• Introduction

    An Overview of a Theology of Meaning

The Essence of Christianity

  • Though shaped by countless forces—our upbringing, our biology, the culture we inhabit—each of us carries within a self-governing core that cannot be reduced to these influences. This inner freedom, the capacity to choose, define, and direct our lives, is what makes us human. It is the center of personhood where conscience speaks and where we decide, again and again, who we will become.

    Every moment presents a choice. We may yield to impulse, conditioning, or pressure, or we may act from our deeper self—guided by reason, love, and truth. Freedom does not mean doing whatever we please, but rather ordering our desires toward what is good and life-giving. Real freedom, then, implies responsibility; it demands that we take ownership of our actions and their consequences. When we forget this, freedom becomes license—an escape from meaning rather than a path toward it.

    Time, too, is part of the moral drama of life. Our days are limited, and with each passing moment, our choices shape the person we are becoming. Waste, indifference, and selfishness erode the possibilities of joy and fulfillment, while deliberate acts of generosity, forgiveness, and courage enlarge the soul. To choose poorly is to diminish ourselves; to choose rightly is to grow into the image of our better self.

    Ultimately, life is a continual invitation: Do we choose life over decay, love over apathy, truth over illusion? Our circumstances may constrain us, but they cannot replace our agency. Even in hardship, the freedom to choose remains.

    The question echoes through every decision: who will I be in this moment? The answer, always, is ours to give.

  • In our post-Christian culture, countless narratives compete for our attention and allegiance, each offering a different vision of the good life.

    Though they promise fulfillment, many of these systems ultimately lead to fragmentation rather than flourishing. Among the most pervasive are consumerism, individualism, and relativism—each seductive in its appeal, yet hollow at its core.

    Consumerism proclaims that happiness can be bought. It conditions us to believe that things—possessions, experiences, and lifestyles—can satisfy the human heart. Identity becomes defined not by who we are but by what we own. Yet the promise of fulfillment through accumulation always disappoints: desire only expands with each purchase. When worth is measured by assets and appearance, envy and discontent corrode community, and people become commodities. Consumerism offers comfort temporarily but leaves an ache of meaninglessness—a nihilism dressed in luxury.

    Individualism, too, appears noble in its defense of freedom and authenticity. It tells us that the highest good lies in self-determination and personal happiness. Yet isolated autonomy dissolves the bonds of mutual belonging. When relationships exist only insofar as they serve one’s self-realization, love becomes transactional and community fragile. A culture built on self-fulfillment alone cannot sustain trust, sacrifice, or shared purpose. Its logical conclusion is loneliness, for a person turned entirely inward eventually finds no ground outside the self on which to stand.

    Relativism, finally, denies that there is any truth or moral order beyond personal preference. It masquerades as tolerance but erodes the very basis for conviction or justice. If all truths are equal, then none can bind us together or call us higher. The world becomes a mosaic of competing “personal truths,” each shouting for recognition, yet none capable of offering meaning deeper than feeling. Without a shared moral horizon, society descends into confusion and cynicism.

    These narratives fail because they divorce the human person from truth and any purpose beyond ego and whim; we trade communion for consumption, freedom for isolation, and joy for momentary pleasure.

  • At the center of Christian wisdom stands kenosis—the self-emptying love revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.

    It is the paradox that fullness comes through self-giving, and that we discover who we truly are when we offer ourselves for others. This kenotic pattern—pouring oneself out in generosity, compassion, and service—is the roadmap for our own transformation in meaning.

    What we give ourselves to ultimately forms us. We are shaped in the image of what we love. If our attachments are shallow, coarse, and self-serving, we become so ourselves. If we direct our lives toward wealth, status, or pleasure without transcendence, our inner world grows hollow. To live self-directed and ego-driven is to circle endlessly around the self—what Scripture names as a kind of living death, or hell on earth.

    Kenotic love, by contrast, enlarges the soul. When we love what is good, beautiful, and true, we are drawn into their likeness. When we give ourselves to others in friendship, forgiveness, and mercy, we participate in divine life.

    The cross is the ultimate symbol and expression of this self-emptying love.

    Jesus shows us that we become what we love, and therefore invites us to choose wisely. We face a choice: love or indifference, life or decay. The wisdom of Jesus is clear—only kenotic love leads us to wholeness, freedom, and joy.

