The Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things

People remember stories much better than they remember a straight list of teachings.

To be Christian means to find the decisive revelation of God in Jesus. To be Muslim means to find the decisive revelation of God in the Koran. To be Jewish means to find the decisive revelation of God in the Torah, and so forth.

So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.

The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to the God who is already here.

There are people who assume that Christianity is about the afterlife and that our chief problem in this life is that we are sinners who need to be punished and the point of Jesus life is that he took our punishment so we can go to heaven. I write about the problems we get ourselves into by misunderstanding and limiting the way we think about our faith.

Religion is much more than language, but to be Christian does mean speaking Christian for most people. The language many of us use has contributed to the crisis in Christianity in North America. Traditional Christian language is becoming less familiar to millions of people. The language is frequently misunderstood by people.