Faith crisis: When our core beliefs get shaken. (And yours is coming.)

by K.W. Leslie, 19 April 2021

Hopefully the main reason, or at least one of the reasons, you’re reading this blog is you’re interested in growing your relationship with Christ Jesus.

Sad to say, a lot of Christians aren’t interested in any such thing. Not that they aren’t interested in Jesus! It’s because they assume they’re doing just fine. Life is good, so God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. Heck, some of you might think this, and you’re just reading this blog ’cause I amuse you, or you generally agree with me… or you’re looking for evidence I’m some heretic. Whatever.

Such people will continue to believe they’re doing just fine. That is, till they slam into a faith crisis. Or as Christians prefer to call it, a “crisis of faith.” It’s when we discover we’re wrong about God. Hopefully we already knew this—we get that nobody understands him 100 percent except Jesus; we’re certainly not claiming we have Jesus-level knowledge. (Well I’m certainly not. I don’t know about some preachers.) What turns our error into a full-on crisis, is intentionally or not, we turned these wrong ideas into our core beliefs. We made ’em vital to our entire understanding of God. And once we found out we’re wrong, of course we’re rocked to our core. Now we gotta reexamine everything.

Unless your life is short (which’ll no doubt trigger someone else’s crisis of faith), faith crises are inevitable. Everybody has one. Everybody. You’re gonna have one someday. Brace yourself.

The only exception is of course Jesus. ’Cause like I said, a faith crisis is when we discover we’re wrong—and Jesus isn’t wrong. He fully, absolutely does know God. Jn 1.18 The rest of us aren’t quite so omniscient, much as we’d like to imagine we’re God-experts by now. Even longtime Christians have faith crises. Sometimes big huge ones, if we’ve invested a lot of effort, time, and our own reputation, into promoting beliefs which turn out to be wrong. If you spent all your life promoting cessationism, but Jesus appears to you one night and tells you to cut that out, you’ve gotta humble yourself so much. If you’re not used to humility, it’s gonna be rough.

So when the crisis comes, Christians either

  1. Grab Jesus’s hand tight, and let him lead us through it.
  2. Quit Jesus altogether.
  3. Go into serious denial, shut off our doubts, shut down our faith, and only pretend to be growing Christians from then on.
  4. Yep. It’s either follow Jesus, quit Jesus, or lobotomize your Christianity. Like those cessationists whom Jesus ordered to repent… who haven’t. If you don’t wanna go their route, work on that humility! This way when the Spirit shows us we’re wrong, no matter how much it shakes us up, we’ll know better than to insist, “No I’m not wrong,” and stop following Jesus—one way or another

    The crisis of faith?

    Often a faith crisis is called “the crisis of faith,” because people assume there’s only one type of faith crisis.

    It’s this one: Bad stuff happened in a good God’s universe. As it does. But immature Christians assume bad stuff will never ever happen to us, because we’ve been taught all our Christian lives that all things work together for our good. Right? We sing it in our worship songs, and wear it on our T-shirts.

    Then bad stuff does happen. As it happens to absolutely everyone. Everybody dies, which means everybody’s gonna have a loved one who dies, including people whom we really, really don’t want to die. Parents will die. Children might die. Best friends might die unexpectedly, even violently, sometimes painfully. Turns out God doesn’t magically rescue us from all our woes. Not that he ever promised to. “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” Jesus stated. Jn 16.33 KJV He didn’t make exceptions for his favorites.

    But naïve Christians don’t believe this, so they freak out. They believed God promises to keep us safe. He didn’t. So now they’re not sure they even believe in him anymore.

    Okay. Yes this particular form of faith crisis happens. All the time. So often, you can see why people think it’s “the crisis of faith,” because it’s the most familiar form it takes: People find out they’re dead wrong about God—pun totally intended—and it shakes ’em to their core.

    I blame it on bad pastoring. Pastors have a duty to tell Christians this isn’t how God works. They know—or should know, from personal experience—it’s false. They should say so. They don’t.

    And too often it’s because these pastors don’t believe it either. They think, and preach, God does make all things work together for our good. Turns out they’ve somehow never been through this particular faith crisis themselves. Or they have, but they’re in massive denial about it: A loved one died, and it was hard, but God caused such wonderful things to happen as a result of that death, that instead of grief they now have warm fuzzy feelings. God truly does make all things work together for our good.

    Yeah, no. This is a bright red waving flag meaning these pastors are spiritually immature. And therefore not qualified to be in church leadership.

    Yes, I’m entirely serious: If you went through a faith crisis, and came out the other end not recognizing and confessing you were wrong, you’re still wrong, and you’ve resisted the Holy Spirit’s attempt to correct you. Are you sure you want people who ignore the Holy Spirit, to be in charge of your church? I don’t. Pretty sure Jesus doesn’t either.

    Some crises are harder than others.

