Honesty

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.

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.