  • The dominant narrative in our culture urges us to turn away from what is uncomfortable. We are taught, subtly but pervasively, to avoid the lowly, the awkward, the poor, the old, the ill, and the confused. Such people remind us of our fragility, our dependence, and our shared humanity—realities our culture finds unbearable.

    Instead, we curate appearances and perform compassion from a distance, offering small gestures of pity that keep our consciences quiet but our hands clean. We live in an age of virtue signaling, where the public show of concern replaces the costly work of love.

    Christianity dares to reverse this. The wisdom of Christ begins not in the palace but in the manger, not on a throne but on a cross. The Incarnation is God’s descent into our poverty and weakness. In Jesus, compassion is not an emotion or a performance—it is an embodied solidarity with the broken. He touches lepers, dines with outcasts, comforts the grieving, and restores dignity to those society has forgotten.

    To live beautifully, according to this vision, is to draw near to those our culture avoids.

    Yet most of us recoil from this call. We fear the mess of others’ suffering; we prefer the safety of selective kindness. In avoiding the wounded, however, we wound ourselves.

    Protecting our convenience and “social cleanliness,” we become spiritually unclean—numb, self-absorbed, and impoverished in love. The irony is that in rejecting the lowly, we cut ourselves off from the very places where God’s presence burns brightest.

    True compassion requires more than sentiment. It asks for proximity, patience, and vulnerability. It means letting others’ pain interrupt our plans and unsettle our self-sufficiency. This is not moral weakness but divine strength—an imitation of the God who stoops to wash feet.

    Christian wisdom teaches that love for the marginalized is love for Christ Himself. Only when we dare to see and serve the least can we begin to glimpse the beauty of a life shaped by mercy.

  • At the heart of Christian wisdom stands the virtue of mercy—the gracious love that heals what is broken, forgives what is wounded, and restores what is lost. It is not pity from above but compassion that stoops to embrace.

    Mercy is love meeting suffering with tenderness. In Jesus, mercy is not an optional extra or a sentimental ideal; it is the very face of God turned toward humanity. His life shows that kindness, forgiveness, and generosity are not weaknesses, but the highest expressions of divine strength.

    To live mercifully is to participate in God’s reconciling work. Forgiveness releases the hold of resentment; generosity breaks the chains of greed; kindness counteracts cruelty. Every act of mercy brings a measure of healing into a fractured world.

    The Christian is called not only to receive mercy but also to extend it—to live as an instrument of peace in families, workplaces, and communities. Mercy transforms relationships because it refuses to give people what they “deserve” and instead responds with what love commands.

    A humane society cannot endure without mercy at its foundation. Laws and institutions can enforce order, but only mercy can soften hearts. Without it, justice becomes rigid and vengeance replaces restoration.

    A culture without forgiveness collapses under the weight of its own errors, as every wound becomes permanent and every conflict a cycle of retaliation.

    Christian wisdom insists that mercy alone makes us truly human. It bears witness to the truth that we all stand in need of grace, and thus we must extend it freely. To be merciful is to mirror God’s heart—to choose reconciliation over revenge, generosity over judgment. In a world obsessed with retribution and status, mercy offers a new way: the way of love that sustains both the soul and civilization itself.

  • Ritual, liturgy, and discipline stand at the heart of Christian life not as empty forms or inherited habits, but as time-tested means of transformation.

    At their best, these practices are designed to change consciousness—to awaken us from self-centeredness toward awareness of God, of one another, and of the sacred dimension of ordinary life. When we participate in prayer, Eucharist, confession, fasting, or the lighting of a candle, we engage not in superstition or routine, but in an act of spiritual reorientation. Each gesture, word, and silence within Christian worship communicates layers of interconnected meaning: remembrance, surrender, gratitude, and hope.

    The sacraments embody this principle most vividly. Baptism, for example, enacts the dying and rising of the self; it is not only a symbol but a lived pattern of renewal. The Eucharist shapes a consciousness of unity, teaching us to see Christ present in broken bread and in the faces around the table. Such repeated participation changes the way we perceive reality—it trains the heart to recognize grace woven into the fabric of daily existence.

    Liturgy, as the work of the people, functions as a communal discipline of awareness. Through rhythm and repetition, it tunes the believer’s inner life to the divine order.

    The prayers of the hours, the liturgical seasons, and the gestures of bowing, crossing, or kneeling serve to draw body, mind, and spirit into alignment. These movements over time cultivate humility and attentiveness, virtues that extend beyond worship into all dimensions of moral and relational life.

