It isn’t the one about wives obeying husbands, or slaves obeying masters, or the seven ‘clobber’ passages used to terrorize our queer friends. Those verses have done real damage, and they deserve every ounce of scrutiny they’ve received.

But the most dangerous verse is not any of them.

The most dangerous verse is tucked inside Jesus’ most famous sermon. Unknowingly, you may already have it memorized.

Seek, and you will find. (Matthew 7:7)

I know. Try to stay with me.

Three years ago I started shopping for my first Jeep Wrangler (Someone should have warned me about mid-life!).

Within a week, Jeeps were everywhere. Every stoplight. Every parking lot. Every corner. Each one wooing me like a siren song, luring me to linger at them with their top down. I couldn’t not see them. Telling myself not to think about Jeeps only produced more Jeeps.

Reader — I bought a Jeep.

Try this simple exercise

Look around wherever you’re reading this — the room, the office, the coffee shop, the bathroom (no judgment) — and count everything red for thirty seconds. Roses, socks, stop signs, exit signs, whatever. 1-2-3 GOOOO!

Now, without looking again: name three things you saw that were yellow.

You can’t. You weren’t looking for yellow. Your brain isn’t broken. It’s a well-oiled machine that does exactly what you tell it to do.

Seek, and you will find.

This is the danger.

The same brain that searched for Jeeps and roses will scan just as efficiently for betrayal, for the co-worker’s slight, for reasons to end your marriage, for evidence that God doesn’t care. Long before there was an algorithm feeding you outrage based on your search history, there was you — feeding yourself.

Some of us wake up every morning looking for trouble. And of course, we find it.

We claim it’s a matter of perspective. Living our truth. Being authentic.

Seek and you will find is such a dangerous passage because it can either reward you or it can wreck you — with its most haunting message unspoken: It’s entirely up to you.

The brutal thing Jesus was pointing at is that our perspective is not neutral, and our truth is not automatic. Both of them get shaped — every hour of every day — by what we choose to look for.

What you seek, you will find. What you refuse to seek, you will not.

Which brings us back to the Bible

This is why two people can read the same passage and walk out with opposite theologies. It is why we have 35,000 Christian denominations and counting. It is why the same book has been used to build orphanages and to justify slavery. To welcome the stranger and to deport her. To ordain queer pastors and to write letters demanding they be defrocked.

If you want to find a reason in the Bible to alienate, oppress, and cast out whole categories of people while using God’s name as cover for your own bigotry, you will find it. Many characters in the Bible leveraged God’s name to justify war, exploitation, rape, and genocide. The Bible does not hide it.

If you want to find a reason to welcome, uplift, protect, and empower those same people in the name of the same God, you will find it – as the central character in the Bible leveraged his father’s name to heal the sick, feed the hungry, break the chains of the oppressed, and announce that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor.

Whether it’s in the Bible or it’s in your own life – you will find what you seek.

Try this thought experiment

Imagine someone else woke up tomorrow in your exact life. Same body. Same bank account. Same geography. Same ethnicity. Same marriage. Same kids. Same commute. Same haircut. Same knees. Same news feed. Same everything.

Within thirty seven days, they could make your life dramatically better — or dramatically worse.

The only variable is what they were looking for.

Jesus wasn’t the only person to notice this. Aristotle wrote about it. The Stoics knew it. Marcus Aurelius, the leader of Rome in the 2nd Century, reflected:

What you choose to think about every day seeps into your inner self and forms the person you become.

Or as Thoreau put plainly:

Some of us are miserable because we are seeking evidence of our own misery. We want the diagnosis confirmed, because once it is, we can go back to spending all our energy announcing the problem — with none left to do anything about it.

In a world filled with rainbows, we insist on seeing only red. We know it’s killing us, yet we refuse to look for anything else.

Some may wonder if this screams toxic positivity. That’s not the point.

Suffering is real. We need to grieve. Injustice cannot be resolved with rose-colored frames.

Jesus himself said to the disciples, “In this world you will have trouble.” He was not wrong. Within hours, he would be arrested. Then executed.

But he finished the sentence with something his friends weren’t expecting:

“But take heart! I have overcome the world!”

Both were true. The trouble we experience is real. And it is not the last word.

That is the invitation.

Beloved — hear me.

The most dangerous verse in the Bible is dangerous because it is entirely up to you.

You will find whatever you are looking for. In your marriage. In your neighbor. In your children. In your body. In the news. In your scripture. In your God.

So the questions are not: is God good? or is life fair? or are people worth trusting?

The question is:

What are you looking for?

Reasons to justify your misery? Reasons to cage a whole category of people you were told not to love? Reasons to keep the walls right where they are?

Or just enough reason to look for the goodness that has been waiting for you? In your relationships. In your scripture. In the face of the person you’ve been quietly hating. In the life you already have.

Seek, and you will find.

Amen?

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My father clocks in at 82 this month. He may live to 102. Maybe I check out before he does. Whatever the order, the only question left is the same one:

What do we make of the life we were given?

Every morning I wake up and stare at a framed question hanging over our commode – TMI? – from the late poet Mary Oliver, at the end of The Summer Day:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The question lingers as I make breakfast (after a good hand-washing, of course). It haunts me and hones me. It reminds me to squeeze every moment out of the day ahead like the last of a toothpaste tube. I refuse to throw away my one wild and precious life!

Then I proceed to wolf down five eggs while scrolling through social media for the latest gaffe from the administration. I meander around the house. I flush a few minutes hours down the aforementioned commode — as Mary Oliver averts her eyes — overthinking past decisions and hyperventilating about the ones yet to come.

This. Is. What. I. Do.

It is how many of us manage our one wild and precious life.

In his 2005 commencement address at Stanford, Apple founder Steve Jobs delivered a sobering message: “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Pancreatic cancer would cut his life short a few years later, reminding us that every human story bears witness to the same reality:

Death is imminent. Life is not.

Attending Your Own Funeral

If you were sitting in the front row at your own funeral, what would you hope to hear those closest to you say about the life you lived?

As a pastor for nearly thirty years, I have suffered through funerals where the air was arctic, forced speeches fell flat, and the heartache of loss ended the moment the lunch reception began. I have also witnessed lifelong friends and family celebrate, cry, and cheer on a life well-lived. In the late 90s, a packed house was shocked to hear our pastor say of a dearly departed member of our congregation, “Bill puts the FUN back in funeral.” Tears of joy melted mascara and left the crowd longing for one more day of Bill’s wild and precious life.

For weeks after the funeral, I asked myself: What do I want those closest to me to say when I’ve clocked out?

I brainstormed a list of two hundred things — but nobody wants to sit through all that, so I whittled it down to fifty. Then twenty. Ultimately I highlighted five words yet to be scribbled out, and they are now the barometer for my upcoming funeral — date TBD.

5 words. 10 questions. Every morning. Reflect. Look ahead.

You’ll have your own words and questions (five or fewer!), but the exercise will narrow the focus on what you’re really doing with your one wild and precious life.

Maybe no one told you this before, but life isn’t about getting what you want.

It’s about getting what you really want.

Have you sat with yourself long enough to discover what that is?

Author James Clear asks a clarifying question about pursuing what we really want. We usually apply it to our careers or our body shape, but it is every bit as valid for the life we want to live:

We burn hours of energy on that question when it comes to our finances and physical health. But we airball it when it comes to our relationships. We have neglected the most important practice in life — one another.

I’m currently fixated on minimizing the minutes I spend on social media each day — lamenting every face-to-face interaction I’ve missed while hunting down another dopamine rush online.

My aim is to be present and available for the people in front of me — family, friends, cashiers, neighbors, various shoppers in the grocery aisle — and it has radically changed my level of enjoyment in life. The gas station attendant I chatted with on a road trip through Wheeling, West Virginia, may not sit in the front row at my funeral. But we shared a moment that will never be available on Instagram.

Spoiler Alert

You’ve had more than three thousand years to read the book, and nearly a month to watch the film, so I’m going to close with a scene from Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. You’ve had your chance…

For seven years after the war, Odysseus lived on Calypso’s island. It was warm. Beautiful. Endless. By every visible measure, it was a life most of us would envy. Calypso even offered Odysseus immortality and eternal youth. And still, he longed for home — to live out his one wild and precious life.

We are surrounded by our own Calypsos. Beautiful islands with better Wi-Fi. The next promotion. A lower number on the scale. A higher follower count. The perfectly curated version of ourselves we are still trying to build. Each of them whispering that if we just stay a little longer, we’ll no longer desire what we really want — which is, of course, to go home. To the people. To the presence. To the wild and precious life that doesn’t demand us to earn anything — that only invites us to pay attention.

In the final hour of the film, Odysseus asks Calypso to help him leave. He assembles a makeshift raft — unfit for the journey — and launches into the sea. As the waves rip it apart and he begins to sink, the goddess who once held him captive whispers the words that finally send him home:

Give up the fight. Give up control. And live.

Beloved — hear me.

My friend Sean did not spend his last days grieving the promotion he never got, the luxury car he never bought, or the app he never downloaded. He did not even lament the version of himself he never quite became. He spent his final breath surrounded by people who love him.

That is the life we were made for. Not the perfect self on the perfect island. Not the seven-year trap that convinces us we’ve arrived when home is still on the other side of the sea.

Home is not a place. Home is a table with the people you love around it. Home is your kid’s face when you finally look up from your phone. Home is the neighbor who has been waiting for months for someone to notice her. Home is the gas station attendant in Wheeling, West Virginia, whose story you almost missed.

So put down the phone. Answer the call. Chat with the cashier. Say the thing you have been meaning to say. Build your raft.

It’s time to go home.

Because death is imminent.

But life — this wild, precious, breathing thing we get for one turn only — life is not automatic. Life is what happens when we finally stop chasing the wind and let the voice of wisdom speak:

Give up the fight. Give up control.

And live.

Amen?

Chapter 11 | Hard as Hell (Ja)

In my twenties, I was peak James Dean. Live fast, die young.

Although I had no movie contracts, no modeling agency, and no working visa to help me pay the bills, I lived fast and, without anyone in the world who gave a shit about me, I had every intention to die young.

I would ride atop the subway cars in Queens, jostle between them once we arrived in Manhattan, swinging my body around the tail end of the moving train as we pulled into Times Square, not a care in the world. I hustled the hustler. I maneuvered through the masses in the city, scoring enough bread for the day – and sometimes the week – without a single concern for the consequences. No accountability. No cop could stop me. No God watching out for me and nobody waiting up for me to come home. Lost and alone, I spent the next year with my middle finger extended to a God who didn’t exist and to a city that didn’t care about my existence.

But something in me changed one day just outside Grand Central Station. Bouncing down Lexington Avenue, I was about two blocks away when a manhole cover exploded into the air at 41st Street. Apparently, a gas leak in the pipes had been brewing and bubbling beneath the surface until it had nowhere else to go but up. The crowded sidewalk screeched in unison as the ground beneath them shot into the air.

