The Gospel Isn’t Broken.

Many people in progressive Christianity claim the "good news" of the Gospel isn't good news at all. They're wrong- and here's why.

If you’ve ever wrestled with your faith, you’ve probably crossed paths with progressive Christianity—a belief system that questions some of the most foundational truths of Scripture.

I first encountered it a decade ago when I was deconstructing. Hurting, angry, and looking for something that felt more loving, I picked up a book called A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren. At the time, I didn’t realize how dangerous its ideas would be.

One thing stood out to me as I read his book cover to cover.

McLaren suggests that the “good news” isn’t really good at all—that the cross is a violent, cosmic act of abuse. He reframes substitutionary atonement as a grotesque story of divine abandonment.

But in doing so, he trades the mystery of mercy for the logic of human offense. And that’s where the damage begins.

To be fair to Brian, there has been a lot of damage done in the Christian Church in the name of evangelism. We’ve flattened the story of Jesus, simplified the theology, written a six line narrative on little tracts and bumper stickers, and told people they should just say the sinners prayer and ask Jesus into their heart and then you’re all fixed!

It’s no wonder people have felt disillusioned and confused.

But that’s where my understanding of Brian and his book ends. Because the damage that Progressive Christianity is doing to many many hurting followers of Jesus is hard to understate.

I wish I could burn every copy of this book because of how heretical and confusing it is.

So how do I respond to people who say the gospel isn’t really good news at all? Having been in their shoes at one point in my life, I hope this explanation helps.

The gospel is the most breathtaking story in all of history.

And to understand it as God intends, we must put aside our postmodern viewpoint and first ask ourselves, what do we believe about life and God?

First, God is the only uncreated being. Everything else has had a beginning. Science confirms this even with their theory of the big bang. Something began. God is the creative intelligent designer of everything we see and understand, and many things we cannot see or understand.

Second, God is unchanging. He doesn’t waffle or waver or stress out or change His mind. He is steadfast, true, perfect, just, loving, and does not change. This is really hard for us to grasp deeply because everything around us does in fact change.

Third, we only understand what God has revealed to us. We are made in the image of God, created to be worshippers in fellowship with our Creator. That is how we are made.

All of this is deeply woven into Torah, the first five books of the Bible and the first revelation of God to us human beings.

Imagine you’re a gardener. You choose the seeds, design the layout, water the plants, defend them from pests. Do your tomatoes get a vote in how much sun they get? Do your cucumbers weigh in on harvest timing?

Of course not. They’re part of your creation, under your care.

They don’t know the sun path, your family needs, the condition of the dirt, the cost to garden, the types of pests that are around. They know none of this. You the gardener knows.

In this analogy we are the plants and God is the gardener. We have absolutely ZERO rights to know or understand anything. At face value, this probably doesn’t feel good to hear. It pushes on our pride and our ego.

But it is true. We are created beings, created by an uncreated, immutable, perfect, Holy God. He is in charge. We are not.

Thankfully, that’s just the start of the story. And that truth doesn’t end there.

God, the gardener is full of love. Steadfast love. He absolutely adores us. Just like if we were gardeners and adore our plants.

• We care for them.

• We give the tomatoes wires to rest on.

• We til the soil.

• We water the plants.

This is the nature of God. Steadfast unchanging love. Knowing this, being a created being designed to worship Him isn’t so scary right? Because we know He is unchanging in His love.

But then… we must contend with something else about God. He is holy & just. He demands perfection, not because He is prideful, but because He is perfect and knows that perfection is well…perfect. It’s the way things should be. No sorrow. No pain. No sin. No violence. No unjustness. No revenge.

Think about what it would be to live in a world without sin (it’s hard to do). People try to paint God’s justice as scary and terrible, but all of us would give anything to live in a world that is perfect right? We cannot strip God of His Holiness. Inside of us all is an innate understanding of morality. Imagine a world where rapists and murderers weren’t punished? None of us want a world like this.

And that brings us to a very big problem.

We, as created beings given free will (a precondition for us to be able to voluntarily love and worship our Creator), decided we knew better. Pride. The most original and ancient of sins. The one sin that pulls us away from God more than any other.

Now we are separated from God. The gardener and His garden are not able to be together. God’s perfection demands holiness. And we are not holy. Even just getting close to God will burn us up into ash.

So what does God do? This is the part I don’t think people truly understand.

God becomes a created being—Jesus—and binds Himself in a body forever, to be reconciled to the humans He loves.

The incarnation of Jesus is the most mind blowing thing the Bible has ever said.

Think about it in the analogy. You are a gardener with your plants. And the only way to save your garden, is for you to become a plant yourself. Think about what you’d be giving up to become a plant?! To live in the dirt. Forgo your intelligence. Subject yourself to pests. Shed yourself of your humanity and privilege of being the highest form of creation. Live forever as one of the lowest.

The analogy falls apart eventually because trying to explain what lengths God went to to save us from ourselves, is just incredible.

God became a helpless baby who had to learn how to walk and talk. He sent Himself to Earth, subjected Himself to a created body FOREVER, so that He Himself could take the righteous wrath of Holiness and bring justice for sin. He endured every pain and suffering we endure, and then suffered death at the hands of His created beings.

The intersection of mercy and justice lives at the cross of Jesus Christ.

That is the gospel. And when Jesus rose again, defeated death, and ascended into heaven to sit at the righthand of the Father, He made a way for every single created being to be reconciled to their Creator without sacrificing justice.

So now there is a way for us to be redeemed and restored into the original plan for our creation. To be worshippers and in fellowship with a perfect God. That is what we were created to do, and now we can. Forever.

It’s indescribable.

I believe one of the reasons why people like Brian (and others) sink into the “it’s not good news” theory is because of pride.

We have to go back to the beginning of the story. We are created beings. We do not get to tell an uncreated, immutable, Holy God how things should be. The plant doesn’t tell you how to run your garden, nor does it have any idea the complexities you must contend with.

In a world where it’s all about self, what works for me, we are gods of our own making, pride is the sin that keeps us from evening getting to the beginning of the gospel message.

Nothing has changed in 6000 years.

For me, it was my own sin and suffering that finally broke my pride. Once humbled, I began to see the lengths that God went to to bring me back to Him, and I cannot keep quiet at how beautiful and breathtaking His love is for me. That fellowship with me would be worth Him coming to Earth in the form of a baby.

You don’t have to rewrite or twist the Gospel to make it good news. When you understand what God has done, you realize it is the best news we could ever hear.

That kind of love is what every single human hopes to have, and we have it. If we’re willing to set aside our ego and our pride and see what the gospel story really means.

xx