    Yet the true worth of these practices lies in their transformative power. If they deepen compassion, provoke justice, and open our hearts to the presence of God, they fulfill their sacred purpose. If they harden into mere formality or pride, they lose meaning. Because these disciplines have been tested and proven across centuries of Christian experience, they deserve to be entered into with earnestness and reverence. Through such engagement, ritual and liturgy become more than external observance—they become the steady instruments by which the Spirit reshapes the human soul.

  • When the Son of Man came in glory, all nations gathered before Him. He separated the people as a shepherd separates sheep from goats—placing the sheep on His right and the goats on His left.

    To those on His right, He said, “Come, you who My Father blesses. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you. For I was hungry, and you fed Me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. Naked, and you clothed Me. Sick and imprisoned, and you visited Me.”

    The sheep looked at one another in astonishment. “Lord,” they said, “we don’t know what you’re talking about. We rarely went to church. We often slept through sermons and skipped Bible study. We could never make sense of theology or metaphysics. We didn’t sing well or memorize Scripture. We only did what seemed decent—sharing food, caring for a neighbor, showing kindness when we could.”

    The King smiled and answered, “Whatever you did for the least of these—those you helped without thought of reward—you did for Me.”

    Then He turned to those on His left. “Depart from Me,” He said, “for when I was hungry, you offered judgment instead of bread; thirsty, and you passed by. I was lonely, and you stayed comfortable in your circles. Sick and imprisoned, and you offered only pious words.”

    They objected, voices rising in protest. “Lord, we held the right theology. We studied Your Word diligently. We attended Bible study, tithed faithfully, and sang praise songs every Sunday. We led respectable lives—moral, clean, refined. We trusted that Your blood made us whole.”

    But the King replied, “You knew My words but not My heart. You honored Me with your lips, yet your hands remained clean because they rarely touched the suffering. You found comfort in faith, but not love in action.”

    And so the goats went away, bewildered, still clutching their tidy certainties. The sheep entered into joy, still marveling that mercy had found them, wondering how such ordinary acts of kindness could have revealed the face of God.

  • The question of whether Christianity is “necessary” depends on what we mean by necessity.

    If by necessary we mean that one cannot be good, noble, or whole without it, then the answer is clearly no.

    Human beings, regardless of culture or creed, have always found ways to cultivate compassion, justice, and integrity. Moral awareness and empathy flow from the depths of human experience itself, not exclusively from Christian revelation. One can live a moral life, love their neighbor, and pursue goodness without consciously following Jesus or the scriptures.

    Yet “salvation” in the Christian sense asks something different. Salvation is not about purchasing a ticket to heaven or avoiding eternal punishment; it is about being made whole—spiritually integrated, reconciled with oneself, others, and the divine. In this sense, salvation is an interior journey toward fullness of being.

    Christianity, when lived authentically, offers a distinctive and profound path for that journey. It grounds its vision of wholeness in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which reveal the possibility of love stronger than hatred and life more enduring than death.

    Christianity’s genius lies in its layered narrative that discloses meaning through story rather than abstraction; a wisdom tradition that interprets human longing through mercy, rituals that reinforce the narrative and bind the individual to community; sacred writings that continue to speak across centuries.

    To engage this tradition earnestly is to encounter a mirror and a guide. The imaginative world of scripture and sacrament forms a landscape in which the task of becoming whole can unfold with coherence, beauty, and depth.

    Without such a narrative or discipline, the struggle for meaning and integration may become harder—not impossible, but less guided.

    Thus, Christianity is not necessary in an exclusive sense, but it remains a potent system of truth and love. When embraced sincerely, it has the power to transform toward wholeness.

  • If Christianity were to vanish from Western culture, something far greater than a set of doctrines or church institutions would disappear.

    We would lose a powerful, unifying narrative—the story that not only shaped Western civilization but also gave rise to its deepest commitments: human dignity, compassion, justice, and the inviolable worth of the person.

    Christianity did not invent these ideals in isolation, but it gave them enduring form—anchoring them in the conviction that every human being bears the image of God.

    Without that narrative and its wisdom , the idea of human dignity risks becoming an abstraction. When the sacredness of the person no longer derives from something transcendent, the measure of worth begins to depend on utility, power, or sentiment.

