The God understood as a father figure, who guided ultimate personal decisions, answered our prayers, and promised rewards and punishment based upon our behavior was not designed to call anyone into maturity.
John Shelby SpongWhen I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times.
John Shelby SpongThere's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance.
John Shelby SpongThat's why the virgin birth never gets rid of the human mother. The story only gets rid of the human father. So Jesus' life was the life of God nurtured through the Virgin Mary. That's because the virgin birth died as a literal story as soon as we discovered that women had an egg cell. It's interesting to watch what the Roman church did about that.
John Shelby Spong