A Way to Live

Jesus taught the way of love.

He told stories. At the center of these stories was a God of love and people in need of love. Jesus’ stories did not focus on belief but on behavior.

Jesus had only two rules for life:

Love God.

Love your neighbor.

He said if you did this, you would automatically get everything else right.

Following Jesus is the way of love.

What Is Love?

Love is the superpower we all possess. It is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Love will save the world.

Love is acceptance.

In Jesus’ day, to sit around the table and eat with someone conveyed acceptance. Jesus was not picky about who he ate with. He ate with tax gatherers, prostitutes, religious leaders, lepers, and Samaritans. He would eat with anyone. He would eat with you.

People were scandalized.

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!” (Luke 15:2)

Jesus told a story about a father who welcomed his prodigal son back to the table. He said that is how God treats screw-ups.

Jesus didn’t see lines between people. He treated a Roman Centurion, a synagogue official, a Samaritan woman, a tax collector, and a Pharisee all the same. He loved them all.

But there was one point of conflict.

Jesus’ Conflict

In Jesus’ day, as in ours, there are those who reject others on the grounds of religion, social status, gender, ethnicity, and morality.

If you are grossed out by the people who sit at God’s table you will not find a seat there.

This is why Jesus insisted on the necessity of forgiveness. It’s also why he had such harsh words for the religion-makers of his day. They said God drew lines that gave them an inside track. They even said God rejected certain people. This made Jesus angry.

Love and hate are like light and darkness. They cannot coexist. If you reject a single person, you banish yourself to outer darkness. This is not because God is angry. It is because God is love.

When you fail to love, you experience the pain of being separated. A seat will always remain at God’s table for you. God will leave the light on for you.

Eventually, you’ll come home. No one can live outside forever. But why wait?

The Way of Love

The life Jesus taught can be summarized by three truths.

God is love

Life is growth

Everyone is family

These are three streams, flowing from the heart of God to you and through you.

Because God is love, you love God.

Because life is growth, you love life.

Because everyone is family, you love your neighbor. 

The way of love is not a philosophy or a religion. It is a way to live. Behavior is primary. Belief is secondary. Love will guide the way to truth.

Here is a simple way to get started. Focus for a week on each statement. After three weeks, combine them.

Eventually you will go much further than these first steps. You will never outgrow them.

Week #1 God is Love—I Love God!

Every day, make the first words out of you mouth, “I love you.” Say this out loud before you get out of bed. 

You will be amazed at what three simply words, expressed honestly, will do.

Don’t worry if you don’t feel anything at first. It’s okay if you are mad at God. It’s okay if you’re not even convinced there is a God. Just say the words, as genuinely as you can.

“I love you.”

You may find that these words lead to further discussion.

“Are you really up there?”

“Why aren’t you taking care of me?”

My Two Big Questions 

Now that I lived on the outside of church, two questions mocked me. 

The first was how to explain all the good things and good people in church. This was a problem for me because leaving was the kind of extreme step that would be in order if I had been protesting something awful, like Hitler’s Germany or something.

But church is not Hitler’s Germany. In fact, it has many admirable features. Why not focus on the good? Do I expect church to be a utopia? Thousands of people see the problems I have pointed out and stick with church because there is so much good. Why can’t I? 

My second question was equally difficult. What kind of egomaniac am I to question twenty centuries of tradition?

Let’s start with the first question: Why did I go to such lengths to withdraw from an institution  filled with so much good? 

Church Is a Mixed Bag—But That’s Not the Point

We can all name good-hearted, churchgoing people who are standup citizens. We all know of churches that do great things in this world. Of course there are hypocrites and bad churches too. Welcome to humanity. Why get so exercised over the fact that church isn’t perfect? Who said it would be? Why not grow up, enter the real world, and accept the good with the bad? Here’s why.

Because the issue is not whether church is good or bad. 

The issue is whether the church is what Jesus intended. 

Did Jesus Intend to Replace One Religion with Another?

