Over the past several weeks, with the impending launch of Humanitarian Jesus, I have been asked numerous times what the basic point of the book is all about. The question is not always asked the same way, but when you get down to the bottom of it, the person really wants to know the punch-line in a sentence or two.

If you have ever written anything longer than your name, you probably know trying to reduce your writing to a single sentence is a hard and fairly aggravating effort.  My first thought is always that if I could do that, if I could tell you the story of the book in a sentence, I probably should not have written a book.  My second thought is that my one line answer always seems to be changing, so maybe I really don’t know or maybe I am giving a bad answer most of the time.

But, for the sake of the question and the sanity of the answerer, here is my best shot.

If you read the book and dig into the interviews, my hope is that you will be left with the following two part question:

Part 1: Is the world a better place because I am in it?

Have you ever just stopped and asked yourself in what ways the world – however you want to define it – is better because you are in it?  How are you impacting the people and places around you?What is your influence?

Some days I wake up, drag out of bed, help get the kids ready, drive Maeve to school, work or try to work, go home, eat dinner, watch TV or read, and go to bed.  I would venture to say that a HUGE portion of my life is spent just prolonging and spending my life in ways that might not make the world a better place.

So the first part of the question is just stopping to consider how and why you are spending your life and what influence it is having on the world.

Chances are that if you aren’t influencing the world at all you probably are not eternally influencing the world either.  But it is more than that.

The fact that the world is a better place because you are in it does not necessarily mean it is an eternally better place because you are in it.  Lots of people do lots of good things in lots of good places, but not all those things have an eternal impact.

I believe in eternity and I believe that I have a role to play in it.  I want the world to be a better place because I am in it, but I want that “better” to last for eternity. 

So there it is – the bottom line – read the book, close your eyes and try to answer this apparently simple question:

Is the world a better place because I am in it

and will that “better” last for eternity?