Christians are steeped in a language so distorted that it has become a stumbling block to the religion, argues Marcus Borg in this provocative study. The sacred texts and stories in which those words are embedded have been narrowed by a modern framework for Christianity that mistakenly emphasizes sin, forgiveness, and the afterlife. Employing the "historical-metaphorical" method for understanding Christian language, Borg takes aim at the contemporary usage of such words as "redemption," "savior," and "sacrifice," and restores the original sense of these words of power and transformation.