Jesus was deeply spiritual but he had constant friction with religion. He broke the rules, often in calculated, public ways. He disregarded the sabbath. He refused to ritually wash his hands. He was friends with people his religion said to avoid: outcasts, immoral, unclean. He ate with them and touched them. He told stories in which Samaritans and tax gatherers were heroes and the religious leaders were the villains.  

This didn’t win him any friends in the religious community. In fact, as you read the gospels you’ll see that nearly 100% of Jesus’ conflict was with religion.  

The so-called cleansing of the temple is the most pointed example. The event is misnamed. It was not a cleansing. Jesus wasn’t tidying up his religion to put it back in order. The cleansing of the temple was a prophecy of its destruction. In 70 C.E., Rome made the prophecy a reality.

Think about it: Does it make sense that Jesus came to reject one religious institution and set up another? Did he think that by replacing Jewish elders with Christian elders all would be well? Did he assume that if he swapped a Jewish temple for a Christian cathedral, the problem would be solved?  

The Kingdom of God Is Not a Religion

The Kingdom of God was not an attempt to reform Judaism. Neither was the goal to establish a new religion. The Kingdom of God was, and is, a way of life. It is how people behave when God is King. It is love, not hate. Forgiveness, not retribution. Truth, not lies. Generosity, not greed. Hope, not despair. Joy, not sorrow. Health, not sickness. Life, not death.

The Kingdom of God is the way of the Garden, in which each woman and each man walks with God in the cool of the day, the law written on his or her heart. It is a world in which “behold, the Kingdom of God is in our midst.” 

Every human organization is a mix of good and bad. This is true of every church, hospital, bank, government and girl scout troop. They are good to the extent that God’s Kingdom has come.

Swapping the Substance for the Form

The Kingdom of God is not the dough. It is the yeast within the dough. It is the invisible force that changes everything. It works its way into our world and transforms it. It changes everything we do, everything we say, everything we are. It makes us breathe easier and sleep better at night.  

The kingdom of God transforms things. But it must never be confused with the things.

The Mysterious Presence

Ever since I was a little boy, I have felt a mysterious Presence. I felt it traipsing across the hills of the Palouse with my dog, Brute. I heard it in music. I felt it in my family. I touched it in the wilderness of Idaho, where I spent summers backpacking with my dad. 

I called this mysterious something “God.” God was the most real thing in the world to me. I wanted God more than anything.

This hunger led me to become a pastor, start a church, to get a Ph.D. in New Testament, to learn to read the Bible in Greek, and to become a seminary professor. Surprisingly, all this didn’t make God more real. It turned God into a ghost.

My First Clue Something Was Wrong

My first clue that something was wrong came almost immediately, at my first job in a big church as a youth pastor. This was my first look at behind the scenes of a church. I was shocked. 

The whole thing was put together with duct tape and baling wire. There was a sense that at any moment it might come crashing down. It reminded me of a hastily constructed Hollywood set.

The polished front, on display on Sunday mornings and in all the materials, featured love and inspiration. Behind this false front was turmoil. Some people didn’t like the pastor. Some people didn’t like each other. They disagreed about their beliefs and questioned each other’s salvation. They fought over how things should be done and who should do them.

As I said, this was my first look behind the scenes. I assumed it was an anomaly. But over the next decade I encountered the same thing in every church I was a part of: the front did not match the back. 

Okay. So church wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. So what? Jesus was the path to God and church was path to Jesus. The only thing to do was make the best of it. In my youthful arrogance I figured when I was in charge, I could fix this. Things would be better. I was eager to try.

My First Church

At age 29, I became the pastor of my very own church. I went in determined to wrap my arms around everyone. I would make the front side match the back side if it killed me. It nearly did.

After a short honeymoon, the church became polarized over the issue of abortion. If you had shown up on a Sunday morning you would not have known this. You would have seen people smiling and greeting each other. You would have sung about the love of God and heard an inspiring message. Someone would have taken you to lunch. We kept the front side tidy.

Behind the scenes was a sharply different reality. The head deacon, who smiled and led the singing and made everyone feel like his best friend, was a master manipulator. He could talk about the love of God while simultaneously stabbing you in the back. When he decided the church would be better off without me, it took him just three weeks to put me out on my ear. He played me like a violin.

