Christianity is not about saving souls!! Christianity is not about confessing that "Jesus is Lord" in order to escape to heaven upon death!!

SALVATION AND JUSTICE ARE NOW...

A few words from Marcus Borg:

Why not emphasize the afterlife as the best reason for becoming a Christian?

When the afterlife is emphasized as the primary reason [for being a Christian], it inevitably turns Christianity into a religion of requirements and rewards: [With this type of thinking] if there is an afterlife, it doesn't seem fair to most people that everybody gets to go there regardless. One must have to do or believe something [in order to experience life after death]. Suddenly we're focusing on requirements and rewards.

Secondly, when the afterlife is emphasized, it tends to divide the world into those who are saved and those who are not. An emphasis on the afterlife also directs our attention to the other world or the next world rather than to transformation within this world. I see transformation within this world to be the primary meaning of the Christian gospel. An invitation to relationship with God is what begins to transform our lives in the here and now, and as that relationship deepens, it also leads us to become concerned about the transformation of society and the world itself.

I see Christianity, and its roots in Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, as very much a this-worldly religion. There's no denial of an afterlife in my saying that. But it's a way of saying that we leave the afterlife up to God. Our task is the transformation of ourselves and of the world this side of death.
--Dr. Marcus Borg
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Wallace: What motivated you to write Reading the Bible Again for the First Time?
Borg: Conflict over the Bible is the single most divisive issue in the church in North America today....

Wallace: Share your views on the "lenses through which people read the Bible."
Borg: There is a "lens of literalism" where the Bible is seen as a divine product that came directly from God and therefore has a divine guarantee. Instead, read the Bible as a collection of ancient documents chronicling the experience of the people of its time, and as a metaphor with a more than factual meaning....

--Dr. Marcus Borg interview.