God Never Said To Build A New Religion And Get Everyone To Abandon Theirs

I got my Master's Degree in Church Development because my goal was to pastor a church and eventually plant a church that would grow and grow and grow and become a major influence in the state, in the country, and in the world. 

Be a pastor.

Tell people about Jesus.

See people commit their lives to Jesus.

Increase this great religion of Christianity.

... You know, "the Great Commission". I wanted to follow through on Jesus' command to "go into all the world" and "make disciples of all nations" and "baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." I wanted to tell people what I thought to be the Good News, that they needed to believe in Jesus in order to get into heaven, and I wanted to see them abandon ...

Atheism.

Agnosticism.

Isalm.

Judaism.

Buddhism.

... And I wanted to see them enter into a personal relationship with Jesus, give their life 100% to him, and throw themselves into a life of service to the Church.

BUT.

All these years later (almost 13), I'm starting to wonder what the point of all of that was because, really ...

Where does Jesus ask us to start churches?

Where does Jesus ask his disciples to pastor churches?

Where does Jesus tell anyone to start a new religion in his name?

Where does Jesus tell people to get everyone to convert to that new religion?

Where does Jesus tell people that Christianity is the way?

Where does Jesus say that he's the only way to heaven and all other ways are destined for hell?

... The short answer is that he doesn't. I mean, yeah - we can take things he said (i.e. "go and make disciples of all nations" or "where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name ..." or "I am the way, the truth, and the life ...") and try to use them to justify all of our evangelistic crusades and church plants and denominations and all of the exams and tests and hoops we make people jump through in order to land the role of a "pastor" and prove to some board of people that they really are "called" by God.

But.

Let's all take a nice trip back down to reality where the rest of the universe is and admit that Jesus never asked us to do any such things; rather, these are things that we created and systems that we put in place based upon what we thought was the best way to advance the ways of Christ. 

Don't get me wrong (and don't hate-email me, I won't answer; I'm giving up arguing with people for Lent) ...

I am grateful for my seminary education.

I am grateful for the opportunity I had to pastor a church.

I am thankful for the church plant my wife and I poured ourselves into.

I look back with joy on the many sermons I delivered, Bible studies I prepared, and church events I was part of. 

... None of those things were wrong in and of themselves, but I think the problem comes when we elevate these (good) human ideas to what we deem to be the perfect and inerrant ideas of God. 

They might be good, yeah.

BUT.

They aren't perfect.

They aren't inerrant.

AND.

They might not even really be "from God". 

Why am I sharing this? I'm trying to be offensive, that's the point of this series of blog posts for Lent. I want to push up against some ideas that people from my more Evangelical tradition assume to be "from God" or "of God" or whatever - I want to push up against those ideas and push people to the brink of thinking that maybe (just maybe) there are other ways to think.

AND.

I want to help release people from some chains, chains that often well-meaning church people can wrap us up in as they attempt to tell us and remind us of "what God has said in his Word" in an effort to get us to conform to whatever they consider to be true or right or orthodox or whatever.

"God said you have to go to church."

"God said that you need to read your Bible."

"God said that you need to believe the right things about Jesus or go to hell."

"God said you need to tithe."

"God said you need to be a Christian."

“God said you can’t have sex before marriage.”



The reality is, though, that ...

God never commanded you to go to church, and so if you haven't been to church in 10 years - that's OK.

God never commanded you to be a Christian and so if you don't identify as one - that's OK.

God never commanded you to convert people to Christianity and so if that's not on your radar - that's OK.

God never commanded you to tithe and so if you can't give or don't want to - that's OK.

God never held hell or eternal torture over anyone's head for not believing that Jesus died and rose again and so if you don't believe any of that - that's OK.



God never said not to have sex before our Westernized American idea of marriage and so if you have - that’s OK.



God never said that being LGBTQ is a sin and so if you are - that’s OK.

What has God asked us to do? 

Love God.

Love our neighbor.

Love ourselves.

... 3 things, that's it; and perhaps how you do those things and how those things look for you will be drastically different than how I do them and how they look for me. 

Right?

Like, for some people loving God might involve going to church and singing songs and praying multiple times a day while for me it might involve laying in a hammock and making a mental note of what I'm thankful for and then sharing that with my best friend or my spouse. 

For some, loving our neighbor might look like telling them about the life of Jesus and inviting them to live like him or visit their church while for me it might be showing them the life of Jesus by helping them, encouraging them, etc. without ever mentioning Jesus' name.

For some, loving oneself might look like meeting with their pastor every week while for me it might look like taking a nap or playing some video games (I'm currently playing "Breath of the Wild" everyday.)

And so, yeah. My encouragement for you this Lenten season is to NOT allow yourself to feel the weight of the expectations of religious people or religion itself. The list of God's commands (in the Bible, anyways) are fairly short and I suspect there are an endless amount of ways in which to honor them.

You do you. Let the haters hate.

Peace.

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