Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Deconstructing Ourselves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deconstructing Ourselves. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Recommended Read: Surviving God: Through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors


amazon link

Surviving God: A New Vision of God through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors, by Grace Ji-Sun Kim (Author), Susan M. Shaw (Author)

Who is God when we see God through the eyes of survivors? Many books have dealt with sexual abuse scandals in the church and the role of pastoral care for survivors. Others have provided liberatory readings of biblical texts to support survivors of sexual violence.

Surviving God takes a new approach, centering the voices of sexual abuse survivors while rethinking key Christian beliefs. Starting from experiences of oppression, beliefs that contribute to oppression are challenged, and new, hopeful, and healing beliefs take their place.

Groundbreaking theologians Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw, each a survivor herself, demonstrate how traditional ways of thinking about God are highly problematic, contribute to the problems of sexual abuse, and are not reflective of the God of love and justice at the heart of the gospel.

These long-held theologies often perpetuate the problem of sexual abuse and fail to promote healing for survivors. Drawing from their own experiences and the experiences of other survivors, and centering the ways gender intersects with race, sexuality, class, and religion, Kim and Shaw lead us to deep healing and a transformed church that no longer contributes to the devastation of sexual abuse. In these inspiring pages, you will discover new ways of thinking about God that are surprising, challenging, and empowering.

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article link


"Any church leader who feeds themselves
rather than feeding the sheep is a counterfeit shepherd.
Anyone in a position of power within the body of Christ
who abuses a lamb or hides the abuse
done to the one the Good Shepherd knows and calls by name
has profaned the name of our God."

Diane Langberg, PhD




Over 7,000 claims of sexual abuse by church staff, congregation members, volunteers, or the clergy were made to just three insurance companies over a 20-year period (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2007). Recently, a study of over 300 alleged child sexual abuse cases in protestant Christian congregations found the overwhelming majority took place on church grounds, or at the offender’s home, most frequently carried out by Caucasian, male clergy or youth pastors (Denney, Kerley, & Gross, 2018).




According to this article, there are 2.7 church shootings a year. There are an estimated 378,000 congregations in the United States, which means the likelihood of any congregation being involved in a shooting in any year is approximately one in 126,000 or 0.0000079 percent.

You are more likely to be abused by someone in the church, than your congregation ​being involved in a shooting. Joshua Peace says in this article, "Diagnosing the scope of the problem [sexual abuse in church] isn’t easy, because there’s no hard data. The most commonly referenced study shows how difficult it is to find accurate statistics. In that 2007 report, the three largest insurers of churches and Christian nonprofits said they received about 260 claims of sexual abuse against a minor each year. Those figures, though, exclude groups covered by other insurers, victims older than 18, people whose cases weren’t disclosed to insurance companies and the many who, like Denhollander, never came forward. In other words, the research doesn’t include what is certainly the vast majority of sexual abuse." ​





Study: Child Sexual Abuse in Protestant Christian Congregations ​Utilizing data from 326 cases of alleged child sexual abuse that occurred at or through activities provided by Protestant Christian congregations between 1982 & 2014.The overwhelming majority of identified offenders were male. Specifically, male offenders were represented by 98.8%. Specifically, offender ages at the time of the alleged sexual abuse ranged from 18 to 88 years of age.

The overwhelming majority (80.1%) of offenders were employed in an official capacity within their respective churches with a substantial minority (19.9%) being volunteers. Pastor 34.9% - Youth Minister 31.4% - Youth Volunteer 8.3% - Associate Pastor 5.4% - Music Minister 4.8% - Volunteer 3.2% - Sunday School Teacher 2.9% - Deacon 2.2% - Church Member 2.2% - Church Camp Worker 0.6%. The most frequent male offender role was a Pastor at 34.9%
Five specific location-types of at the church, the offender’s home, off-site, off-site church-sponsored activity, and the victim’s home emerged.​​​










Websites devoted to reporting about clergy sexual abuse of both children and adults.
Other Important Articles

  • ​Crouching at Every Door - Sexual Abuse is a problem in both Catholic and Protestant churches -- Here are three environments in which Protestants are particularly vulnerable,by by Marvin Olasky, Sophia Lee, Emily Belz​ -- World Magazine.

Monday, September 18, 2023

The Agony of Moving Through Personal Deconstruction



The Agony of Moving Through
Personal Deconstruction

R.E. Slater


I have a number of articles on deconstruction on this website having once entered a spiritually dark period in my own life. It was a personal space in which I did not wish to go when called by the Spirit into an unformed space filled with personal agony and disillusionment.

When entering into this unsettling space it immediately filled up with a definitive solitude which became a seemingly endless wilderness of striking aloneness. I remember it lasted a little over eleven months and felt distinctly uninhabited by the God I knew of everywhere presence. But here, the heavens were brass and answers were not to be found. I was in an existential space of personal abandonment and aloneness. More curious was the emotional fact thst I found I had no interest in ever leaving this space.

As the days and weeks came and went I began writing of my despair and struggling with the failings of my Christian faith as I looked out across the once familiar religious landscapes now seeing the shadowed ruins lying across the empty hills where crosses once stood and lives once lived and loved with a vibrancy of faith fresh and new as the fallen rain.

Paradoxically, through these early days and weeks of darkness and despair, of abandonment and steely heavens, the Spirit came to abide without leaving to comfort by broken heart. My ruins hung in my soul like Jesus' Cross on Golgatha's hill, or like Jeremiah's famed pit of despair. Here I sat in a wilderness I did not wish to leave. And when multiple opportunities came to grant a way out, I did not leave. Nor would I leave unless my Father God came to me with the direction and answers I yearned. Otherwise, I remained in spiritual limbo quite disinterested in my ashes having none come and sit with me to disturb, disrupt, or mock. Those malicious gigures would come later. For now, I was alone seeking my God.

I had said in my heart I would only leave my disillusionment with my faith when God was done with me so that I could know from God where-and-how to proceed. Otherwise, I would stubbornly remain, praying, thinking, reading, writing.... I needed direction and needed to allow the fellowship of God's Spirit time to work in my heart a new way of faith or none at all. I refused all other misdirections. I needed clairity and discernment. What came was most curious of all... not answers but the manigold blessings of uncertainty and doubt to sit with me as my newest companions around tge ashes of my faith.

Here, with my companions I began to learn the value of asking questions I was never taught to ask of the Chtistian dogma I was taught to accept. My dialogue with my shattered faith began to resurrect. As it rose I began to see the work I was commissiined to do on behalf of those I once sheparded. Now this commissiin left the Sunday School rooms for those who came like mysrlelf broken of faith bearing spiritual grief and disillusionment.

