The earliest critics of Christianity saw this movement as a threat to the established order. Central to that threat was the way Christians insisted on affirming that all persons have great worth, regardless of their social class, ethnic heritage, or gender. Underlying Christian thinking was a belief that even those at the lowest levels of society can be full participants in a new humanity in which they share in the divine nature through Christ.

What would it mean to replace the judgmental images of God we carry with us with the thought that God sees through our weaknesses and attends to what we can be? What would it mean to think that instead of harping on each failure, God is able to experience delight at the baby steps we take toward developing our talents and showing concern for others?

For many years I have been in churches that reject the idea of female subordination. In these churches there are two general approaches to dealing with biblical texts that might suggest otherwise. One is to argue that the hierarchical way of understanding things misconstrues what biblical authors were saying. Another is to claim that while biblical authors sometimes gave instructions that involved cultural assumptions about the place of women that reflected standard ways of thinking of the time, those assumptions should not be taken as divine requirements for us.

Many churches today do not recognize a tension between being a good Christian and being a patriotic citizen. In fact, many churches have no problem in singing patriotic hymns and pledging allegiance to the country in worship services. These attitudes are in sharp contrast with the declaration of the early church that Christ is Lord, which was understood to mean that Caesar was not. They thought of Christ as the real ruler who would ultimately prevail over earthly rulers who controlled by means of coercive violence.

We’ve all heard them: stories describing strange events that just don’t fit with our usual ways of thinking about what is likely, or even possible. Some of these stories are told in ways that describe what happened as religiously significant, such as claims that God performed a miracle, perhaps in answer to a prayer request. But many accounts of anomalous events lead us to suspect that mysterious powers within the natural order are involved.

In the last couple of years, I rewatched the Star Wars films. I had remembered enjoying these films for their humor and exciting action. But as I watched them again, I found myself uncomfortable with portrayals of violence that I had previously been cheering on. My earlier viewing was framed by the presumption that there were “bad guys” who needed to be resisted and “good guys” who needed to fight back against them. So, I was in favor of violence when it was done by the right people for good reasons.

Christians from the earliest centuries who recognized that some biblical accounts were problematic tended to suggest that some accounts should not be understood literally, but should be taken as conveying allegorical meanings. Modern readers are generally not inclined to take this approach, but does that mean they have to acknowledge that God does terrible things?

 It is a distortion of the New Testament message to understand the significance of Jesus’s resurrection as primarily about what happens when an individual earthly life ends. In the first place, it is about a transformation of this world that has made possible a new kind of life. His followers are called to participate in this new life in a community of faith that is dedicated to bearing witness to the overthrow of an old order and the inauguration of a better one.

 In biblical cultures people could appeal to a widespread assumption that visions were a way to make contact with the spiritual realm. In our culture appropriate reasons would include evidence that verifiable information sometimes comes through visions, along with evidence that this kind of experience happens to people who are not mentally unbalanced. Even if such reasons are not proof, they can provide a basis for trusting what has been experienced.

Some Christians recognize the problem when another religion is using coercive power to promote its goals, but find it less objectionable when their own religion is in charge. But, as the saying goes, power corrupts. When Christians have had such power, they have sometimes used threats and torture against anyone who disagreed about religious dogmas.

Robert Brownson was a professor of New Testament who had taken what he calls a “moderate traditional position” on biblical teaching about same-sex sexuality. But his thinking on the topic was challenged when his eighteen-year-old son revealed that he thought he was gay. As Brownson considered his previous views in relation to a person he knew very well, those views came to seem to him shallow and unhelpful. In the end he wrote a book in which he did a major rethinking of biblical teaching about gender and sexuality.