Finding the Gospel is a book about changing one’s mind. Or, more accurately, it is a book about how I have changed my mind about some portions of the Christian faith—especially its central message. Apparently, I am not the only one caught up in this rethinking endeavor. Some people suggest Christianity itself is undergoing one of its every 500-year “rummage sales” when all manner of doctrines and practices are dragged out to the driveway for disposal. I don’t know if that’s true—and I will be long dead before the historians settle the question—but what I do know is that as I enter the fourth quarter of my life, my own faith doesn’t look like it did in the first quarter, or, for that matter, in any previous quarter. It is still a work in progress. Perhaps it is so for you, too. If so, I’d like for this book to be my way of sharing notes with you.

There’s one thing I learned very soon in my process: Change is hard work. Intellectually and emotionally, it is hard work. If we were talking about something less emotionally charged—such as changing from cable to satellite TV—it would be so much simpler. But when the change has to do with what you think about God and everything south thereof, the stakes are much higher.