    The Christian narrative insists that the weak, the suffering, and the marginalized are not expendable or inferior but reveal the divine presence itself. This moral inversion—placing the last first—has been one of Christianity’s most radical and humane contributions to the moral imagination of the West.

    We would also lose a narrative that equips society to balance freedom with compassion. The Western idea of the free person, endowed with conscience and moral agency, grew alongside the biblical vision of liberation and responsibility.

    The Christian ethos—love your neighbor, forgive your enemy, care for the poor—served as a moral counterweight to tyranny, greed, and indifference. Remove that moral soil, and the ideals of democracy and human rights may wither into mere slogans, detached from the spiritual vision that once sustained them.

    The danger is not only spiritual emptiness but cultural regression. History shows that when societies lose a transcendent vision of the human person, they often descend into new forms of barbarism—where technology amplifies exploitation, where ideologies justify domination, and where the human being becomes a disposable object. Christianity, for all its flaws, has been the West’s most enduring protest against such dehumanization.

    If it vanishes, we do not simply lose a religion. We lose a humane moral compass and the very story that taught us what it means to be truly human.

Project Overview & Synopsis

  • Atheist thinker Sam Harris said, “One of the most significant challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to express their deepest personal concerns—about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering—in ways that are not flagrantly irrational.”

    He’s right. And Christians would be wise to reread the above paragraph.

    The Enlightenment brought science and naturalism, and the church pretended not to notice and, when it did, it retreated to literal readings of scripture and declared itself infallible.

    Along with this came a triumphalistic stance that asserted theology’s status and insights as above those of all other disciplines, science included. 

    All of this cemented various forms of fundamentalism into place.

    Needless to say, these responses were the wrong move. 

    Triumphalistic, fundamentalist theology quickly loses touch with reality, repels (most) listeners, and engages in category errors.

    Many of these errors arise when Christians assume that ancient theological claims are propositional truths, crafted within an Enlightenment mindset of empirical rationality. 

    This misstep distorts the nature of Christianity’s foundational claims, many of which were not intended as simplistic, factual assertions but as expressions of communal meaning using ancient reasoning that relied on metaphor, mythopoesis, and symbolism. 

    If the past two or three centuries of Christian decline have shown anything, it’s that theology must abandon triumphalism and return to its true nature, that of meaning-making. 

    For example, the proper function of theology is not to pronounce on the mechanics of virgin births and resurrected bodies or elaborate on the process of transforming wine and bread into Jesus. 

    Rather, the purpose of theology is to elaborate the meaning of such claims. What is the significance of saying Jesus was virgin-born, resurrected from the dead, and is present in the Eucharist?

    Theology’s strength lies in addressing issues of existential import: human dignity, moral purpose, and the pursuit of goodness.

    A mature theology acknowledges its limits, cedes explanatory claims to science, and focuses on its actual task: illuminating meaning and guiding ethical life in a world science describes but cannot normatively judge.

    Sadly, as a result of this methodological confusion, much of contemporary Christian theology fosters a spirituality that amounts to magical thinking, wish fulfillment, and ego projection.

    To restore credibility, we must turn away from any ideological theology that lacks humility, makes unwarranted claims, and arrogantly demands that reality conform to its narrow views. 

    Any theology that militantly imposes itself on reality without regard for reason, science, and the truth that emerges from lived experience is false.

    What is needed is a return to a theology of meaning that humbly proposes its wisdom for the post-Christian, post-Enlightenment world to consider.

  • A theology of meaning organizes religious beliefs into frameworks that illuminate existential purpose and normative wisdom. It identifies core themes and concepts, articulating their interconnections to reveal the significance of theological claims for human life.

    Returning theology to this focus allows for a rapprochement with naturalism and Enlightenment thinking by affirming the world’s inherent meaning without competing with their domains. 

    This methodology fosters interdisciplinary dialogue, drawing on psychology, sociology, literature, science, and the arts. Such engagement enriches theological inquiry, offering fresh perspectives on questions of purpose and value.

    Above all, it focuses on the normative dimensions of reality, elaborating insights through metaphor, mythopoesis, and illative reasoning, which weave diverse experiences into a unified understanding.

    Additionally, it incorporates historical-critical analysis of texts and traditions to uncover their original meaning (if possible) and relevance to lived experience now.

    We must return to theology as a form of wisdom. Wisdom is not primarily about factual knowledge of the world. Instead, wisdom focuses on praxis, how to live a good and meaningful life. 

