The Heart of Christianity

At the current phase of my faith journey, I really feel I need to change my paradigm of reading the bible and following my God, seeing the examples in the churches I encountered in the past. Taking the Bible verses out of context or, literally, word for word as some magical chant is not working for me anymore. It leads to a rigid way of believing that block people from seeing people first but hold onto religious teachings.

This book,   came into my view quite timely. It clearly demonstrated the two paradigms that traditional and liberal Christianity take.

Traditional Paradigm

- Bible is literal, divine product, every word is out of God.

- Everything recorded in the Bible actually happened.

- "Faith" is believing in the facts recorded in the Bible, especially those that are hard to believe.

- God is the creator far away "out there".

- God is a God of "requirement and reward", "lawgiver and judge". Being a Christian means meeting those requirements.

- Jesus is the literal "son" of God. The purpose of him coming into the world is to die on the cross for our sins.

- "Sin" is breaking the laws of God. The solution is to "repent".

- "Salvation" is going to heaven after death, if believing in God, or else going to hell.

- Religion is the only path to salvation, absolute truth.

Emerging Paradigm

- Bible is historical, written by people who experienced God, and to the community in the past. Thus, we need to consider the historical context while reading the bible.

- Some language of the Bible is metaphorical. We need to ask "what does this story tell" instead of only focus on "does that really happen?"


- "Faith" is trusting God in a relaxing way, not worry, love God, and love the people God loves.

- God is here and everywhere.

- God is a God of love and justice. Being a Christian means seeing that we are already loved unconditionally, and we are invited to go on a path of transformation.

- Jesus represents who God is. His purpose coming into the world is to heal, to show love, mercy, and justice, to initiate the social movements among the Jewish people. He died because of what he did.

- "Sin" is a status of being separated from God.

- "Salvation" is to have a way back to God in this life, a life of transformation.

- Religion is human creation in response to the experiences of the sacred.

Also, this book helped me established some understanding of certain Biblical truths that I learned the wrong way in the past and confirmed other good ones.

- "Denying yourself" and "take up the cross" is not about oppressing legitimate desires. It's about to abandon the old identity and get transformed into a new one.


- "Crucified with Christ" and "resurrect with Christ" is not about the newly formed lifestyle in the church. It's about the realization that we can live with God and free from the bondage of "being aware of how the world views us" (constantly worrying if I'm good enough, too little recognition or too much recognition from the world, etc)\

- The goal of spiritual practices such as worshiping, singing, and a sermon is to open our hearts to God, and thus get nourished by God, God's words, and God's people.


- Church. We join a church to immerse in an environment and get collective transformation, to practice compassion and care together, and it will help us to build Christian characteristics.

- Prayer. Prayer is about spending time with God. It can be reading God's words, telling God our days, and telling God our wishes and hopes, and praying for others is about loving others. We are not"asking God to give us things".

- Charity. We practice charity as a way to cultivate compassion towards to poor so that we understand better how the system affected the life of the poor.