A couple thousand people had to be evacuated, and a few were carried out via ambulance. In typical New York fashion, after a brief pause in the day, most people carried on as if nothing happened. At first, I laughed. Then, like the hurried New Yorkers beside me, I went on about my day. But later that evening I recounted what happened and could feel that, just like the gas leak bubbling up beneath the surface of the city streets, I was also about to explode.

The childhood trauma that tortured my soul would occasionally disrupt my schemes. I would whack-a-mole the pain and carry on with my fast life, not realizing just yet that unattended trauma would soon get at me like a jackhammer to concrete, bringing me to my knees without any regard for my dignity.

I fell asleep that evening outside a church near Grand Central, reminded of James Dean and his tragic death at twenty-four years of age. He lived fast, died young, and all these years later, he’s still an icon.

As I had just surpassed the quarter century mark without any fanfare, I had a change of heart about the direction of my life.

Undocumented. Unloved. Unwanted by the world. But like the poet Dylan Thomas wrote, I was not about to go gently into that good night. No, I was going to rage against the dying of the light. Whether it was God or the Universe or Mother Mary who spoke to me as I drifted into a deep slumber, I awoke the next morning knowing I was determined enough, and smart enough, to make shit happen – my father, Willamae, and everyone who ever tried to eff with me be damned.

I was broken, but invincible. Highly flawed, but also highly favored.

I was a natural born hustler. A PR agency’s dream hire. A smooth talker, conniver, and master manipulator. I had just enough integrity not to invite God’s wrath down on me, along with just enough intuition to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

Before the internet came along, and decades before the president would make it harder for companies to hire people like me, I could bob and weave through the complexities of fake social security cards, ITIN numbers, and those pesky tax forms. If I timed it right, I could work for several months, gathering enough steady paychecks to sleep in a hostel for nearly a week straight!

Or I’d find the cleanest bathrooms in the city that had a lock on the door. I managed to shower at the sink, shave off any stubble, and swap out my clothing in five minutes flat, causing zero stress to management. As I strode out the door, fresh and ready to fool everyone into believing I actually belonged in this world, LL Cool J’s beats busted my ear drums as I bounced down the street with my new black market Sony Discman in hand:

LL Cool J is hard as hell
Battle anybody I don’t care who you tell
I excel, they all fail
Gonna crack shells, Double-L must rock the bells

Before I was consistently confined to the darkest corner of a psych ward, isolated from the world outside, attempting to rid my mind of every inhumane experience forced upon me…

Before the headaches pulsated so frequently through my neural pathways that I couldn’t see or think straight without my pals Jack and Bud to relieve the stress…

Before I extended my middle finger to the heavens and told God to go eff himself for all the unfulfilled prophecies made about my own promised land just beyond the horizon…

Before I could no longer face myself in the mirror. Before I laid in a pile of my own excrement. Before I had a KICK ME sign tattooed on my back. Before attorneys told me of my lose-lose situation, and before the leak in my soul bubbled up and blew the top off all my aspirations…

Nothing was impossible for me.

Read more excerpts from our book below:

• Chapter 1 (Ja + Brian)

• That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore (Ja)

• The Undocumented Gospel (Brian)

This is your life.

This is what our culture has done to you from the moment you were born.

You were deprived of the solid, nutritious food of life — fun, laughter, work, community, meaning, the playful pleasures of the senses and the mind. Instead, you were given a taste for a different drug: approval, success, attention.

Five thousand marketing messages per day pierce your soul and cajole you to pursue a life endorsed by the masses. Prestige, possessions, and power become your chief aims — consciously or subconsciously — until you can no longer tell the difference between your desires and someone else’s plan for you.

• We chase dopamine hits from likes while ignoring the sunrise.

• We hum along to commercial jingles while missing the hummingbird outside our window.

• We spend countless hours primping for a world that scrolls past us with indifference.

• A meager 3% raise terrifies us into a lifetime of never disappointing our boss.

• Our happiness — or misery — is decided by what other people say about us.

We have become so cravenly dependent on the crowd that we have lost our freedom. And as much suffering as this causes, we keep striving for the next high, no matter the cost of the drug we cannot live without. We are addicted to success, to money, and to the approval of others.

We have so conformed ourselves to the patterns of culture that we are in lock-step with global corporations built on exploited labor — each of them run by a CEO addicted to the same drug we crave.

The remedy?

Every spiritual mentor I’ve had the honor of meeting or reading shares the same word:

Awareness.

Awareness is waking up to and living inside reality. Rather than riding the wave of culture — which lures us into believing we must constantly add more to our lives — the path to the life you were created for begins by dropping every illusion fed to us by a world at war with its own soul.

Nouwen writes about the three big lies of society we have been enculturated to believe:

• I am what I do.

• I am what I have.

• I am what others say about me.

Jesus asked, “What good does it do to gain the world while losing your soul?”

We are so attuned to the reactions of others that we are marching to the beat of their drums. We have lost our ability to enjoy life. We are addicted to chasing the lives of everyone but our own.

De Mello says an awakened person no longer marches to the drums of society. She dances to the music that springs up from within.

Drop your need for the approval of others. Drop your hunger for money and success. Drop your longing to be admired — or even noticed.

Drop the drug.

Dance to the music arising from your own soul.

Two Pairs of Pants

A silly (true) story may help.

Nearly twenty years ago I stood on a platform inside a crowded theater and delivered what I thought was a significant spiritual message about the true meaning of life, and how devotion to God was the key to accessing this narrow path. As the pastor of a brand-new church in the heart of New York City, I was confident the talk had met the cultural moment we were in.

After wrapping my sermon with a closing prayer, two young women approached the stage. My heart was ready to receive their appreciation and affirmation of a message that had surely changed their lives.

Humbly, I stepped down from the platform and heard them say, in unison:

“Oh my God, where did you get those jeans? We’ve never seen such a cool pastor!”

That was all they wanted to know. Where did I get my $350 jeans?

The truth is, I bought them at a luxury store on Fifth Avenue (at a significant discount, thanks to a member of our church who worked there). The other truth is, I was desperate for someone — anyone — to notice how cool I was.

That moment woke me up to the reality that I was living inside an illusion. While aching for the approval of others, I was trying to lead people to a place I had never been myself: an awakened soul.

It is only when we drop our illusions that we can see — that we can be alert, aware. Until then, we are like the drunken mob at SantaCon, stumbling our way through life. De Mello writes that the consequence of this is terrifying and inescapable: we lose our ability to love.

In order to love, we must be able to see. In order to see, we must give up the drug.

Awareness then becomes our superpower — giving us eyes to see what was once clouded by our addiction.

I donated the jeans to a local thrift store. I made a vow not to buy anything for a year.

Like a heroin user in detox, I only realized how addicted I had become once I tried to drop the illusion. Starved for accolades and attention, detaching myself from every cultural cue I’d picked up since childhood became a new ground zero from which I could finally start building the life I was created to live.

Nearly twenty years later to the day, I stood on a platform in Cincinnati, Ohio, speaking to a sparse crowd about Jesus’ invitation to the great banquet of life and the bevy of excuses we use to avoid embracing reality.

After closing in prayer, a young resident from a local children’s hospital approached the stage.

“I was wondering the whole time you were speaking — where did you get those pants? They’re the perfect amount of baggy.”

My mind leapt to 2006. Had I not learned to dance to the rhythm springing up from my own soul? Am I still hungry for the approval of others?

The pants, like nearly my entire wardrobe, were from a thrift store. I think I paid $4.00 for them. Purchased for comfort, to beat the summer heat, and because they didn’t require a belt, they were a win-win-win in my book. I was wholly indifferent to the compliment — except that I let it become a small barometer of the last twenty years.

That evening, as I changed out of my clothes for bed, I stood in front of the mirror and let the great spiritual teachers in my life speak over me the words I have spent a lifetime learning to hear:

I am not what I have. I am not what I do. I am not what others say about me.

I am a beloved child of God, held safely in her arms, loved beyond reason, invited — just as I am — to the great banquet of life.

Having dropped the illusion, I am finally learning to live in reality.

Free to love. Free of the need to be loved. Free to receive what God has been offering all along — a life lived wide awake.

Beloved, wake up.

The music is already inside you.

It has been playing since before you were born, and it will keep playing when the crowd goes home.

Come dance.

Amen?

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To witness the consequences of conformity, watch Dead Poets.

To understand your belovedness, listen to Nouwen.

To better embrace reality, read De Mello.

To enjoy life, drop your illusions.

The young woman’s abusive father — who was also a local pastor — wouldn’t permit her to leave their home. He tied up his own daughter in the basement each time he drove away to shepherd his nearby flock, the innocent sheep unaware of the nightmare unfolding just a few miles south of their small country congregation. Each night, a child of God absorbed the violence of a man of the cloth.

Who Goes to Hell questioned the eternal destination of the abusive father and of the young woman who killed her predator in a final act of self-defense. Would the man who led so many congregants to the cross of salvation receive his due punishment? And would the woman forced to live in a daily hell be forgiven of both her act of vengeance and her unbelief?

The story opened up thoughtful dialogue with many readers. But a few pastors took exception to the questions posed. Instead of wrestling with the scenario — and with the possibility that giving up on a bad picture of God is not the same as giving up on God, and that exploiting the vulnerable in God’s name might, in fact, warrant justice — they came at me with scripture.

I received an onslaught of chapter-and-verse passages, fired at me bow-and-arrow style to strike down my misguided questions and warn my readers away from them: John 3:16, John 14:6, Acts 4:12, Acts 16:31, Romans 10:9, and a host of other passages from God’s Word revealing the capital-T TRUTH — that one must believe with the heart and confess with the lips that Jesus Christ is LORD in order to receive the free gift of salvation from almighty God.

Their conclusion was crystal clear. They had a lock on the truth. To them, Who Goes to Hell was a child’s-play scenario meant to distract and distort the only obvious path to salvation.

As I sorted through emails and text messages from pastors — some of them calling out my father and grandfather by name (both former pastors) to remind me of my heritage, others condemning me for straying so far from the truth (one calling me King Herod, another claiming I was blaspheming the Holy Spirit) — I was reminded of a line from former priest Anthony de Mello:

“If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else: an unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.”

Alongside those words came another line, from another pastor — Greg Boyd, who mentored me for nearly ten years as I journeyed through a few thousand questions about God’s sovereignty, the path to salvation, Jesus as the only way to heaven, and the condemnation of people fed a false image of God their entire lives. His words stood out like fresh flowers in a field of dead weeds:

“It is impossible to have a conversation with someone who isn’t open to the idea of being wrong.”

Greg Boyd, an acclaimed Christian author with dozens of books to his name, once watched close to a thousand members of his congregation stand up and walk out of his church as he questioned America’s claim to be a “Christian Nation.”

Jesus himself — the one who claims to be the way, the truth, and the life — was abandoned by most of his own followers after reminding them that discipleship is less about whom we worship or what set of beliefs we cling to and more about our lives being transformed into a radical love for all of humanity.

