How could I believe in the Jesus of the gospel when so many Christian influencers portrayed him to be a gun-toting, power-hungry, hate-filled, bro-dude wearing a red hat? How could I follow the texts so many of my elders claimed to be the exact voice of God when those same leaders actively defied the instructions contained in those supposedly sacred words? How could I embrace Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth when much of the religious right wants to use it as a weapon to harm and control people I love?
This was not an easy exercise. It wasn’t (as celebrity pastor once Matt Chandler called it) a sexy thing to do. Deconstruction is often lonely and terrifying. It is painful and difficult. You lose friends, confuse family, and get ridiculed by the church faithful. In the end, you hope to find truth and freedom but those elements come with a cost. It changes you.
I won’t bore you with the step by step details of how I arrived at my renewed fondness for scripture. Instead, I’ll share the end result because it is (in my opinion) more stunning than anything I was taught in childhood Sunday School.
When I began this journey, I already knew the Bible was a collection of books: stories, poems, letters, records, and law written by at least 40 different authors over a time span of fifteen centuries. I understood every author wrote these books for a specific historical audience for a very distinct reason. It would be foolish to believe we (modern peoples) were the target demographic for these biblical writers. To better understand scripture, you must discover why the stories were originally told.
As I researched a way to answer this question of why, I began to see a pattern, an ongoing theme. Yes, it’s about Jesus. And yeah, it’s about how all these individual authors related to God. But there’s more. My faith was revived when I realized the Bible – start to finish – is a story of creation.
Most church folk will tell you the creation story is the first chapter of Genesis but it stops there. That can’t be it though. As you read the Bible (all of it and not just the parts that make you feel good) God is constantly doing something different. God is relentlessly creative. Sure it starts with creating something from nothing – the heavens and earth, the times of day, birds and fish, all of the animal kingdom, and people created in God’s image. After resting on the seventh day, God had more to accomplish. God wanted to make all things new.
The word “new” appears 280 times in the Bible (NIV translation), and you see this newness everywhere. When Adam and Eve left the garden, they were given new instructions separate from the rules of Eden. After the flood, God did something peculiar – a divine assurance was made, something not done by any other gods worshiped by humans. When God called Abraham, there was a promise a new nation would come from Abraham’s descendants. When the Israelites left Egypt, they were given new laws and new territory. God installed new leadership, new judges, new kings, and new prophets to lead the new nation into a new way of existing. The prophet Isaiah quoted God as saying “behold I am doing a new thing … making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” When Jesus came, God established a new covenant. Jesus regularly spoke about new things. He told the crowds “You’ve been taught to do this, but I tell you something new and better.” He demonstrated a new way of living. At the end of his life, Jesus told his followers to change their focus from the nation of Israel to all nations. Peter was given visions which convinced him to break old laws and traditions in favor of something new. Paul was given a new name and a new profession. In his letter to the church in Corinth, he said we are made new creations in Christ. He told the Galatians church old traditions didn’t matter - what mattered is the new creation. The author of Hebrews detailed a new way of doing religion, a way we could approach God directly, making the old rituals of the high priest obsolete. And the book of Revelation foretold of a new heaven and a new earth.
This is beautiful to me. If God is real, then God is a creative God. If God is real, then God makes all things new. This is something I can believe in. This is something worth living for.
In the gospels, Jesus told his followers “If you believe in me, you’ll do the work I’m doing - and you’ll do even greater things.” To believe in Jesus, who Christians claim is God in human flesh, to follow him we will do what he did. To follow the footsteps of someone who taught new things and new ways, we must do the same. Jesus gave his followers instructions to continue God’s work of creation. Creating something new is perhaps the most holy thing a Christian can do.
So God bless the artist, the sculptor, the painter, the doodler. God bless the storyteller, the novelist, the raconteur, the poet, the bard. God bless the singer of songs, the vocalist, the rapper. God bless the musician, the instrumentalist, the producer. God bless the rhythm maker, the drummer, the beat boxer. God bless the photographer, the videographer, the audio engineer. God bless the crafter, the woodworker, the jewelry maker. God bless the actor, the actress, the costume designer, the director. God bless the artist.
Now ...
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