“I like you. You’re a Christian . . . but you’re not a jerk!”

As a pastor and author, I often hear these sentiments from people in my travels, and although I’d love to simply agree with them, I know that isn’t the primary story they’re telling me. They’re not paying me a compliment as much as they’re revealing their pain. They are letting me know they’ve been injured, that professed people of faith have often been the source of that injury—and they want me to do something about it.

Much of what people tell me about their experience of religion grieves me, frustrates me, and sometimes even angers me. Every day, I wake up trying to be a translator between wounded human beings and those who either purposefully or unintentionally hurt them, especially when they do so in the name of a God who is supposedly love.

I imagine you’ve read a lot of books in your life and I wasn’t interested in writing one you’ve already read. You and the world don’t need another thoughtful exploration of progressive Christianity or another inspirational missive about reclaiming Jesus for a new generation.

As a pastor who has spent nearly three decades teaching, studying, dissecting, deconstructing, and reconstructing the Christian faith, I’ve felt perennially burdened to write the book I’ve never read, one that rests on a single, elemental truth: Faith in a supernatural being should make you a better human being.

If God is love and if you’re emulating that God, then you should be loving. If you claim a religious worldview or have spiritual aspirations, those should yield more compassion, not less; more decency, not less; more generosity, not less. If not, what’s the point of having them?

This book is both observation and confession, sometimes looking out a window and sometimes into the mirror. It’s about admitting the prevalent tension between the love I inherently claim solidarity with as a follower of Jesus, and the lack of love I’m often capable of living with. I imagine you understand that tension. Maybe we could step into the tension together.

I’d love for you to take this journey with me and see where you end up, which doesn’t need to be in aligning with me theologically or agreeing with me politically or sharing my religious worldview. I’d just like you to dig a little deeper into your own reservoirs of empathy and see what that might yield. I’m hoping that journey will be challenging, humorous, uncomfortable, and messy.

I think your relationships are worth it.

I think your well-being is worth it.

I think the Church is worth it.

I think a world that could use a little more kindness is worth it, too. What do you say?

Let’s not be jerks, together.