Because my experience of solitude and brokenness was so extreme, I would never recommend this kind of deconstructive experience to anyone. It was extremely hard in every way... and spiritually dangerous because of the many misleading paths leading out of it. Paths offering forms of help and answers which I rejected. The path ahead of me didn't offer answers but required me to ask harder questions of my faith. The path I chose was uncertainty and doubt and when completed would save me from leaving my faith.

At the last, my Spirit world was re-forming and I knew exactly what I was being called to do when falling headlong into a pit of darkness. The Spirit's vision was requiring me to deconstruct my past faith and thereby reconstruct it again in a totally radical way. It took many years of breakage and rebuilding as it couldn't be done in a moment. I was to reform and remake my emergent faith into a contemporarily progressive faith. But to do this required removing its very foundations on which it stood. In those moments, my ministry turned from the caretaking of traditional Christians to the caretaking of shattered faith communities. More specifically, to the ministry of the older Nones-and-Dones and to the younger audiences under 35 years of age. My focus was to center on the Spirit of life and a renewal of faith practices in loving speech and action by creating a "Theology of Love" rather than theologies of separation and hate.

To this vision I also was guided by the Lord to build a new theological foundation built upon a better, more expansive philosophic foundation than those the church has been clinging to over tge past 2000 years. Such a foundation was forcing bad Christian theology, beliefs, rituals, practices, worship experiences, and missional policies and practices. Again, this was not a task I wanted from God, but it was God's burden which became my own. I knew it would be hard, unwanted, and rejected by my former faith. And frankly, I was too old and worn out from years of bible study and ministry, work, and family to start over again. I did not want this Spirit burden but accepted this mantle to walk the desert lands of faith composed of seared hard hearts, indifference, ignorance, mockery, rejection, and unrepentant souls.

It also would limit my activity in promoting the much-needed earth policies of green (habitat) and blue (water) organizations to political groups who were activrly ignoring these subjects of vital currency to their messages of economic reform and betterment. After earning a Master Ecologist Certification from MSU's extension program the need to address-and-instate better ecological and clean water policies (known as "green infrastructural practices") became my other unpaid, fulltime job. Thsnkfully, after retirement, the Lord gave me 15 years in participatory environmental politics and at the same time 12 years in developing a post-evangelical process theology built upon Whitehead's earlier ((Hegelian) process philosophy.

Fifteen years ago I couldn't have done this. I had no grand vision nor ability to remake a better form of Chridtisn faith. Nor any vision on which to build a vision for vibrant ecological societies and embracing communities. Yet God had other plans and directed me into a (1) post-faith resurrection of Christianity and towards a (2) reinforcing democratically balanced socio-ecological political organizations both of whom I needed to learn from. Along the way, I discovered their heart beat as my own; that we each beat together in re-visioning the presence of our future. That I was not alone but had joined communities of deconstructionists looking to rebuild betters ways of living and believing together. I also found a God I could preach again and a more proper ecological response commensurate with my new faith vision for community and world.

The Spirit had broken my heart in rejecting my older, out-of-date faith, and healed my soul out of this same spirit-darkness of personal deconstruction. Within this intense year-long arrangement between God and mysrlf I was being prepared to speak of a better God than the one my faith once believed. A God who had become an idol. An idol I was to break, like Moses did to Aaron's golden calf, and to reconstitute back to a living God for all peoples. Not just to the lost flocks of the church - but to the non-churched, religious and nonreligious, broken, dismayed, and spiritually lost. It all began with deconstructing my perceived beliefs, my arguable dogmas and fsith tenets, my misleading apologia, and my refusal to admit uncertainty and doubt as my Spirit guides.

For those interested in my ongoing ramblings and lessons learned check the topics list found on the right side of my website labeled "deconstruction". All topical discussions had once started with deconstruction as the Lord helped me to resurrect each topic towards more uplifting iterations of non-dogmatically reconstructed forms of themselves by the loving Spirit's illuminating breath forming a new, living gospel which is equally consistent in its message to the church and the world.

To this efffort I have layered each article on top of all previous articles as I build upon each thought and topic towards a fuller range of faith encompassing processually based Christian structure centered in Jesus and in love. I think of it as a theology - or compendium - of love which Christianity has lost sight of... which then broke me... and has motivated me to question all the bad, dead doctrines which have missed all the good, living doctrines formed from a loving resurrected Creator God.

R.E. Slater
August 29, 2023

*I attached the CT article below to share how those churches or church associations which have not deconstructed themselves but have placed the onus of repentance on the other rather than doing the hard work of introspection and repentance amongst themselves. The CT writer thinks of deconstruction by the unhelpfully incorrect name of "burnout" as a way of socio-religious avoidance. I would rather see his editorial efforts to the evangelical church focus on throwing off the chains of hate to follow Jesus in his atoning crucifixion and redemption to life eternal in practices of love. - re slater



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The Most Dangerous Form of Deconstruction

by Russell Moore
February 9, 2022


What if some evangelicals are so burned out on church that they don’t even know it?



With all this talk of deconstruction these days, one problem is that very few people mean precisely the same thing when they use that word.

For some people, deconstructing means losing their faith altogether—becoming atheists, agnostics, or spiritual-but-not-religious nones. For others, deconstructing means still believing in Jesus but struggling with how religious institutions have failed.

And there are also many for whom deconstructing means maintaining an ongoing commitment to orthodox Christianity, as well as a robust commitment to the church—but without the cultural-political baggage associated with the label “evangelicalism.”

On one level, these divergent meanings may suggest that the term deconstruction doesn’t signify any one thing specifically—not without a great deal of qualification, that is. This is true, come to think of it, of the word evangelical these days as well.

But that doesn’t mean that deconstruction is a lesser phenomenon than we think. As a matter of fact, I think the case could be made that all of American evangelical Christianity is deconstructing—at least in some sense of the word.

It’s just that I believe there’s more than one way to deconstruct.

At one level, we can see deconstruction happening in terms of institutions. Someone asked me a few weeks ago what percentage of churches or ministries I thought were divided by the same political and cultural tumults ripping through almost every other facet of American life. I answered, “All of them. One hundred percent.”

I don’t mean that every church is in conflict; many aren’t. But even the churches and ministries that are not descending into warfare are aware of the conflict, and many are vigilant—wondering if one word said, or an event scheduled, might set it off.

Beyond that, at the level of individuals and leaders, we are perhaps not aware that the most dangerous forms of deconstruction are not the people we know who are doubting, scandalized, or traumatized by what they’ve seen in the church. There’s a different form of deconstruction that that could actually destroy us.

