From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian D. McLaren:
We’re following the best Christian tradition of going back to Jesus and the Scriptures, so our quest for a new kind of Christianity is, in fact, a most conservative quest. In our return to our roots, however, we’re not writing off all the great sages, scholars, and saints of church history. We’re simply going back to the original Evangelists, apostles, and especially Jesus and making sure we’re as in sync with them as possible from this point forward. We’re not trying to explain away anything in the Bible. We’re simply trying to take seriously the central elements of the canonical texts that have been studiously marginalized for too long—the good news of the kingdom of God and the biblical narratives that it consummates, integrates, celebrates, and opens to all people everywhere.
From time to time on this blog I get comments from people who seem threatened by my words. They say “why are you so down on the church” or “what do you have against the church”. When I answer them I try to assure them that I am not down of the teachings of Jesus Christ. They are very much a part of my daily life. But we have come to see Jesus more through a lens of other men and have fallen away from the words themselves.
What is happening via the emergent movement today is kind of like renovating an old house. You often must strip down layer after layer of paint that has been put on the house by many previous owners in order to see what the house originally looked like. By going back to the original words our quest for a new kind of Christianity is actually a conservative one. You might say that we are trying to restore the old kind of Christianity but with meaning to today’s world.
I know that these words will not calm many in those churches who seem fixated on reciting a man-made list of beliefs about Jesus as proof of their faith in him. They seem to think that reciting beliefs that others have formulated about Jesus is what is expected of us.
The central elements of the text which are the words of Jesus seem to be but a shadow in many churches of this day. The good news of the kingdom of God has been lost to recent generations. The emergent movement that is taking place in the church today will eventually free us to understand the words of Jesus outside of this archaic literal foundation. Origen had is right almost 1800 years ago that there is just too much inconsistencies to say all in the bible is literally true without exception.
RedLetterLiving 
The renovation analogy is a perfect one for what you are describing. So many people have written so many millions of words of analysis and interpretation, insight and speculation, that the simple message of Jesus has been re-booted into a convoluted human-based message.
The Bible interprets itself. If God wants us to know something that is important it is in the Bible more than once in more than one way. We don’t have to speculate. We just have to read everything in context and accept what it tells us.
From a human perspective the Bible seems incomplete. But it is exactly what God wants us to know. Anything else is just humans attempting to out-think the Creator.
Yeah, we humans are pretty dense sometimes. You need to hit us over the head several times to get our attention. The Bible does just that on things that Jesus deemed important. We should never latch onto one single isolated sentence as a foundation of our faith. Unfortunately that is what seems occur with many today.