In the aftermath, the church went through a split that ripped apart families and ruined lifelong friendships. I vividly remember sitting on my in-laws couch on the Christmas after it happened, my stomach in knots. How could such good intentions have led to such terrible results? 

It wasn’t just that I failed at my first church. My whole existence had been undermined. Church turned out to be a nightmare. But God and church came in a the same package. To question church was to question God. I had dedicated my life God and spent the last ten years training to serve the church. 

So there I sat, out of a religion and out of a job, with no idea how I would support my newly pregnant wife.

New and Improved?

A group from the old church wanted me to come back and start a new one. I hesitated. Did I really want to go through this again? But maybe I wouldn’t have to. Maybe things could be different. I had been studying Rick Warren’s new church model. With a blank slate and a new approach, maybe church could be salvaged.

In this episode, we turn our attention from the infidel to the apostate.

Strangely, these titles were the result of seeking God together.

We invite you to join us in the pursuit of God.

Both Jim and I have experienced a deep crisis of faith. In the midst of going through this together Jim started calling me “The Apostate” and I began to call him “The Infidel.”

In this episode we explain why, and how our experience changed the way we think of our lives and of God.

Mentioned in This Episode

Richard Rohr

Peter Enns

(Click images below to view on Amazon)

 

Tribe, by Sebastian Junger

 

Educated, by Tara Westover

 

Room (the movie)

 

Last week I painted a picture of the Mountain of God. On this mountain we are warmed and energized by the same light. On this mountain, we move closer to God, closer to each another, closer to truth. There is no “us” and “them.” There is room for everyone. The mountain of God is not a religion. It is the end of religion, the triumph of the Kingdom of God.

The essence of the this Mountain is four relationships.

The relationship between you with God.

The relationship between you and your close friends.

The relationship between you and your neighbors.

The relationship between you and your world.

It all starts with you.

The Mountain of God Begins with You

As a teenager, the image of a tree planted by the water spoke to me.

He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,

Which yields its fruit in its season

And its leaf does not wither;

And in whatever he does, he prospers.

(Psalm 1:3)

I wanted to be a that tree. I wanted roots that went down deep into God. This was intensely personal.

The mountain of God begins with the individual. It is Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is Matthew leaving the tax booth. It is a widow, grasping Jesus’ robe to be healed. It is Thomas proclaiming, “My Lord and my God!”

There is no universal adaptor for making a connection with God. Each connection is unique and corresponds with the nature of the person. I can’t tell you how to connect to God and you can’t tell me. Your soul’s connection with God is a sacred secret, “a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it” (Revelation 2:17).

Be Thyself

The only way you can experience God is as yourself.

Nature shows the way. Trees don’t try to be colorful like wildflowers. Stones don’t try to flow like water. Bears don’t try to sing. Birds don’t try to make honey. Nature’s glory is in the fact that everything is exactly what it is made to be. By being true to itself, every created thing, from the tiniest bug to the tallest mountain, becomes a brush stroke in a Divine masterpiece.

The most important thing you can be is yourself.

It’s Not Easy Being You

Being yourself is not as easy as it sounds. Human architects are everywhere, each one seeking to cram you into their design for the universe. If you don’t fall in line, you’ll ruin their picture.

Living on the mountain of God means regarding these human blueprints as the scribblings of a lunatic. It means refusing to be a brick in someone else’s wall. It means being true to your nature, which turns out to be the same as being true to God. Don’t expect this to be easy.

Religion Never Fits

Religions can’t make room for so much variety. They regard uniqueness as chaos. Only square bricks fit the design. You are given instructions for making a connection with God. The beliefs and behaviors that validate the connection are spelled out for you.

The result of this mass-produced, artificial connection with God is a mass-produced, artificial religious community that feels curiously like a modern shopping mall. Like malls, religious communities rely heavily on illusion. They are mostly false fronts.

But You Have a Home on God’s Mountain

The mountain of God is solid through and through. This is no mass production. There is not a single duplication. There is no illusion. The mountain of God is as wild as nature herself. Religion, with its static ideas of God and rigid blueprints, will never fit.