    When a pagan comes to Jesus, she figures now she’s gotta give up certain activities Christians frown upon. Like porn: She’s heard good Christians don’t get mixed up in porn, so she shouldn’t either.

    But of course she discovers all her Christian friends are super into porn. So she’s so relieved—hey, it’s no problem!—and that’s what she’ll believe from now on. If her pastor rails against porn, won’t matter; she’ll keep her own opinion. And keep it to herself, same as all the other inconsistent Christians.

    Thing is, porn is a problem. As the Holy Spirit within us is gonna show us as he’s working on us, pulling us towards truth. But sometimes it’s gonna take time. The Spirit has lots of things to teach us, and he might consider these other things, for now, more important than quitting porn. And once he gets to it, sometimes we’ll be resistant. (Or we’re too busy with all the porn.)

    But once the Spirit finally does make an issue of it, we’re not gonna grow any further as Christians till we heed him. Because these things are just that important.

    The crisis is when this new information or revelation is just too much for us.

    It’s actually not. The Spirit knows what he’s doing, and knows precisely how far to push or stretch us. But we haven’t always learned to trust him. We lack faith. So to us, it feels like a crisis. Either we accept what the Spirit’s teaching us and keep moving forward, or we have to stop. And by stop, I really do mean stop.

    For some this isn’t that huge a crisis. It’s not traumatic at all: “I have to stop doing that? Okay, I’ll stop doing that.” Or “That’s so obvious! Of course I believe that; how could I have missed it?” It shook a core belief, but we’re still kinda flexible on those core beliefs, because we know Jesus is more important than our fundamentals.

    For others it’s traumatic. If you think fundamentals are as important as Jesus, you’re gonna fight for those fundamentals as hard as you would Jesus—and if you think they’re more important, you’ll fight Jesus all the harder. If these are fond, beloved beliefs, we’re gonna be horrified by the idea they’re wrong—or worse, lies—or embarrassed to discover we adopted a worldview which is in any way contrary to God. We might refuse to accept our churches are cults, or our leaders and friends are terribly misguided—or worse, hypocrites.

    And sometimes yes it’s traumatic… but we’ve learned to trust the Spirit absolutely. We trust him so much, we don’t care which of our dearly-held habits and beliefs he overthrows. We’ll change everything for him. Seriously, everything. It won’t be easy, but it’ll never shake us away from God: Following God is the entire reason for the shakeup.

    But not every Christian believes the Spirit’s the person behind the shakeup. They believe, and preach, all doubt comes from the devil. God’s all about faith, right? Never doubt.

    Especially when these are deeply held, deeply cherished beliefs. Or when we’ve been taught Christians have to believe ’em, otherwise we’re not truly Christians. In the church I grew up in, we were taught not only does the bible have no errors, if if did have an error in it, we’d have to throw it out. And for that matter, we’d have to throw out our religion, ’cause everything we know about God comes from bible. (Y’see, they don’t believe God talks to people anymore. So prayer is one-way, all prophets are frauds, and personal appearances by Jesus don’t happen and don’t matter.) When you raise the stakes so outrageously high, it’s no surprise people will fight their doubts tooth and nail.

    Yep, even fight the Spirit over them. Hopefully we’ll lose. But you know how stubborn people can be. Defeat them in an argument, and they’ll never concede; they’ll just bide their time, look for better evidence, come back later, and restart the argument. And some of us are the very same way with the Spirit. He tells us to put something down; we go looking in the bible, or among fellow Christians, for proof that we can take it back up. Just like the hypothetical new believer and her porn. We don’t accept the Spirit has the last word and final say; we want the final say.

    So it becomes a struggle—a crisis of faith. We fight it out. And since we can’t possibly win (the Holy Spirit is God Almighty, after all) the only thing we can do is retreat—and live our lives in dead faith, or no faith.

    Divorce is not an option.

    This passage bears reading.

    John 6.59-60, 66-69 KWL
    59 Jesus said this while teaching in the Kfar Nahum synagogue.
    60 So, many of his students who heard him said, “This word is hard. Who can listen to it?”
     
    66 As a result of this lesson, many of his students went home and no longer followed him.
    67 So Jesus told the Twelve, “Don’t you also want to go?”
    68 Simon Peter answered Jesus, “Master, to whom will we go?
    You have lessons of life in the next age, 69 and we believed, and came to know you’re God’s saint.”

    Simon Peter wasn’t Jesus’s best student for nothing. He knew even though the Master might teach something hard to understand, or even impossible to believe, he has the words of eternal life. There was no other option for Peter. There’s Jesus. That’s it.

    Not everybody thinks this way. Lots of folks are really just dabbling in Christianity: They were raised Christian, or their version of Christianism works for them. Present them a convenient option, and they’re outa here. I knew a man who quit Christianity for Buddhism. Growing up, he grew tired of always asking God’s forgiveness for sins which he never intended to stop committing. He heard the Buddhists didn’t consider such behavior a sin. (He heard wrongly, but the “Buddhists” he knew were, like Christianists, just adopting a form of Buddhism instead of the Buddha’s actual teachings.) So he decided that was the religion for him, and switched easily. People can adapt to any religion when it lets us worship our real gods.

