Bishop John Shelby Spong saw it coming. A man of the cloth with a spine of steel, he stood inside the institution and dared to say what most only whispered: Christianity must change or die. Not tweak the margins. Not rebrand the sermon. Change—or become a mausoleum of myth.

Spong wasn’t trying to destroy the church. He was trying to save its soul. He understood that in a world of satellites and stem cells, thunder is no longer proof of God. The sky-father model is dead. The miracles don’t land. The stories have lost their grip—because they were never meant to be read like instruction manuals for the cosmos.

But beneath the debris lies something worth keeping.

At the center is Jesus—not the miracle-working mascot of organized religion, but the man. The teacher. The prophet. The one who dared to say: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s the gospel. Not the virgin birth. Not walking on water. The golden rule. A simple sentence that still holds the weight of moral truth two thousand years later.

Divine or not, that message is eternal.

And yet we still teach children the magic tricks, not the message. We still stuff their heads with angels, demons, talking snakes, and eternal torture—and call it moral education. We use myth as a leash, fear as a lesson. Instead of nurturing conscience, we hand them dogma. Instead of encouraging wonder, we impose answers. It’s not just misguided. It’s dishonest.

Let the rituals stay if they bring comfort. Light candles. Sing hymns. Speak the old words. But don’t lie. Don’t pass off metaphor as fact. Don’t pretend to know what no one knows. And above all—don’t trap children in fear dressed up as faith.

The church of the future, if it wants one, must be a place where belief is not required to belong. Where doubt isn’t shamed but welcomed. Where ethics matter more than creeds. Where science is not the enemy and mystery isn’t forced to wear robes.

This is not about throwing out religion—it’s about growing it up. Keeping what heals. Leaving what harms. Honoring Jesus not with superstition, but with action.

We don’t need a church that tells us what to believe. We need one that helps us live.

A church for the believer and the skeptic. The mystic and the materialist. The child and the adult—both told the truth.

A church for all of us.