Good Morning Friends,
It’s Wednesday - let’s break some rules, and drink more ☕️.
Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE
I used to be a rule setter, I used to be one of the guards that felt responsible to make sure that people "did faith" and "were Christians" and "read their Bible" ... all in the correct way.
There was a right way.
There was a wrong way.
For me, the right way to believe and to be a Christian was to believe that we are all born sinners who are separated from God and to believe that Jesus left heaven and came to earth for the sole purpose of taking our punishment on the cross so that by believing in him we might go to heaven when we die instead of hell.
This, for me, was the Gospel.
This was the whole point.
This was the right way, and the only way to believe.
I also believed that God created the universe and that there was no room for Evolution. I believed in a Young Earth Theory, that that the earth was only 6,000 years old ... and I believed in a "Pre-Tribulation" view of the "End Times", a view stating that Jesus would return before the "Tribulation period" to rapture away his people so that we would all be safe while the rest of the world fell deeper and deeper into chaos and destruction.
And I would argue with people who didn't believe these things, and argue with people who didn't believe that the Bible was the "true" and "inerrant" Word of God.
I remember there was this online chat room on a sports website where we'd talk about baseball and stuff, but where we'd also talk about other topics such as religion. I was one of the few Christians on the website, thrown into a mix of agnostics, atheists, Jews, and people who really didn't know what they believed. I would spend hours and hours at a time in that chat room debating with people over everything from the existence of God to a 6,000 year old earth to Jesus being the Son of God to the Bible being inerrant. If you were in the house late at night you could hear me pounding away at the keyboard in my room as I set out to show these people ...
How to believe.
What to think.
What the Bible was.
Like I said, I was a rule setter and a self-appointed guard who stood at the doorway of Christianity making sure everyone believed the right things.
Now that I've deconstructed a bit and have stepped out of the Evangelical world and into a more Progressive one ... I've come to realize that although I've left much of my rule setting behavior behind, there are just as many rule setters out here in the wilderness of Progressive Christianity as there were back in the Temple of Evangelicalism. I used to be a rule setter and so I can smell them coming from a mile away.
They make people feel like there is ...
A right way to believe and a wrong way.
A right way to deconstruct and a wrong way.
A right way to reconstruct and a wrong way.
A right way to believe and a wrong way.
The other day I came across a conversation online that I decided to observe from afar. There was a Progressive Christian in the comment section telling other Progressive Christians how to deconstruct and "warning them" that if they deconstructed too much without also reconstructing that pretty soon they would destroy their faith and there would be nothing left.
He was emphasizing the importance of reconstructing the atonement.
Having a proper understanding of the Bible.
Salvation.
Heaven.
All the things.
He was a classic rule setter but instead of setting Evangelical rules, he was setting Progressive rules and it was just as gross.
As a former rule setter, I wanted to give you permission today to break all the rules. When it comes to deconstruction, reconstruction, and rethinking all the things that you used to believe - there are no rules, there is no right way, there is no wrong way, and you should reject whatever rules anyone attempts to shackle you up in.
If you want to deconstruct the atonement theory down to nothing, pour gasoline on it, and light it on fire - go for it.
If you want to still believe that the Bible is the Word of God - good.
If you want to believe there is a hell even if it's not a place of eternal torment - do it.
If you want to believe that Jesus isn't the Son of God - you do you.
If you want to spend all of your time taking things apart and never putting anything back together - that's fine.
(** SIDE NOTE: the only "rule" or "value" out here, really, is to love and include and so the only time it's acceptable, I think, for someone to make me feel like maybe I'm not "doing it right" is if something I believe regarding God or Hell or LGBTQ people or whatever has the potential to emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or even physically harm another human being. Those are things that ought to be called out, and called out hard, as this Wilderness must forever remain a safe place.)
A lot of us who deconstruct do so because we come from a place of some sort of religious trauma. In other words, it's a traumatizing experience or teaching or whatever that has ultimately pushed us into this place and the reality is that everyone processes their trauma differently and although it can be helpful to have a guide walk the road with you, it's unhelpful (and often times re-traumatizing) to have know-it-alls come along to set rules and tell you what to do, what not to do, how to believe, etc, etc, etc.
In her book "Kamikaze Yogi" Anita Grace Brown says that "Jesus was (and is) not shackled by doctrine". He's not! The Christ wasn't shackled by the rules that the Religious Elite tried to bind him with and as one who has The Christ dwelling within them, you don't need to be bound by them either.
This is your permission slip to evolve and grow and deconstruct and reconstruct at your own pace, however you please.