The gospel proceeds on the basis of universal depravity; the gospel assimilates all varieties of human nature into one common experience of guilt and need and helplessness; and this is just what you do not like about it.

[Per] the gospel of Mark, the oldest surviving gospel? Attaining essentially its final form probably as late as 90 CE but containing core material dating possibly as early as 70 CE, it omits, as we have seen, almost the entire traditional biography of Jesus, beginning the story with John the Baptist giving Jesus a bath, and ending – in the oldest manuscripts – with women running frightened from the empty tomb.

No matter where the skeptical thought originates, or how it gets access to our minds, we see at once that it flattens the level of life and every aspiration. It makes our character less vigorous. The gospel is not simply a philosophy of religion or law of life, but it is an apocalypse, showing the heavens to our thought, and so bringing its spiritual benedictions to every heart and life.

The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men.

[The Gospel of Mary is an] intriguing glimpse into a kind of Christianity lost for almost fifteen hundred years...[it] presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects His suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is—a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women's leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority. All written in the name of a woman.

We are called upon at the beginning of the twentieth century to decide the question propounded in the Sermon on the Mount, as to whether we will worship God or Mammon. The present day is a Mammon-worshipping age. Socialism proposes to dethrone the brute-god Mammon and to lift humanity into its place. I beg to submit, in this very imperfect fashion, the resolution on the paper, merely promising that the last has not been heard of the Socialist movement either in the country or on the floor of this House, but that, just as sure as Radicalism democratised the system of government politically in the last century, so will socialism democratise the country industrially during the century upon which we just entered.

The whole economic system of Capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications. ... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship of Mammon has become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised “mammonism” is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions. Economic materialism formulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream.

I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

The Gospel is the freshest and most original thing in the world, while the tone of modern intellectualism, with all its culture, is at bottom commonplace and middle aged.

The generous wish to share with all what is precious, to spread broadcast priceless truths, to shut out none from the illumination of true knowledge, has resulted in a zeal without discretion that has vulgarised Christianity, and has presented its teachings in a form that often repels the heart and alienates the intellect. The command to “preach the gospel to every creature” – though admittedly by doubtful authenticity – has been interpreted as forbidding the teaching of Gnosis to a few, and has apparently erased the less popular saying of the same Great Teacher “Give not that is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”

"Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that’s what he has the Father say. “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” ...

Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they’ll be able to have a relationship with God...

But there’s more. Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them "the gospel" does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God will have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell... A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony... if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, acceptable, awful reality... sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting the gospel is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn’t safe, loving, or good. It doesn’t make sense, it can’t be reconciled, and so they say no... God creates, because the endless joy and peace and shared life at the heart of this God knows no other way. Jesus invites us into THAT relationship, the one at the center of the universe... so when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will “get into heaven,” that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that. (excerpts all from chapter 7)"

I think part of the problem is we're in this consumer mentality as a church where we have the idea that our job is to build as big of a church as we possibly can. And if we get into that idea and fall into that trap, then we say then we can't say anything that's going to offend people. Why, if we preach that homosexuality is an abomination to God, we better not preach that because that's going to offend the gays or people who know gay people. If we tell people what the Bible says, that every other religion in the world is wrong: Islam is wrong! It is a heresy from the pit of Hell. Mormonism is wrong! It is a heresy from the pit of Hell. Judaism, you can't be saved being a Jew, you know who said that by the way? The three greatest Jews in the New Testament: Peter, Paul, and Jesus Christ. They all said Judaism won't do it, it's faith in Jesus Christ.

The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class- leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families, — sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers, — leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other — devils dressed in angels’ robes, a

As he was rummaging about, a book called ‘The Gospels’ fell into his hands. ” ‘The Gospels’ is the name given there to a book written once upon a time by a certain Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John about Jesus Christ, a Messenger from our Endlessness to that planet. “This book is widely circulated among the three-centered beings there who nominally exist according to the indications of this Messenger. “And when this ‘writer’ happened to come across that book, the notion suddenly popped into his head: ‘Why shouldn’t I also write a gospel?’ “According to certain investigations that I had to make for quite different needs of mine, he must then have deliberated as follows: ‘Am I any worse than those ancient barbarians, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Johnnie? ‘At least I am more cultured than they were, and I can certainly write a much better gospel for my contemporaries. ‘What is more, a gospel is the very thing that is needed just now, because the “English” and “Americans” have a great weakness for this book, and the rate of exchange of their pounds and dollars is “not half bad” just now.