Hello my friends,

I hope you have been able to find places of calm and rest in the midst of this election season. Know that you have all been in my prayers as we navigate what can be such a stress inducing season together.

This week I wanted to talk about something I have been processing personally, specifically how I discovered how many myths made up my beliefs as Christian and what God taught me through that process.

But first, here are some things that have me thinking.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER

-Our church recently hosted a conversation with Rev. Dr. Rebecca Todd Peters and Rabbi Daniel Fink, the rabbi for the Ahavath Beth Israel congregation to have an honest discussion about abortion, from both the Christian and Jewish perspectives. If you are at all interested in hearing this conversation and the Q & A from people at the end, you can watch it by clicking here. I don't know about you, but I am always wanting to learn more about such serious topics, especially as a faith leader, so I hope you find this discussion as helpful to foster more thinking on the topic as I did.

-In today's climate, hearing a spike in antisemitism coming from many in the public eye, which always has such a devastating impact on our Jewish brothers and sisters, I wanted to recommend Marvin B. Wilson's book, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. One of the ways we Christians can combat the evil sin of antisemitism is to learn the Jewish roots of Christianity. Jesus is Jewish after all and Christianity began as a Jewish movement. We simply cannot afford to be unaware of this dynamic. This book is an insightful read on this topic.

-I also wanted to recommend Colby Martin's book, "UnClobber, Expanded Edition with Study Guide: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality" It can be a very helpful guide in parsing through the ways we Christians think and talk about the topic of Homosexuality from a Biblical perspective.

Okay, onto today's content.

THE MYTHS WE BELIEVE

As many of you know, I was raised Evangelical. In fact, I have spent more time as an Evangelical Christian than I have as a Wesleyan Christian. I was homeschooled k-12 in a deeply conservative environment in rural Idaho. As far right politically and theologically as you can imagine, that was me for a very long time. I'll have to tell you more about that some day.

For now though, one of the things I have been really reflecting on since gaining some distance from that worldview is how many myths I believed about the world around me and about others, not to mention myself. These myths were the lenses through which I read the Bible and they influenced everything from the way I prayed to the way I voted.

I believed that the United States of America was a nation called by God to usher in Christ's kingdom in the world and I saw it as my personal duty to make sure my nation understood that identity and acted accordingly.

I believed there were hoards of evil elites actively working behind the world's scenes, conspiring against God fearing, gun carrying Christians like me, all of whom must be opposed and defeated by any means necessary.

I believed that anyone who even considered abortion was a murderer, no matter the circumstances of the mother .

I believed that the LGBTQ community was on the same level as pedophiles and they were trying to "groom" those around them.

I believed people from other religions were enemies of Christianity, especially Muslims and Mormons.

I believed that anyone who was poor was mostly due to their terrible decisions or immoral behavior and it was up to them and them alone to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps," because any government assistance whatsoever was a form a "laziness."

I believed women and people of color were equal, as long as they functioned within the ridged categories I believed God had created for them.

I believed that as a Christian, I could never be seen "affirming" any sin, especially not any of the "sins" I just mentioned, because being a Christian made me an absolute authority on such issues as politics, sin, morality, what's right, and what's wrong, who is in and who is out. I couldn't even have friendships with those I believed were "in sin" without letting them know how sinful they were. Again, I saw this as my duty. I was saving them from hell after all. This was how I could "love" them best.

I believed in absolute truth and that my definition of absolute truth was the only correct and acceptable definition of absolute truth, even among Christians from other traditions or denominations.

I believed I needed to hold myself to the same rigid standard of truth I held everyone else to, and I lived in constant, silent fear that I would never, ever measure up.

I believed that I needed to fit the rigid standard of Evangelical masculinity, push down any emotional sensitivity or gentleness, because the worst thing anyone could think of me was that I was somehow "feminine" or worse, "gay."

The far right Christian and political media I consumed on a regular basis simply amplified and confirmed my beliefs. I absolutely knew I was right about everything I believed in and having it confirmed by both the political and faith leaders I admired only confirmed my zealous duty to persevere.

The world was out to get Christianity, it had declared war on us, and I was determined to be one of the few soldiers fighting on the side of God.

Ultimately, the absolutism I believed in, the rigid either/or categories I weaponized against others, I also weaponized against myself. I not only lived in constant fear of others externally, I also internally lived in constant fear of the absolutist God I was worshiping. Every single day I feared that I would somehow fail in my faith, even slightly, and then get left behind from the rapture and go to hell.

These beliefs left me paralyzed by fear, culminating in anxiety and depression later on in life.

Looking back now, the further away from the person I once was, the more I grieve the stigmatizing and demonizing beliefs I held about others and the more in awe I am of how God brought a change in my extreme beliefs.

The Greek word often used for repentance in the Bible is μετάνοια (metanoia). It literally means "change of mind." In so many ways, God has brought me to repentance from these absolutist beliefs of my past. This repentance has brought me so much peace and freedom.

Do you how God brought me to this "change of mind?" It was by encountering the very people at the center of these deep convictions I was claiming to care about. People with whom I had never had an actual relationship. These relationships were the ways God revealed how much myth I was holding onto in my beliefs, especially about those I considered as "my enemies."