    In the case of Jesus’s students who bailed on him, they couldn’t handle his teaching about the bread of life. Jn 6.32-59 They were too materialistic. They only thought of what Jesus could give them, and Jesus’s metaphors made ’em realize he was talking some serious commitment. Didn’t take much to trigger their crisis of faith, for they had very little faith to begin with, and weren’t willing to push through it with Jesus. They just left.

    We can’t think like that. We have to determine now, once and for all: No matter what the Spirit puts us through, we’re with him. We’re committed. Our relationship with God is for better or worse, not just better. For richer or poorer, not just richer. In sickness and in health, not just health. Yeah, it’s exactly like marriage. The church is the bride of Christ, remember? We have to be just as committed. More, considering how easy our culture finds it to divorce.

    What shakes, and what doesn’t.

    I live in California, and we get earthquakes. (So does Israel.) So I know a little something about earthquake-proofing your buildings. You don’t achieve this by building on a firm foundation. When the ground shakes, so does the foundation; doesn’t matter how firm it is. Only those who live outside earthquake country would write worship songs about “how firm a foundation… is laid for your faith.”

    Certain parts of the building are designed to stay standing. They may shake. That’s okay, so long that when the shaking’s over, the building stays up. The ancients knew this, and based their buildings’ stability not on foundations, but on various solid, stable stones. We call ’em cornerstones.

    Nowadays our buildings are made with a wood and steel framework. (One which shakes, but stays up, in an earthquake.) So cornerstones tend to be ceremonial. But not so in Jesus’s day. And it’s why cornerstones were so important. When Paul wrote this:

    Ephesians 2.19-22 KWL
    19 So then you’re no longer foreigners and strangers.
    Instead you’re fellow citizens of saints. Family members of God.
    20 Constructions on the foundation of the apostles and prophets—
    Christ Jesus being the foundation wall himself.
    21 In Christ the whole building fits together, growing into a holy temple, by the Master.
    22 In Christ you’re also built together into a dwelling-place for God, by the Spirit.

    notice who’s in the most stable position. It‘s not the apostles and prophets—the folks who wrote the bible, so most folks tend to skip over any apostles and prophets currently leading our churches, and point to the bible. Fine; point to the bible. It is the foundation of our faith; they’re not wrong. But useful as the bible is, it’s not bible. It’s Christ. I live in earthquake country. The foundation won’t keep a shaking building up. The framework, the foundation walls, the cornerstone, does. Christ does.

    I point this out ’cause when we Christians have our crises of faith, fellow Christians tell us to turn to the scriptures: The bible has all the answers. But we discover, to our horror, it actually doesn’t. It tells us what God is like, and how he saved us. But the details we seek for our various crises: Often not in there. Don’t need to be. We’re supposed to trust God.

    We’re supposed to trust God despite our not having all the answers, despite his not always giving us answers. We’re meant to turn to him. But that’s not what we do. We’re told the bible has answers. So we scour the bible for ’em. And when we don’t find them, we get very, very frustrated—the bible won’t give us what we were promised!—and we despair, and quit.

    Or we try other routes. Find some Christian guru who knows all. We’ll try friends, or popular Christian books, or TV preachers—anyone who claims to have a solution. And y’know, they might. And might not. Maybe they went through a similar crisis, and the Spirit led ’em through it, so they have good advice. But maybe they turned to someone other than the Spirit, so they have rotten advice. Or maybe they’ve never been through your crisis—or any crisis, ’cause they turned Christianist long ago, so their only advice is, “Stop doubting. Just believe really hard.” You quench that Spirit. How dare he lead you into truth and stress you out like that.

    No, I’m not saying ditch our fellow Christians and try the go-it-alone route. Absolutely not. But we need to figure out who the trustworthy Christians are before our crises hit. Otherwise we’ll turn to anyone who tells us what we want to hear, rather than people whom we already know hear God.

    Refuse to accept simplistic, useless answers from Christians who deny their doubts, insist we should never doubt, and pretend they never doubt. Challenge the leaders of the church to deal with your serious questions—to stop watering down Christianity in the mistaken belief that just because the gospel is a simple idea, everything in Christendom is simple. Get real. That, too, is what the Spirit wants.

    Many Christians claim the faith crisis is a private, internal struggle, just between us and the Lord; just head to the prayer closet and pray it out. Bad idea. Go ahead and share your struggle with trusted Christians. Let ’em pray for you and with you. Let ’em encourage you; share some of their testimonies about how God got them through their faith crisis. ’Cause we all go through this, and if you hide your crisis you’ll never learn from their experiences.

    You’ll have fears. That’s normal. You’ll have doubts. Also normal. You’ll be tempted to pretend everything is just fine. Don’t do that. Don’t turn to hypocrisy. Don’t embrace sin instead of growth.