    In essence, theology doesn’t explain the world; it offers a way to live in it.

  • In Christian spirituality, the sources of authority are both cohesive and fluid, woven from Scripture, tradition, community, and personal experience.

    While scripture remains the central narrative and guiding story, it is not authoritative in a simplistic or literalist sense. The Bible’s texts are rich and complex, demanding interpretation through reason, context, and collective wisdom. They invite pluralistic readings to a certain extent, reminding us that the idea of the Bible as the sole or ultimate grounding authority is inadequate: scripture always requires interpretive engagement within a living culture and tradition.

    The Christian tradition itself is another vital authority, functioning as a living narrative that spans centuries, cultures, and practices. But tradition is broad, diverse, and far from monolithic. We must be careful not to let our own subtraditions or theological backgrounds narrow our vision or cause us to misinterpret the whole richness of Christian inheritance.

    Community—the gathered church—is a further source of authority. Theology and spiritual life are never practiced in isolation, but always shaped in conversation and relationship with others. Yet Christian history demonstrates that there are no infallible communities: all assemblies are fallible, limited, and in constant need of renewal and humility.

    Ultimately, experience is a primary source of authority in Christian spirituality. Reality itself is the strongest test of any theological claims: when spirituality resists integration with lived experience, it ceases to be vital and risks becoming mere fantasy.

    These sources—scripture, tradition, community, and experience—interweave and correct each other, offering the dynamic tension that produces what is commonly referred to as orthodoxy.

    Ultimately, it is the individual, situated within a community, immersed in scripture and tradition, and attentive to lived experience, who becomes the final, reliable interpreter of Christian authority. This balanced, multifaceted approach guards both the wisdom of the past and the integrity of present engagement, ensuring that faith remains grounded, reasonable, and ever open to the Spirit’s new work.

  • Let’s start by addressing our juvenile notions of divinity.

    God is not a divine Santa-Claus whimsically giving gifts and doing favors for good boys and girls. Nietzsche and the New Atheists deservedly killed this god.

    The real God is a metaphor for an ultimate, transcendent reality that is the source of all existence and the ground of being. God is the power that sustains and animates the universe, imbuing it with meaning, order, and purpose (logos).

    “To apply the term ‘God’ (in the Christian sense) is to say that we perceive a connection between the marvels of the natural world, the moral law, the life of Jesus, the depths of the human personality, our intimations about time, death, and eternity, our experience of human forgiveness and love, and the finest insights of the Christian tradition intuitively. To deny the existence of ‘God’ is to say that we cannot (yet) see such connections.”

    – British Society of Friends, Faith & Practice, 5th Edition

    This necessitates a rejection of artificial dichotomies between the natural and supernatural. (De Lubac) The spiritual and mundane become indistinguishable, and the two collapse into one sacred whole. Attuning our perception to see this is the goal of any spiritual path.

    In this sense, all creation is an emanation of the Divine. All exists in God, and God is in all. Therefore, reality possesses an inherent sacredness. And since all is in God, all that seeks to bracket out God is ultimately nihilistic.

    In this light, forms of panentheism recommend themselves and need to be explored.

    We must renew our understanding of Divinity, aligning it with the best of human learning, science, spiritual imagination, myth, and poetry.

    If our God is a whimsical, irascible, capricious old man above the sky, then our theology is going to be incoherent at best, and bat-shit crazy at worst.

  • The Bible is a set of interconnected stories that weave an overarching web of logos – of meaning.

    To call oneself a Christian is to claim these stories as one’s own – to locate one’s life in some manner in the ongoing narrative(s). To be Western means to have some reference to this set of narratives as well.

    A theology of meaning proceeds from the conviction that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible – it is a collection of stories that mix fact with fiction, poetry and prose, metaphor and symbols.

    The writings are a collection of our spiritual ancestors' understandings of the divine, notions of goodness, human nature, and the meaning and purpose of life. To claim these stories as meaningful and culturally significant, we must not claim them as magical.

    The texts were not written to serve as historical, scientific, or even moral documents (as we understand these disciplines today). Instead, Scripture combines history remembered with history metaphorized, expressing sacred myths primarily as sweeping spiritual statements.

    The writings are stories told from another world whose forms of reasoning and argumentation sharply differed from our own.