Even today, many years after Who Goes to Hell was published, I receive a steady stream of truth-tellers, each loaded with a set of Bible verses yet to be critiqued from any perspective but their own, each calling me back to belief in a tiny God who separates sheep from goats based on rigid rules created by insecure, unhealthy human beings who have perpetually exploited the vulnerable in pursuit of power and control.

What they seemingly fail to understand is that I have found the God of Love — and therefore have fired all the other gods, including the one I used to fear would condemn a young woman to hell for her refusal to believe in a God who refused to believe in her.

So let this be both a warning and an invitation.

If you are pursuing the truth, keep one question in your pocket at all times:

Am I willing to be wrong about this?

If the answer is yes — even a trembling yes — then you have not lost your faith. You may have finally found it. You may have been wrong your whole life. That is not the end of the story. That is the door opening.

But if the answer is no — if your grip on certainty is tighter than your grip on the God who is love — hear me plainly. You are not defending truth. You are defending fear cloaked in scripture.

The God I once believed in would have condemned a tortured girl for refusing to worship her torturer’s god. That was never God. And every time someone comes at me with chapter and verse to bring him back, I remember that perfect love casts out fear.

Perfect love casts out the god of fear. Perfect love casts out the theology of fear. Perfect love casts out the pulpit built on fear.

Do not let fear be your guide. Do not let fear be your gospel. Do not be afraid of the ones who wield Truth like a weapon — and, for the love of the young woman in the basement, do not become one of them.

May we all be brave enough to be wrong.

Amen?

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But first, a walk down Misery Lane.

Leading someone to Christ on the back of a napkin was the evangelism move of the mid-90s. I first heard about it from a famous megachurch pastor, who will remain unnamed. He told stories of being on airplanes and yachts, drawing strangers into deep questions, then asking the flight attendant for a napkin and a pen. A few minutes later, the stranger was a brother or sister in Christ — having prayed the sinner’s prayer and folded the napkin away as a memento from when they “crossed the bridge” of faith.

Countless pastors adopted the method.

For years I was embarrassed I could never pull it off. As it turns out, I’m an introvert who loathes airplane small talk, and I also grew increasingly uncomfortable with the setup itself.

Whatever pastors drew on the napkin, it always revolved around the same idea: our sin separates us from God. The Romans Road was the most common version:

• We are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

• The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23)

• God sent his son Jesus to pay for our sins. (Romans 5:8)

• Those who repent and confess Jesus as Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:9–13)

The back of a napkin was often illustrated like some of the artwork below shows:

The problem with the back of a napkin is that it leaves no room for the rest of Romans. In particular, Romans 8:31–39, which actually reads:

Nothing can separate us from God.

The author lists at least sixteen things that try to separate us from God — trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, the sword. Then he keeps going: neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth — and here’s the kicker — nor anything else in all creation.

That’s a monster-sized list of things that regularly try to block our access to God. And we’re told that none of it is strong enough to get in God’s way.

God is with us wherever we go.

If you’ve been following God out of fear of the fires of hell, or if you stopped following God because the napkin story no longer holds, there is a better way.

Four Words to Reframe Everything

You are CHOSEN by God.

We have all experienced the sting of not being chosen — at recess in elementary school, passed over for the promotion, left by a former lover, watching our work get overlooked by the jury. Rejection teaches us to look for our identity in what we do, what we have, or what others say about us.

Henri Nouwen called those the three big lies.

Underneath them sits a deeper truth: you are God’s chosen, dearly beloved child. You can rest in the assuredness of that love.

And your chosenness does not mean anyone else has been passed over. Unlike our culture’s economy — where one person being chosen means another was rejected — God’s economy has room for all of us. Embrace this truth about yourself. Embrace it about your refugee neighbor. Your queer neighbor. The neighbor sleeping outside. The elderly neighbor dying alone. We are all chosen. Don’t let the world divide us into worthy and unworthy. In God’s eyes, we are all worthy of her love.

You are BLESSED by God.

The word blessed is intimately intertwined with benediction. In Latin: bene = good, diction = speech. To bless someone is to say a good word over them.

Too often, we experience the opposite.

Brené Brown writes that dehumanizing always begins with language.

My dear friend, Ja, grew up being called “N— boy” by his father’s girlfriend. Immigrants in our country are routinely labeled monsters and aliens. During the Holocaust, Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen — subhuman, rats. In countless domestic violence cases, the last word a woman hears before being hit is bitch.

Fatso. Pig. Lardass. Loser. Slut. Boy. Bootlicker. And a host of names I’d rather not type. We size each other up and cut one another down. We walk around wounded, and wounding others — all of us simply longing to belong.

But God looks at each of us and declares:

This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.

Nearly every story Jesus tells is a reminder that God loves the discarded, the ignored, the oppressed, the ostracized. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the lowly. Blessed are those who are made fun of and cast out. Blessed are those who suffer — for they shall see God.

But we often pay more attention to the noise around us than the Spirit within us — the one calling us by name, inviting us to belong just as we are.

You have been BROKEN.

All of us have been hurt, betrayed, turned against by the people closest to us — family, friends, parents, partners.

Many of us try to hide our wounds. I’m fine. I’ll be okay. It’s not a big deal. Such is life.

Growing up, when I would fall and scrape my knee, the adults around me would say, “Rub it out. Don’t be a sissy.” I would swallow my tears and push the pain back inside, keeping it hidden from the world.

But suppressed wounds leak into everything else. Sooner or later, they burst out in ways we never saw coming. The work for many of us is to acknowledge our wounds, to embrace them, and tend to them.

Others of us don’t hide our wounds — we wear them on our sleeves. We’ve been so hurt that we let our pain define us. We let our brokenness eclipse our chosenness. Our brokenness becomes the only thing we — and the people around us — can see. We become the eternal victim. We blame everyone, including ourselves, for our condition.

The real work — for the wound-hiders and the wound-wearers — is to place our brokenness underneath our blessedness, underneath our chosenness. To remember that we are, first of all, God’s beloved. Nothing can separate us from that. Not hardship. Not betrayal. Not trouble. Not fear of what’s next.

Nothing can separate us from God’s love.

And when that reality sinks to the depth of our souls, something starts to shift.

You are GIVEN as a gift to the world.

We’ve witnessed this countless times. Through Alcoholics Anonymous, grief care, support groups — we enter into another’s suffering because we’ve been there. Our brokenness becomes the very thing that allows us to be a blessing to someone else.

The child once betrayed by her parents starts a group home where abandoned children receive unconditional love. The man who once slept on the street now builds deeply affordable housing for those living on poverty’s edge. The cancer survivor raises money — and community — for those still fighting. The domestic violence survivor walks alongside young women who are now in the shoes she once wore.

Your brokenness, transformed, becomes your unique gift to a world in need of a blessing.

The Napkin or the Gift?

Let me put it plainly. Neither the alcoholic nor the child caught in a sex trafficking ring needs the Romans Road. They don’t need to hear that their sin separates them from God and that the fires of hell await unless they repent. (What is a trafficked child supposed to repent of, anyway?)

What they need to hear — and maybe what you need to hear — is this:

You have been chosen by the Creator of the Universe.

You are blessed by God so that you can be a blessing to others.

You have been broken by the world, and when you place that brokenness underneath your chosenness and blessedness, it can be transformed into a gift.

You have been given to the world as a gift, and that gift can transform the lives of others.

So throw out the napkin. Pick up these four words instead:

Chosen. Blessed. Broken. Given.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

If you’ve been holding onto a God who needs you smaller, scared, or sorry to be loved — let that god go. That god isn’t God. The God who set the stars spinning has been calling you by name since before you knew the rules. The God who knit you together didn’t lose interest when you started asking the hard questions.

You will never be separated from this love. Not by the questions you’re asking. Not by the version of God you walked away from. Not by anything your pastor said on Sunday, or anything an evangelist scribbled on a napkin 10,000 feet above the ground.

Not by anything in all creation.

Amen?

To hear a 20-minute message on these four words by Henri Nouwen, go here.

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After my own mother’s death, our home was filled with people from our church where my father was the pastor. All adults. There to console and comfort us. But I was barely fifteen. I was in no mood to talk with grown adults about my mom, or to receive whatever they were offering. In my own home, I was alone and left out.

Then a knock came at our door. It was my friend, Jason, holding a basketball. Inviting me to play. In the midst of my mother’s death. In mourning. In grief. Just two days after experiencing a loss that still causes a sudden outburst of tears in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day, my friend offered me not a way to escape the pain but a way to endure it. Side by side. With him. With our neighborhood friends.

I changed clothes and went outside for hours. I sweat. I yelled. I laughed. I won (and lost). But most importantly, I played. This isn’t a bit about how life goes on. No, it’s about how we grieve. The best game I ever had was two nights after my mother died. Under the lights. Bumping into people on my way to the hoop. Celebrating a victory. Lamenting a loss. Since that evening in January of 1990, I have always connected the game with both grief and joy. Every shot is a memory of my mom.

When we moved into our home in Stillwater, OK, my father had a hoop installed. I was 12 years old. Our driveway was slanted and narrow. It wasn’t the best training ground, but it was a hoop. And over the next several years I developed two shots that never miss – just by nature of where the bucket was in relation to the slant on our driveway, my dominant left hand, and tens of thousands of attempts over a few years, meant these two shots would always go in, regardless of who was on me. Put me on a full court with nine other players. Double team me. Hands in my face. Foul me. It didn’t matter. The shots would fall.

The rest of my game was a miss. I can’t dribble with my right hand. My defense is a solid “C.” I’m ineffective at running a motion offense. But give me the ball on the right wing, fifteen feet from the hoop, and not even Wembanyama could stop me. My own sons have been baffled at the look of the shot (it ain’t pretty), and shocked – but never surprised – when it drops.

“You only have one move,” Campbell’s exasperated voice screamed aloud after I beat him for the umpteenth time in a row. Technically, I had two shots. But they both started from the right wing. Both were unstoppable. And every time the ball splashed through the net, I’d remember my mom. And my friend, Jason, who came to me when I was all alone inside my own home, and rescued me. Not with words, but with an opportunity to experience both joy and pain in the same moment. To laugh and yell, to win and lose, to high five and to cry – to be fully present, and to deeply grieve while surrounded by other fifteen year olds who had no idea what to say, but were somehow imparted with the gift of sensing what I needed most, which was to simply be with them.

I’m now 51. My twins are 26. They are both ballers. But my *one* shot continues to drop.

Last week my 13 year old son joined us on the court. The NBA playoffs inspired us to break out the sneakers and hit the court multiple nights in a row.

Me and Xav versus he and Cam. He was furious. I couldn’t miss.

“You’re so weird, bro. So - weird!” He was stumped. How can this aging, wrinkled, left-handed mess of a shot fall in time after time?

“Bro only has one move,” he declared, pressuring me to switch up my game.

Stone-faced, but with a wry smile emerging, I said to him what I repeated to anyone who ever made fun of my one move (though I swear I have two!).

“Stop it, and I’ll do something different.”

It was June of 1987 when I was told my mother had cancer. I was just 13. Just like my one move out on the basketball court, her disease was unstoppable. No doctor. No medicine. No prayer could save her from death eighteen months later.

