DOWNLOAD AN EXCERPT OF “CRAFT BREWED JESUS”

Will you stay the course or take a new road? Will you finally address those pesky questions you have for which you’ve only gotten pat answers? Is this the year to research those unexamined doctrines and doubts? If you have been skeptical about any of the following, the forthcoming book “Craft Brewed Jesus” (Spring 2016) may help: 

• How can an all-loving God allow eternal damnation?
• Shouldn’t God’s judgment of evil be restorative not retributive?
• If “Christ is the end of the law” (Rom. 10:4), why does the church preach a law-based life?
• Is the institutional church really the only way to do Christian community?
• Why do some parts of the Bible seem contradictory and confusing?
• Why does the preaching of the Second Coming of Jesus seem wacky?
• Why do I struggle with achieving an intellectually-satisfying faith?

If you never knew the following facts, “Craft Brewed Jesus” may be for you:

• The beliefs/practices of the original Jesus followers contradict much of modern Christianity.
• Jesus did not found a new religion or institutional church.
• The Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian faiths have vastly different theologies of original sin, the atonement, and church authority.
• The New Testament books we have today were not finally established until the 4^th century and not everyone accepted them. A large portion of the New Testament was disputed or rejected for centuries. The most disputed and rejected book was the book of Revelation. Several Christian traditions have always had a different Bible than Western Protestants (e.g., the first-century church, Eastern Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Ethiopian Tewahedo, and Catholic).
• Early Christians respected scripture but viewed it differently than modern Christians do.
• The belief in the ultimate universal reconciliation of humankind with God (Historical Universalism) was the prevailing view of the early church and church fathers.
• The teachings of Jesus are compatible with all faiths as long as the love ethic for God, neighbor, and enemies is paramount.

Visit “Craft Brewed Jesus: How History We Never Knew Taps a Spirituality We Really Need” to see available book excerpts.