    Literal readings, uncritical approaches, and a lack of contextual understanding distort the Bible's message, leading to misuse and misunderstanding. Interpretation is always personal within a communal context. Just as there are no infallible texts, there are no infallible interpreters.

    The scriptures are not a set of magical books. We reject all forms of literalism, proof-texting, fundamentalism, legalism, and Bibliolatry. Such attitudes must be fully purged from our theology.

  • Jesus is the architectonic revelation of Divinity and humanity. In Him and through him, we find meaning and life.

    The core of Christian living is aligning our lives with Jesus's teachings and example.

    Therefore, we must diligently refine our understanding of the historical Jesus to achieve this. This necessitates careful engagement with scholarship in historical Jesus studies, hermeneutics, and textual criticism.

    Further, we must move beyond simplistic interpretations of Jesus as merely a sacrificial victim. Concepts like original sin and substitutionary atonement require critical examination and are problematic and unjustified in most current forms.

    In many ways, we have become overfamiliar with the Galilean and therefore don’t really know him.

    A deeper understanding of Jesus within his historical and cultural context and a rereading of the Gospels with fresh eyes will ultimately enrich our knowledge and practice of the Christian life.

    To achieve this, we must engage with the various forms and trends of Historical Jesus scholarship.

  • The early church’s claim of Jesus’ Resurrection takes various forms. Central to all of them is the conviction that Jesus remained meaningfully present in the community after his death.

    What this means is that the resurrection of Jesus is not merely a historical event to be believed; it is an ongoing reality that invites us to participate in a transformed way of life.

    The first Christians interpreted the resurrection according to Jewish theology: a new way of living and being had entered the world. If the Christian communities had been challenged to show the body or bring out Jesus, they would likely have responded, “Come see how we live.”

    It affirms a life rooted in kenotic love—a love that empties itself, pours itself out, and finds its fulfillment in the well-being of others.

    The resurrection claim was a defiant assertion that imperial power could not extinguish the values Jesus embodied—love, compassion, forgiveness, and justice.

    To claim and participate in the resurrection was to say that Rome could kill us, but they could not ultimately win. To participate in the resurrection was to join the community that was his living body.

    Above all, the Eucharist became a central locus for experiencing Jesus' resurrected presence. These ritualistic meals served as a tangible connection to Jesus, reinforcing his real presence within the community and continuing his ministry of the Open Table.

    The resurrection isn’t so much to be believed as it is to be practiced.

  • The Kingdom of God is not a distant, heavenly ideal but a present reality open to all who embrace love and mercy. It is accessible to spiritually discerning and compassionate people with open hearts and hands.

    The Kingdom is now in the sense that it is an already present alternative reality that we choose to participate in if we adopt its values of love and mercy.

    The 25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel provides a powerful framework for understanding the importance of the works of mercy as central to the fullness of Christian living and as a means of making the Kingdom real.

    Jesus explicitly links entry into the Kingdom with our service to the lowly and needy: the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, and the stranger. This group includes the marginalized, the oppressed, the lonely, and the unwanted. It also consists of the difficult, the annoying, and those with whom we disagree politically, morally, and theologically. 

    Therefore, the works of mercy are not optional or occasional good deeds; they are the required way of life in the Kingdom.

    “If concerned about sexist implications, use any modern translation of 'Kingdom of God,’ but remember it should always have overtones of high treason. Similarly, to say Jesus was Lord meant Caesar was not. Translate “Lord’ with any contemporary expression you deem appropriate, as long as it can get you killed.”

    – John Dominic Crossan

  • Humans, as limited and imperfect beings, inhabit a dynamic, limited world where moral perfection remains an unattainable ideal, though a measure of wholeness is possible, if elusive.

    Christian communities, in all their forms, must vigorously proclaim and defend human dignity and oppose the dehumanizing forces of today’s versions of empire, secularism, and nihilism.

    Salvation is not the promise of some other worldly reward. Rather, it should be understood as wholeness and holistic human flourishing now. As Irenaeus reminds us, the Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

    Salvation, then, reimagines human actualization as individual and collective thriving and wholeness—a dynamic process of self-improvement, learning, and love, becoming fully human.

    Reason and justice reject bloodshed as a means to achieve wholeness; violence does not rectify the world. Thus, much of the traditional theology of original sin and atonement is flawed, demanding a rethink of Jesus’ death as a self-sacrificial act of love.