But I continue to play. Not as a way to move past the pain. But to embrace it. Her spirit within me. Every shot that drops, a reminder of my loss. A memory of my friends. A moment in time that holds me tight and restores my soul.

Thanks be to God for my mom. For my friends. And for basketball.

—----------------

“We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game.”

-Pat Conroy

The man on the other end of the line was serving life in prison for double murder. Unless laws are changed or a President offers him clemency, he’ll die behind the razor wire.

And yet, his life is filled with purpose. He has written several books centered on character development and inner strength, one of which recently won a prestigious award. He facilitates recovery groups. He is the assistant to the facility’s program director. He now has a fiancée. Aside from the technical reality that he isn’t free to walk beyond the gates that contain him, his life boasts a freedom many of us reading this post still don’t have.

When I asked what led to his transformation, his response took me back to a haunting line in Pensées by 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal — one that provides brutal insight into how to live a life less ordinary:

Pascal believed the human soul was tortured with a few big questions:

• Who am I?

• What gives life meaning?

• Why do suffering and death exist?

• Am I truly happy?

But rather than mining the depth of our heart and soul, we engage in what he calls divertissement — diversion. We distract ourselves so as not to confront our vulnerability, loneliness, mortality, or spiritual longing.

Instead of getting alone in a room, we fill our lives with just about anything we can to avoid confronting the emptiness or misery within. (It would do us good to remember Pascal wrote this in the 1600s, long before Zuckerberg stole Facebook from the Winklevoss twins.)

The brutal truth is, most of us are not comfortable with who we are — mostly because we don’t know who we are.

I listened to the man on the other end of the line describe what led to his transformation:

“When I could no longer escape my own thoughts, I was forced to reckon with who I was. Life without parole had a way of waking me up because I was locked in a place long enough to sit still.

At first, I hated myself and wanted to die. Then my anger was directed toward my so-called parents. My upbringing. My past. And the thousands of micro decisions that eventually led to the fateful night that brought me here. That was the first ten to fifteen years inside. Just stewing with anger, regret, and the desire to end it all. But eventually, I got beneath the pain.

It’s gonna sound wild when I say this, but the defining moment of my transformation was a prayer I never got to pray.

I was told by a chaplain I needed to ask God to forgive me for everything I’d ever done. I didn’t grow up religious, but I had seen some of the guys find religion in here, so I figured what the hell and gave it a shot. I got down on my knees in my cell and started off on my first prayer to the man upstairs, trying to remember how the chaplain told me to pray.

But a voice dropped into my head the moment I put my knees on the concrete. I thought it must’ve been my cellie, but he was in seg, so it couldn’t have been him. Then I heard the voice a second time, and it whispered to me again:

I’m sorry you had to go through all that.

In that moment, I broke — but it actually led to my healing. While I will always regret the night that led me to spend the rest of my life in here — and all the pain I caused the victims’ families — I finally understood the journey I was on. By the time I stood up from the prayer I never finished, I had discovered the purpose of my life from that day forward: to help others find healing. We are nothing but a shell if we don’t sit long enough to discover what’s just beneath our pain.”

Though I have never served time behind bars, I could relate.

Unlike my new friend, I grew up very religious. The son and grandson of pastors, knowing the right thing to say in a moment of pain or tumult had always come easy to me. It’s in my blood. Years of seminary, sermons, and sitting with the pain of others gave me a depth of knowledge on how to tend to the human soul. And yet, for the past several years, I had abandoned my own while chasing down divertissement. I was awash in distractions. The voices beckoning me to just be rather than just do (it) were muted as I filled my life with more of everything. Strangely enough, almost all of them were good things. But even noble thoughts and plans without a center will eventually collapse.

A 3-alarm fire to my soul, brought on not in a sudden moment but from years of neglect, led me back to the quiet room I’d been avoiding. With enough resolve to temper my fear, I closed the door behind me, sat in the Sukhasana pose, and went silent.

A few days into the quiet place helped me discover I had been running the past few years on the residue of a more spiritual, and spirit-filled, life. The haunting truth: there was just enough remnant in me to fool most people, including myself, that everything was okay.

I had the spiritual language. The busy, productive work. The family portrait filled with smiles. Lots of projects on my plate that led to intriguing conversations. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. My conscience was clear. But my soul was gasping for air.

I hadn’t sat quietly — in a room — alone — for a very long time.

I turned off the television. I deleted an app that stole hours from me each week. I closed my laptop. Just me and my thoughts. And occasionally, just me and my journal. Instead of writing down my goals, my task list for the day, or the next big project I wanted to tackle, I simply invited a few of the deeper questions into my soul:

• Who am I?

• What gives my life meaning?

• Why do suffering and death exist?

• Am I truly happy?

At first, the answers were unkind. Like my friend, I spent a good amount of time hating myself. I turned on my family. My upbringing. My past. Then I discovered the little boy inside me who just wanted to be held, and healed, from all the pain that was never processed. All the joy that gave way to so-called progress and success. All the people I hurt along the way.

And, finally, the courage to sit with my past long enough to learn something from it, yet not be defined by it.

The writer Jedidiah Jenkins recently invited people to light a candle in a room in the morning. Put the phone away. Turn off the television. No distractions. Not until the flame is out.

Sit still. Be quiet. Journal. Write. Contemplate. Pray. Sleep. Rest your weary soul. Discover the person beneath the divertissement.

Less focus on what we do, more on who we are.

Less action, more contemplation.

Less distraction, more introspection.

What you and I discover could be the next meaningful chapter of our lives. Instead of living off the residue of a life once lived, a revived spirit may lead us to uncharted territory — in both depth and breadth — that just might bring healing, hope, and freedom to everyone within reach, including ourselves.

Maybe the best thing we can do today: sit alone, quietly, in a room.

If you’re a pastor praying that no one asks you tough political questions.

If you’re deconstructing your faith but it’s doing nothing but making you smarter, more skeptical, and secretly wish you wouldn’t have tugged on the thread that left your faith unraveled on the floor in front of you…

I have *the* remedy, and I’m not playing around.

In fact, I know you have it, too. You may have just forgotten.

Give me five minutes.

I began my journey of deconstruction fifteen years ago. I was the Lead Pastor of a church I founded in New York City. I kept preaching about a God I wasn’t sure I believed in because – money. The pay wasn’t great, but it covered the rent, and pastoring was the only job I’d ever had. My big hang up at the time was about the atonement – why Jesus died, what it meant, and why a loving God would create hell for people who don’t love him in return. Questioning the condemnation of my gay friends, the blessing of bombs that shatter people into millions of pieces, and the lockstep alignment with empire all came sweeping down the plain, as well. I eventually stepped out of church leadership.

Maybe we’ve been on similar paths:

We stop going to church, revoke our baptism, and get a few tattoos. We read books, listen to podcasts, and search Substack for a new savior who will show us the way. We see something that looks like the light. It turns out to simply be another flash in the pan — leaving us more intelligent, and more isolated, in our brave new world.

I did all of those things, and more. I wound up with two post-graduate degrees, a lost job, a pile of bills, and an insatiable thirst for anything other than one more criticism of the faith I’d been handed so long ago.

Not because the critiques were invalid, but because I was still longing for a reason to believe.

Like Jack said to Ennis in Brokeback Mountain: I wish I knew how to quit you.

Despite enough evidence to prove everything I’d ever been taught was a sham, I just couldn’t let go of the idea of a loving God who cares for her children and longs for them to know they are loved, know they belong, and know there is nothing that will ever change that reality. I became restless, turning over theological arguments in my sleep, dreaming in nightmares of confusion over being led astray – constantly trying to find my way back to the heart of God.

And then – after several years of debates, deconstruction, and an endless supply of books, I finally landed upon the one thing I needed the entire time – a human being.

Amidst all the theological clatter, I was finally taken back to where my deconstruction began: with heartbreak over how my friends and neighbors were being ostracized, oppressed, and left on the outside of God’s community – namely, by people like me who were more fastened to ‘truth’ than to love.

I learned the only way to rise above the noise was to go deep – not inside a textbook, and not with well-meaning professors. I found my footing again when I realized the only way to go deep was to lock arms – not with the right doctrine, church, or political ideology – but with another human being.

I invite you to do the same. To go back to where (or with whom) it all started for you.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

My guess is it was heartbreak over an institution – speaking on behalf of God – that told you or someone you love they’re not worthy IF they are _____________ or UNLESS they _________________.

The same folks who held up the Bible as they taught you to love your neighbor as yourself were now wielding God’s Word as a weapon to keep you from doing so.

Your child came out.

Your neighbor was detained by ICE.

A close friend with dark skin continued to experience discrimination.

Your mom died of cancer, and a pastor told you it was because she lacked faith.

Disillusioned by a faith system hell bent on turning Jesus’ teachings against anyone in disagreement with their doctrine, you walked away. You could no longer embrace a theology that requires women to shrink back from their giftedness, whitewashes the sin of slavery, or condemns your compassionate, kind-hearted and generous co-worker, just because she is also a Muslim.

For so many of us, our journey of deconstruction began because we could no longer hold on to a theology that brings harm to the people we love so dearly. It may have felt like we were abandoning faith, but we were ultimately searching for a better picture of God – one that’s often easier to find on the street than inside the sanctuary.

We started our search in earnest, but we got tangled up in the weeds of the very mess we were trying to escape. We wound up arguing with YouTube videos, our Reformed friends, and anyone “dumb enough” to believe Jonah actually got swallowed up by a fish. Love for our friend transformed into a kind of intellectual intercourse that left no one satisfied.

But it’s time to turn back to solidarity. Let your life not be twisted by doctrine, but deeply informed by the love you have for your neighbor, friend, co-worker, and family.

As Henri Nouwen writes:

“We cannot love issues, but we can love people, and the love of people reveals to us the way to deal with issues.”

When you get entangled with a person ostracized by the church or culture-at-large…

When their outcomes become your outcomes…

Their successes and failures become yours, as well…

As the radical act of solidarity becomes the forefront of your mission, all of the doctrinal standpoints, theological frameworks, and scholarly opinions will find their proper place…

And sometimes that place is a waste bin.

HORIZONTAL, NOT VERTICAL

Eduardo Galeano says that charity is vertical, but solidarity is horizontal.

Similarly, although my deconstruction began with concern for my neighbor, it turned into a vertical wrestling match between me and my beliefs about our heavenly father.

I had come to understand I was wrong about one set of certainties, but I was mistakenly just shopping around for another set of certainties. I kept searching for airtight arguments that would clarify my state of confusion.

That all changed the day I met someone whose story not only shattered every single belief I’d ever had, but whose life also led me back to the heart of God in a way no book, podcast, Substack post (!!), or seminary degree ever could.

Ten years ago, I sat down over coffee with a forty-seven year old man who was homeless, undocumented, and uncounted by the city of 8 million people in which he lived (A few of you have read about me and my friend, Ja, previously).

.He was a “nonexistent entity, a pile of excrement, a sorry I got nuthin’ for ya sack of shit as busy New Yorkers strode by” his outstretched hand (his words).

