Undiluted Quotes

“When we look at the undiluted, radical message of Jesus, we see that it was never about wearing a theological label, subscribing to a particular theological structure, or even about becoming a Christian. The undiluted message of Jesus is, and always has been, a straightforward invitation to follow him, and to learn to be like him.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Instead of concentrating on how we can include the “other,” too often in American Christianity the focus becomes on when, how, and finding the right justifications for excluding the “other.” When I truly begin to appreciate the inclusive nature of Jesus, my heart laments at all the exclusiveness I see and experience. I think of my female friends; women of wisdom, peace, discernment, and character who should be emulated by the rest of us. When I listen and learn from these women, I realize what an amazing leaders they would be in church—but many never will be leaders in that way because they are lacking one thing: male genitals. Wise and godly women have been excluded, not because of a lack of gifting, education, or ability, but because they were born with the wrong private parts. I also think of a man who attended my former church who has an intellectual disability. He was friendly, faithful, and could always be counted on for a good laugh because he had absolutely no filter— yelling out at least six times during each sermon. One time in church my daughter quietly leaned over to tell me she had to go to the bathroom—and, in true form so that everyone heard, he shouted out, “Hey! Pipe it down back there!” It was hilarious. However, our friend has been asked to leave several churches because of his “disruptiveness.” Instead of being loved and embraced for who he is, he has been repeatedly excluded from the people of God because of a disability. We find plenty of other reasons to exclude people. We exclude because people have been divorced, exclude them for not signing on to our 18-page statements of faith, exclude them because of their mode of baptism, exclude them because of their sexual orientation, exclude them for rejecting predestination…we have become a religious culture focused on exclusion of the “other,” instead of following the example of Jesus that focuses on finding ways for the radical inclusion of the “other.” Every day I drive by churches that proudly have “All Are Welcome” plastered across their signs; however, I rarely believe it—and I don’t think others believe it either. Far too often, instead of church being something that exists for the “other,” church becomes something that exists for the “like us” and the “willing to become like us.” And so, Christianity in America is dying.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“We must become people who remove barriers to God, instead of people who are busy installing new ones.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“I continued to find myself in a constant process of attempting to deconstruct values that were cultural and replace them with the legitimate teachings of Jesus - no matter how crazy that made me look to the world or Christians around me.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“When we reorientate our lives on the person and teachings of Jesus, we become free to follow him wherever he leads—even if it is in an opposite direction as where our religious tradition might lead us.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“I slowly began to realize that I had been wasting my time with a hyper-focus on why all the “others” were doing it wrong and began to release the icy grip I had on everything I thought I knew. I finally accepted that I would be much happier if I just focused on myself and taking my own faith journey seriously and stopped worrying so much about everyone else. As soon as I gave up on the idea of changing everyone else and exchanged it for a commitment to change myself, I saw my heart begin to change.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Those who fit in neatly at church, those who are hyper-focused on the “law” are told to repent, but the sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes are invited to sit down for dinner, to share a glass of wine, and to build a friendship.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“If we want to rediscover the radical message of Jesus and experience a reorientation of our lives, we must become willing to let go of whatever else might be getting in the way—even if that’s a religious tradition named after Jesus—and return to the timeless invitation to simply become a follower of him.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“God, the awaited Messiah, the Savior of humanity, has had his message reduced to: Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. Abortion is murder. Gay marriage will destroy us. Don’t forget to vote republican.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Someone once asked Gandhi for a sermon, and his reply was, “My life is my sermon.” In the same way, we see how Jesus chose to live his adult life as perhaps one of his most potent sermons of all. While our contemporary Christian culture places value on the unholy trinity of buildings, bodies, and bucks, Jesus—the wisest teacher who ever lived and central figure in human history—was a homeless man who instead lived his life investing in authentic community with twelve close friends. We see them wrestle with the radical nature of his message together, share meals together, serve the poor and hungry together, and share life’s burdens with one another.