    We must foster a Christianity that helps people flourish and thrive. Above all, we must foster a theology that focuses on meaning, because meaning and salvation are inherently linked.

    To do so, we must insist on making Jesus’ rejection of moralism, legalism, and literalism – all of which distract us from the meaning of our lives and tempt us to build walls and control others.

    Given our intrinsic social nature, salvation is as personal as communal. It is not a goal to be achieved or a magical moment in time. It is not gained by answering an altar call; instead, it is an ongoing way of being in the world aligned with God and God’s values.

    Our earthly journey ends, and death’s mystery prevails. Yet, wisdom affirms that kenotic love fosters wholeness now, not deferred to some post-mortem salvation.

    What transcends death is our love, generosity, and the lasting effects of our service to others; such endures, though what else persists remains unknown.

  • Humans emerge from nature, and our lives are supported and enmeshed in the ecosystem. At the end of our lives, we (or, at least our physical aspects) return to nature. 

    This natural state does not diminish the truth that each person possesses an ontological value—an inherent dignity and worth grounded in being, unmerited and unearned. We embody profound dignity rooted in our nature.

    The assertion of human dignity is at the heart of the Christian tradition. Following the Jewish lead, Christianity also sees the human person as reflecting divine realities.

    Human dignity constitutes an ontological status, not a moral one. Philosophical and practical reflection reveals humans as highly self-aware animals, endowed with rational intelligence, affectivity, reasoned self-determination, social nature, love, and the capacity to discern meaning and purpose.

    As subjects, not objects, humans embody awareness, action, and unrepeatable identity, resisting instrumentalization and affirming their status as ends in themselves.

    Reflecting on human dignity is a gateway to moral understanding and asserting human rights and responsibilities that form our social order. Our dignity demands certain things from us—how we live, eat, dress, work, have sex, entertain ourselves, and relate to others, both humans and nonhumans, in the world around us.

    Humans experience the capacity to be called by something beyond ourselves, something that both speaks to our nature and is yet embedded there. In moments of quiet honesty, we find ourselves with a given orientation – and that orientation offers itself as an approach to our better selves – it is the voice of our nature calling us toward fulfillment.

    Therefore, morality is not imposed on humanity or revealed by a deity or religious authority. Instead, it is an integral part of our natural identity. Our moral responsibilities and rights arise from our nature (a reasoned, loosely teleological reflection on such) and our relationship to others.

    This vision offers a formal framework for moral reasoning. Our motivation for virtue is a matter of integrity, following the logic of our very being. Our dignity and ontological status provide something of a given orientation.

    Claiming that understanding moral truth is a function of reason doesn’t mean the Christian tradition doesn’t significantly contribute to that task.

    The Christian moral vision serves as a source of metaethics, offering wisdom, not rules, for how to live a good and meaningful life.

  • Jesus’ ministry used eating together at the table as a powerful tool for change.

    The scandal he caused was due to who was invited to the table. He ate with the unwanted, the lowly, and the marginalized, and it freaked out those around him.

    The early Christian communities’ continuation of this practice was expressed in Eucharistic meals of love and acceptance.

    According to the Didache, the earliest Christians attested that Jesus was present during the celebration of the Eucharistic meal.

    In a real way, the Eucharist is a continuation of Jesus’ open table ministry. We must remember that it was an inclusive table of healing, not a dining experience for the self-righteous.

    The Eucharist ties together the church as the body of Jesus, the community of the resurrection, and the presence of the Kingdom in the world.

    Therefore, our Eucharistic celebrations should be frequent and beautiful.

    The sacrament of the Eucharist must be expanded beyond formal church settings. Our dining room tables must be seen as altars, too.

    We should find creative and simple ways to incorporate Eucharistic rituals into our gatherings. And we must move beyond the idea that clergy are necessary to do so.

    Above all, we must be mindful of who we welcome at our table.

  • Christianity spread slowly but unstoppably for one primary reason: Christians created authentic communities of mutual support and inclusion. Please reread the previous sentence.

    The Church didn’t succeed due to theological arguments, and the movement didn’t spread because of miracles. It prevailed because it fed the poor, cared for the sick, welcomed the lonely, and drew in the marginalized.

    We need to prepare for the Post-Church. By this, I mean that we must look beyond institutional structures, denominational affiliations, clerical authority, and traditional church ways.

    Instead, the focus should be on fostering organic communities, embracing sacramental living, and promoting transformative action within local contexts and the broader institutional structures.

