grid::blog::gospel -rationale

I posted two grid::blog::gospel items yesterday [this one and this one] and feel that perhaps I should explain something of why the gospel is explained in them the way it is.
My own sense of what we need to communicate comes out of a sense that people really are looking for something 'spiritual' but that the way that we have been putting our core message is being heard in ways that we don't necessarily want. People tend to have a pre-suposition that we are about laying rules, oughtage and mustery on them in a way that is likely to be life-denying and distorting of their humanity. Furthermore when we speak we tend to confirm this picture; we talk of sinfulness which is understood widely in body-hating and pleasure denying ways and we talk about punishment which can only carry the connotation of God being 'on our case' and confirm the negative message stereotypes.

I used ancient authors too because of making a connection with the sense that the ancients have something to teach is, which is a part of comntemporary spiritual searching and these quotes I think convey a sense of spiritual reality and of the 'mystical' which I think is important to present.

I've tried to set out my vision for gospel proclamation in a way that starts with goodness, joy, life-affirmation and human potential. I don't believe that peopl are unwilling to recognise 'sin' -they are quite wiling to admit they/we foul up, often big-time. but the baggage of our sin language is just too heavy for the intended communication to handle. We need to show how the gospel really is good news and how it akes sense of the spiritual search that is already going on.

Ideally, of course, we have a different way of putting it over to each individual we meet, having listened to their story and to the spoken and unspoken spiritual search and perhaps even tentatively identified the touches of the Holy Spirit in their life ...