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“While it may be tempting to believe that GenXers and Millennials want less of Jesus, I believe the truth is that they want more of him. Those disillusioned with Christian culture simply long for a more authentic portrait of him. They just want the real Jesus.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“The version of Jesus that so many of us live out is something that fits snugly in our lives, existing in near-complete harmony with the culture around us. However, the radical message of Jesus was never intended to fit neatly into any culture—it was countercultural from the very beginning, and remains so today.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“What Jesus teaches in regard to violence is so radical that it almost doesn’t even make sense. When we serve an Americanized version of Jesus, we tend to subconsciously imagine that Jesus would have said something to the effect of, “Don’t use violence unless you really and truly fear that your life may be in danger.” However, that isn’t what he taught—Jesus repeatedly taught that those who actually “follow” him must adopt a position of nonviolent love of enemies. This new ethic of nonviolence was not what people were expecting; the Mosaic Law had established principles that justified retributive violence (much like in our own culture), condoning tit-for-tat responses to injustices. Jesus insists, however, that the Kingdom he came to establish was going to operate by different principles from anything they had experienced previously, and that the use of previously justified violence had no place in this new movement God was starting.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Jesus never wanted us to have canned, prefabricated answers for every issue—he wants us to wrestle with the complexity of his message over and over again, until we are able to hold truth in tandem with tension. Truth must be held humbly next to the same hand that holds our doubt. Jesus, I believe, wants us to embrace the tension of faith and repent of our own need for certainty.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Some might argue that the current generation seems uninterested in Christianity because they want to avoid issues like sin and repentance, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Usually, these services went something like this: an aggressive message on why going to hell would be like putting your face in the fire while listening to AC/DC, and that the solution to hell is to “ask Jesus into your heart.” In this paradigm, Jesus becomes the ticket out of a bad situation, and all that’s required to get your free pass is to “repeat this simple prayer after me.” And, poof…you’re “saved” and now a fully vetted Jesus follower. American Christianity has been poorly marketing Jesus in this way for years. The deep, mysterious, and beautifully difficult message of Jesus becomes diluted to the point that we sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus” or “All to Jesus I Surrender” as we make our way up the aisle—thinking that following Jesus is actually that simple. What’s worse is that often our motivation for “asking Jesus into our hearts” is that we’re petrified of the myriad of ways that Jesus will have us tortured for eternity if we don’t properly pray the “sinner’s prayer” to show him that we love him back. From that night forward, we’re supposed to faithfully attend a “Bible-believing church” and destroy our Guns n’ Roses CDs in order to show that we actually meant it when we prayed it. In American Christianity, we’re often sold this bill of goods that makes following Jesus look relatively easy…as if it were a singular event instead of a radical new lifestyle. Said the magic prayer? Check. Willing to go to church? Check. Going to work really hard to cut back on how much I use the “F word”? Check. The rewards of following this simple, relatively easy checklist of what it means to follow Jesus supposedly has a huge payout. Not only do we get to claim our “get out of hell free” card, but”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Looking back, the one thing that has taken me most by surprise in following Jesus is the level of undiluted difficulty. Sure, as kids we were warned about how hard it was to follow Jesus, but for all the wrong reasons. Following Jesus was going to be hard, so we were led to believe, because people of the world would hate us and want nothing to do with us. The reality I have discovered is that when we live lives that reflect Jesus, most people (with the exception of the religious elite, lovers of power, and lovers of money) actually love us—just like they did with Jesus! However, living a life that makes the gospel attractive is difficult—it means that we must get beyond ourselves, oppose cultural forces that dilute the beauty of the message, and embrace a life that is dedicated to doing undiluted justice. Committing our daily lives to being people who live to make the world a little less broken and a little more reconciled isn’t easy—but it is beautiful.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“I was used to having stones in my hands, but I realized now I needed both hands free to get to work… On me.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“we have become a religious culture focused on exclusion of the “other,” instead of following the example of Jesus that focuses on finding ways for the radical inclusion of the “other.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“However, if we want to rediscover the radical message of Jesus, we must rediscover the radical practice of living in community with others. Because that’s what he did.