"The idea of a goal, an ultimate aim, calling us to a hard road of self-denial has been quietly removed from the record."

Walt Mueller:

I've been reading through N.T. Wright's After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. Wright states a compelling case for a more proper way to approach our lives as Christians here in the midst of our broken world. . . a way more proper than 1) the belief that Christianity is all about conformity to a set of rules (the Pharisees!), or 2) the more widespread contemporary error that Christianity is all about following a Jesus who "accepted people as they were, and urged them to discover their real identity, and to be true to that essence." Wright goes on to say, "The idea of a goal, an ultimate aim, calling us to a hard road of self-denial - the idea, in other words, that Jesus of Nazareth meant what he said when he spoke of people taking up their cross to follow him! - has been quietly removed from the record, no only of secular Western life but also, extraordinarily, of a fair amount of Christian discourse." I couldn't help but reflect on these words from N.T. Wright as I read the reports on Rob Bell and Senator Portman.

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