What God showed me as I encountered the very people I had such strong beliefs about was how demonizing and hateful my beliefs actually were towards them. They didn't have anything to do with love. Moreover, God showed me just how deeply superficial and downright untrue so many of my beliefs were about others. My beliefs about them really had nothing to do with who they actually were or the reality of their lived experiences.

It was such a sobering and humbling experience to develop friendships with those whom I considered to be the "them" in my "us vs them" mentality. I honestly grieve every day how shallow, ignorant, and unloving my beliefs were about others.

Since this realization, I have become convinced that when I don't have actual relationships with those who are literally experiencing the topic I claim to have such strong beliefs about, I will always have superficial and out-of-touch convictions about that topic at best, and superficial beliefs are the most dangerous and demonizing beliefs, because they leave so much room for fear to hold sway over love.

Superficial beliefs are like seeds that fall on shallow soil. They spring up quickly, but they are not deeply rooted and don't produce any life.

For example, as a pastor, one of the topics that has sobered me deeply in the current political climate is abortion. Did you know that 7 out of 10 women who have had an abortion in the United States identify as Christian? And within that 70% of women who’ve had abortions that self-identify as a Christian includes Catholics (27%), Protestants (26%), non-denominational (15%), and Orthodox (2%). Further still, among Protestants, more identify as Baptists (33%), Methodist (11%), Presbyterian (10%), or Lutheran (9%). You can read more on these findings here.​

That means 7 out of 10 women have likely heard demonizing and stigmatizing rhetoric from their own churches and faith leaders about them being "murderers" while their actual lived experiences and circumstances were completely disregarded. That means 7 out of 10 women have likely not felt safe to talk to their own pastor or anyone in their church community about their own lived experience out of fear of being demonized, hated, and ostracized. That means 7 out of 10 women who've probably heard entire sermons about abortion being a "worldly" issue rather than a reality approached with humility as something that is directly impacting those sitting in the pews of our churches. That means 7 out of 10 women have probably heard so much rhetoric about "life being sacred" by Christians, all while knowing that such phrases didn't include their life too. That means 7 out of 10 women have probably felt isolated and betrayed by those who were more in love with their superficial and demonizing beliefs like I was than they were concerned about loving their neighbor as themselves.

I realized that my claim to care for babies, which I did and still do, somehow meant I shouldn't care about the lives of women too. It was a "cut and dry" issue in my mind after all.

This realization absolutely broke my heart. Especially after women in my very own community were brave enough to share with me their own stories and the demonization they have endured. The nuance and complexity of their stories were things I had never even considered in my belief system before. It made me so convinced that when we reduce an issue as deeply complex as abortion to a binary, either/or, right or wrong paradigm, we overlook the very people it impacts the most. The very people we Christians have been called to love.

It has been through so many conversations and experiences like this that God has caused the myths and demonizations of mine to melt away into humility.

My list could go on and on with so many other cultural and political topics in our culture today, but that is for another day. All this to say, it makes me think of how we Christians can often begin and end with what we believe about these topics without ever getting to know the very people whose lives are actually impacted by them.

If we Christians do not know the people on the front lines of the topics we claim to care about so deeply, like immigration, abortion, the LGBTQ community, racial justice, school curriculum, etc., we have to ask ourselves, do we actually really care all that much? Do we actually have deep beliefs about these things or do we just think we do? Do our actions and relationships show how much we actually care?

This matters so deeply, because this doesn't just impact people we don't know. This impacts those who are closest to us. Those who may not feel like they can even talk to us because we've already told them they are not safe to talk to us by declaring our demonizing beliefs. This counts for all of us, no matter where we find ourselves on the theological and political spectrum. Are we the kind of "believer" that people feel safe coming to and talk through serious, complex, and controversial issues with?

This is what challenges me time and time again about Jesus: "Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God as something to exploit for his own gain. Rather, he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant and by becoming a human being. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:6-8).

Jesus saw a world caught in an endless cycle of futility and death. Jesus had all the cosmic power in the universe, all the "right" answers, he is Truth incarnate, yet instead of forcing all of creation to submit to his will, to what he believed to be right, and instead of declaring war and destroying anyone and everything that was opposed to his power, he humbled himself and became a servant to all! He then entered into relationships with people, listened to people, debated with people, cried with people, brought healing to people, brought redemption and justice to people, and lived life with them and died with them. He didn't stay in his eternal, heavenly domain, isolated from what it meant to be a created being. No, he became one of us and lived this complex human existence alongside us.

If the God we Christians claim to worship did this, then at the very least, we Christians can do a better job of not demonizing others or believing conspiratorial myths about others, but instead, strive to see the world through the eyes of others, especially those whose very lives are impacted by the things we claim to have strong beliefs about. We can strive to live alongside others in humility rather than absolutism like Jesus did.

Maybe then we Christians can begin to practice not "doing anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than ourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, we can watch out for what is better for others." Maybe then we can truly "adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 2:3-5)

As always, thank you so much for reading. I always love hearing from you, so feel free to reply to this with your thoughts.

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Thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I deeply appreciate you all,

Ben