From the Foreword to A Place to Breathe

This is the book I wish I had read many years ago. As a boy I heard hundreds of sermons, most of them excellent, I’m sure. But I remember being impatient with most of them, because I wanted the preacher to cut out all the stories and flowery language, and just tell me what to do. I wanted the specific plan of action that resulted from the narratives. I have lived with that want for a long time... One of my basic questions was: how do you put it all together? I read a number of theologians, including Tillich, Barth, Pannenberg, Teilhard, Bonhoeffer, Neibuhr, and Rahner. All were helpful, but all brought heavy philosophical concepts to their articulation of the faith. What I wanted to know was less intellectual than the questions they addressed: how do you put it all together at the practical, daily, lived level? Do you really need all the philosophical background to be an intelligent and thoughtful Christian? Tillich wrote of the theological circle in which theology offered answers to questions raised by philosophers, but I was no philosopher, nor was any other Christian I knew. Were our questions worthwhile? Is the Christian faith primarily explanatory, a response to philosophical questions? What if I am not asking the “right” questions? This book is my answer to those questions. Given the Bible stories, the history of the church, and the great body of dogma and doctrine that has developed over the centuries, what does a person of faith do? And how does such a person put it all together as a practical, useful way of thinking about and acting out the Christian life? I share my answer in print, certainly not as any kind of authoritative final word, but in a sense as an invitation to explore, to question, to put together the reader's own version. Each reader will have different specific questions and issues, and so will come to a different overall synthesis, but my experience with my fine teachers and with their generosity leads me to believe that others may have the same questions I had, and that my sharing – in this book – will be helpful to them as my teachers' generous sharing was to me.