After listening to Tony Jones speak about his new book, Did God Kill Jesus on Homebrewed Christianity, I found myself being pushed into new territory in my faith. Partly because I probably am one of those progressive Christians who wants to sanitize the faith and take the blood out of it.

I think there’s more to it, though.

I’m no fan of the cross, particularly as the Christian symbol of our faith. The short reason is it seems we haven’t redeemed the cross. We haven’t beaten the sword into a ploughshare; instead we’ve taken it up as a different kind of sword. But I’ve written about this before.

More compelling to me is the thought that as much as we need to change that present truth, we can’t run from our awful past. We need to be aware of it, to know it. So that we can work through it.

After all, aren’t we in the redemption business?