A Farewell to Mars

"A preacher of peace was executed for his revolutionary ideas. But have the ideas of Jesus somehow become less radical since a Roman governor sentenced him to crucifixion during Passover in the spring of AD 30? No. Two thousand years have not made the ideas taught by Jesus of Nazareth any less radical than those that so threatened Pontius Pilate and the imperial ideology he was aligned with. What has happened over the ensuing two millennia is that we who confess Christ have deftly (and mostly unconsciously) crafted a religion that neatly separates the Jesus who died on the cross for the radical ideas he preached—ideas that Jesus foresaw would lead to his crucifixion."

Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars