It took me a long time to admit I wasn’t evangelical anymore.
My theology was shifting—on days with exceptional clarity, I saw it had already shifted—further and further away from what I had had been taught was orthodox. I didn’t take the Bible completely literal anymore, let alone hold on to Sola Scriptura (the belief that the Christian scriptures were the sole source of faith and practice). Communion had given way to Eucharist in my thinking, and I believed in the real presence of Christ at the table rather than it being some symbolic memorial. I was dissatisfied with everything the evangelical church was offering me and was asking foundational questions about baptism, preaching, the nature of God, and even the gospel itself.
I was deconstructing everything.
Yet, I still wanted to be evangelical. It was built into my identity, my core, my understanding of my faith and, indeed, of myself. I grew up evangelical. During my formative years, when the sense of self solidifies and comes into its own, I was immersed in the evangelical church and culture. It became an identity piece for me, how I understood my place in the world. I was an evangelical.
And here I was disagreeing with the basic tenants of what that meant to me.
The dissonance was strong. It was disorienting. I wondered if I would ever again have a place in church, ever again use my gifts, ever again lead worship, preach, or teach. Would I ever lead another Bible study? Would I ever be comfortable with and unsuspicious of a sermon? Would I ever not feel like an outcast, ever have a place in the pews again? Would I ever be accepted again?
The sense of a loss of identity was strong.
Why didn’t I just give up my questions, my searching, my deconstruction? If I wanted to be an evangelical so much, why didn’t I just conform?
It wasn’t that easy.
See, my deconstruction was fueled by the Bible and theology. The more I read the Bible, the more questions I had about the faith I had been handed. The more I wrestled with the concepts and questions, the more theology I did, the more dissonance came because what I grew up believing stopped making sense.
Hell. Sin. The exclusion of specific people. A victorious Christian life. Miracles. The literalness of the Bible. All this and more just stopped making any sense in light of who I was coming to see Jesus was. How he acted, what he taught, what he accomplished, all of it led me further and further away from the church of my youth.
Jesus is the reason for my deconstruction.
I know that can sound a bit… counter intuitive. But it’s the truth. As hurt and broken and spiritually hungry and emotionally thirsty as I was, Jesus led me right out the doors of the church. He marched me straight into the wild lands, into a spiritual wilderness where I wondered if I would ever find a spiritual home again.
For some people, deconstruction leads them away from the Christian faith all together, and that can be a good thing. To find healing and wholeness, thriving and flourishing we sometimes need to be led away from that which hurt us, lied to us and made us become untrue to the image of God that is etched into each of us.
My deconstruction didn’t lead me away from Christianity, but it did lead me away from the Christian church for a long, long time.
Jesus has a way of cutting through our self-imposed identities and calling us to new life. And often, that cutting and calling is a painful process, a process in which we experience a series of little, daily deaths. If we remain true to Jesus in this process, we begin to understand what it means to truly follow Jesus, to be a disciple, to leave behind everything and follow him.
Jesus was talking with his disciples one day, and he asks them a question: “Who do people say I am?” Jesus was curious what the rumors on the streets were about his identity. What did people think of this wandering miracle working preacher who was challenging the political religious powers in first century, Roman occupied Israel?
The Disciples began firing off identities people wanted to pin on Jesus. John the Baptist come back from the dead. Elijah returned from heaven to proclaim the Day of the Lord. Other people were saying Jesus was a prophet like the ones of old.
Jesus got curious. “And you? Who do y’all say I am?” Jesus wanted to know what his disciples thought of him. Was he a prophet for them to learn from? Was he a revolutionary come to liberate them? Maybe a new rabbi teaching a new way of following Torah?
After a moment of quiet anticipation, Peter spoke up for the entire crew of disciples.
“You are Christ.”
The disciples saw Jesus as the Messiah, the hope of Israel, the savior that had been promised by the prophets of old. Jesus, in their eyes, was the one who they could pin their hopes on because he was going to do something new, bring about a new creation, open up a new way that the covenant of God with Israel would be fulfilled.
Jesus told them to keep this truth on the down low, to speak about it only in hushed whispers among themselves. Don’t proclaim it, don’t tell other people, don’t say a word about it. Then Jesus did something weird. Jesus began to talk about death.
Jesus told them that as the Messiah, he had to suffer, be rejected by the elders of Israel, be killed, and then three days later to rise from the grave.
Some Messiah.
Where was the liberation from the oppressive Romans? Where was the overthrowing of the puppet government that the corrupt high priests and scribes upheld? Where was the deliverance promised to Israel?
Jesus didn’t talk abut any of that. He talked about suffering, rejection, and death.
Peter spoke again for the disciples. Pulling Jesus to the side, Peter told Jesus to stop talking this way. This isn’t the way a Messiah talks. This isn’t what a messiah does. This isn’t savior talk. There was a better way, a way that wasn’t suffering, rejection, death.
Peter and the disciples had grown up into an identity as a Hebrews. They were Children of Abraham, Israelites, Jews. Part of the identity (at least in the first century) was expectantly looking for the Messiah who would lead Israel into a new golden age, free from oppression and into the fulfillment of the covenant God had made with Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
By proclaiming Jesus was the Messiah, they were saying they believed in him, put their hope I him, and trusted him to fulfill the promises they had inherited as part of their identity. They were looking to Jesus to do something that no one else could do in a way they had been taught to expect. With power and might, Jesus would liberate Israel, establish Jerusalem as his throne, and Israel would become a powerful among the nations, never to be exiled or invaded again.
So, when Jesus started all this talk about suffering, being rejected, dying—for some reason they seemed to jump right over the “rise again on the third day” miraculous bit—it struck at a core piece of their belief, of their identity. Their faith, their hope, their history were all wrapped up in their identity. Who they understood themselves to be was entangled with the idea of a Messiah coming in power, not a suffering servant come to die.
But to be a true Messiah, Jesus had to do something that was so counter to the systems of power—systems of oppression—that control this world. If Jesus had listened to Peter, listened to the expectations of who he was supposed to be, Jesus would have indeed been king, king of a besieged nation. He would have gone to war against Rome. He may have won. He may have lost. But either way, he would have been playing by the rules of this world, and betraying his deepest identity as the self-donating, self-sacrificial God that is love.
To play by rules of Empire, even to overthrow Empire, is to capitulate to Empire. And doing that lets the Empire win.
So, Jesus had to challenge their idea of what it meant to be the Messiah, and that meant challenging their identity piece that hung on the expectation of a politically powerful Messiah. It’s no wonder Peter had to step in and rebuke Jesus. He had to get Jesus to stop talking this nonsense. This wasn’t what the Messiah was supposed to be talking about.
Having his identity challenged meant Peter was facing a little death. All the disciples were. They were faced with losing a core piece of their understanding of who they were, namely Jews longing for the hope of Israel. If their hope wasn’t in a militaristic, political king, what were they hoping for?
Jesus sees this as he looks at the disciples. He sees the confusion, the desperation to hold on to who they are, their identities. He sees their eagerness to exalt him as the powerful Messiah.
And Jesus chooses the way of death, the way of suffering, the way of God.
He rebukes Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You’re thinking in human terms, not God’s ways.” Then he calls all his disciples to come close and hear him well.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”
Their identities as people who were hoping for a victorious life of blessing and might, those identities had to die. The identities that were hoping for a bloody, vengeance filled revolution? Those identities had to die. Even their core understanding of what it meant to be an Israelite, hoping for the Messiah to come and liberate them politically, economically, and militarily, even that identity had to die.
Identities that were wrapped up in human things, ways of power, might, victory, strength… these identities had to die.
They still do.
As I clung to my identity as an Evangelical, Jesus was calling me to die to it, to die to my expectations of how things were supposed to be, to die to my self important need to remain. Jesus wasn’t calling me to a new way of being Christian; Jesus was calling me to himself, to follow him, to take up my cross, die to my identity that is wrapped in human things and to find a new identity, a true identity that lets me flourish as I am meant to be because it has been raised three days later with my Messiah.
Jesus was calling the disciples towards resurrection, toward life eternal, towards new creation. But first they had to die. First, we have to die to ourselves.
But think about it, what good does it do to retain our identities that are wrapped up in human things, in oppression, violence, and marginalization? That will make us ultimately lose our soul because we cannot actually flourish with these concepts of our self.
But Jesus suffers with us, is rejected with us, dies with us, and rises three days later, bringing us with him.
Take up your cross. Die to the self. Find new life.
The suffering Messiah is calling you towards resurrection.
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