Letters From Leavers

I had a Damascus Road type conversion experience when I was 18. I began attending the high school Christian Club, was baptized in a Baptist church less than a year later. While finishing my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I was the leader of a Christian parachurch organization and was responsible for leading weekly bible studies, prayer meetings, outreaches, discipleship and special events (concerts, films, etc). I lead a short-term missions team overseas while in graduate school and then decided to work part-time in environmental consulting and attend Seminary full-time. Shortly after finishing a 1-year graduate program in Biblical Studies (Multnomah Biblical Seminary), I lived overseas in southeast Asia as a science teacher and Resident Director (Dorm Parent) at a Christian International school for over 3 years. I have been married 16 years to a wonderful woman and have 2 beautiful children…and I no longer believe the bible is the literal inspired words of God.

Let me clarify, with some examples: I don’t believe that God drowned the inhabitants of planet earth with a flood, and at the same time saved Noah and his family inside a large ark. It’s a story. In fact, I NEVER believed this story to be literally true. Not even in the most ardent, zealous, sincere moments of my newfound faith or in seminary or on the mission field or when i was discipling young men on the university campus, did I ever really believe this. There are so many other examples: Ten Commandments inscribed on stone by God on Mt. Sinai, Herod ordering the massacre of first-born males after Jesus’ birth, Adam & Eve in a literal Garden of Eden with a talking snake, etc.

What EXACTLY do I mean when I say “I don’t believe these things?” If I was transported back in time with a video camera to when these events were supposed to have occurred, I would not be able to capture some of these events on film because they simply did not happen. In other cases, I would be able to record the events, but they did not occur exactly the way the Bible portrays them. Also, they are not myths that have some profound, spiritual, God-inspired embedded truths that we can learn from. They never happened. They are made up stories. Any truth that we derive from these stories, are extracted by each of us as we impart and impose some subjective meaning to these made up stories.

What about Jesus? Christianity? I thought you said you were a Christian? I think many (not all) of the things in the new testament actually happened. They sayings of Jesus and the chronology of his life are based on at least 20 years of oral tradition before they were written down. I view the letters of the new testament as letters from Christ-followers to fellow Christ-followers at that time, with the intention to encourage and instruct along the way of their faith journey. They were following Jesus together and trying to figure things out as they went along, and they wrote down stuff that they thought was important and helpful, as best as they could remember.

What do these writings mean to me today? I consider these new testament letters to be an outdated, wrinkled, torn, coffee-stained map for my faith adventure, handed down each generation from the original courageous, sincere, adventurous fellow Christ-followers. It’s all I have. It will have to be enough to get me to where I want to go and help me become the man I want to become. It’s not the ONLY source of direction or instruction or spiritual growth for me. I love www.ted.com/talks to hear about brilliant people making a difference with their lives. I love other good books, good friends, comedians, movies, lectures, seminars and podcasts. I think some of the things my fellow Christ-followers said 2000 years ago really don’t apply to my life today at all (e.g., letters of instructions to slaves, ideas on the appropriate behavior for women, etc.). It applied to their lives, but not mine. The old testament instructions on hygiene, safe foods, etc. are absolutely useless to me, and if read today in a medical school would just seem archaic and irrelevant…because they are. Some of those ideas helped at the time and made sense, but not anymore. Why would keeping women silent in church be in any way relevant to me? If you know anything about church history, you soon realize that there are many letters from fellow Christ-followers that did not make it into the “official” book of letters in the new testament.

I am old enough now to better understand how and why this all plays out. We humans need certainty, predictability, and a foundation of understanding from which to build our lives. We like the idea of our God engineering and inspiring each and every word as the architect of the Bible. It’s something we can put our trust in. Understandably, we need something to rely on and count on. We don’t build or live in high-rise buildings unless we can believe that the architects and carpenters were trustworthy, competent, and experienced. I think it must be similar with the Bible for those people who want to build their lives on a perfect, inspired, God-breathed Word of God. Anything less would seems risky and uncertain. I totally get why the belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible is so important to people.

As for me, I am thankful for this rugged imperfect map. I met Jesus when I unfolded this map on a road trip when I was 18. I can see the blood stains on one torn corner from the hands of Paul due to his selfless service. I can see a tear at the top from the idealism and practicality of James as he was moved by anger to action to stand up against rich landowners oppressing and abusing the poor. I can see the love of John in his poetry written in calligraphy on the back cover, and can only imagine he would have been a faithful, wise friend and perhaps the best husband a wife could wish for. I can see now that all these amazing men and women had such authentic character, courage, and faith that I can only conclude (choose to believe) that God was inspiring their lives. I just don’t believe God inspired each and every actual, literal, written-down word. That way, God is not made out to be a murderer/weatherman/nautical engineer. He doesn’t care at all about the sacrifice of animals and where their blood should be sprinkled, etc. He doesn’t tell people to pillage towns after winning a war. There is nothing perfect or inspired about those stories and beliefs.

At the end of the day, I can only hope that the same God that I believe inspired the determination, love, courageous action and faith of those first Christ-followers, will inspire me as a Christ-follower so that my life will inspire the lives of my wife, my children, my friends and family and community. Now open your map and keep on living this great adventure of faith.

Maybe Dennis Miller was right in his rant: The idea of being forced to read a smudged, torn, stained map in the middle of a road trip with a flashlight with dying batteries, forces us to “…huddle together in community for warmth in existential darkness, and in the process, bringing all of us closer together. Or maybe I am just a f$#%ing moron.”