It seems as though we Christians have developed a nasty habit of leading people into a radical encounter with God's unconditional love, forgiveness, acceptance, and union only to spend the ensuing years teaching them how to become close to God to earn his approval.

So many Christians today see a system in which they cannot measure up and so they feel unworthy. The church seems to have failed them.

In a civilization that glorifies success and happiness and is blind to the sufferings of others, people's eyes can be opened to the truth if they remember that at the centre of the Christian faith stands an unsuccessful, tormented Christ, dying in forsakenness.

I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus provided reasons to believe through many different means, the most dramatic of which were miracles done in public as authentication.

When Christianity was born, it was the only religion on the planet that had no sacred objects, no sacred persons, and no sacred spaces.'8 Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship.19 The Christian faith was born in homes, out in courtyards, and along roadsides.20

The message of the steeple is one that contradicts the message of the New Testament. Christians do not have to reach into the heavens to find God. He is here! With the coming of Immanuel, God is with us (see Matthew 1:23). And with His resurrection, we have an indwelling Lord. The steeple defies these realities.

For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.

From that moment on, no Christian can ever say one form of prayer is as good as another or one religion is as good as another.

The question had become not "What does Jesus say?" but "What does the Church say?" This question is still being asked today. Sad but true: Some Christians want to be slaves. It is easier to let others make decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law.

The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment. Small wonder that the late spiritual giant Basil Hume of London, England, claimed that Christians find it easier to believe that God exists than that God loves them.

The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.