The Christ, especially when twinned with Jesus, is a clear message about universal love and necessary suffering as the divine pattern—starting with the three persons of the Trinity, where God is said to be both endlessly outpouring and self-emptying.

If my underlying thesis in this book is true and Christ is a word for the Big Story Line of history, then the incarnational worldview held maturely is precisely the Good News!

Our full "Christ Option"—and it is indeed a free choice to jump on board—offers us so much that is both good and new—a God who is in total solidarity with all of us at every stage of the journey, and who will

Our full "Christ Option"—and it is indeed a free choice to jump on board—offers us so much that is both good and new—a God who is in total solidarity with all of us at every stage of the journey, and who will get us all to our destination together in love.

In the Franciscan school, God did not need to be paid in order to love and forgive God's own creation for its failures. Love cannot be bought by some "necessary sacrifice"; if it could, it would not and could not work its transformative effects.

But God loves things by becoming them. God loves things by uniting with them, not by excluding them.

God protects us into and through death, just as the Father did with Jesus.

The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world.

Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

I'll say it again: God loves things by becoming them.

The Genesis story of the Judeo—Christian Tradition is really quite extraordinary. It says that we originate from free and overflowing love. This flow will be rediscovered and re-experienced by various imperfect people throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This sets us on a positive and hopeful foundation, which cannot be overstated.