But he had me at hello. He called me on my own B.S. – instantly recognizing my thin veneer of religiosity covering up a lifetime of wounds. And we shared a deep affection for dark humor – we poked and prodded the pain within us. Together, we found healing. He became closer to me than a brother. (More on this momentarily)

HAMER. KING. JESUS.

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” Civil Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer cried out in rural Mississippi as she pressed for Voting Rights for herself and her black neighbors, even after she was arrested, beaten, and bloodied in a local jail.

And inside Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King wrote:

What drove them both was the pursuit of collective liberation (economic, social, political, and personal), and they knew it could only come through the radical act of solidarity. In order to achieve freedom and arrive at Beloved Community – a place where everyone is cared for, absent of hunger, poverty and hate – they were willing to put their bodies on the line, if necessary.

Hamer and King modeled their own lives after the solidarity they found in Jesus, who was a threat to the Roman Empire and to the religious elite for the same reasons King and Hamer were a threat: disrupting the status quo by declaring liberation for everyone (not just white people, wealthy men, or immigrants from Norway).

Jesus declared the poor were on equal footing with the powerful, that women and men were equally valuable in the eyes of God, and that everyone discarded by the elite would actually be *first* in God’s kingdom. In every interaction we find in scripture, Jesus sides with the poor, the forgotten, and the outcast. And his solidarity became their salvation. Though the empire snuffed him out, his resurrection meant that death is not final, the empire will be upended, and that solidarity is what will save us all.

Collective liberation is our goal.

For every black, brown, and white child of God.

For every woman, man, and non-binary human being.

For every single person living on the underside of power.

For every undocumented immigrant, asylum seeker, and refugee.

Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.

The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross.

-James Cone

JESUS AND DOCTRINE

To be in solidarity with others does not require agreement with systematic theology, dogmatic doctrine, or membership in a church. It doesn’t require a “stance” on political issues or white papers on women in leadership. The way of Jesus does require, however, going horizontal – walking alongside others in pursuit of collective liberation.

—---------

After every coffee with Ja, after every meal together, every deep descent into the dark corners of our lives – and the wailing laughter that would soothe our vulnerabilities – I would then go back to an air-conditioned apartment. He, to a corner of Penn Station where the fuzz wouldn’t bother him. This was our routine — for years.

But then Fannie Lou Hamer would start ringing in my head…

And Dr. King’s philosophy on the inter-related structure of reality reminded me:

Our liberation was bound up together.

Here’s the truth: Jesus never asked us to sign on to a set of doctrinal statements.

He invited us to follow him. And where does that take us? To all the places no one else will go. To love (and be loved) by those others ignore. To radical – horizontal – solidarity. Even if we need to put our bodies on the line.

Rather than spending days on end reading books on atonement theories, whether queer people are in God’s good graces, if women are allowed (allowed?!) to be leaders in the church, or Noah actually built an ark two football fields long, spend your time and energy with all the folks being oppressed, marginalized, cast out, and forgotten. The moment you understand our freedom is tied together, there ain’t nothing a commentary can say that will change your mind about joining God in the pursuit of collective liberation.

Another sermon is not the path you need to complete your deconstruction – another person is.

Radical solidarity is the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus modeled it. Hamer embodied it. King lived it. And so can you.

BONUS: My friend Ja and I are co-authoring a book about — solidarity! We meet this week with a publisher we’re genuinely excited about! Say a prayer. Send good vibes. Support our work!

You can read more of our story here – here – here – and here!

Fireworks. Flags. Stadiums full of people shouting, “I WAS BORN IN THE USA!”

But the song is actually about the dark realities of the Vietnam War. It’s a protest song.

Music critic Greil Marcus once said, “Clearly the key to the song’s popularity is a misunderstanding; it’s a tribute to the fact that people hear what they want to hear.”

And that’s not just true of music. It’s true of Scripture. It’s true of faith.

It’s true of the story we’ve been told about Jesus.

Because whether it’s lyrics to a song or verses from the Bible, people often hear what they want to hear. And over time, we begin to believe what we’ve been told – again and again and again. (a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth - Goebbels)

Which brings us (back) to the question at the center of this entire series:

Why did Jesus die?

I thought we were done with this 5-part series, but I received some significant pushback, along with a few follow-up questions (with chapter and verse to underscore the remarks – which I appreciate!), so here we are with Part 6 of our 5-part series. BONUS!

We began this series with this line:

The Story We Were Given

For many of us, the answer to why Jesus died came packaged inside a familiar framework:

It goes like this:

God Creates the world. It is good, beautiful, and whole. Humanity is made in God’s image. There is harmony everywhere.

Then comes the Fall. Humanity disobeys. Eats the fruit. Breaks trust with God and, suddenly, everything fractures: our relationship with God, with one another, and with earth itself.

Then Redemption. God launches a rescue plan. Calls Abraham. Forms Israel. Sends the prophets to warn and woo “his people” to repentance. But God knew humanity would fail to live up to his standard of holiness, so he sent his son Jesus to “redeem” his people – buy them back from the hell they deserve – through his death on the cross, dealing with sin once and for all.

Finally, Restoration. If you believe in Jesus as LORD, your sins are forgiven, and one day you’ll go to heaven. No more pain. No more suffering. You’ll enjoy eternal streets of gold with your name in the Book of Life.

That’s the story many of us were handed. And for a long time…I accepted it.

But then, questions started creeping in.

• How does one act in a garden condemn all of humanity?

• How does Jesus’ death actually satisfy God’s anger?

• Why does the world still feel so broken if redemption has already happened?

Maybe you’ve had similar questions. And now:

• You’ve been quietly deconstructing.

• You’ve got questions you’re afraid to ask out loud.

• You’ve wondered if your faith is slipping through your fingers.

If that’s you—you’re not alone.

Because in Luke 24, we meet two people in that exact place.

The Road to Emmaus

Two disciples are walking along the road to Emmaus. They are confused and disoriented. They thought Jesus was going to lead them to the freedom they longed for but, instead, they watched him get publicly executed by the empire.

They’re lost again. Wandering the streets without hope.

Then, Jesus shows up. Although they don’t recognize him, we learn that something extraordinary happened during their conversation:

“Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

This is actually the conversation I’ve been waiting for my entire adult life.

Jesus – explaining everything! For all of us wrestling with the faith handed to us, wishing someone could just bring clarity to the unresolved tension in our heart and mind, we now have Jesus explaining it all for us!

But here’s what is most striking about this exchange on the road to Emmaus:

The just-raised-Jesus doesn’t start with the fall. He doesn’t walk the disciples through the Creation narrative. No. Where does he start?

He starts with Moses. He starts with Exodus.

Don’t Start There. Start Here.

If we’re going to understand Jesus, we have to start where he started.

EXODUS

He points to people in bondage, enslaved under an empire, exploited economically, dehumanized politically, and reminds the disciples:

God heard their cries, and broke the shackles on their feet!

This isn’t a story about God forgiving people for being enslaved; it’s about God liberating them from oppression.

God empowers Moses to confront Pharaoh: Let my people go!

Chains are broken, the system of slavery is dismantled, and God leads people toward freedom. This is where Jesus begins. That’s the foundation.

THE PROPHETS

Next, Jesus walks them through the prophets. I’m sure many of us were up late last night reading through Nahum and Habakkuk before crashing in bed!

What we discover through prophets like Amos, Obadiah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and Zechariah is that their primary role as prophets was not to shame people for their private sins, but to challenge systems of injustice.

They call out exploitation.
They confront the powerful.
They demand justice for the poor.

Isaiah gives us a prime example:

Because here’s what happened:

The people who were once enslaved in Egypt – started enslaving others.

The people who were once oppressed — became the oppressors.

And the prophets said, “God has shut his ears to your prayers because you have exploited the vulnerable. This is not the way of God!”

JESUS

Jesus comes not as a detached theological solution, but as a liberator.

In Luke 4, Jesus stands up and reads from the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor,
freedom for the captives,
recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free…”

And then he says:
“Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

In other words, I am the new Moses. I am what God looks like when God shows up for the oppressed. I am embodying liberation. I am continuing the Exodus, bringing freedom from bondage for all people.

But as we learned during week 4 and week 5 of this series, the religious elite and the Roman Empire snuffed him out. As an uprising began, the empire ensured there would not be another Moses confronting Pharaoh.

They hung Jesus on a cross as a warning: confront the empire, suffer the consequences.

THAT is why Jesus died. He was a threat to the empire.

The empire declared: Jesus is not the new Moses; he’s just another run of the mill zealot.

Jesus is executed and buried. The disciples, who believed him to be their liberator, were thoroughly confused – just like many of us in the 21st Century are confused, though not in the exact way the disciples were.

For many of us, our confusion stems from hearing for decades that the problem with our lives is:

• the sin that separates us from God

• that God is holy and cannot stand such unrighteousness

• that a payment was needed to turn away God’s wrath

• The great chasm between us and God

• The only solution is to accept Jesus as LORD, who forgives us our sin that would otherwise send us to hell

But that’s not what Jesus said; it’s not what the prophets said, and it’s not even what the apostle Paul said. Instead, we read there is nothing that can separate us from God.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?

No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth,

For those keeping score at home, that’s a total of sixteen different things that cannot separate us from God! Now, for one final exclamation point:

nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If nothing can separate us from God, why all this talk about the great chasm between us?

The truth is, the only thing that can separate us from God is the idea that we are separated from God. That’s it. And for many years, that’s what we’ve been taught.

But the capital T truth is:

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and rescues those whose spirits are crushed.

Psalm 34

The truth that Jesus tells the disciples on the road to Emmaus is that he has always been about freeing people from enslavement, bondage, and oppression. And although the empire and the religious elite tried to snuff him out and make an example of his subversive ways by nailing him to the cross, the resurrections means the public execution of Jesus didn’t hold. In the end, death does not win. Love triumphs over evil.

As Moses said, Let my people go!

And we have been invited and empowered to join Jesus, Moses, and the prophets in bringing healing and hope to our world.

The Kingdom of God

This is not about a future heaven we escape to, but a present reality breaking into the world. This is a world where chains are broken, systems are transformed, and where people live in justice, dignity, and a beloved community.

This is the story Jesus tells.

He didn’t offer the disciples a set of doctrinal standpoints to adhere to.

He told them an old story – but he helps them see it with fresh eyes.

Jesus reminds them: You were in bondage. God heard your cries. God brought you out.

And the goal was never just freedom for you – but a world where no one lives in chains.

Now, the story makes sense in a new way. The story arc of the Bible isn’t about alleviating us from the consequences of personal sin; it’s about collective liberation.

It’s not about how to escape hell but how to confront it – right here, right now.

The question isn’t HOW DO I GET SAVED?

The question is, “Who’s still in bondage, and what does it look like to join God in setting them free?”

If Jesus explains his death and resurrection by starting with the Exodus…then maybe we should too.

If Jesus centers the oppressed…then maybe we should too.

If Jesus reads scripture as a story of liberation…then maybe that’s how we’re meant to read it as well.

