Reconstructing 00: Introduction

It's been a while.

The last five years have been beyond my ability to comment effectively. I've seen so much go wrong in the evangelical community. It's caused me to deconstruct the broken faith I inherited, and rebuild it into one that, so far, works much better.

I want to say first that I am not criticizing any particular person or church as I write this. The churches of Christ I've attended have been full of wonderful, supportive, and loving people, that have done tremendous things for my family. I hope to continue in friendship with them. What's driven me to this point are larger than actions by any one person or small group.

Sometimes in life you support the lesser of two evils. That's what living in this world calls for at times. But when you do that, you have to keep calling it evil. You rend your garments and do what's necessary. But when you support the lesser evil, and call it good, that's setting up a false version of God. It's idolatry. That idolatry has infected and pervaded the evangelical community since 2016, and probably since long before. It's resulted in our complete and abject failure to stand for and with the downtrodden of the world. Instead, we stood with the oppressors, or at best, said nothing for fear of looking political. As if that ship had not long since sailed.

Then COVID came, and I saw so much self-centered refusal to wear masks and stay home. When Christians spend even one second worrying about their rights, rather than their responsibilities and duties, they have completely lost the plot.

For that matter, when Christians say "Don't be afraid of COVID, God will protect you!" that's also setting up a false god, with its own false promises; YHWH God never promised anything like that. This is the consequence of the deep anti-science war that many evangelical churches have been prosecuting for decades. All truth is God's truth. When you're told to reject the evidence of your senses in favor of one particular human interpretation of scripture, you are in the wrong place.

I'm still Christian; that is non-negotiable, but the evangelical Christian teachings I grew up with were clearly, deeply associated with actions and attitudes that were antithetical to my understanding of Christ. So I started really studying those evangelical Christian teachings, and in the process, found something else. All the distinctive teachings of my tradition, the ones that I'd been told for decades were the only honest way to read scripture? Every single one has alternate readings that are at least as plausible. And that's for the teachings that were had any biblical support; some of those teachings aren't in scripture at all.

My tradition was built on teachings of man that had been elevated to the level of scripture. I had to tear my faith down to the bedrock of Christ and start over. I will tell you, reconstructing has been the most joyful and spiritually fulfilling process I've ever engaged in! I'm learning scripture for what it is, and what it says, rather than what I'm told. I'll go over some of those details in future posts.

Do I still consider myself an evangelical Christian? Yes and no. All Christians are called to be evangelical, but I've had to separate myself from the "evangelical movement." I'm far from the only post-evangelical or exvangelical going through this process. There are numerous books and podcasts on the subject, and anything written by David Gushee over the last decade is necessary reading.

I've learned a lot about the wisdom and practices of the Christian mainstream, of which my tradition was an isolated corner. In particular, I've been hanging with the Anglicans lately, and it's filled a deep need within me for humility and reverence before God. They speak on issues in the world, not in a partisan fashion, but from the perspective of how the kingdom of God interacts with those issues. They spend half their worship time reading scripture and holding Communion. And I've yet to hear a single metaphor comparing the Lord's Supper to a sporting event.

So for a while this blog is going to focus on my search for answers, and my attempt to answer questions from what scripture actually says. High among them, how should we Christians live?

No pressure.