    Our cornerstone is Jesus. So when the bible and fellow Christians are of little help, the Spirit of Christ has every answer. Regardless of whether he shares those answers, we gotta trust him. Yes it’s hard. Particularly for those of us who like to have answers. But this is how we do it. Cling to Jesus and ride out the earthquake. Let him shake everything off you which needs to come off.

Why skipping church messes us up.

by K.W. Leslie, 15 April 2021

Whenever I share Jesus with people, most of the time I discover they’re Christian. Or at least they imagine they’re Christian.

In the United States, most folks have had some exposure to Christianity. Some of us grew up churchgoers. Others said some version of a sinner’s prayer at one point in our lives. Others had Christian parents, or were baptized, or attend Easter and Christmas services and figure that’ll do. People figure they believe in Jesus and that’s all it takes to make ’em Christian. Confess, believe, and we’re saved. Ro 10.9 Right?

So by this metric they figure they’re Christian. They believe in Jesus. Following him is a whole other deal. They’re not religious. They’re “spiritual,” as they define spiritual, which usually means imaginary—’cause like I said, they imagine they’re Christian. Their Christianity wholly exists in their heads. You’d be hard-pressed to find it elsewhere in their lives, but it’s in their heads at least—and somebody’s assured them it counts if it only exists in their heads. Or “in your heart,” which they figure means their feelings—which are still only in their heads.

So to them, Christianity’s how they feel about Jesus. Not what they do for him. Not following him. They don’t. Or they’ll do the bare minimum to feel Christian: They pray every so often, and it won’t entirely be prayer requests, but some actual sucking up praise. They drop a dollar in the Salvation Army kettle.

As for going to church… well they don’t. Maybe on the holidays. ’Cause Sundays are their time. Their one day off; the one day of the week they get to sleep in, or have no obligations, or can get drunk during brunch. It’s “Sunday funday,” their weekly holiday.

Nobody’s ever explained to them that if “Christians” don’t go to church, it makes us heretic.

Seriously. Heretic. No, heretic doesn’t mean they’re going to hell; it only means they get God so wrong, it can be argued they’re not properly Christian. Contrary to what a lot of go-it-alone “Christians” imagine, there are valid standards for what makes us Christian; it’s called orthodoxy. Among these standards is “the communion of saints,” or the church. It’s in our creeds. True Christians deliberately interact with fellow Christians. And not just to have coffee or watch a game: For the purpose of encouraging one another to follow Jesus better, and to worship him together.

If we avoid the communion of saints—and it might sound like we have perfectly legitimate reasons—the cold hard fact is we’re heretic. Jesus doesn’t want his followers to go it alone. He ordered us to love one another. He made it a full-on command. It identifies us as his followers. Jn 13.34-35 When we won’t obey Jesus, we’re not followers. When we figure we can love one another just fine without ever intentionally coming together to do so… we can call ourselves Christian, but I seriously doubt Jesus recognizes us as such. Lk 6.46 And if he doesn’t identify us as his, Mt 7.21-23 we’re not.

Hey, somebody had to warn you. Better you hear this now, than when you stand before Jesus.

Three focal points of church services.

by K.W. Leslie, 14 April 2021

Obviously not all churches are alike. Practices vary. Even within the same denomination: Y’might have one church which is known for its Christian education, bible studies, Sunday school program, and teaching pastors… with a sister church known for its musicians.

Talk to any Christian about what they like best in their church, and they’ll usually emphasize a few things they particularly like: The friendliness. The informality. The kids’ program. The decor. The amiability of the head pastor. The many outreach programs. The coffee—for once it’s not Folger’s! (’Cause Folger’s is crap. But when the person in charge of the church’s coffee doesn’t even drink coffee, guess what they always buy? Right—the cheapest stuff on the shelf. Kirkland or Folger’s, or some other awful blend which tastes like Juan Valdez’s burro rolled around in it. Churches, don’t do that to your people. But I digress.)

These things aside, y’might notice churches structure their entire Sunday morning service (or Saturday evening, or whenever they do their services) around one of three things: Sacraments, teaching, or music.

AS FOUND AMONGSUITS BEST
SACRAMENT-
FOCUSED
Orthodox, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans.Kinesthetic learners. They enjoy the physical motions and movements, and the visual cues. They wanna feel not just spiritually, but physically connected to our Lord Jesus and our fellow Christians.
SERMON-
FOCUSED
Reformed, Baptists, Methodists, Anabaptists.Intellectuals. They enjoy knowledge about God—theology, bible background and history and study, and wisdom. (Often they enjoy the pursuit of knowledge in general.) They seek to love God with all their mind and will.
MUSIC-
FOCUSED
Pentecostals, charismatics, non-denominationals.Emotive people. Music appeals to their desire to worship God with all their heart. They pursue a sense of God’s presence.

