a God by any other name

I recently read a curious interview online. The gist was someone claiming that the typical understanding/interpretation/explanation of salvation is out of sync with modern times and not well-supported by the Bible on close examination. To the contrary, he stipulated that salvation isn't primarily about sin or defining who is accepted by God but rather about participating in the ongoing redemption of creation at large. He also specifically mentioned that the usual way of framing the concept of salvation is too exclusionary and narrow for a pluralistic society of people whose expressions about good and evil only differ superficially; underneath, everybody who loves his or her neighbor believes the same broad ideas. In any case a God who demands human sacrifice for unholiness is too vengeful to be consistent with the suffering, victimized Christ who identified with the downtrodden.

I almost don't know where to begin dissecting the viewpoint of Christianity in the preceding paragraph.

• In point of fact it isn't as revolutionary or new as some would say. Theologically liberal and culturally-muted sects of Christianity have been around just as long as any other part of the Christian movement. Some Christians always have been hesitant to accept the details at "face value" and opted to mix and match the "general outline" (i.e. the bits they like) of the faith with a variety of external notions.
  
• I've written before about cultural accommodation through appeasement - the practice of deemphasizing or totally removing culturally-foreign ideas, like truth and sin and hell and blood, until the remainder isn't Christianity in any practical sense. In this case one of the rejected ideas appears to be God Himself, or more specifically the God who quite explicitly in the Bible is exacting in both His moral laws and the highly-serious methods by which guilt is remedied and the divine relationship restored. It may be true that too many Christians are too focused on that aspect of Him, but that's still distinct from veering to the opposite extreme of pretending it isn't there.
  
• At another time I wrote about how nonsensical it becomes when someone tries to say that nobody's spiritual beliefs are ever wrong. My point is that if the spiritual realm is real, then what we have are real disagreements about real things. If your one true god is an impersonal unity of the universe then my God cannot also be your god because we're describing contradictory beings. If you believe in multiple gods of roughly equal "rank" then how silly is it to suppose that my God consists of the same divine Presence as all of yours? (Yeah, yeah, Christianity has a Trinity, but Jesus also said "the Father and I are one".) Maybe one's motivation for reducing all religions to one unified supernatural path is the worry that when there are too many religions someone can't rationally believe in one of them. I offered some thoughts on that in the post linked in the previous sentence.
  
• At yet other times, I addressed the question of words failing to express all of God, as well as some straightforward reasons for why there's no such thing as Christianity without doctrine. It's certainly a truism that words and doctrinal statements and formal pronouncements aren't the entirety of Christianity, and right actions and motivations matter. But it's still overreaching to conclude either words are useless or your thoughts are pointless. Sure, we have contact with a resurrected God and we are called to imitate Him and cause others to imitate Him. How shall we do that without describing Him or studying His words?
• Lastly, a serious obstacle to a radical reinterpretation of salvation is the manner that Jesus lived and died. Assume not that He came to atone and assure a blissful afterlife, and instead He came solely to be an in-the-flesh example and teacher of a better human lifestyle that heals and loves not damages and hates. Why didn't He start His ministry sooner? Why didn't He do as His followers advised and "lay low" somewhere away from Jerusalem, where He could train disciples without interference? Why did He talk so literally about His blood and body at Supper?