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Western, individualistic culture invites us to embrace our independence and champion our ability to do this all on our own, but the life of Jesus invites us to embrace a healthy interdependency on others. The radical message of Jesus invites us to express and wrestle with our faith in a lifestyle of unbroken community with others. In Western culture however, living in community often is against the flow of how our society works. As culture has morphed deeper and deeper into a strictly individualistic-oriented culture, we now find ourselves in a world where it is not uncommon to not even know the name of our neighbors in the house next to us. What’s even scarier is that we might not even know the person sitting in the church pew next to us.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“From our earliest years, American culture reinforces the notion that we are all completely independent individuals. Sometimes we call it “personal responsibility” and other times we call it “rugged individualism,” which, in and of themselves, are not entirely negative concepts. Taken too far however, these cultural concepts lead us to believe we really are the captains of our own ship, that our primary responsibility is to our own selves, and that we can do this all on our own.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Some might argue that the current generation seems uninterested in Christianity because they want to avoid issues like sin and repentance, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him. People are tired of being fed a watered-down version of Jesus. People are tired of an American Jesus. They want something that’s more…”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“As Christians in America, we’re often lulled into the false belief that somehow we have a monopoly on the pure and undiluted version of the message of Jesus. Unfortunately, we don’t. Christianity by nature has a tendency to blend in and become obscured by the cultural influences that surround it—such has been the case for nearly 2,000 years of Christian history.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“The undiluted Jesus is someone who invites us to actually follow him—to do the things that he did—and to be willing to set aside anything in our lives that gets in the way of that central calling. It’s a calling for us to simply look like Jesus. To let the dead bury the dead. To embrace an uncertain future. To pick up a cross. If we want to rediscover the radical message of Jesus, we must stop diluting it by focusing on power, peace of mind, and prosperity. Instead, we must embrace the truly radical message that invites us to find life through laying it down. Ironically—if we do this—we’ll actually find the life we’re looking for, unfamiliar as it may be.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Like the religious elite of Jesus’ time, we are destined for a life of being barrier makers and line drawers if we insist on holding on to a culturally diluted version of Jesus. However, when we rediscover the radical message of Jesus—a message that consistently, from beginning to end pronounced inclusion for the excluded, and love for the outcast—we rediscover a divine invitation to become the people who flip the tables, erase the lines, and remove barriers. We are invited to join Jesus in practicing undiluted inclusion of the “other.” Let’s stop being the religious elites who focus on when and how to keep people out, and instead endeavor to be the loving, inclusive followers of Jesus who unrelentingly invite the outsider to come in.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“Our ability to most fully experience the divine is directly linked to our ability to most fully experience relationships with other human beings.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“The early Christians didn’t have megachurches where people watched a pastor with a $250,000 salary preach via a Jumbotron from a satellite campus; they didn’t “worship” beside people they’d seen several times before but never actually met, and they didn’t preach a hyper-capitalistic, American version of Christianity. The first Christians lived in the context of community and wrestled with an emerging theology among a tight-knit group of friends—friends who shared every aspect of their lives together, including their wealth. They did life together, in every respect. The undiluted version looked a lot different from American versions of Christianity. Western, individualistic culture invites us to embrace our independence and champion our ability to do this all on our own, but the life of Jesus invites us to embrace a healthy interdependency on others. The radical message of Jesus invites us to express and wrestle with our faith in a lifestyle of unbroken community with others. In Western culture however, living in community often is against the flow of how our society works. As culture has morphed deeper and deeper into a strictly individualistic-oriented culture, we now find ourselves in a world where it is not uncommon to not even know the name of our neighbors in the house next to us. What’s even scarier is that we might not even know the person sitting in the church pew next to us.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus

“the transformational aspect of Jesus’ message starts right here—with you and me.”
― Benjamin L. Corey, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus