Dropping the Evangelical Title, and the Start of My Deconstruction

Posted on by We Are Zion

I have become a skeleton of faith, a shadow of my past self. Like the picture above I have a shape, but no volume.  I have lost my first faith and part of me feels like a sinner for doing it. But it is what I was conditioned for, that if I walked away from the narrow I would burn. However, I have to walk away from the path illuminated for me. Because the map that I was given points me in a different direction; I am of course talking about my faith and the Bible.

In the decade that I have been a Christian. I have found God, been baptized, found a calling, jumped in the depths of God, bible, and theology. I have been let go from leadership at two churches, been called a heretic, hated, loved, and mourned Christianity… I’m only 24. I don’t blame anyone but myself for this, and it is because I don’t accept “because” as a real answer. I am a rebel of the system through and through and know that, but it is because I know there is more. I was never satisfied with what I learned at church, I always known something more was there, right below the surface, but I didn’t know how to break through.

1 year ago

I began listening to a copious amount of podcasts and music dealing with theology. Such as Home brewed Christianity, Humble Beast Records, Seminary Dropout, Unbelievable, Rethinking Hell, and Theopologetics all fueled my fire to learn about God. Then 3 months ago, I was introduced to Brian Zohnd, a man of immaculate character sharing in my distaste of christians creating a chimera of their faith and nationalism. Introducing me to christus victor atonement theory, and braking the mold of Christianity that I had been blindered into. Next, came NT Wright, then the Liturgists; all of this new information stretching me to rethink everything I knew, redefining Gods love, and re-framing how I  read the bible.

Now, it is 11/16/16 one week after the elections in America… and I’m dropping a title I carried for a decade; I’m not a Evangelical Christian any more. For me, the bible is still central, but I emphasize the Kingdom of God with salvation being a by product, this differs from the salvation centered thinking of Evangelical Christians. I also cannot stomach passively affirming a sect of Christians whom can vote for a man platforming on hate, racism, and white male privilege nostalgia. Who then, justifies their choice with “well we all make bad choices” and “God is in control”. Then, also turn around and tell everyone to treat everyone with dignity and respect. This unfortunate chain of events has damaged Christians in not only my eyes, but many others inside and outside the church. You can not expect to draw a line in the sand by saying “well we voted on the politics not the man,” and not have people cry bullshit to your face. 81% of the evangelical vote went to Trump; this is a disturbing number when compared to Romney (78%) and McCain (74%) who acted far more christian. Even though, it is a 3% increase that means (estimated) 2,760,000 more Christians voted for Trump.

This reveals something about American Evangelical Christendom to me. It shows me that Christians will compromise their moral compasses to attain a worldly cause. Hear me when I say this, I don’t believe all Christians are racist, sexist, bigoted, xenophobic hatemongers. I recognize minorities and women voted for him. But at what cost? Trump was a man that Campaigned as a Christian but barely acted like one. Addressing women like objects, blacks as lazy, and Hispanics as rapists, Muslims in general as terrorists, excluding minorities from a inclusive America. This is unchristian at it’s core, God is an inclusive God, choosing to include everyone in his kingdom if they believe. Yet, Christians seem to be the loudest about shutting certain people out and making it more difficult to get in. Most Christians form camps that try to make being a Christian in America easier, but when you look at Jesus, he died because of his beliefs. This is what the world at large sees, they do not see a loving inclusive church. Jesus told us “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” and what did he teach us… love, forgiveness, being none judgmental, about wealth and poverty, hypocrisy, and prayer. The Beatitudes encompass the majority of Jesus teachings to us. Yet, we embody none of those things when we align with an man like Donald Trump, even if you just want the republican senate. I’m not a advocate of Hillary, I’m not mad Trump is president, I’m angry my God was dragged through the dirt and used to justify a choice. This election hinged on the evangelical and we should have just sat it out.

Now, I’m at the start of my deconstruction, taking my faith, breaking it to its smallest components and putting it back together. Forced into it by looking at a faith I don’t recognize from the people who showed me the light to begin with. Now, I’m looked at with malice when I say I hate America because it is woefully inadequate. Met at with blank stares when I completely divorce my political ideologies from my faith. Wanting only to advance God’s kingdom and be in his presence, but still in the back of my mind lingers “you’re wrong, you’re wondering the darkness.”

So now, I will deconstruct and rebuild every aspect of my faith down to the most obscurely debatable points, fixated on language and its weight, the context of every verse, chapter, and book. Then, marry it to the over arching narrative of the Bible at hand and from the Deuterocanonical Books. In this I hope to build a more robust faith, and help others to move into a well rounded faith as well. If I end up with no faith so be it, I would rather believe in nothing then to believe in a God who is OK with race bating and hate mongering. But in my studies of the Bible so far, I have not been lead to that God, but to a God who is Love and has always been Love, and wants nothing more then to restore humanity to it original state.

God and My Shifting Christian Metaphysics

Posted on by We Are Zion

I was talking to one of my friend the other day and I was telling him about how my view of God is shifting from this Overlord type, to a God that is there for you always. A God that wants to write with you, walk with you, whatever with you.  No matter how many times the church says he wants a relationship with you they always end up preaching a overload; do no wrong, an eye in the sky God. This God comes out of the subtext of the sermon between the God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you, and the “He is still God and still hates sin and still wants us to do what is right else we will be judged.” I don’t buy that he is a overlord, he is a loving father, and friend. When he created us he only gave one rule; don’t eat the fruit from that tree. During this time, God walked with man, talked with man, and I would bet he hung out with man. He did all this because he wanted to be with us and create with us.

God created us to have dominion over this world in the Garden. During this time, I picture it going  like this between him and Adam.

God: “Hey Adam, I just made this thing! What should we call it?”

Adam: ” uh, a platypus…. I don’t know. Why the heck did you make that?!”

“I don’t know I just kinda did it, we already had ducks and marmots so I thought, I’ll just shove them together”

Now, I know it would be more nuanced and then this but I think that this illustrates my point. God, while we have reverence for him because he is king, he just wants to create with us. I mean God created silicon and then was like hey you guys what can you make with this, then we made computers. Then, we shot a dude into space, we landed on the moon, and we shot curiosity to mars. I picture God in this respect, being a God that wants to say ” hey [insert your name] lets go make something together or if you don’t wanna make something, lets just hang out.” and there is all this other stuff out there for us to find and make still, but we are not there yet.

This is why God Forgives us, so that we can continue to just Create with him. Frankly, I think Jesus died so that God and our relationship could move forward from a constant Sin/repent/forgive/repeat relationship to a Sin/forgiven relationship. I mean, it makes sense, when you look at how God acts in the old testament. Cain killed his brother and God let him live he as the father of murder. Cain was so afraid of people killing him that God gave him a mark to save him. God used murders for some of the most insane things in the bible. Paul was a christian killer and now look we base almost 90% of our theology off of him. We look at the LGBTQ as degenerates bound to burn, yet here is God using Paul a former murder to create a context for theological thought. So why is it that they can’t come to the table and love and be loved and create with us?

I think we as Christians have put rules above God, and this has locked us out of who God is. We don’t allow our selves to doubt because if we doubt we are not Christians. We don’t allow our selves to be wrong be cause if we are wrong then God could be something we weren’t taught, and if God isn’t who we were taught then, who is God really. All of this is destructive thinking taking us to a place where we no longer love because we are busy defending a internal narrative that absolutely cannot change because we as humans are to arrogant to admit we were wrong about something and humbly move forward…..

And now people are suffering for it because we don’t think we can’t extended the grace of friendship to all people.

But yet, here is God extending Grace freely to every one. Wanting to co-existent with us; yet, we are too busy rejecting God so we can push our misconceptions of God forward, we are unable to move forward in to better light, to clearly see God. We will never fully understand what God sees in us, but we can know that God Loves us and we are told that we should love others, and that by moving forward in to this creative loving nature that is bestowed upon us, we can really start to emulate what the kingdom of God and God himself looks like.

Progressive faith

Posted on by We Are Zion

I left my church this week. Well really I haven’t gone for the last month, but who is counting. I left because the experience was making my anxious, and unwelcome. I felt like i wasn’t aloud to ask, seek, and find God in my own way. If God is infinite then our understanding of him should always be in flux. what I mean that is that the basics should remain the same but the possess of output and understanding should always be re learned.

Every time you read the bible or hear a sermon you learn something more about God and the Bible. If I’m always learning something new then my interpretation has to be fed through a new filter. Now don’t get me wrong this has to be within reason if it is something heretical then you need to discard it. However, if something is biblical then your frame of reference should change to at least include it as information to consider whether you believe it. Asking questions about these things is the next step to learning.

I think that God wants us to ask questions, but when we ask question we always ask the same questions, hoping for new or better answers. However, we should be working toward asking better questions. So if our original question is “Did Jesus die for our sins?” then the next question should be “Why did Jesus die?” now this happens to an extent. When we reach questions like “How did Jesus’ death invoke the forgiveness of God for his people?” most people stop though. I don’t know what the next question should be, but I know there is one. I also know that most people have their opinion on this question, but some people when faced with a different answers just throw their hands up and just say “well it just is that way” or ” why does it matter how, as long as we are forgiven?” If this faith insecurity or they just want to be told what to believe, I have no clue. I do know this, the second we stop asking questions is the second we start to get radical.

This brings me back to why I left my church. I wasn’t allowed to move forward; I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. If I was allowed then I certainly was not allowed to teach any one what I was looking for. Now that I left I feel healthy again; I feel like I can love again. I certainly feel safer, but I don’t know what I’m going to do next. What I thought I was going to do isn’t going to happen anymore. I certainly believe that God is positioning me for something, but what, I don’t know.

If you are feeling stuck, confused, and uncomfortable. I want to encourage people who are in this situation to look to God and do what feels right; I don’t mean exit the church actually I would recommended you avoid that at all costs. I only left because it was the open door for me to be healthy again, for me to fix myself, and re position myself, I certainly will position myself under authority as soon as I can. However, I know that a large portion of people in America feel uncomfortable with where the church is at and it is because people are afraid to move forward in to the next phase of Biblical and Triunial understanding.

I’m not saying that the problem is that you’re not allowed to ask questions, but I know that if the Body of Christ is to move forward something needs to happen. If you’re at a church that is not missional and will not move to that and you are a missionary then you need to find a place that will help push you forward into that. If you’re a musician and you want to write your own worship music and your doing worship but they wont let you try out a song you wrote then you probably need to move somewhere else. the worst thing for a christian is to become complacent in a position because of X, Y, or Z. Because with complacency a stagnate faith grows, a stagnate faith hates change. If the church can’t change then Christ can’t grow, and if Christ can’t grow then Christ died for nothing.

 

INTP, Christianity, Chaos

Posted on by We Are Zion

Recently I decided to read up on my personality type, basing my resources off of the briggs personality identification. In the end I learned that I was INTP-T, if you’re not familiar with this terminology you can look it up before reading to get a more in depth understanding, but basically it means I’m Introverted, intuitive, thinking, prospective, Turbulent…. while intellectually this is a possibly amazing combination, as a Christian I look at the identifier and don’t read INTP but instead I read Inept.

As some one who who loves the Lord and wants to understand his innermost workings I scourer the Bible, internet, book, podcasts, and other brains for information. This comes at a cost though…. scoring a 29% in the feelings category means that I have little room allocated to considering the feelings of a individual because for me, logic dictates the situation and when logic isn’t dictating  the situation I lose my mind. I devolve from a reasonable individual to someone who is bent on proving no matter the cost logical truth.

A larger problem arises out of this thought process, a distaste for a gift that God gave me a wish that I could handle the mainstream more easily and not mock people who who can just simply say “well it just is”. This transforms to a point to which I feel like I am no longer allowed to be  Christian. That due to my overly logical nature I am ineligible for forgiveness because I don’t project forgiveness.  That I am lukewarm water primed to be spit out of Gods mouth and be told that I was never known. Obsessive learning that lends to intellectual weight, Depression due to intellectual weight ensues, only broken when the stress of intellectual weight is to much to handle and it absolutely has to be released,  a rampant unending cycle is formed.

This turns my Christianity tumultuous, which in turn makes my voice death. When I reflect on my last few years I have grown in many ways but I have devolved from anything that is loving, understanding, or graceful. My patience is with those I know inside and out and not those who I have just meet. Reason supersedes grace, frustration supersedes love, knowledge supersedes understanding. I know these things and have known them for a long… long time and it is past due that I work them out and fix them. My passion is to be a mouthpiece of God and to do this I have to break my Inept nature of destructive Bull horning, and balance that with wisdom in handling situations that make no sense to me.

PRAYER:

God,

I look to you for guidance

I look to you for example

I look to you for love

I look to you for daily needs

You are a mystery, blessing, and curse

But I love you deeply

I pray for me and all like me

That within you we find a voice

A voice of light

A voice  of hope

A voice of authority

A voice of God

Mantle to us your characteristics

So that light may pierce the dark

Where only we can thrive

Amen

 

Fear (humbeling honesty cont.)

Posted on by We Are Zion

I was just in Red Robins, I was watching the avalanche hockey game and having a beer. I witnessed a couple that came in the looked really haggard, while watching the game the manager engaged in a conversation with me about the couple being in another restaurant earlier that week. They had raised a fuss and were obviously on drugs. They looked like they were on drugs their sunken eye sockets and glazed eyes were a dead give away, they ordered nothing but water and just wanted to be left alone. Not that they should really just come in to drink water, but people started to come up to the manager and voice how there presence made them uneasy.

Situations like this throw me off because my heart and my flesh slam into each other the hardest here. On one side, I break and hurt for those people in these situations. Broken, lost, and hurting needing compassion and a purpose. But my flesh tell me to stay away and to not engage with them. They are the low lives and cant keep there lives together. When I see people struggle with drugs I see two people. First, I see the person who made the bad choice early in life and how they are desperately crawling there way out of the pit, only to fall 10 feet up. The second is the persons who has allowed there there life to be consumed and destroyed by drugs.

Why does my flesh and heart collide though. Fear… fear drives the clash on one side, you don’t want to be the guy that just sat at the drug table because now you’re crazy. Furthermore,  you’re obligated to fix the situation that is at hand in the eyes of the sober. If you fail you’re a fool, and the cycle of addiction takes hold; it just proves the statistics.

But we never consider the fear the person drugged out is going through as well. They are scared of life, they are more okay with life, jack out of there mind because it hurts less than reality. They are afraid of the destruction there body in going through because of the addiction and when they will die from a overdose. They’re more scared of the pain that comes from withdraw and overrule the primal instinct to live and to reject pain.

This clash of fears is destruction to the spirit, a cataclysm of humanity to not help those in need. All because we are to afraid to be judged and be held to a higher standard that we don’t think we can live up to.  As I left the restaurant the couple was arrested and the lady couldn’t understand why (while in reality she was just going to the drunk tank for the night to sober up) she was afraid and confused. she didn’t understand she was being taken because her presence alone made people uncomfortable. I walked past, thinking what I would have done in that position, not thinking about how I could be a light to those people; how I could be Jesus in that moment.

check out my post Humbling Honesty for a short excerpt on how being transparent can cause fear, but ultimately is humbling.

Humbling Honesty

Posted on by We Are Zion

Sometimes I feel like being outwardly honest about your inward emotions is the most difficult thing you can do. This is because it shows a vulnerability, and that vulnerability instills a fear in us. This fear is driven by things like status, importance, vanity,  and intelligence. People who are driven by these fears are showing they believe they are worth more than the people around them.

Fear is a feeling that something will likely be painful, traumatizing or dangerous. When we fear something, normally, we run from it; seldom do we lean into it. We don’t show our emotions, and hold our emotions back because we are afraid of the outcome. This outcome can be a lose of status, being thought of as stupid, or being discredited in a subject and therefore become less important.

We won’t be able to move forward with anything that we want to do with that kind of emotional fear inside us. We were not given a spirit of fear [2 Timothy 1:7]. We were created to be powerful, self confident and willing to step out in faith. If fear is holding us back we are hurting ourselves. We are showing that because we don’t want to lose our credibility or status we will keep our mouths shut, even if doing it hurts us even more because we believe we are more important than someone else.

I find being transparent and open about my emotions humbles me because I realize I’m not always right. I want to be a beast for God, allowing him to move through me and to do this I must be humble. I have to realize I am not as important as the plan that God has and move with the path God has set before me.

On the flip side of this transparency, we also have to know when to hold our tongues. Because if we just flippantly rattle off words, we can actually be showing we believe we are important enough to just speak our minds whenever. In doing this, we are like a blind man with a sword, potentially cutting of the heads and injuring allies because we believe we are so important or powerful and we don’t need to be aware of our surroundings.

WAZcast Ep 2

Posted on by We Are Zion

sorry it has been a minute since I last posted! My computer was down and out and I wasn’t able to get anything out to you guys but alas it is fixed! and here is Ep 2 of WAZcast!