I always thought of “burnout” as a rather banal way of communicating exhaustion from overwork. “Make sure you take a vacation,” one might say. “You don’t want to burn out.”

In his new book, The End of Burnout, though, Jonathan Malesic argues that burnout is something else entirely. It is instead “the experience of being pulled between expectations and reality at work.” To illustrate his point, he uses the metaphor of walking on stilts.

Walking on stilts, he writes, is the experience of holding both one’s ideals and the reality of one’s job together. When the two stilts are aligned, one can keep them together and move forward. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s possible for one to walk. However, when the stilts are misaligned—that is, when the ideal and the reality are radically different—people find different ways to cope, which can lead to a kind of burnout.

 

Some, he argues, might cling to their ideals while the reality swings away from them. In his case, the metaphor has clear limits—because his point is that we place too high of expectations on our work and careers, expecting them to give us meaning and purpose in life, which they cannot deliver.

In the case of the church, however, we have not expected too much, but too little. The church is meant to shape our character, and if not to grant meaning to our life, then to at least to point us toward the meaning—through worship, mission, and teaching.

Yet some have seen behind the veil to a kind of Christianity that does not even aspire to holiness, love, gentleness, Christlikeness, renewal of mind, bearing of burdens—the kind of church found in the New Testament. These people are often led to the point of exhaustion at the incongruity of it all, perhaps questioning if they were lied to all along.

For some, Malesic contends, the stilt walking falters when they ignore the reality and hold on to their ideals anyway. This is the sort of coping mechanism we see in those who wave away the current crisis in the church by saying, “Well, think of all the good things happening” or “Most people aren’t like that” or “The church was never meant to be made up of perfect people.”

Those things are easy to believe, because there’s a sense in which they are all true. But often, in times like these, what they really mean is “Don’t talk about these matters in public; we can handle them on our own in private, but we don’t want to give Jesus a bad reputation.” The problem is, Jesus never asked his church to protect his reputation, especially by covering up when something wrong or dangerous is done in his name.

But what’s more is that, as Malesic points out in the workplace, the “If we don’t talk about it, it will go away” mentality cannot hold. If our moral ideals are strong but we reassure ourselves with a false version of reality, we will end up seeing through our own delusions—and others certainly will.

And when that happens, it results in a different kind of burnout—frustration. That is, we begin to despair that anything ever can or will eventually be done to fix things.

The most dangerous form of deconstruction, however, is what we see happening in the lives of people who would never see themselves deconstructing. Many of them seem to believe what they’ve always believed, and they still belong to or lead the same institutions they always have.

In fact, they are often the ones heatedly denouncing those who are deconstructing—or the ones still left wondering how and why so much awful fruit could emerge from systems and institutions they presumed to be godly, trusted, and “confessional.”

For some of these people, there’s an entirely different kind of deconstruction or type of burnout.

Malesic argues that this form of burnout happens when their ideals and reality are so divergent that—having to choose one of the stilts on which to cling—they abandon the ideals to settle for the reality as it is.

At first, they can find all sorts of reasons why their former ideals are too unrealistic, even if these reasons are completely incongruent with what they once stood for. People who expect the church to live up to what Jesus demanded of it are said to be “currying favor with elites” or “not realistic about how the world works” or “not seeing what’s at stake if we don’t circle the wagons around ‘the base.’”

In following this strategy, people begin to depersonalize those around them. This leads to cynicism. Once the institution is all that’s left—or “the movement” or “the cause” or the “theology” or, even worse, their own position and platform—they have ultimately torn down their individual character, which is needed to protect and build those institutions.

Even worse, they have deadened the personal conscience needed to hear the call to repent. One can be a hack easily enough in the marketplace or in the political arena. But playing to whatever “the base” wants or expects from the church of Jesus Christ year after year does something far worse—and not just to the institution or the lives of those harmed, but to the very souls of those who play the game.

Once they have whittled down their moral principles to only those that are useful in maintaining their own place of belonging—they have essentially deconstructed themselves.

As we watch evangelicalism in the United States deconstructing in various ways, I wonder if what we should do is not avoid burnout but rather seek the right kind. After all, God’s most miraculous work seems to come at the point of our greatest frustration, helplessness, and even despair.

The prophet Elijah was not crazy to believe that he had encountered a hopeless situation. In his time, the people of God were captive to idols, and to vicious, predatory, narcissistic leadership. But Elijah had to get to the point where he could hear God saying to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?

John the Baptist was not being unreasonable when he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:20) And when the disciples on the road to Emmaus said to their traveling companion, the recently crucified Jesus, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (24:21)—Jesus revealed to them that their hopes has been met in ways they couldn’t have imagined until that very moment.

The question is not whether we will deconstruct, but what we will deconstruct.

Will it be the wood, hay, and stubble that is destined to burn up and burn out? Or will it be our own souls? Sometimes the people we think are “deconstructing” are just grieving and asking God where he is at a moment like this. That has happened before.

By contrast, sometimes the people who appear most confident and certain—who are scanning the boundaries for heretics—are those who have given up belief in the new birth, in the renewal of the mind, and in the judgment seat of Christ. For them, all that’s left is an orthodoxy grounded not in a living Christ, but in a curated brand.

And that may be the saddest deconstruction of all.


*Russell Moore leads the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter.
Subscribe here.

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

When Your Theology Becomes A Problem


When Your Theology Becomes A Problem

June 20, 2022

When are your personal theological beliefs a problem? You might be thinking, “What I believe is none of your business!” In a way, you’re right. But when your personal beliefs go beyond the “personal” and affect my life — or anyone else’s — in a negative way, they become a problem.

My wife and I went into Hobby Lobby the other day — you know, because we’re not living through record-breaking inflation or anything — and I glanced at the bookshelf by the checkout line as we were checking out. They had about 10 books for sale. Three stood out to me:

Creation to Babel by Ken Ham

The Harbinger II by Jonathan Cahn

Fault Lines by Voddie Baucham

Do you know what these books have in common? One, they represent the fundamentalist-evangelical leanings of Hobby Lobby, obviously (no big deal — we know where Hobby Lobby stands). Two, and most importantly, they each influence evangelicals’ theology in such a way that they begin to negatively affect other lives.

These books represent the three doctrines evangelicals have used to become a nuisance to others: origins, eschatology, and ethics.

When Your Doctrine of Origins Becomes a Problem

The doctrine of origins, according to Ken Ham, is the foundation for all Christian doctrine. That means that if you don’t get Genesis right (translation: if you don’t agree with his modern interpretation of Genesis), you have no authoritative foundation for anything else you believe. Obviously, that’s preposterous. But I will say that he is on to something:

Your doctrine of origins does determine the importance you place upon truth.

If you accept or are at least open to the scientific realities of evolution and an old earth, for example, that means that you have decided to let truth dictate your beliefs. If you blindly reject the scientific consensus and accept the pseudoscience peddled by Ken Ham and his ilk just because you think it’s “biblical,” you have decided to let your beliefs dictate the “truth” as you want it. So Ken Ham is right: Your doctrine of origins is the foundation. But if you subscribe to his ideas, what a weak foundation it is.

His organization, Answers in Genesis, exists to spread his false doctrines throughout the world, and their ultimate goal (though they wouldn’t put it this way) is to scare Christians away from science. That is a very, very dangerous thing.

I’m a public school English teacher, and science teachers throughout the South have told me that they have to be careful using the term “evolution” in science class because they fear pushback from parents. While our students are learning about evolution in class, I have seen students’ parents share Ken Ham/AiG articles on their Facebook pages as a way to conflict with that is being taught in schools. So Ken Ham has empowered his followers in such a way that they are actually hindering science education in public schools. If this is you …

Your theology has become a problem.

I would argue that one’s beliefs about origins extend to other scientific beliefs as well. You saw it during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Who were the ones most likely to reject the advice from scientists about mask-wearing and the vaccine? Fundamental evangelicals who already had permission from their faith to reject science. If a scientist also accepts evolution (an almost certainty), why would evangelicals believe them about anything else? Actually, I remember seeing this happen on Facebook: Bill Nye posted a video encouraging mask-wearing, and a prominent faith leader commented with, “Bill Nye rejects God’s creation and accepts evolution, so why would I believe anything he says?” I fear that this phenomenon is common in evangelicalism, and your doctrine of origins has affected your trust of science so that you reject sound medical advice and spread that misinformation to others. If this is you …

Your theology has become a problem.

This mindset also extends to climate change. Indeed, Ken Ham himself said, “Bottom line: if scientists reject the events of history such as the Flood as recorded in the Bible, they will have wrong interpretations about climate change.” Ken Ham’s doctrine of origins directly affects his view on climate change, and since Ken Ham has the ear of millions of evangelicals, he is leading them to reject the threat of climate change for similar reasons. Therefore …

Their theology has become a problem.

When Your Eschatology Becomes a Problem

This presents a great segue to the next problem doctrine: eschatology. Now, to be fair, there are some eschatological systems that aren’t a problem most of the time: postmillennialism suggests that the world will get better before the return of Christ, so postmillennialists are at least trying to make the world a better place (as long as they aren’t part of the dominionist postmillennialists, like DeMar and others of that flavor); preterism teaches that the return has already happened and that the kingdom of Christ is here and is charged with making the world a better place for a future that could extend for thousands or millions of years, so that doctrine actually has positive potential. But the eschatology of fundamental evangelicals — the eschatology of The HarbingerLeft Behind, John MacArthur, Hal Lindsay, etc. et al. — premillennialism, especially dispensationalism, is a different animal; it basically forces its adherents to want the world to burn so their savior will return.

Piggybacking off of the climate change topic, John MacArthur — a devoted dispensationalist— once said regarding climate change, “God intended us to use this planet, to fill this planet for the benefit of man. Never was it intended to be a permanent planet. It is a disposable planet. Christians ought to know that.” In another sermon he said, “It’s just all going to burn up; it’s just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” John MacArthur doesn’t care about the world. Why? His eschatology teaches him that the world is going to burn up any day now, and it’s God’s plan, so why worry about it? In fact, we shouldn’t hinder God’s plans by trying to save the planet if he plans to destroy it anyway. And the problem is that he has the ear of millions of evangelicals who, likewise, reject climate change and choose to show indifference to the problems of the physical world. If this is you …

Your theology has become a problem.

Faulty eschatology, particularly dispensational premillennialism, also influences bad foreign policy. Ask any American fundamental evangelical what the most important nation on the earth is, and I would bet everything I own that the answer (other than, maybe, America) would be Israel. In the American South, where evangelicalism is the leading faith tradition, you’ll see plenty of Israel flags flying alongside the American flag. You’ll see plenty of “I Stand with Israel” bumper stickers. A large church in my area, World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, TN, is basically free PR for the Zealous Zionists who back an Israel take-over of the Middle East.

This issue, like others, also involves taking lives. American fundamental evangelicals will align with Israel on almost any issue — they are God’s people, after all. If Israel starts a conflict with an innocent nation, you better believe American evangelicals would side with Israel. In one of John MacArthur’s sermons, he taught that Israel is being guided by God right now to be the light of the world once again. Therefore, pretty much anything they do goes.

It causes American evangelicals to lose it when the U.S. government gives money to clinics that provide abortions but look the other way when they send money to Israel, who is very liberal on abortion; it causes them to make plans to usurp other faiths in the region in order to rebuild some fabled third temple (something they teach but isn’t found in the Bible); it causes them to disregard the tens of thousands of innocent people who have been killed or misplaced through Israel’s settlement expansion over the decades. If this is you …

Your theology has become a problem.

In my opinion, the saddest thing bad eschatology leads Christians to do is to avoid the problems of the world and instead look for escape. Dispensationalists — which is what the majority of American fundamental evangelicals are — believe that a secret rapture will remove Christians from the world before the Great Tribulation. That’s not found in the Bible, but it guides their approach to almost every bad thing that happens in the world.

A tornado wipes out a town: “Oh God, please return and take us away from this suffering.” A child dies from cancer: “Lord, please call us home.” America legalizes gay marriage: “God in Heaven, please return, remove us from this wicked world, and rain your judgment down upon it!” The list could go on and on and on. When a terrible thing happens — either actually terrible, like a devastating tornado, or terrible to evangelicals, like a Democrat being elected — find a news story on social media in an area dominated by fundamental evangelicalism and try to count the comments pleading for God to return and take them from this world. It’s a hobby of mine, but it depresses me.

It’s a problem when your theology leads you to ask God to remove you from the situation instead of helping to clean up a tornado-devastated town; it’s a problem when your theology leads you to ask God to take you away after a child dies from cancer rather than to contribute to the solution. I even saw one person on social media say that Christians shouldn’t try to end homelessness and world hunger because the world must get worse before Jesus returns. Whenever you ask God to give you an escape or to ignore the most vulnerable in the world rather than asking God to empower you to make a positive difference in your current situation …

Your theology has become a problem.

When Your Doctrine of Ethics Becomes a Problem

Asking God to escape from the world means you are choosing to ignore its problems rather than face them. That’s what I think of when I see Voddie Baucham’s Fault Lines sitting on the shelf at Hobby Lobby. What Fault Lines does is offer fundamental evangelicals a way to escape from the reality of racism in the United States. Using his teaching (which is shared by many), fundamental evangelicals have a way to distance themselves from the issues social justice advocates seek to address. By using terms like “woke” and “Marxist” loosely, Baucham helps create the “boogey-man” mindset many Christians have toward any secular solution to the world’s problems. Just as “the flood” is Ken Ham’s answer to any issue raised at his beliefs, “the gospel” is Voddie Baucham’s answer to any issue addressed by social justice advocates. To him, if the gospel can’t fix the problem, then the problem must not really exist.

To Baucham and others, any worldly solution is anti-Christ, and the problem it seeks to address often ceases to be a problem at all in their minds. For example, critical race theory is seen as a “woke” solution to the racist problem that, to them, isn’t much of a problem at all. Therefore, we see many evangelicals neglecting their role of displaying God’s love in the world by ignoring one of the most repugnant issues we face: racism. Even if you don’t agree with every aspect of CRT (like sociologist George Yancey, who approaches the issue differently but still approaches it seriously), you are putting a “gospel” mask on the problem and not actually addressing the root causes, so …

Your theology has become a problem.

Baucham’s family ethics are also affecting lives other than those that believe them. He teaches a level of discipline that borders abuse and feels that Christian parents must basically beat their children into submission. Sure, I received plenty of spankings (though I didn’t deserve any of them, obviously), and most of history has made use of this style of discipline, but modern advances in science, sociology, psychology, and other disciplines show that child discipline is not as black and white as that. Yet many Christians read his words and feel that they must engage in that level of violent discipline in order to please God, even if it isn’t right for their particular child.

Furthermore, Baucham has an archaic view of women. Check out Rick Pidcock’s article about this. Here are a few things he believes: like his friend John MacArthur, he believes that women in abusive marriages should suck it up, suffer for Jesus, and not tell anyone so they don’t bring shame upon the church; he believes that men should witness their potential wife submit to her father so he knows she’ll submit to him; he believes that daughters should stay at home and serve their fathers (often without furthering their own education) until they get married and go with their husbands to stay at home and serve them. Therefore, we see influential “celebrity pastors” like Voddie Baucham influencing Christians in such a way that they could very well end up traumatizing their children — physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually — and negatively affecting their ability to function as adults, as well as purposely holding women back from living out their dreams and potential. If you subscribe to this doctrine of family and gender ethics …

Your theology has become a problem.

The same could be said for guns and the LGBTQ+ community: fundamental evangelicals too often find themselves defending gun rights over victims (even child victims) of senseless gun violence when research confirms that gun control measures would save lives; fundamental evangelicals too often ignore the existence of LGBTQ+ members of society and vote for legislation that would remove their rights to enjoy the freedom all Americans deserve just because their personal interpretation of the Bible tells them that being gay is a sin. In both of these cases (check out this piece about how Christians misinterpret Scripture to support gun rights), these Christians elevate their personal beliefs to a level so that they actually believe they have a right to force their opinions upon others. If this is you; if you believe your personal opinions should dictate how others live their lives …

Your theology has become a problem.

Conclusion

If the single most important aspect of your theology is not loving others, then you’re doing it wrong. And if you truly love others — the way Jesus did — you won’t care about what they wear, where they live, what they believe, who they love, or anything else; you will just love them. And if you love others, you won’t let your personal beliefs get in the way of acting out that love.

If you don’t seriously believe that your faith empowers you to act in a way that brings justice, peace, and love to the world and to contribute to a future that could very well be positive for every one, you don’t really have faith — you have an excuse to do nothing.

In short, if your theology keeps you from pursuing truth, keeps you from trying to make the world a better place, forces you to treat anyone without the respect all people deserve, and doesn’t have true love as its central tenet …

Your theology is a problem.


 

Saturday, June 18, 2022

I Can Still Be A Christian: From Deconstruction to Rediscovery



I Can Still Be A Christian: From Deconstruction to Rediscovery

April 8, 2022

If you’ve kept up with trends in Christianity for the past few years, you’ve seen one word pop up pretty often: deconstruction. Both the religious-political fallout of the Trump presidency and the Covid-19 pandemic led many evangelicals to re-evaluate their faith — for better or for worse. What it means: The tenets of the Christian faith you grew up believing are being challenged, either by science, philosophy, politics, or other external realities, and you are in the process of examining those tenets to see how they hold up to the evidence. Many of them fall apart — hence the “deconstruction” of your faith.

For many, this boils down to a simple change of opinion on a few topics, primarily political or social — rarely biblical in nature — and the central tenets of historic Christianity are left intact. That’s not deconstruction to me; it’s simply changing your mind.

For some, deconstruction is more of a transition of beliefs, either doctrinal or practical — think, a Baptist becomes an Anglican, a Catholic goes non-denominational, or any other scenario. It has changed, sometimes pretty significantly, but orthodoxy is untouched.

Still, for others, the comfort of orthodox Christianity is abandoned in favor of beliefs that many would regard as heretical — though the “h-word” is more often than not thrown around too liberally and usually baselessly.

After going through deconstruction, some formerly devout Christians even opt for various forms of atheism and agnosticism; some have even adopted beliefs that are more in line with Buddhism or other eastern religions.

Regardless, it’s rare that a Christian goes through deconstruction and ends up back at the starting point.

My Deconstruction: The First Stone

I didn’t know it until I heard the term a couple of years ago, but I’ve been deconstructing my faith for a while — more like demolishing, really.

It all started on a Monday evening at Huntsville Bible College back in 2010. We had to attend an eschatology conference as part of the requirements for a course on the Book of Daniel. The course was taught by an Assembly of God professor, so the content was from a dispensationalist perspective.

Being a Southern Baptist kid who was theologically weaned on Left Behind, you can imagine my shock when the speaker, the late Rev. Dr. Wayne P. Snodgrass (an amillennial Baptist), uttered these words: “I don’t deal with the rapture because the Bible doesn’t deal with the rapture.” I didn’t realize it then, but …

that’s when the first rock fell.

A Stonemason

I’m a stonemason. I have been for my entire life. My dad was one (the best in the South), and I’ve worked with him since I was 14 — and professionally for 10 years before becoming a teacher (and on the side now even though he is technically retired). I am very familiar with this idea of “deconstructing.”

A structure is not what it used to be; perhaps it was damaged by an external factor or had settled over the years — meaning it was outdated and could no longer function as it once did — so it needed to be taken down.

My dad, brothers, and I would handle stuff like this all the time: An old fence built by slaves or Irishmen in the 18th or 19th century was falling apart, so we were called in to repair it or repurpose the stones; an old chimney stood tall with the shell of the burned house collapsing around it, so we were asked to come in and take down the chimney to preserve the stones.

I can’t even guess how many days of my life have been spent reconstructing old fences like this. In fact, when I saw this image on Shutterstock, I genuinely thought for a moment that it was a job I had worked on.

When we take apart these old stone structures, a few things happen:

  • First, we assess the structure to see how we should approach it so the process (1) is safe and (2) will preserve the most stones.
  • Second, we examine each individual stone as we remove it to see if it goes in the “keep” pile or “discard” pile — all structures have at least some keepers, and some keepers are so good that they get their own pile.
  • Third, we move the pile of keepers to a new spot and prepare for the reconstruction phase — or storage phase, depending on the owner’s needs.

Sometimes, stones in the middle fall out, and the structure is wobbling like a Jenga tower. Just a little pressure will cause it to collapse, so it is often best to safely push the whole thing down and sift through the pile of rocks on the ground.

Back to the Conference

That’s what happened to me at the eschatology conference back in 2010. My rapture stone was knocked out of the structure of my faith, which I thought was a strong tower; alas, it was a brittle post.

The problem: That stone was smack-dab in the middle, and my structure was now rocked (pun unintended), swaying back and forth and waiting for the next rock to fall out before, eventually, collapsing.

I pulled a Dante; I got on my ship and set sail on a journey for truth — though my goal was to find “truth” that fit my beliefs and proved Dr. Snodgrass wrong, so it was really more of a journey for vengeance. I searched far and wide for proof he was wrong. I examined the stone to see if it really was what I thought it was.

Well, as my stone structure was a brittle post, my ship was a plywood raft with a torn table cloth as the sail. I set sail into territories my childhood faith had me ill-prepared to encounter.

What did I learn?

  • First, the rapture isn’t accepted by all or even the majority of Christians (that surprised me — I really thought it was the only option).
  • Furthermore, the rapture was invented by a dude (John Nelson Darby) in the mid-late 1800s; I was never told that in church growing up, and Tim LaHaye never brought it up.
  • Finally, I learned that the rapture isn’t even in the Bible. Talk about rocked! (pun intended that time)

Discovering on my journey that there are dozens of passages in the New Testament in which Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John believed the so-called “second coming” would occur within the lifetimes of many living in the first century AD really rattled my orthodoxy.

My church leaders conveniently skipped over those passages — while skipping over Josephus and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, which was a pretty significant event — or reinterpreted them to fit their belief system.

Then studying the symbolism and imagery of apocalyptic literature in the Bible, as well as the symbolism of the Temple, the New Heaven and New Earth, and my reinterpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, forced me to re-examine what would really transpire at “the end.”

I grew up believing that something like this was going
to happen to Earth — and probably in my lifetime.


My conclusions now are completely different from what I was raised to believe. In a nutshell, I believe the New Testament teaches — and history reflects — a completion of the prophetic clock in the Bible: We are in the Kingdom of Christ; the Savior has come and has indwelled his people. This is it, and that’s fine — we are still a Kingdom that should strive to make the world a better place that is more aligned with the core truth of the Gospel. Even if God does have a plan for the future (I don’t really think he does, but I digress), we don’t need to worry about it and would probably be better off if we acted like there is nothing on the prophetic horizon — it gives us more ownership and responsibility for the world’s problems.

As I said, I don’t believe how I was raised to believe, but even if I had come to the same conclusions, on my own, I still would have been pissed. Why would they hide such a treasure trove of theology from me? Were they scared?

I then thought, “What else did my church leaders hide from me? What else about my faith is wrong, or at least incomplete?”

Starting Over

That’s where René Descartes comes in. He said in A Discourse on the Method, and I paraphrase, to never accept anything that was not introduced there by reason. I realized that I didn’t really believe anything I thought I believed; I simply accepted what I had been taught and didn’t question it. I never gave any of the ideas and doctrines time to say I believed them. I simply signed the dotted line on the statement of faith and moved on with my faith.

Descartes also said to erase everything you have been taught so you can examine everything, individually, without the distraction of assumptions. That’s hard to do. But as Isaac Asimov said,

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

I started scrubbing and declared to myself, “You know what? I got a little time — I got my whole life to figure this out. I’m gonna push the whole thing down and see what survives.”

It was a mess at the beginning — rocks everywhere! But I had a hammer and chisel and a little experience, so I started chipping away one at a time. It’s hard to describe just how many stones are in a structure, and they all play an important role, but some are more important than others …

Filler Stones

Growing up in the buckle of the Bible belt meant that everyone around me was a Christian. In Lynchburg, where I grew up and still live, people typically are either Baptist or church of Christ. We even have some who are called Baptist Church of Christ since they can’t make up their minds (actually, they are unrelated to the restoration movement and are their own thing, but that’s irrelevant to this specific post).

Beyond Baptist and church of Christ folk, there ain’t much. We have some Methodists, of course, but I didn’t know a Presbyterian church was in Lynchburg until I was in my late 20s, and the only Pentecostal church nearby is about a quarter mile into Lincoln County (instead of Moore, where Lynchburg is). I’m assuming they set up shop there so people wouldn’t think they were just drunk on the local product (Jack Daniel’s). Not really. They are great people — just hyper.

Anyway, living here meant that Christian faith was a part of every day life, not just a Sunday gathering. In high school, my friends were either lukewarm Baptists or church of Christ zealots. I remember riding on the school bus to and from baseball games; we would pass the time by having theological debates. I, a Baptist at the time, would argue with my church of Christ teammates about issues like whether music should be used in church, if communion should be weekly, or if one must be baptized to be saved.

One thing I concede now (but wouldn’t even consider admitting then) is that they were far more prepared to defend their beliefs than I was. I held my own because I always find a way, even if I’m knowingly BS’ing. But it’s like their “elders,” as they called them (we even argued the terminology of pastor vs. elder), would hold a weekly class dedicated to debating Baptists — or at least knowing church of Christ doctrine inside and out. It made sense because most of them believed they were the only ones who had the truth and a one-way ticket to Heaven. I don’t think (I hope not) many believe that way anymore.

Those issues are now trivial to me. So when I knocked down my structure, those stones were placed in the “deal with later” pile. Sure, they are important (all doctrine is), but they didn’t seem as important to me when I decided to grab a hammer and chisel and really get my hands dirty with this deconstruction thing. They almost seemed irrelevant altogether, like the filler stones we use when we are building something — little stones used to fill in gaps. They have to be there, but they don’t seem as important as the ones out front for all to see, or those on the foundation.

