on a particular theme or teaching that one Gospel may emphasize over the others or vice versa.

On the whole, the portrait of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels takes seriously his life, works, and teachings. In fact, in these Gospels, the death and resurrection of Jesus cannot be grasped apart from his life; the life, works, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus form one piece. It is my contention that when the good news according to Jesus is drawn from these Gospels, the result is a richer, deeper, healthier, more relevant and holistic gospel than is current in traditional, evangelical Christianity.

I am a Christian minister immersed in the theological and practical questions of common parishioners. I do not profess to be a scholar, nor am I writing for the scholarly community, though I certainly draw from scholarly sources. In the pages that follow, my indebtedness to theologians, biblical scholars, spiritual writers, and pastoral teachers and educators of all persuasions will be apparent. I speak to the common Christian and religious seeker. Some of the questions I address in this book are as follows:

• What was the message and ministry of Jesus really about?

• What does Jesus’ practice of an “open table” say about the nature of God’s kingdom?

• How should disciples of Jesus Christ relate to people of other religious faiths?

• What kind of God is the God of Jesus, and what difference does it make?

• What are the dynamics of an authentic faith? What are dynamics of grace and forgiveness?

• In what ways did Jesus turn conventional values upside down?

• What’s involved in living in God’s new world?

• Why did Jesus have to die?

• How can we understand God’s judgment in light of Jesus’ teaching on love?

• How should we understand the concept of “hell” today?

• Must Jesus literally return to this earth?

The explanations I offer with regard to these questions are not the standard answers one usually hears from traditional, evangelical Christian preachers and teachers.

The time has come for evangelical Christians to embrace a more credible, reasonable, inclusive, and gracious Christianity—a Christianity that can actually contribute to making this world a better world, or, as I suggest throughout the book, can help transform this world into God’s new world.

M. Scott Peck, in his introduction to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Road Less Traveled, discusses the timing of his book. He doubts that, had his book been published twenty years previously, it would have been even slightly successful. When his book hit the press, he says, “a large number of women and men in the United States were both psychologically and spiritually sophisticated and had begun to deeply contemplate ‘all the kinds of things that people shouldn’t talk about.’ They were almost literally waiting for someone to say such things out loud.”

I believe this is where many in the evangelical community stand today in relation to the teaching of this book . Evangelical leaders, who are content with the way things are, will not welcome these teachings; they will probably call me a radical and dismiss what I say. But I am convinced that many evangelicals are waiting for someone to say these things out loud. I offer this book with a prayer that it will help contemporary Christians and religious seekers explore a better way of being Christian.