Read the gospels and notice something: The only conflict Jesus had on this earth was with religion. It was religion that killed him—or thought it did. Nothing on the mountain of God can ever die.

The Mountain of God is both free and orderly,

Question Anything But Church

In case you missed it, I am making an outrageous claim. I am saying that the church is not a natural extension of the message of Jesus but a radical departure from it. If you haven’t questioned my sanity, I question yours. I am taking a swipe at one of the fundamental building blocks of western civilization.

People have debated the tenets of Christianity for ages: the nature of God, the divinity of Christ, what happens when we die, how to be saved, the right way to be baptized and take communion… These issues split us into camps but leave us under the broad umbrella of Christianity.

There is one aspect of Christianity too sacred to be questioned: the church. It’s fine to revive the church, to reform the church, to modernize the church, to despise the church, and even to leave the church. What is not acceptable, not ever, not under any circumstances, is to question the church.

The Unimaginable World Without Church

Church is the child of a marriage between Christ and Constantine. It bears little resemblance with the teachings of Jesus. But it has been around since the fourth century, claiming to be the embodiment of Christ in this world. It is as much a part of our universe as the sun and moon and stars. A world without church is a world in which we can no longer find our bearings. We can imagine a world without God. We could never imagine a world without church.

Leaving church was the most distressing and disorienting experience of my life. I was a lost soul, awash in a sea of questions, without rudder or compass. Leaving church didn’t just force me to make a few adjustments. It blasted a gaping hole through my whole existence, both as a Christian and as an American.

The Hole Where Church Used to Be

It wasn’t inspiration that I missed when I left church. I felt closer to God in the Sierras than in church. I like to take long walks on Sundays and spend time in my books and Bible. This is far more nourishing than sitting through a church service. When I look around Sundays, it is obvious that I’m not alone.

Of course there is always that lady on the second row, lifting her hands, dancing to the music. And there is always that man who “Amens” every point of the sermon and laughs at every joke. But if you take a general survey the faces in the room, you’ll find most of them vacant. They look like a crowd at the airport waiting for a delayed flight, checking with their watches to see when they can go.

No, it wasn’t the absence of inspiration that hit me like a Mack truck when I left church. It was the loss connection with other people and a defined path to God. When I left church, I lost both my friends and my way.

Ecclesia: Filling the Hole with a Mountain

After four years, I am starting to recover. I’m finding new friends whose love comes without creedal requirements. I’m getting reacquainted with a God who is wild and mysterious and unpredictable. As difficult as my transition has been, I wake up every morning and bless God for it.

Throwing rocks at church is easy and ordinary. Why would I do that? Church is a shadow from my past. Ecclesia is the light ahead, bright as new creation.

Ecclesia is not a theory. It is a way of life, as gritty as the dirt beneath my fingernails. In these last five episodes, I will bring Ecclesia down to earth. I want it to be so clear that a child can understand. Indeed, if a child cannot understand it, I have badly missed my target.

“Let the little children come to me,” said Jesus. “Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” (Luke 18:16)

I’ll start today by painting a picture. In the weeks that follow, I will focus in on the pieces of that picture. As we go, you will see that Ecclesia does more than fill the hole left by church.

Free at Last! Free at Last!

I am free in a way that I have not been since high school. I’m not going to strip clubs, or drinking heavily, or driving down the wrong side of the road. I remain happily married to my wife.

It is not my behavior that has changed. It is the world around me. It’s suddenly gotten bigger. God is no longer a small certainty but a vast mystery. I love questions for which there are no answers. I stretch my arms and wiggle my toes. I am becoming my uninhibited, undiluted self.

My new freedom has changed the way I see others. I don’t look at people cautiously anymore, sizing them up, wondering about their political or religious views. I see every person as family. I have a strange urge to throw my arms around them and hug them. I feel no compulsion to hammer people into shape. I love them where they are, as they are, knowing that if they need any fixing, love is the one thing I can do to help.

This bigger world came at a price I nearly refused to pay.