I have ideas and thoughts about these doctrines now, but I wouldn’t have these ideas without spending more time with the other, more important stones. Other stones in this pile include things like women in ministry (I’m all for it, for the record), drinking alcohol (yes, that’s an issue even in whiskey country), Calvinism vs. Arminianism (I think both are annoying), and other issues commonly debated in the church today — to no avail.

The Second Stone

The second stone that really challenged me — on the same level, if not higher, than the eschatology stone — was the origins stone. It seemed natural and appropriate: I examined the end; now I must examine the beginning.

Just as Left Behind shaped my eschatology, Henry Morris and creation “science” shaped my view of origins. The idea that God created the world in six literal days was not something I thought was even debated in Christianity — in the academy, the Church, or anywhere else.

The only ones who disputed that truth were the atheistic evolutionists. Evolution was simply a tool of Satan and a conspiracy by atheist scientists to discredit God. That isn’t what I believed; that was reality — there wasn’t a chance to disbelieve it. The same goes for Noah’s Ark, Adam and Eve, etc. I was taught that to deny these ideas was to deny God.

I didn’t question these ideas until I really read into them.

Promises

There used to be a Christian bookstore in Lynchburg that was owned by some friends of mine (and people I went to church with for several years). It was called Promises. I would go in often as I was a single guy then; I was probably 18 or 19 and was starting to accept the “calling” to ministry.

I would check out all the study Bibles (and buy some). I would check out some of the theology books. Mostly, I would take a “Moses” staff they were selling and pretend to be Gandalf. “You shall not pass! … unless you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior” is probably something I would have said at that point in my life.

Like most bookstores, especially Christian ones, Promises went out of business. I left that store for the last time with some goodies: the Gandalf staff (I figured it was fate, and it still sits in my classroom, ready to be used to tell students that “they shall not pass”) and three study Bibles — the NKJV Chronological Study Bible, the NIV Archaeological Study Bible, and, most notably, the New Defender’s Study Bible by Henry Morris. I started digging …

After thoroughly studying Henry Morris’ study Bible, especially its essays, I thought, “What the heck is this crap? Why does my church believe this?” I discovered that young earth creationism (the viewpoint I thought was known as simply “biblical”) is very weak. Here is Henry Morris, the Father of Young Earth Creationism, and he is forcing everything he needs to support his belief.

I can’t remember the details, and I’ve since given the Bible away (on accident — I wish I still had it), but I remember sitting on my bed late at night, reading his essays, and thinking that Morris had a very desperate tone. He didn’t come to conclusions, either biblical or scientific, because the evidence took him there; he came to conclusions because he had to.

This part of the Bible causes a lot of problems for Christians, especially
if they get involved, in any way, with the science vs. religion debate


I decided to ignore origins for a while as I was about to begin Bible college. So this stone, although loosened a bit, was still in some way intact for a while — I hadn’t thoroughly examined it yet.

Fast forward a few years … after my rapture stone was knocked out of place and I decided to examine everything …

I eventually came back to origins. I first dipped my toes in science. I had never given evolution the time of day. We were told to ignore our science teacher, and some of us even rebelled by answering incorrectly (on purpose) any question that had anything to do with the Big Bang or evolution. But when I was older and had no pressure to ignore it, I was able to examine it without fear of it conflicting with my faith.

What I found shocked me: The “science” I was taught in church did not match the science taught by … well, actual scientists. And these scientists weren’t only atheists and anti-Christians as I had been taught; many were Christians who believed in a creator God. And they followed evidence instead of fabricating it. I knew that, once again, my childhood leaders led me astray in an important doctrine, and I had to go back to the biblical text to see what went wrong.

At this point, I was aided by scholars like Leland Ryken and John H. Walton, among others. Ryken opened up the world of biblical literature to me. I was a literature guy: I studied Tolkien, Middle English literature, poetry, and science fiction. Literature was (and is) basically “my thing.”

However, I approached the Bible with the assumption that it was written in a vacuum — that it was written by God himself and unlike anything else ever written. These guys helped me see that it was not; it is literature — ancient literature, even if it is inspired by God. And this ancient literature contains literary devices and styles that are not used anymore.

Therefore, I (and apparently my church leaders) missed them. We interpreted Genesis 1 (and 1–11) literally because (1) we, like I said, assumed that the Bible was written in a vacuum, and (2) we didn’t know what type of literature was actually present in the opening chapters of Genesis.

Following rabbit trails helped me discover the literature of Genesis. One of the first literary topics I discovered (from Walton’s Lost World series especially) is also something completely avoided by most evangelical churches: ancient near eastern literature.

You’ll never hear those words in a Southern Baptist church.

Why?

It scares them

There are too many similarities between ancient near eastern literature and biblical literature, and the dates and geographic locations also make them too connected for comfort. They wrote about their gods in similar ways, and they used many of the same literary styles.

I started to realize that the Bible is not a book of science. The Bible’s science does not match reality. But with the assumption that God wrote the Bible still deeply embedded in my emotions (albeit not in my intellect), that was a problem.

I knew that young earth creationism was bogus; I knew that I really couldn’t even fit modern science into the Bible without some extreme gymnastics, as performed by men like Hugh Ross. There had to be another way, a way that took both the Bible and modern science seriously.

Publishing

At this point (late 2019-early 2020), I started McGahan Publishing House, and I was looking to publish a book on Christian faith and science. I emailed Loren Haarsma, husband to Deborah Haarsma (president of BioLogos), and he referred me to someone who seemed too qualified for my new publishing company, but it worked out for us.

Denis Lamoureux has PhDs in theology and biology — as well as dentistry. As a trained theologian and biologist, he seemed like the perfect prospect for a book on religion and science. With his academic credentials and publishing history — several books by notable publishers, such as Zondervan, and dozens of academic articles — I assumed he was out of our league as we still had not published a book at that point.

But Denis and I hit it off, published two books, including this excellent one, and have plans for more. He liked our independence, both professionally and intellectually — we are free to explore ideas that frighten other publishers, such as the Adam and Eve story not being literal history. Publishing his work and having conversations with him have enabled me to spend even more time examining the origins issue, form connections with others in the field, and discover other thinkers and ideas in science and religion.

This led me to solidify the stances toward which I was already leaning:

  • Evolution is true - like it or not.
  • The global flood of Noah never happened.
  • The earth is billions of years old.
  • Adam and Eve were most likely not the first humans on the earth — if they even existed.
  • The Bible is not a book of science.

But that’s okay, for the Bible still reveals a God who wants to commune with his greatest creation and image bearers.

And that’s what matters — having a spiritual life in which a personal relationship with God is the most important goal of a Christian.

