"Theologians have always said that Jesus is divine and human. He lived fully on this earth in the community of his friends and family, but he also never lost contact with his heavenly father. He was shamanic, skilled at being both earthy and visionary. He could be profoundly involved with his fellow humans and yet also metamorphose and be in the company of his visionary forebears.

"European Renaissance theologians said that we, too, could be and should be both human and divine. Deus humanus was their phrase, a divine human. They saw what humans could accomplish in art and technology, and they had the strong spiritual imagination to see how we humans could take our part in the ongoing creation of the world: solving aggression, creating a world community, and cultivating a highly convivial life.

"We have lost that spiritual vision and largely turned the Gospels into a book of moral standards. But now we have the opportunity to reread these documents with a renewed appreciation for the spiritual. We could recover that grand vision of the Renaissance and think more deeply about religion, spirituality, and Jesus' vision.

"We could see in them an affirmation of the joy of human life and relationship. We could see a highly spiritual Jesus who is constantly aware of the father in heaven, and an Epicurean Jesus whose spirituality conflicts in no way with the sheer pleasures of bodily existence and human contact. We could appreciate the Jesus who cooks, dines, converses, enjoys an oil massage, and, in one passage at least, dances. We could emulate Jesus the poet, the one who sees everything as poetry, everything symbolic of deeper spiritual meaning.

"Once you understand that the Gospels do not ask you to compete for the truth or swear allegiance to a creed or institution, you are free to study and think for yourself as you adopt the Jesus vision. You are neither fanatical nor lukewarm in your embrace of that intelligent and fascinating proposal for a new imagination of what human beings can do. There is indeed something saving about it: you can be saved from unconsciousness, meaninglessness, negativity and despair, depression, narcissism, and perfectionism."