Yeah, you might think there are other types. Like the snake-handling churches. But in such churches, snake-handling is a sacrament, so… yep, there they are among the three.

How d’you know which one is your church’s main focus? Simple: If you skip it, the people of your church act as though you didn’t really “have church.” Wasn’t a proper service; didn’t count.

Skip the music, or only sing for 10 minutes, in a music-focused church, and people will think something went horribly wrong. They didn’t feel the Spirit that week. They feel unfulfilled. They’d be outraged if they didn’t sing at all. Ever been in a church service during a power failure? If you don’t have a guitar or piano available, sacrament- or sermon-focused churches will figure, “Fine; we’ll sing a song or two acapella, then ‘get on with it’”—meaning the real part of their service, the message or sacrament. But in a music-focused church, people won’t settle for an abbreviated songset. They’ll try their darnedest to make the musical experience as significant as the electrified experience. And blame the devil for the power failure—“Satan tried to stop us from having church!”—and pointedly make even more joyful a noise as their voices and acoustic instruments can produce. And y’know, they’ll succeed.

Now skip the music in a sermon-focused church. No I’m not kidding; tell people, “Sorry, the music pastor’s out sick today, so we’ll have music next week.” Don’t even bother with a simple acapella chorus. And no, you won’t have a revolt: People might think it’s weird, but hey, they heard a sermon, so they’re good. Music-focused Christians would lose their minds, but sermon-focused Christians wouldn’t mind at all. Turn it around and skip the sermon (as I have seen music-focused churches do multiple times) and sermon-focused people would be really, really irritated: They came to church to get spiritual food, and music is baby food at best: They want something to chew on. You can skip communion; many such churches only celebrate it once a month, or only on Easter and Christmas. Music’s optional too… which is why I find it tends to not be very good in such churches. When I was growing up, Mom had no trouble with being as much as 45 minutes late for the service, ’cause “we’ll only miss the music.” But we’d better not miss the sermon.

And in sacrament-focused churches, holy communion (or Eucharist) must happen. Skip the music, skip the homily; don’t you dare skip communion. Otherwise it’s “not church,” and now the people will have to go to another church that week so they can receive communion. No I’m not kidding: They will.

When and where the church meets.

by K.W. Leslie, 13 April 2021

Years ago I got an email asking about what day of the week we oughta attend our church services.

My church has a Saturday night service, and I started going to that instead of Sunday mornings. My sister says Saturday nights don’t count; we’re supposed to go to church on Sundays. I told her God doesn’t care when we go to church, so long that we do. Which of us is right?

Which of you is right? The weaker believer. Always.

Romans 14.5-6 NLT
5 In the same way, some think one day is more holy than another day, while others think every day is alike. You should each be fully convinced that whichever day you choose is acceptable. 6A Those who worship the Lord on a special day do it to honor him.
 
Romans 15.1-2 NLT
1 We who are strong must be considerate of those who are sensitive about things like this. We must not just please ourselves. 2 We should help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord.

If our Christian sister or brother has a hangup, we might not think it’s a legitimate concern—at all—but to them it totally is. It might derail their Christianity. Shouldn’t, but could. So we have to take that into consideration, and be gracious to them. Not shout back at them, “I have freedom in Christ!”—as if that gives us license to be jerks.

No, that doesn’t mean we have to change our usual worship practices to accommodate them. If you usually attend Saturday night services, keep doing so. But don’t do it to outrage anyone—“Lookit me, I’m worshiping on Saturday, neener neener neener.” I’m mainly thinking of those Christians who attended “worship protests” during a pandemic, not to worship Jesus, but to flout government guidelines under the guise of worship. When you’re truly doing it to honor Jesus, your ulterior motives won’t include fleshly things like division and antagonism. You’re not gonna be a dick about it! And God will judge those Christians for their horrible example to fellow Christians, and their horrible witness to the lost and the sick.

So yeah: If your sister insists Saturday nights “don’t count,” she doesn’t have any biblical basis for this belief. Sunday morning worship is simply Christian custom. Nothing more. We can worship God whenever we like. We oughta be worshiping him daily! And we can worship him together, as the people of his church, whenever we schedule a service, be it Sunday morning, Saturday night, Wednesday night, Friday night, Tuesday morning, Thursday afternoon, whenever.

But till she finally realizes this, take her to Sunday morning services.

The church is people.

by K.W. Leslie, 12 April 2021
Church. tʃərtʃ noun. A Christian group which gathers for the purpose of following and worshiping God.
2. God’s kingdom: Every Christian, everywhere on earth, throughout all of history.
3. A denomination: One such distinct Christian organization, namely one with its own groups, clergy, teachings, and buildings.
4. A Christian group’s building or campus.

If you compare the definition of church I gave, with that of an average English-language dictionary, you’ll notice a few differences. The average dictionary tends to first refer to buildings—because that’s what your average English-speaker means when they say church. “I’m going to church” means “I’m going to a church building.” Or “We’re gonna be late for church” means “We’re gonna be late for the services at the building.”