Creation still matters, but now we see that God’s good world includes justice and dignity for all.

The Fall still matters, but maybe it’s not just about a moment in a garden, but every system that fractures relationships and exploits people.

Redemption still matters, though it’s not about an afterlife experience, but what happens when chains are broken in the here and now.

Restoration still matters, but maybe it’s not just a distant future, but a present calling to participate in God’s renewing work.

Same Bible. Different understanding. And that changes everything.

We have not been invited to merely believe a list of facts (or else).

We have been invited to embody the way of Jesus, to practice the resurrection, and to seek out those in bondage so – one day – we may all be free.

Amen?

Next Thursday will be a new post about the book I’m co-authoring with my friend Ja!

“Mom, should I believe in God?” Before she or his father could answer, he continued.

“I mean, I guess I can believe in God AND Jesus, but there’s just no way I can believe that someone who died and was buried for 3 days, got up, walked out of a tomb, and was alive again.”

It gets better.

“Isn’t that — just a bunch of stuff people made up?”

His mother, who holds a graduate degree in theology, was stumped. Not by the question itself — but that it was coming from her own nine year old child.

If that were your child, how would you respond?

In Luke 24 we read about three women (Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James) who took spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. However, according to the scriptures, Jesus wasn’t there (He has risen! Just as he told you…) The women rushed off to tell the disciples about what they had not seen.

But [the disciples] did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

The Gospel of Luke was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word for nonsense is lēros, which means trivial, empty chatter.

Plato, the Greek philosopher who shaped western philosophy, lived about 400 years before Jesus. He would often use the word lēros to describe sophist philosophers – those who reason with clever but fallacious arguments.

“It sounds deep, but it’s lēros.” → It’s pseudo-profound.

He would often criticize speech that lacks truth, depth, or philosophical rigor by calling it lēros.

Lēros = NONSENSE. Speech that’s disconnected from reality.

The disciples, the nine-year old from dinner, and even Plato (assumedly) would like to have a word with the idea that a human being could die, then be raised again, and that word is: lēros.

Yet, here we are — and here we have been — for 2000 years celebrating the nonsense.

CRISIS OF FAITH

Several years ago I had a deep crisis of faith. I was born into the Christian faith. My father, grandfather, and most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were all pastors or deeply involved in the church.

And yet the faith I was raised on started to crumble when it collided with the realities of the harsh world I was living in…

The iron clad answers from childhood or even seminary seemed like lēros compared to the complexities of modern life.

I was a pastor at the time, standing on a stage delivering talks about a God I wasn’t sure I believed in any more. I didn’t want to mislead anyone any longer, so I stepped down from my role as Pastor and went on a journey of discovery to try and get to the heart of Christianity:

What does it mean? Why is it so important? And what am I supposed to do with Jesus, the one we’re celebrating on Easter morning?

• I would wake up at 5am and read for 3 hours before going to work.

• I would listen to podcasts and debates throughout the day,

• I enrolled in seminary again — trying to figure out if the first 35 years of my life was all wasted on trivial, empty chatter.

Had I committed myself to a religion that was disconnected from reality? Would Plato have labeled me a sophist? Would the nine year old from dinner shake his head in disbelief at what I thought to be true?

I read dozens and dozens of books, including every one written by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, who grew up an Episcopal, became an evangelical, graduated from Yale Divinity and then, after more than a decade of theological studies, stopped believing in God. He’s now a bonafide atheist.

And yet, he has spent the past 30 years studying the life of Jesus to try and figure out why some 2.5 billion people still believe all the nonsense about him.

I read all of his books about Jesus — many of them NY Times bestsellers — and…

Based on Bart’s research, he posits that Jesus himself never believed he was the savior of the world, but that his followers constructed the idea after his death. He doesn’t believe in the resurrection or the miracles — and what he writes is compelling. I drank from that fire hose for several years.

But something Ehrman believes is a rock-solid fact is that Jesus was killed by Rome and the religious establishment because he was a political threat.

Jesus was a threat to the empire, to the status quo, and to the wealthy elite.

Jesus said – and I quote – When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. I and the Father are one. And my mission is to free the oppressed, to preach good news to the poor, to open the eyes of the blind, and to break the chains of those in captivity. (John 10:30, 14:9, Luke 4:16-20)

And to that, the Roman Empire and the religious establishment said: lēros.

That’s nonsense — speech disconnected from reality!

But then, it started to happen.

• Jesus healed the sick, restoring them to community.

• He put those in poverty on equal footing with those in power.

• He elevated the roles of women, who were seen as property, and whose testimony wasn’t valid in the court of law

• He preached love for enemies, peacemaking through nonviolence, and giving up one’s possessions as the path to a good life.

And all of the people who heard Jesus, who interacted with him, who were touched by his wisdom and compassion, began to follow him. There was an uprising.

The authorities took note, and they put a stop to all of the nonsense, making a public spectacle of Jesus — hanging him on a cross so all of his followers could see: confront the empire and suffer the consequences.

Although Bart Ehrman doesn’t believe in God, he does believe this is why Jesus died.

THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY

Ehrman wasn’t the only scholar I read. Another is named Rodney Stark, a sociologist and historian who authored a book titled The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.

If Ehrman’s assessment is true — that Jesus’ resurrection is nonsense — how did Christianity become an unstoppable force in the world?

• Scholars say that 30 years after the death (and supposed resurrection) of Jesus there were about 1500 Christians in the world.

• 100 years later that number increased to 30 or 40,000.

• But by the end of the 3rd Century, scholars believe upwards of 6 million people, roughly 10% of the Roman Empire, claimed to be Christian.

And remember, the Roman Empire occupied Jerusalem and Judea. They were the dominant force in the world at the time. Its leaders believed people should be worshiping them — and yet this tiny movement of Jesus followers kept expanding.

How did this all happen, especially if the resurrection was a bunch of lēros?

THREE PRIMARY REASONS

Stark’s research uncovers three primary reasons Christianity spread during the first two centuries:

1 - Radical Care During Epidemics

There were at least 2 terrible plagues in the Roman Empire during the first two centuries. Bodies piled up everywhere. Most people who had means to leave, left.

Except the Christians, especially the wealthier ones. They stayed. Instead of seeking refuge, they provided refuge for those who were ill.

• They nursed the sick, often at great personal risk.

• This simple act of compassion dramatically increased survival rates.

• It also made Christianity visible as a faith of tangible love.

2 - A Strong Ethic of Love and Charity

Christian communities practiced a level of mutual aid and generosity that stood out.
Caring for widows, orphans, the poor, and the abandoned wasn’t optional — it was central. James, the brother of Jesus, writes in James 1:27 that “true religion” is caring for orphans and widows. The apostle Paul gives instructions to wealthier believers how they are to treat and interact with their poor neighbors, particularly around the dinner table. This created tight-knit, resilient communities.

The result? More people were drawn to a movement where no one was disposable.

3 - The Dignity and Inclusion of Women

Christianity offered women greater status, protection, and participation than much of Roman culture.

• Women were leaders in the early church (despite what you were taught!)

• Women were valued as full members in the community.

• Roman society treated women as disposable, but Christians protected women.

The result? More women joined the movement, and because women were integral to family and social networks, the movement spread more rapidly.

For Stark, Christianity grew because it was lived convincingly.

It wasn’t just preached, it was practiced.
It wasn’t simply believed, it was embodied.

In other words, the earliest followers of Jesus believed in all the nonsense he was teaching, and when those living under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire experienced it, they couldn’t get enough of it.

They thought: this is the way the life is supposed to be.

The world wasn’t won over by theological debates about an empty tomb. However, they were convinced because they had encountered a community shaped by those who believed in the nonsense of the resurrection. They encountered a community:

• Who had courage in the face of death

• Who cared for the sick and poor

• Whose radical inclusion and dignity lifted up all people as children of God.

BACK TO LUKE 24

The text in Luke 24 points to three women who were the first to witness the resurrection — three women whose testimony wouldn’t even be heard in a court of law at the time, and yet the truth of the resurrection apparently hinges upon their witness. Lēros, Plato might say.

But the earliest followers saw the resurrection as victory over the Empire.

If the establishment put Jesus on a cross as a public warning not to confront the empire, then the empty tomb was God asserting victory over the establishment – assuring everyone that we could move from death to life, from oppression to liberty, from fear of the empire to freedom in the beloved community.

Belief in the resurrection made the movement possible.
Practicing the resurrection made the movement contagious.

The earliest followers of Jesus believed in the nonsense he was teaching, and they believed in the nonsense of the resurrection.

According to Rodney Stark, Christianity grew not because Christ-followers proved the resurrection, but because they practiced it, and the world couldn’t ignore what it saw.

For what it’s worth, Stark was an agnostic at the time he was researching for this book. Today, he is a self-described Christian.

AN INVITATION

On Easter morning, I don’t want to try and convince you of anything.

But I want to invite you to believe the nonsense, and see what happens…

Believe the nonsensical teachings of Jesus, which claim:

• The poor are on equal footing with the powerful.

• Women and men are equally valuable.

• Our enemies are to be loved.

• Strangers are our neighbors.

• Nonviolence is the path to peace.

• Radical compassion is the driving force of our lives.

• Everyone is a child of God.

And I want to invite you to believe in the nonsense of the resurrection, that there is:

• Freedom from oppression

• A beloved community being built for all people

• And that we no longer need to live in fear of the empire.

But let’s not just believe the nonsense, let’s embody it. Let’s practice the resurrection:

in the ordinary.
in the unseen.
And even when it costs you something.

I am convinced the world is not starving for another argument about an empty tomb, but it is starving for people who will live like every human being bears the image of God.

May we believe the nonsense.

May we put it into practice.

And may we build a beloved community in the process.

AMEN?

All of the disciples in the portrait are models and actors, but there’s a shocking detail I’m guessing you’re unable to detect on your digital device.

After hanging for 12 years behind the altar of a country church, the portrait was to be transported to an art gallery in Sheffield, England, but when Wadsworth unpacked her 12 foot painting inside the Graves Gallery, she noticed that Jesus had been shot.

And not just randomly, but on Christ’s right side, the very place a Roman soldier made the final wound into the body of Jesus to be sure he was dead. Was this a modern-day reimagining of the death of Jesus?

Over the past few weeks we’ve been exploring the most dangerous question in Christianity, – and it’s not about how Jesus died, but why he died and what does it all mean?

Father Greg Boyle writes that nothing is more consequential in our lives than the notion of God we hold. Not God. The notion of God. This is what steers the ship. Our idea of God will always call the shots.

For this reason, we’ve been focused on the following line throughout the series:

So tell me, how do you understand the cross? And what does that say about the kind of God you believe in?

Just for fun, let’s run a quick quiz: Which version of why Jesus died that we’ve covered, so far, makes the most sense to you? Or perhaps a better question might be, “Which perspective portrays the God you hope we have?”

Week 1 - Satisfaction Theory

Jesus died to absorb God’s wrath for human sin, satisfying divine justice so those who believe can be saved from punishment.

