"Many people are picking and choosing what they want to believe about Jesus, discarding the more difficult teachings about sin, repentance or the doctrine of hell and instead merely focusing on the love of Jesus, the forgiveness of Jesus. They are coming up with their own versions of Jesus that may not bear any resemblance to the real Jesus. It's called syncretism--the piecing together of various beliefs, many of them New Age beliefs, and creating their own 'stew' of beliefs about God and Jesus Christ.
The problem with that is that it's really irrelevant what you or I think about Jesus. I am free to believe that Jesus was a magician who used ancient incantations from Egyptian rites and was married to Mary Magdalene and had a family and never rose from the dead and who taught that we're really gods, not sinners who need forgiveness. But that does not mean my beliefs are true. The question is, who is Jesus? Our role ought to be to discover what the evidence tells us about His identity and His teachings and His claims, not to come up with our own concoction of who we wish He were."
Lee Strobel, in an interview published in the November, 2007 edition of Decision magazine.
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