But when Jesus used the word ἐκκλησία/ekklisía he didn’t mean a building. He meant a group of people. That’s what Jesus’s church is to him: His people. Mt 18.17

The church is to Christianity, what the nation of Israel was to the ancient Hebrew religion: God’s people. The people the LORD rescued from slavery, whom Jesus saves from sin and death. The people he wants to follow and obey and worship him, and build his kingdom out of.

The church isn’t a building, though we meet in buildings, and headquarter our organizations in ’em. The church isn’t our denominations, our leadership structure, our organization church. It’s not the institution, not our leadership, not the time of week we meet, not the mission statement, not the specific things we claim to believe, not the specific things our pastors preach about.

The church is people. It’s us, collectively. We are the church.

Sometimes the leaders of our churches point this out. More often they don’t. Not because they’re hiding anything; it’s just not one of those things they feel they oughta emphasize every single week. But maybe they should, ’cause Christians aren’t always aware we’re the church… and start to develop the false idea we’re not the church; that something else is. Something outside ourselves. Something we could quit, or oppose, or even fight.

Whenever Christians forget the church is people—and we’re the people—the church typically goes wrong.

The limitations of legalists.

by K.W. Leslie, 08 April 2021

Back in college I had some classmates who had honest questions about Christianity. They were pagans who were raised by totally irreligious parents, so all they knew about Christians were stereotypes. Yet here I was, a real live Christian, who didn’t fit those stereotypes, who knew enough to give ’em facts and background, and not be a jerk about it. So they picked my brain.

  • What do you guys do in church? What’s the program?
  • What’s the bible about? What’s in it?
  • What’s the dress code? (They heard rumors about sacred undergarments, so I had to inform ’em that’s only a Mormon thing.)
  • What political views must Christians have?

And so forth.

But as I was trying to answer the questions, another classmate decided he just had to get in on this, and pitch his two cents. He was a fellow Christian, who went to another church than I did—a much more legalistic one. He continually felt he had to “correct” my answers whenever they got too gracious for his taste.

It got annoying pretty quickly—for me, ’cause I wanted to answer my questioners, not debate him; and my questioners, who on the one hand were seeing how all Christians think alike, but on the other hand had deliberately not gone to him, and didn’t appreciate his help.

So I deviously suggested a change of venue. “Hey, you wanna keep talking about this over lunch? Let’s go to the Pub.”

The Pub was an on-campus restaurant which, true to its name, served alcohol. And as I correctly guessed, the legalist would not go to the Pub. He said yes to the idea of talking over lunch—he invited himself along, obviously—but not the Pub, never the Pub; his religion forbade it. He scrambled to suggest five or six alcohol-free options… but the pagans quickly realized what I’d done and gratefully went along with it. So off we went, leaving the legalist behind, fuming.

Over lunch I talked ’em into trying out a church that Sunday, just to have the experience for themselves. And I let the church folks take ’em from there. Pretty sure my legalist classmate would never have got ’em even that far.

Yep, I totally took advantage of his hangup. Good thing we’re on the same team, right? Now imagine if we weren’t. (No doubt he wasn’t so sure we are.)

Burdens which were put on one’s heart.

by K.W. Leslie, 07 April 2021
HEART hɑrt noun. Hollow muscular organ which pumps blood through the circulatory system.
2. [in popular culture] Center of a person’s thoughts and emotions; one’s mood, feeling, enthusiasm, mood, or courage.
3. [in popular Christian culture] Center of a person’s lifeforce; one’s innermost being; the true self, particularly one’s true thoughts and feelings.
4. A conventional heart shape, as found on a deck of cards.
[Hearted 'hɑrt.ɛd adjective.]

I’ve already written on the heart—the blood-pumping muscle in our chests, how popular culture uses it as a metaphor for emotion, and how the ancients believed it did what we now know the brain does. And of course how Christians mix up the biblical idea with the pop culture idea, and therefore misinterpret the bible like crazy: To the ancients, you didn’t feel with your heart; you felt with your guts. You thought with your heart. Or, when your “heart was hard,” you didn’t: Your mind was made up.

Today I’m gonna discuss another Christianese use of “heart”: Whenever there’s something we’re thinking about, and it’s significant, and it’s bothering us. Might bother us a little, like a peeve; might bother us a lot, like a trigger which makes us relive a previous traumatic experience. In my experience it’s almost always a peeve: It bugs us. It doesn’t bother us so much we’re losing sleep or hair over it; it just bugs us. But instead of saying, “That kinda pisses me off,” like good Christians we gotta bust out the Christianese terms for it:

  • “Something was laid on my heart about that…”
  • “That feels really heavy on my heart.”
  • “Would you like to unburden your heart about what you’re going through?”
  • “Sounds like that’s really weighing on your heart.”