God killed his Son. And he did it with pleasure for you. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. It was a sweet-smelling aroma when Christ his Son was slaughtered. The cross was violent, horribly violent. And it was planned by God that way, and it was God’s pleasure to have it so.

-John Piper

Week 2 - Moral Exemplar Theory

Jesus died as the ultimate example of self-giving love, inviting humanity to be transformed by following his life and teachings.

Jesus has more fully bound us to himself by love; with the result that our hearts should be enkindled by such a gift of divine grace, and true charity should not now shrink from enduring anything for him.

-Peter Abelard

Week 3 - Liberation Theology

Jesus was executed by an empire threatened by his message, and his death reveals God’s deep solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized.

A symbol of death and defeat, God turned the cross into a sign of liberation and new life. The cross is the most empowering symbol of God’s loving solidarity with THE LEAST OF THESE, the unwanted in society who suffer daily from great injustices.

-James Cone

Which one reveals the God you hope we have?

Which notion of God is steering your ship?

Before you put your response in permanent ink, we have one more theory to cover.

Christus Victor Atonement Theory

According to J. Denny Weaver, author of The Nonviolent Atonement, Christus Victor:

“Used the image of a cosmic battle between good and evil, between forces of God and those of Satan. In that fray God’s son Jesus Christ was killed, an apparent defeat of God and victory by Satan. However, Jesus’ resurrection turned the seeming defeat into a great victory, which forever revealed God’s control of the universe and freed sinful humans from the power of sin and Satan. This was the prevailing view found in early church theologians.”

Quick pause here for review. Moral Exemplar Theory is known as the earliest official view of the cross. Liberation Theology is how the earliest followers of Jesus understood the cross. And Christus Victor became the prevailing view among early church theologians (Remember: the Satisfaction Theory of atonement didn’t take root until the 11th Century, and wasn’t popularized in mainstream theology until the 16th Century).

Weaver goes on to say:

“...the resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate and definitive cosmic victory of the reign of God over the rule of Satan and the multiple evils that he produces, including war and devastation, famine, pestilence, and natural disasters. This is the victorious Christ, Christus Victor.”

If you’re noticing similarities between Christus Victor Theory and Liberation Theology, it’s because – as Weaver writes – “Jesus’ execution was a product of the evil powers represented by Rome” rather than a voluntary surrender by Jesus.

In other words, both posit that Jesus’ death was not to satisfy God’s wrath, and not to be used as the ultimate act of self-surrender, but the result of an Empire’s need to maintain power and to squelch future rebellions against their reign.

This is why Jesus died.

The “ransom” paid (see Matthew 20:28) by Jesus was not to his heavenly father, but to the system that was threatened by Jesus’ message and rising popularity among the peasant class.

What we learn in both views is not only why Jesus died, but what his resurrection means, which is why James Cone wrote:

the enslaved African sang …because they saw the results of the cross – triumph over the principalities and powers of death, triumph over evil in this world.

Moral Exemplar Theory has little explanation for the resurrection.

Satisfaction Theory focuses on Christ’s death as punishment for sins.

Liberation Theology and Christus Victor tell us this:

-Jesus was killed because he was a threat to power.
-His resurrection was God’s victory over the very systems that crucified him.

But there’s a question we can’t ignore. See below.

If the resurrection is victory over the powers…
If Jesus came to free the oppressed, release the captives, and bring good news to the poor…

Why hasn’t it happened yet?

I John 3:8 says:

“The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil.”

But look around.

The system doesn’t look destroyed. It looks alive. It’s thriving.

• 50 million people live in modern slavery.

• One in four of them are children.

• 90 million people are displaced by violence, disaster, and persecution.

• Tens of thousands die each year from gun violence in the U.S. alone.

• Millions live in poverty in the wealthiest nation on earth.

And that’s before we even mention Ukraine, Iran, Israel-Palestine, or the daily assault on immigrants in our own country.

So we ask: Christ victorious? Really? Liberation? Where?

Is this your God? A God who lets children suffer? Who watches cancer ravage bodies and calls it a plan? Who allows systems to crush the very people Jesus came to save?

Now you see why Satisfaction Theory makes sense to some. If the world isn’t changing, at least it offers an escape hatch.

But here’s the truth:

If we refuse to wrestle with these questions – honestly, painfully, openly – then what are we even doing?

If your heart doesn’t break…
If you never find yourself shaking your fist at God and asking, “What is going on?”

Are you even paying attention?

So let’s remember what Jesus actually did.

He didn’t just talk about another world, he gave us a glimpse of it.

He taught us to love our enemies – and then he did it.
He healed on the Sabbath – defying systems that valued rules over people.
He elevated women in a world that erased them.
He welcomed the poor, the sick, the outsider – on equal footing.
He confronted the powerful and exposed systems built on exploitation.

Jesus didn’t just preach the kingdom of God. He embodied it. He gave us a preview of what’s to come.

And this is where Liberation Theology and Christus Victor push us further.

Theologians like James Cone, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and J. Denny Weaver would say:

The resurrection is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of a new one.

With the resurrection of Jesus, the reign of God has already begun.

Not finished. Not complete. But breaking in.

A piece of the future – right here, right now.

Resurrection means this: Things are not what they seem.

What looks like victory may actually be defeat.
What looks like defeat may be the beginning of victory.

The powers thought they won. They killed Jesus. But in raising him, God exposed their power as hollow – and declared that death, violence, and oppression do not get the final word.

And now comes the part we don’t always like:

We are not just waiting for that victory. We are meant to participate in it.

We demonstrate freedom from the powers – not by escaping the world – but by refusing to live under their rules. Instead, by living as if God’s reign is already true, we create a world the empire cannot control. In fact, we live in such a way that we make it irrelevant.

As Rachel Held Evans wrote:

To put one’s hope in Jesus is to believe — despite all evidence to the contrary — that his way of peace, justice, mercy, and compassion will ultimately prevail over the empire’s way of violence, exploitation, oppression, and fear.

That’s hard to believe, and even harder to live, which is why so many of us settle for the status quo — giving the empire exactly what it wants.

Maintain the status quo. Don’t challenge anything. Don’t question systems. Don’t disrupt power. Just keep things as they are.

Because the status quo is how the system survives.

But if the resurrection means anything, it means the status quo is already broken.

If our end game is the beloved community, then change is not optional.

It is necessary.

Because the status quo says:

“As long as I’m okay, everything’s okay.”

But beloved community says:

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

The status quo is built on fear. But Christ’s love casts out fear.

The status quo wants you to avoid politics, but Jesus embodied a different kind of politics — the reign of God — which confronts injustice and reorders the world.

So here’s the truth as we approach Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday:

Jesus’ life was a preview.
His death was a collision with the powers.
His resurrection was a declaration that the powers do not win.

And now?

The future of the world is not just in God’s hands. It is in ours, too. Not because we replace God, but because we have been invited by Jesus to embody what God has already begun.

We are called to be — right now — what the whole world will one day become:

A community of peace.
Of justice.
Of radical equality.
Of love without condition.

So the question is not just:

Do you believe in the resurrection?

The question is:

Will you live like it’s true?

Tell me why Jesus died, and I’ll tell you what kind of God you believe in. Because how you understand the cross will shape how you live in the world.

How do we say to the poor, “God loves you”?

According to Gustavo Gutiérrez, this is the first question of theology.

Not in theory. Not in abstraction. But in a world where the poor are crushed by systems they did not create, how do we say: God loves you.

In his groundbreaking book A Theology of Liberation, Gutiérrez offers three truths we cannot ignore:

First, poverty is not good. It is not spiritual. It is not something to romanticize. It is an evil that degrades human dignity and must be opposed.

Second, poverty is not the result of laziness or fate. It is the result of systems – economic, political, social – that benefit some while crushing others.

Third, poverty is not just about money. To be poor is to be made invisible. It is to live closer to death than to life.

Let’s Start With Jesus

When Jesus stood up in a synagogue in Nazareth to give his first recorded sermon, he quoted the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the captives
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free…

If you grew up in the church, you might expect the “good news” to sound like this:

Repent of your sins so you can go to heaven when you die.

But that’s not what Jesus says. And honestly – it doesn’t make sense. Because when you keep reading the Gospels, you don’t see Jesus telling the poor why they deserve their condition. You see him standing with them. Eating with them. Touching them. Defending them. Restoring them to community.

So What Is the Good News?

Imagine hearing Jesus’ words not as abstract theology, but as a poor laborer under Roman occupation (where 90% of the agrarian society lived in abject poverty):

A man from Nazareth – a nobody town – standing in the shadow of an empire that taxes you into poverty, crushes dissent, and treats your life as disposable.

And he says:

God is on your side. Not the side of empire. Not the side of domination. Not the side of those who profit from your suffering. God is on the side of the poor. The captive. The oppressed. And God is doing something about it.

The World We Actually Live In

Let’s bring this into the 21st century.

In Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, physician and anthropologist Seth Holmes reflects on spending 18 months living with migrant farmworkers – crossing the border with them, working alongside them, and sleeping where they sleep.

Here’s what he found:

• It costs about $2,000 to cross the southern border.

• A full harvest season earns around $4,000.

• Workers labor 12–15 hours a day.

• Pay is based on speed. Miss the quota? You get nada.

At one farm, workers must pick 51 pounds of strawberries per hour just to stay employed. Every pound? About 14 cents. Meanwhile, you and I buy those strawberries for $3.50 at the store.

What the label doesn’t say: These berries were picked by people who risked their lives to get here – working jobs that break their bodies so their families can survive.

At night, berry pickers sleep in makeshift shelters that barely protect them from the elements. This is not accidental. It’s systemic.

According to the National Agricultural Worker Survey:

• 81% of farmworkers in America are immigrants

• 95% were born in Mexico

• 52% are undocumented.

The Deeper Question

Why does this happen? Why do people have to leave their home countries just to survive? Holmes observed something striking: U.S.-grown, industrial corn was being sold in Mexican villages cheaper than local farmers could produce it.

So local economies collapse. People lose work. And they migrate – into a system that will exploit them again.

Here’s The Rub

Farmers feel trapped. Corporations chase profit. Consumers want low prices. Everyone is caught in a system that demands cheap labor and produces disposable people. It’s actually cheaper to bring a strawberry from China to Los Angeles than from northern California to Los Angeles.

This is what Liberation Theology names: Not just personal sin – but structural sin.

What Actually Separates Us?

As we explore why Jesus died, we first reviewed Satisfaction Theory, which tells us that sin separates us from God – and only Christ’s blood could avert God’s wrath (making us “at one” with God again).

But last week we read that nothing can separate us from God’s love. (Rom. 8:35-39)

So what does separate? Not God from us. But us from each other.

Systems that divide:

• rich from poor

• citizen from immigrant

• white from Black

• powerful from powerless

These are the real fractures in our world.

So What Did Jesus Come To Do?

If Jesus walked into a migrant camp today, what would his message be?

“Repent so you can go to heaven”?

Or:

“The kingdom of God is at hand – and it looks like fair wages, health insurance, and affordable housing.”