Heaven Through Us

Posted on by We Are Zion

Thinking about Gods kingdom, generally perceived as something far away, in another dimension. Because the idea that Heaven is only attainable after death if you have been saved is the most common. This view can produce the perspective that what we do on earth is only good for getting into heaven. In reality, we get into heaven by Gods grace, and the death of Jesus. What if if Heaven was closer then you thought? That the Kingdom of God is actually at hand and we have the opportunity to step in to Heaven on Earth?

Quickly defining heaven, Heaven is the Kingdom of God. When you hear Jesus say in Mark 1:15 “..The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” you actually reading about Heaven. Heaven and The kingdom of God are interchangeable. What if Heaven is for God and the angels though, and Earth if for the humans? Heaven would then not be our eternal destination. This idea is pretty counter Christian, because I haven’t meet a Christian that doesn’t believe we are going to heaven. Christians for the most part says that salvation is to save us from our sins and to set us up for eternity. Then, when we get to heaven we have a new body and we are completely remade. However, it wouldn’t make sense for God to make Adam and Eve human if he wanted them to be another way. Our gloried bodies will probably look a lot like what we have now, but we wont have the sin in our life. If God created us to be human and nothing else; then God put us on Earth to be on Earth and no where else. Earth was given to humans to show the glory of God. God gave us earth to rule over, and God let Adam name the animals. When man fell, he was disconnected from the kingdom of God. This disconnect was restored through the death of Jesus, and now we are able to step back into the Kingdom of God and start to restore it on Earth today.

Our job as christians is to be Ambassadors for Christ on earth. 2 Corinthians 5 : 20 says “So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!'” this is our call as Workers of God to be Ambassadors. Some people don’t know an Ambassador is to own the ground you stand on, this means that if we are Christ’s Ambassadors and we have the Kingdom of God in us (Luke 17:21), Heaven is where we stand. This is very important because if we walk in that knowledge our confidence shows and people are drawn to that. With each person being a place of heaven on earth we are able to slowly transform the world in to a place of God’s Kingdom a place where sin can no longer dwell. It is also important to note that Jesus said to Peter “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matthew 18:18. If Heaven is Earth and what we allow will be allowed in heaven, we need to radically rethink how we view what we are doing to and on this earth.

Fight Pain, Ask Questions

Posted on by We Are Zion

Every once and a while, I catch my self in this funk that I really can’t explain. It is one of those times where I question everything about my faith, theology, and calling. I’ll just sit there and go over a million different ways a situation can play out. I know a lot of people go through this for different reasons; my reason is it is birthed out of my depression. However, I always come out of it with a straight head. Most people who hits this wall of confusion comes out of it with a straight head, although it takes longer for some.For me, it is like I am sitting on a chair and one of its legs was kicked off and now I’m about to slam in to the ground.

How you handle this moment is immensely important. Instead of embracing it, that overworked, stereotypical response from the church, which frustrates me to no end. I’m going to tell you fight it… battle your suffering, challenge it, rip it to shreds. Although it seems counter intuitive, because we live in a world of politically correctness, we live in a world that tells us to embrace everything. Why would I embrace my anguish? I have no affection for it. Maybe, long after the ordeal, I can see the growth that took place, if it even happened!

However, I don’t mean throw punches and go “nope I’m just not going to suffer”, no growth will take place with that mind set. Rather take the situation and study it, and ask questions and learn. If every task you try and complete is hindered, and everything you try to accomplish falls short. Don’t wallow and ask why me. If your just sitting there going woe is me, your wasting your life. Instead, ask yourself what is happening, ask other people to look at your situation and give you input. I have two empty, three-month bottles of Effexor (anti-depression drug), sitting on top of my computer and a new bottle sitting in my kitchen. When I get down, I have to ask myself what can I learn. I have to tell myself I’m going to learn and I’m going to fight the feeling. Because if I feel like this,  I need to learn from every hit, and I’m going to come out sore, but I get to go in to the next fight stronger.

The Bible says we’re going to suffer 1 Peter 2:21 says “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps,” Christ suffered, he even asked God to take the cup from him and on the cross yelled “My God, why have you forsaken me?”. Why is an incredible question to ask in hardship because it sets you up to learn. Christ was an example for us to follow  and suffering is in the life of Jesus, and it is in our life. Learn from misfortune, ask why, and challenge it, you will learn from suffering. No one ever tells you how to learn from suffering, the answer is why, just like Jesus asked on the cross, after asking why go find the answer by any means necessary.