This peeve is a burden, a great weight, a heavy thing. And it’s been dropped on our heart, squashing it a bit, causing discomfort—like when the cat tries to sleep on your face; less so like the early signs of a heart attack.

Sometimes it’s not that great a weight—it’s just “been on my heart.” Other times it’s all we can think about. It’s a serious mental or emotional roadblock, it’s “weighing on my heart” or “heavy on my heart,” and if we wanna get it off, we’re gonna have to “unburden” it—dump it on a group of other Christians, who can either fruitlessly worry about it along with us, or tackle the problem and solve it, either with us or instead of us.

Regardless of how light or weighty the burden may be, the fact we use Christianese is a sign we believe one of two things:

GOD GAVE US THIS BURDEN. Supposedly this isn’t just my particular peeve. This is God’s peeve. It’s something which bothers him. And because he thinks exactly like I do I follow him, he’s recruited me to help him do something about it.

I NEED GOD TO TAKE AWAY THIS BURDEN. Honestly, this is just my individual hangup. And I need to deal with it, and I’d like God’s help.

Lemme say right now I much prefer the second idea. A lot of us Christians absolutely do have hangups and issues, and no God isn’t the origin of any of them. They’re unhealthy things we brought into Christianity with us. They need to be purged from our lives. And God can help; Jesus totally offers to.

Jesus’s resurrection: If he wasn’t raised, we’re boned.

by K.W. Leslie, 06 April 2021

Of Christianity’s two biggest holidays, Christmas is the easier one for pagans to swallow. ’Cause Jesus the Nazarene was born. That, they won’t debate. There are a few cranks who think Jesus’s life is entirely mythological, start to finish; but for the most part everyone agrees he was born. May not believe he was miraculously born, but certainly they agree he was born.

Easter’s way harder. ’Cause Jesus the Nazarene rose from the dead. And no, he didn’t just wake up in a tomb after a two-day coma following a brutal flogging and crucifixion. Wasn’t a spectral event either, where his ghost went visiting his loved ones to tell them everything’s all right; he’s on a higher plane now; in time they’ll join him. Nor was it a “spiritual” event, where people had visions or mass hallucinations of him, or missed him so hard they psyched themselves into believing they saw him.

Christians state Jesus is alive. In a body. A human body. An extraordinary body; apparently his new body can do things our current bodies can’t. But alive in a way people recognize as fully alive. Not some walking-dead zombie, nor some phantom. Jesus physically interacted with his students, family, and followers, for nearly a month and a half before physically going to heaven.

That, pagans struggle with. ’Cause they don’t believe in resurrection. Resuscitation, sure; CPR can keep a heart going till it can beat on its own, or doctors can revive frozen people. Returning from the dead happens all the time. But permanently? In a new body? Which he took with him to heaven? They’re not buying it. They’re more likely to believe in the Easter Bunny.

But that’s the deal we Christians proclaim on Easter: Christ is risen indeed.

It’s not the central belief of Christianity; God’s kingdom is. But if Jesus didn’t literally come back from the dead on the morning of 5 April 33, it means there’s no such kingdom, and Jesus is never coming back to set it up. And nobody’s coming back from death. There’s no eternal life; at best an eternal afterlife, which ain’t life. There’s no hope for the lost. The Sadducees were right. Christianity’s a sham. There’s no point in any of us being Christians.

No I’m not being hyperbolic. This is precisely what the apostles taught.

1 Corinthians 15.12-19 KWL
12 If it’s preached Christ is risen from the dead,
how can some of you say resurrection of the dead isn’t true?
13 If resurrection of the dead isn’t true, not even Christ is risen.
14 If Christ isn’t risen, our message is worthless. Your faith is worthless.
15 Turns out we’re bearing false witness about God: We testified about God that he raised Christ!
Whom, if it’s true the dead aren’t raised, he didn’t raise.
16 If the dead aren’t raised, Christ isn’t risen either.
17 If Christ isn’t risen, your faith has no foundation.
You’re still in your sins, 18 and those who “sleep in Christ” are gone.
19 If hope in Christ only exists in this life, we’re the most pathetic of all people.

No resurrection, no kingdom, no Christianity. Period.

Our dead won’t stay dead.

by K.W. Leslie, 05 April 2021

1 Thessalonians 4.13-14.

The Greeks claimed when you died, you went to the netherworld. Specifically, you went to the god of the netherworld, Ἅ́δης/Ádis (or as the Romans called him, Pluto; or as well call him, Hades; no, he’s not a bad guy like the movies make him out to be, although he did kidnap Persephone) and he determined where you went.