    Christianity calls for an outward focus on others.

    It requires us to grapple with the sanctity of all life, the dignity of work, economic justice, human rights, the need to alleviate poverty, ease suffering, and prevent it.

    Any Christian community is obligated to be a prophetic voice challenging injustice and working toward the common good, offering a vision of human flourishing rooted in the values of the Gospels.

    If our spiritual communities aren’t resisting human denigration, if they aren’t standing with the needy and powerless, if they aren’t counter-cultural, then they are failing in their purpose.

    For further practical insights on new ways of being Church and structuring communal life, see Blue Ocean Faith’s 9 Communal Principles and Theological Distinctives, or The Iona Community in Scotland, to see these principles applied.

  • If you think the Good News of Jesus, presented in the gospels, is about getting to heaven, you’re not only missing the point, you’re misreading the texts.

      – N.T. Wright

    The term "Good News " (Evangelium) is so common that it has lost its specific meaning. Christians have heard the term so often that they no longer ask what it means.

    Not surprisingly, there are multiple interpretations, many of them shallow.

    For many, the Good News centers on an atonement theology focused on substitutionary and Jesus as a blood sacrifice, and some form of the Four Spiritual Laws of Evangelical theology.

    However, if you carefully read the New Testament, it’s hard not to notice the practical, social, economic, and relational concerns. The Good News seems to be about a more just, fair, loving world – this world, not some ethereal afterlife. 

    The rapid spread of early Christianity seems unlikely if its core message centered on individual salvation, a concept foreign to Jewish or pagan frameworks and of little concern to them.

    What is the Good News for us today? Jesus taught personal transformation through love, justice, and compassion, centered on kenotic love.

    Transformation occurs when we dedicate ourselves to pursuits worthy of our dignity and worth. Part of the wisdom of the cross is that we become what we give ourselves to.

    Jesus focused little on heaven or moral perfectionism, avoiding tribalism, control, or claims of infallibility. He introduced no new religion, rituals, or structures beyond the open table, emphasizing a faith beyond legalism and ritualism.

    Christianity must question its legalism, literalism, and ceremonialism. Jesus taught that holiness is wholeness, not moralism or theological precision, but a life of love, mercy, and self-generosity.

    The Good News remains controversial, clashing with imperial elites, social orders, and legalistic Pharisees—whom we must love but not emulate. Today’s materialism, conformity, consumerism, militarism, greed, and selfishness mirror those powers, demanding resistance even at personal cost.

  • The question “Is Christianity true?” invites reflection on what truth means and how it applies to a religion that has shaped lives for centuries. 

    Truth, in its simplest form, is correspondence—when a claim aligns with reality. A statement like “the sky is blue” is true if the sky is indeed blue. 

    However, applying this to Christianity—a complex tradition of beliefs, practices, and communities—requires more than just checking facts. Christianity’s truth cannot be reduced to a checklist of doctrines or a historical audit of the Church’s actions. 

    Its truth lies in its capacity to reveal the meaning of life and foster human dignity through a way of living rooted in kenotic love—self-giving love that seeks the flourishing of others.

    Christianity is not merely a philosophy to be debated or a theory to be proven. Reducing it to propositions misses its essence. A creed recited without action is hollow; assent without love is empty. While doctrines guide, they are not the fullness of Christianity’s truth. They point to something more profound—a lived reality that transcends intellectual assent.

    The Church’s history complicates the question. Its mistakes, excesses, and abuses—crusades, corruption, or exclusion—show it is not perfect or wholly good. These failures do not negate Christianity’s truth but remind us that flawed humans live it. 

    Truth is not synonymous with perfection. Instead, Christianity’s truth emerges despite these shortcomings, in moments when its teachings inspire acts of compassion, justice, and reconciliation. The Church’s errors call for humility, not dismissal, as we seek what makes Christianity resonate as true.

    Christianity’s truth lies in its way of life and relationships, which align with human dignity and fulfillment. To say Christianity is true is to say it offers a path to thrive as humans were meant to, through love that empties itself for others. 

    To ask if Christianity is true is to ask if this way of life resonates with reality. Does kenotic love lead to flourishing? Does living for others bring meaning? 

    The answer lies in the countless lives—quietly heroic or boldly transformative—that embody this truth. Christianity is true not because it is perfect but because it shows us how to live fully, loving fiercely, while helping others do the same.