I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter.

Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I've probably read maybe by now fifteen, twenty books on Matthew. I'd say the authors I like best are an English fellow named Michael Goulder, who taught at the University of Birmingham in England, and he writes about the Jewish background in Matthew's gospel, which is part of what I was just talking about, which is just really thrilling to me.

There are some great values in Christianity, but I think the values are located more deeply in our humanity than they are in our religion. There are certainly some survival values.

Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. To me, neither option is worth pursuing.

I think we have to recover our spiritual nature. The way we have interpreted Christianity does not do that.