The Third Stone — God

I thought I had it all figured out. I had the end figured out; I had the beginning figured out — the rest would fall into place. Then, at the bottom of the pile of stones sat the most important stone of all …

the cornerstone.

I thought this one was safe, but it wasn’t. It was a major stumbling block for me.

When I encountered the cornerstone during my deconstruction, it was during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and …

the pandemic changed me.

I started thinking a lot more about pain, suffering, and death. I wasn’t scared of dying from Covid. I was relatively low-risk, and I had it — twice. I had the OG Covid before being vaccinated and then the omicron variant after being fully vaccinated. They were both very mild for me.

However, I noticed the people who had different experiences. I saw people I care about die from it. I saw friends and acquaintances lose their spouses, parents, cousins, and grandparents. I heard about children dying from it.

That made me think about death and suffering regarding more than just Covid.

I started thinking about the 6-year old boy who drowned while on a family vacation in Florida.

I started thinking about the poor kids (in America and around the globe) suffering from hunger and extreme poverty.

I started thinking about the innocent children at St. Jude’s suffering from cancer.

I started thinking about the child victims of mass shootings.

I thought about the 12-year old boy who committed suicide because he was being bullied in school.

I started doubting God’s involvement in the world.

There is no doubt that the little 6-year old’s family was praying for a miracle, yet his lifeless body is what they found.

There is little doubt that impoverished families across the globe pray for God’s hand to intervene and feed them, yet he never comes.

Parents spend hours at the chapel altar praying for their child who has cancer, only to plan a funeral a few weeks or months later.

Every time I see a tragic story of a child or innocent person dying or suffering for no reason, I get angry. I get sad, and I sometimes cry when I’m alone, partly because it goes against everything I’m supposed to believe about an all-loving God, and partly because I project all of that suffering onto my own family and children.

I project my wife onto the young, vibrant woman who dies from Covid.

I project my children onto the little boy and girl who just lost their mommy or daddy because the ventilator malfunctioned.

I project my son onto the little baby at St. Jude’s who has no hope of survival and is suffering for no reason.

I can’t help but to think about my 6-year old daughter when I hear about the 6-year old boy who drowns — all alone and scared.

I ask, “Where are you, God?”

He never answers.

Where is God? Why can he not do more? And if he can, why doesn’t he?

The young parent of two little girls who dies from Covid because the ventilator malfunctioned — why couldn’t God prevent that from happening? No one would have known because no one thought it was broken. It was SUPPOSED TO WORK.

Why does the innocent boy at St. Jude’s, who just loves Batman and Iron Man or trucks and tractors, have to get cancer in the first place?

Why can’t God, with barely a movement, rescue the 6-year old? No one would know he did it — he wouldn’t be exposed.

Why can’t he drop some manna from Heaven to the impoverished families? Did he not do it for the Hebrews in the wilderness?

Why can’t God make a gun jam before a deranged person kills innocent children? Gun jams happen without God’s intervention!

It makes no sense. Lex Luthor seemed to be on to something:

If God is all-powerful, he cannot be all-good.

If God is all-good, he cannot be all-powerful.

Sometimes, I think I understand it, or am at peace with it, but then I just hear about someone else, someone innocent and beautiful, who dies or suffers for no reason — and with no “god” to help them. And many of these are Christian people who are suffering, people who are called “his children.” No father would let his children suffer if he had the power to step in.

I felt myself drifting toward atheism.

I didn’t like that feeling. I had devoted so much of my life to preparation for ministry. I have lived my entire life with my Christian faith as the most important thing. Giving it all up would have huge ramifications. At one point, some felt that I had a bright future in Baptist ministry. And what would it do to my family? I couldn’t even consider that. Maybe I’ll just lie about it, I thought.

I didn’t know of another way. I didn’t think there was a type of theism, especially Christian theism, that would accommodate my doubts.

Then I realized …

What if it’s not God I’m angry with, but the version of God I was raised to believe in?

I noticed that the cornerstone was the toughest of all. My chisel and hammer made some markings on it, but I couldn’t break it. It was chosen as the cornerstone for a reason — it’s tough; it’s strong enough to withstand the mightiest of strokes, and I was swinging my hammer as hard as I ever have. However, my strikes were unable to break the cornerstone because …

The stone I was striking didn’t really exist.

God is not confined to the worldview within which I framed him. My assumptions about God were assumptions I didn’t erase before going on my journey. The fog was still there.

What if we are misinterpreting God altogether?

What if God is something much different than what is defined in typical statements of faith?

What if God is something, someone much more personal?

What if our interpretation of God depends on our view of origins, or our eschatology?

What if Christian theology is a huge mess, and our idea of God is just as messy as anything else?

The idea that a transcendent, omnipresent God is out there intervening in the world, answering prayers, and unfolding a plan just simply does not match reality. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise.

But people, myself included, still experience God! What do we make of that? Human experience should matter. And in my experience, God is there; God is real. He might not intervene in ways I used to believe, but …

  • he changes lives
  • he inspires people to do great things
  • he brings people together.

God is not without; he is within. God is not an outside force that acts for people; God is a force that acts through people — the people in whom the Spirit of God has dwelt.

The New Structure

None of the options worked for me. I was at the stone supply shop, and none of the samples fit what I had going on. And with my OCD, I had to have something — a theological system that works.

So, I decided to take my stones and build my own.

A new system that makes sense to me …

With my faith structure, I would hold myself accountable: If the world around me isn’t improving, I can blame only myself.

Instead of choosing to see God in the disaster, I choose to see God in the relief — through his people working in God’s name to help those in dire need.

Instead of praying for God to act from the outside, I pray for God to activate me from the inside.

If I can’t change the world, God can motivate me to change someone’s perception of the world. That is often as simple as saying, “Hello! How are you?” It is often as simple as giving someone a sandwich.

That should be what Christian faith is all about.

And then, I discovered some Christian thinkers I had heard about but not really given the time of day: open and relational theologians — men like Thomas Jay Oord, John Cobb, and others.

They believe and teach basically what I believe and teach, especially the parts about how God interacts in the world.

They believe in God and experience God in their lives, but they understand that life sometimes sucks, and although God doesn’t intervene as an outside force to make the world better, he does indwell us and encourage responses from us that will make the world better.

They believe and teach that though prayer does not change the circumstances around us, it does change us.

And I can work from that.

That’s where I’m working from now — using what I have learned biblically, experientially, and theologically to develop this system into something that works for me.

And I think it’s gonna work.

For the first time in a few years, I can honestly say something I wasn’t confident I would ever again be able to say …

I can still be a Christian.