My old world may have been small, but it was safe. Every question had an answer. God was dissected and laid out before me. If I had questions, I consulted the religious experts. They gave reasoned answers and assured me all was well. I took their word for it.

But all was not well.

Religion Is Like Communism

My tiny world was like being under a Communist regime. In exchange for my freedom, I was guaranteed my next meal. Never mind that it was cabbage and water. It was food and it appeared on schedule.

Fear kept me in my place. I was taught that outsiders were dangerous, that God was dangerous. My religion would protect me.

This system was fragile. Cracks in its logic were cracks its walls. Endless energy was poured into shoring up the walls. This was always done in the name of defending the truth but it was really just strengthening the fortress. Contradictory views were considered only before being put in front of a firing squad.

Mine was a small world, but it was safe. Leaving it is by far the hardest and best thing I have ever done.

Land of the Free

As Julie and I traveled the East Coast this summer, I felt a kinship with those who left Europe and came to America. I thrilled to the words of Thomas Jefferson, inscribed inside the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial,

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Our ancestors fled the tyranny of church and state to find freedom. They left houses and lands, fathers and mothers, and friends and neighbors to risk carving out a new life in a hostile wilderness. Why go through all that? Freedom. They wanted the right to be themselves, to think their own thoughts, to worship their own God. They were willing to risk their lives for this.

The spirit of dogma came over from Europe on the ships too, but this spirit did not prevail. The most incredible thing about America is that she did not fight a war to decide whose God was the real God. Instead, she proclaimed herself, “land of the free.” I get goose bumps thinking of it.

Freedom Is No Joke 

Political and religious systems may put you in chains but they feed and protect you. If you leave, you must stand on your own two feet. It’s terrifying. You are like a bird that has lived its entire life in a cage. Do you know how to fly? Can you even feed yourself?

For me the answers were, “No,” and “No.” When I stepped out of my religion, I promptly fell to the ground and began to starve. I limped along for months. When I tried to fly, I crashed into trees. Freedom is no joke. I have the bruises to prove it.

When you give your life to a political or religious system you don’t have to lug around your own soul. “They” carry it for you.

Buried Alive!

I used to wake up from a nightmare in which I was buried alive. If it were just a matter of dying, suffocation would be no worse to go than many other ways. It’s wasn’t the dying that scared me, It was being confined to a small space, unable to m ove, running out of oxygen, alone in the darkness.

This dream was no accident. Several years ago, my world started to shrink around me and start to choke me. I didn’t understand this. I had a great family, a nice house, a loving church, good friends, and a secure future. If I was trapped, I was trapped in paradise.

But I could not deny what I felt. I was like a scuba diver overcome by panic. I tried to stay calm and breath, but I couldn’t. I tore off my mask and swam for the surface. Never mind if it was rational. Never mind if it was safe. The compulsion was too strong to resist.

I am finally starting to understand why I felt the panic. Imagine that you had been born and raised indoors. To you, the heavens are a layer of sheet rock, eight feet over your head. But somehow you had a sense that there is more. You feel suffocated but can’t explain why.

This is what happens when you feel the narrowness of your world and desire to open your mind to the vastness of the universe. First there is a terrifying feeling of suffocation. You feel desperate to escape. When you break free and step outside, the first reaction is terror. There is no ceiling. It just keeps going up and up and up. But it’s also exhilarating. The world is much more wonderful than you ever imagined.

After this episode, I will focus on the wide world that the Bible calls the Kingdom of God. But in order to enter God’s infinite space, you must leave the safe, narrow confines of your present world. It won’t be easy. Today I’ll share my story and explain why breaking up with church is hard to do.

I will describe the three pieces that make up a world. Then, I’ll tell how mine came unglued. I’ll go on to explain why the world feels so strange to most people today. Finally, and best of all, I’ll begin to describe a world we can all live in, what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

The Three Pieces That Make a Coherent Cosmos

Beliefs

You were born into a world you did not make or choose. You open our eyes, look around and start asking some basic questions like, “Who am I?” and “Where am I?”

In answer to “Who am I?” you are given a name. You are ________. In answer to “Where am I?” You are given a family. Your family is your world. In it you learn what to expect from life, how to behave, and what you must do to survive. Welcome to the world.

