The Highway

Nearly three years of work, patience and endurance has culminated in a small trade paperback that now joins the many illustrious authors in my bookcase. To even begin to compare it to the other occupants of my small library would be ludicrous . . . it was never its intent. To say that it is a masterpiece that will go down in history as a source of insight and inspiration for generations to come would be equally so. It is a book, a simple voice commenting on the increasingly complex...
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Nearly three years of work, patience and endurance has culminated in a small trade paperback that now joins the many illustrious authors in my bookcase. To even begin to compare it to the other occupants of my small library would be ludicrous . . . it was never its intent. To say that it is a masterpiece that will go down in history as a source of insight and inspiration for generations to come would be equally so. It is a book, a simple voice commenting on the increasingly complex world in which we live. It asks Christianity to examine itself, what it has become in the lives of ordinary people just trying to do the right thing. It reflects on hard choices we all face in bringing the teachings of a first century carpenter from Galilee into the present day.

The Highway: Recollections of a 21st Century Heretic is finally in print, and I held the pen.

I was not out to try to destroy a religion. I was not out to tell people how to live. I simply offered my opinion, my humble opinion, as a man apart. I share my story, my journey along with the stories of those around me, how each of us tried to fit in, make it work. I asked a religion where the love of its founder had gone, challenged it to convince me I was lost, discovered instead a conditional belief system that plays on the worst of our fears. It has closed itself off to an ever advancing world, reducing all we can experience to a book that we had to be told how to read. It tries to mold everything around it to fit its narrow vision. It is not afraid to use whatever means at its disposal to force us to obey, and for those of us who cannot or will not surrender to its will: "Its my way or the highway, the choice is yours."

Is this God's "plan?"

Is this what Jesus intended Christianity to be?

Is this our sole purpose in life, to surrender all we have to an organization that tells us it has the only answers, the only keys?

The Highway asks these and much more. It marks a journey on a road Christianity does not own or control, marks a stand against those who would place themselves between each of us and our Maker. It invites us to answer the most profound questions of life, and dares to suggest that the answers have always been right under our noses. . . all we have to do is look.

Mark R. Braun