  • Good people went to Ἠλύσιον/Ilýsion, a continent or island in the far west (you know, like where the Elves went in The Lord of the Rings), full of green fields.
  • Bad people went to Τάρταρος/Tártaros, a place as deep below Ádis as he was below earth, to be imprisoned with the Titans whom Zeus defeated when he took over the world.
  • Special cases, like Dionýsios and Iraklís (whom the Romans called Hercules) were turned into gods, and lived with them on Ὀλυμπος/Ólympos—a literal mountain near Thessaloniki, where the Greeks imagined the gods lived when they weren’t busy on adventures.
  • The rest stayed with Ádis as he determined what to do with them.

Other than Ólympos, all these places were spirit worlds: Once you died, you weren’t coming back. Not that people didn’t want ’em back; some Greek myths told of living people who went to Ádis and begged him for one of the spirits he kept. He rarely said yes—it’s why he was called Ádis the Adamant—and even when he did, the myth’s hero usually botched the rescue and lost the dead person forever. Dead stayed dead.

And really, claimed Greek philosophers, you didn’t wanna come back to life. Life meant decay. You were in an aging human body, which’d eventually succumb to entropy. But in the spirit world, there was no such thing as matter, and no matter means no decay. So being a spirit is way better than being alive and material.

This belief isn’t just a Greek one. Lots of religions teach it. The ancient Egyptians believed Osiris came back from the dead like Jesus… but not back to our physical world; he left to rule the netherworld. Buddhists aspire to escape the Hindu cycle of reincarnation and rebirth, and remain pure spirit, i.e. join the universe. Even Christians figure, “When I die I’m gonna live forever in a spirit body”—which they insist is most definitely not a material one.

In contrast the Pharisees insisted God’s plan is to bring people back to life. Material, physical life.

Simon Peter denounces Jesus.

by K.W. Leslie, 01 April 2021

Mark 14.66-72, Matthew 26.69-75, Luke 22.54-62, John 18.15-18, 25-27.

After dinner earlier that night, Jesus told his students they weren’t gonna follow him much longer; they’d scatter. At this point Jesus’s best student, Simon Peter, got up and foolhardily claimed this prediction didn’t apply to him.

Mark 14.29-31 KWL
29 Simon Peter told him, “If everyone else will get tripped up, it won’t include me.”
30 Jesus told him, “Amen, I promise you today, this night,
before the rooster crows twice, you’ll renounce me thrice.”
31 Peter said emphatically, “Even if I have to die for you,
I will never renounce you.” Everyone else said likewise.

And y’know, Peter wasn’t kidding. I’ve heard way too many sermons which mock Peter for this, who claim he was all talk. Thing is, he really wasn’t. When Jesus was arrested, Peter was packing a machete, and used it. Slashed a guy’s ear clean off. You don’t start swinging a work knife at a mob unless you’re willing to risk life and limb. Peter really was ready to fight to the death for Jesus.

But Jesus’s response was to cure the guy, then rebuke Peter: Jesus could stop his arrest at any time, but chose not to. Having a weapon was only gonna get Peter killed. Peter thought he was following God’s will, but he was in fact tripping up. And Jesus did say his students σκανδαλισθήσεσθε/skandalisthísesthe, “would be tripped up,” by the later events of that day. Despite his repeated warnings he was gonna die, his students kept expecting the Pharisee version of the End Times to unfold, where Messiah would destroy the Romans and take his throne… and instead Messiah got killed by the Romans.

This sort of turn of events would knock the zeal right out of anyone. Y’know how Peter later would up saying he didn’t know Jesus? At the time, he kinda didn’t. Thought he did; totally got him wrong. We all do, sometimes.

See, Peter was having a crisis of faith. Every Christian, if they’re truly following Jesus, is gonna have a point in our lives where we have to get rid of our immature misunderstandings about Jesus. And some of us fight tooth ’n nail to keep those misunderstandings. Even enshrine ’em. But in so doing, it means we’re not gonna grow in Christ any further. The Holy Spirit is trying to get us over that stumbling block, but we insist it’s not a block; it’s a wall.

To his credit, Peter didn’t scatter. He followed the mob, who took Jesus to the former head priest’s house, where Jesus had his unofficial trial before the proper trial before the Judean senate.

John 18.15-18 KWL
15 Simon Peter and another student followed Jesus.
That student was known by the head priest.
He went in, with Jesus, to the head priest’s courtyard.
16 Peter stood at the door outside.
So the other student, known to the head priest, came out and spoke to the doorman, who brought Peter in.
17 The doorman, a slavewoman, told Peter, “Aren’t you also one of this person’s students?”
Peter said, “I’m not.”
18 The slaves and servants stationed there had made a charcoal fire; it was cold.
They warmed themselves. Peter was also with them, standing and warming.

This’d be the first denial. But Jesus didn’t just say Peter would deny him, or pretend he didn’t know him, or pretend he didn’t follow him. Peter ἀπαρνήσῃ/aparnísi, “will entirely reject,” will renounce, his Lord. Mk 14.30 It’s not a white lie so he could merely stay out of trouble; Peter went overboard and publicly quit Jesus. Really.

Good thing he could take it back. As can we. But, y’know, don’t quit him, okay?