You accept all this. You’re just learning to walk. This is no time to question the ground beneath your feet. The beliefs you learn as a child are deeply imprinted on your psyche. They can be changed, but it takes a lot of work.

Lifestyle

Based on your beliefs, you go out and build a life. This lifestyle is a logical extension of the beliefs. As you think, so you are.

Friends

Based on the lifestyle you build, you make friends. As you grow, you notice that not everyone lives in your world. They don’t act like you. They don’t think like you. They don’t get you. It’s as if they grew up on another planet. Their customs aren’t the same. They speak a different language.

They are strangers. You can be polite. But drawing close to people from another world is like trying to establish a deep relationship with your dog. You can love them and admire them and appreciate them, but you’re simply not on the same wavelength. You are missing a tail and don’t know how to bark.

My Birth World 

Beliefs

I was born into a world where God was real. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother playing Chopin etudes on the piano as I drifted off to sleep. I heard God in the notes. My mother read the Chronicles of Narnia to me at bedtime. We discussed C.S.

Introduction

It was five years ago when I first realized I had to leave the church. It’s hard to describe how completely devastated I was by this. The church defined my whole world, everything from my weekly activities, to the origins of the universe to the meaning of my life. All of this was shattered when I left the church.

I tried not to. I thought that if I stepped back for a season, I would be able to step back in. Maybe I was just burned out. Maybe I was just misplaced.

But when I stepped back, it made things worse. I realized that I wasn’t burned out and that no tweak to my role would make a difference. Of course, I had my gripes about the church like everyone else. But this wasn’t about a few personal grievances. I knew to my toes that something was fundamentally off with church.

This was like having a bomb go off in my face. All around me were pieces of my former life and my own face, and none of them connected anymore. Nothing made sense.

You might say, “Of course your world didn’t makes sense. You were a pastor. You drank the Kool-Aid. You went too far.” But if you’re listening to this podcast, your world doesn’t make sense without church either. The church and western civilization have gown together for so long, that there is no separating them. Whether you like it or not, your life is a product of the church.

I felt this weird mix of church and culture when people came to me to ask me to perform their wedding ceremony. They didn’t believe the things I believed. Honestly, it made about as much sense as me going to a Buddhist monk to be married. Why did they do it? Because a church wedding is a cultural tradition. It’s just what you do. I suppose people want God’s blessing and thought maybe I could give it to them. I always felt like a prop, like the little man on the wedding cake.

The same thing happened at funerals. People called out of the blue to ask me to do a funeral. I would stand by the graveside, waxing eloquent about the sure hope of the resurrection, looking out on a sea of puzzled faces, knowing most of them didn’t buy a word I was saying.

And then, for me, leaving church left me tied up in knots about baptism and the Lord’s supper. These belonged to the church. How could I participate? And if I opted out of these sacred ceremonies wasn’t I opting out of God?

These questions were so hard because they are bound up with a fundamental mistake that has been a part of our lives for centuries, one that has come to define our whole existence. To abandon these traditions is to saw off the branch we are sitting on. It’s hard to get people excited about this.

But I am excited about this. And I want to warn you about today’s podcast. The things I am about to say are hard to deny. But they may create a sense of free-fall in your life, just as they did in mine. I began by tugging on a few loose threads of my religion and the whole ball came unraveled. The same thing will happen to you. Listen at your own risk.

Today I will investigate how we came to this strange, untenable place. I will start by asking what Jesus actually taught, then describe what happened instead. Finally, I will tell you what has to change.

What Jesus Actually Said

Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God was the announcement of the love of God calling all things to oneness with Himself and into harmony with each other. That’s what ecclesia is. Jesus kept the good news of God’s Kingdom carefully separate from any nation or human government. This point is stressed repeatedly. For example,

In the wilderness, the devil offered absolutely control of human government to Jesus. To this, Jesus replied,

“It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’”

When Jesus announced his ministry as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s good news for the poor, the people of his home town rejoiced, but when he went on to say that the message wasn’t just for ...