Liberation Theology says: Jesus did not come to help us escape the world. He came to transform it.

The Cross Through This Lens

Theologian James Cone writes:

“God’s liberation of the poor is the primary theme of the gospel.”

And in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he draws a haunting connection:

The cross was a tool of state violence. So was the lynching tree.

Between 1880 and 1940, thousands of Black men and women were lynched in America – often in public, often with crowds watching, sometimes with photos taken and sent as postcards.

The cross and the lynching tree served the same purpose: To instill fear. To maintain control. To keep people “in their place.”

Why did Jesus die? He was executed by an empire threatened by his message. But as Easter approaches, we know that’s not the end of the story. According to Cone:

The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross.

The cross is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power.

A symbol of death and defeat, God turned the cross into a sign of liberation and new life. The cross is the most empowering symbol of God’s loving solidarity with THE LEAST OF THESE, the unwanted in society who suffer daily from great injustices.

Let’s Be Clear

There is nothing redemptive about suffering itself. Not the cross. Not the lynching tree. Not injustice. What IS redemptive, however, is God’s presence in the midst of it. God does not cause the suffering – God enters it. God stands with the oppressed, and refuses to let death have the final word.

Liberation theology is crystal clear. The cross is not just about individual salvation; it is about God standing in solidarity with the oppressed – even unto death. This is why Jesus died.

Liberation theology reveals a God who sides with the marginalized, confronts unjust systems, exposes the violence of the empire, and then declares: this is not how the world is supposed to be.

What About the Resurrection?

We’re in week 4 of 5. We have one more monster-of-a-session ahead of us.

Let’s review. We began with the question “Why Did Jesus Die?”

Satisfaction Theory: To pay the penalty for your sin, averting God’s wrath through Christ’s blood.

Moral Exemplar: To model the ultimate sacrifice of love for others.

Liberation Theology: Jesus was executed by an empire threatened by his solidarity with the poor and his message of liberation.

But something is still unresolved. If the cross exposes injustice, what does God do about it?

We are now just ten days from Easter morning. Christ’s death on the cross, even as a radical act of solidarity with the poor, doesn’t answer the question of the resurrection.

We’ve been asked by pastors for centuries, “Do you believe the resurrection happened?”

But here’s a better question to ponder: What does the resurrection actually mean?

*The artwork in the preview from Simone Leigh is titled “Brick House.” It sits at the entrance of Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. Overlooking the Alabama River, this space honors the lives and resilience of the 10 million Black people who were enslaved in America.

—------------------------

In 2009, a refugee from Afghanistan named Mohammed Bahrami walked into Faith Bible Church in Muncie, Indiana, with a bomb strapped to his chest.

Intent on killing as many Christians as possible, he arrived just in time for the Sunday service to begin. Adversely affected by the bevy of hate crimes toward his Muslim neighbors in the post-9/11 era, Mohammed had only one thing on his mind that day: Taking this war into his own hands.

But as he walked up the steps to the church, he was noticed by one of the church deacons, a former football player for the Cincinnati Bengals, who said he tried to disarm the hate he could see in Mohammed’s heart. A handshake became a warm embrace. The deacon introduced Mohammed to his wife and children who were standing by him at the front door. While his headscarf and long-flowing robe stood out amidst this mostly white congregation, they welcomed him into their church, and invited him to the potluck after the service – all while an explosive was taped to Mohammed’s chest.

Coincidentally, the pastor was preaching on one of Jesus’ most radical teachings: Love your enemies. Little did the pastor know at the time, but he was the enemy.

Fast-forward eight weeks: Mohammed Bahrami and the pastor stood in the waters of baptism together, Mohammed converting to Christianity because of the unconditional love he received from a group of people he intended to kill.

May the peace of Christ reign forever! God is good – all the time!

—--------------------------

That story isn’t true. But it could be.

The real story – told in the documentary Stranger at the Gate – goes the other way.

Richard “Mac” McKinney, born in Ohio, spent 25 years in the military training for war. After serving in Afghanistan, he returned home with a deep hatred for Muslims.

When an Islamic Center opened in his town, and his young daughter befriended a Muslim classmate, something in him snapped. He decided to act.

Mac built a bomb and walked into the mosque on a Friday afternoon on a reconnaissance mission before the final blow.

“I am the surgeon,” he thought. “Islam is a cancer.”

But when he entered, he was met not with fear, but with kindness. A man, Dr. Mohammed Bahrami noticed something was off. Without hesitation, however, he welcomed Mac to the mosque, and over the next eight weeks, Mac McKinney experienced a kind of love he had never previously been shown. Eight weeks later, Mac converted to Islam.

Today, he often quotes a line from the Qur’an:

To kill one person is to kill all humanity. To save one person is to save all humanity.

Overwhelmed by the love of those he was trained to hate, he was transformed.

Moral Exemplar Theory

In this series, we’re asking a central question: Why did Jesus die?

If you’re wondering how Mac’s story connects, keep reading.

Last week, we explored Penal Substitution (aka Satisfaction Theory), where the focus is on the death of Jesus – his blood as payment for sin.

In Moral Exemplar Theory, the focus shifts almost entirely to the life of Jesus.

This view, which is arguably the earliest post-biblical understanding of the cross, claims that the primary purpose of Jesus’ life and death is to transform us morally.

Scholar Adam Kotsko puts it this way:

The goal of Christ’s saving work is to produce positive moral change in individuals and communities.

Jesus shows us the way of:

• radical love

• simplicity

• devotion to God

• care for the poor and marginalized

And when we follow his example, we are changed.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.” Moral Exemplar Theory invites us to try it, and be transformed.

A Vision Shared Across Faiths

Here’s what’s fascinating: Christians, Muslims, and many Jews can all affirm this vision of Jesus. For example, in Islam, we learn that Jesus is born of the virgin Mary, that he performed miracles, teaches truth, and will one day return to restore justice. In Judaism, he is referred to as a wise and compelling teacher. Across traditions, Jesus is admired (revered?) as a moral guide.

Because his life is undeniably compelling. The earliest Christians modeled Christ’s love, with early observers, even enemies, reflecting: Look at how they love one another.

That kind of life changes people. Just like it changed Mac.

But here’s the question critics raise:

If Jesus is primarily an example, what does that have to do with the cross? Or atonement (becoming ‘one’ again with God)?

Moral Exemplar Theory says:

We are so moved by the life of Jesus – so transformed by his love – that we are saved from a life of emptiness and redirected into a life of purpose, meaning, and love. We begin to live differently. We become different people. And in that transformation, we might even say: “Jesus is the way.”

I love this. When someone says, “Jesus saved me from an empty life and gave me joy, love, and peace,” the only appropriate response is AMEN.

The Shortfall

But we still haven’t answered the question: Why did Jesus die? With Moral Exemplar Theory (often called Moral Influence Theory), he didn’t *technically need to die.

Notice the *asterisk

*Technically, Jesus didn’t need to die in order to be a supreme example for us. However, within this framework, the cross becomes the ultimate example of love:

“There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Jesus’ death is the final, climactic demonstration of self-giving love. And that matters. We could think of other examples of self-giving love: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Robert F. Kennedy, etc. But there are two reasons why we need to be careful with this sort of “self-giving love.”

First, again, following the example of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or others who have been models in our ancient and modern world just might change your life. That is, of course, good news. (Let me also give you a hint toward week 4: all of the above died for reasons other than merely “being a good example.” But more on that later…)

Second, passages like the above have been used to justify harm, particularly when combined with what we read in the book of I Peter:

For it is a commendable thing if, being aware of God, a person endures pain while suffering unjustly…For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

It’s important to note we are not the original audience for this instruction. We are not a small, budding group of Christians being persecuted by the empire (No, we ARE the empire! But more on that in week 4).

The passages above have been leveraged to justify harm. For example:

• Telling abused spouses to stay.

• Commanding enslaved persons to endure beatings.

• Glorifying suffering instead of confronting injustice.

So yes, Jesus’ sacrifice is powerful. But if we’re not careful, it can be misused in devastating ways.

What Moral Exemplar Gets Right

This view reminds us of something essential: The life of Jesus matters. His teachings matter. His relationships matter. His compassion, his justice, his nonviolence – all of it matters.

And more than that: Through Jesus, we see what God is actually like. Up close and personal. He’s not wrathful, detached, or dangerous. He’s present, compassionate, and merciful. A God who moves toward the suffering, not away from it.

What It Misses

But here’s the tension: Moral Exemplar Theory often stops at imitation. Follow Jesus.
Live like Jesus. Love like Jesus. All good. But Jesus didn’t just claim to show us how to live. He claimed to show us who God is. And that changes everything. Because if Jesus is revealing God – not just modeling humanity – then the cross is not just an example, it’s a revelation. Something is happening that’s bigger than inspiration.

Where This Leaves Us

If Satisfaction Theory says: It’s all about the death…

And Moral Exemplar says: It’s all about the life…

Then both fall short on their own. One reduces the gospel to blood. The other reduces it to behavior. But the story of Jesus refuses to be that simple.

So We Ask Again

What is God’s end game? What is God actually trying to do in the world? And what exactly happened on the cross? Why did Jesus die?

Because here’s the thing:

What if the cross isn’t just about payment? And not just about a moral example?

What if it’s about confrontation? What if something deeper was happening – something cosmic?

Something that had less to do with God needing something…

…and more to do with God defeating something?

Next week, we begin to explore a theory that dominated the first thousand years of Christianity. A theory where the cross is not about satisfying God…but about overcoming evil.

Because if that’s true, then the cross is not just something to believe in.

It’s something that changes everything.

Over the next four weeks, we’re going to wrestle with the question that sits at the center of the Christian story: Why did Jesus die? (read Part 1 here)

To help us get started we need to begin with the end in mind. Wise words from Stephen Covey, the mid-90s management guru whose book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People became a global phenomenon with nearly 60 million copies sold worldwide.

Habit #2: Begin with the end in mind. Decide where you want to go – or who you want to become – and then build your life toward that destination. Simple idea. Brutally hard in practice. Because by the time most of us learn the habit, we’re already thirty years into a life shaped by our default settings.

As it pertains to our question at the center of the Christian story (why did Jesus die?), it would do us well to begin with the end in mind. What are we after? What was/is God after? And what about the people who killed Jesus? What were they after? What was their END GAME?

A better understanding of the above will help guide us over the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, for nearly a thousand years the church has largely given the same default answer to our central question: Jesus died on the cross for your sins.

-But what happened to the first one thousand years after Jesus’ death? And what changed? Slow down, Charlie. We’ll get to that in subsequent weeks.

First, let’s remember:

How you get somewhere is just as important as getting there.

Imagine being hungry. Ever been there? Not starving. Just – Hangry. Before you lay two choices: a pack of M&Ms or a bag of organic veggies from Whole Foods.

Both products may temporarily satisfy your hunger, but one is clearly healthier. In that regard, how we satisfy our hunger matters a great deal.

For nearly a thousand years, the dominant answer to our big question has simply been Jesus died on the cross for your sins. He saved you from the penalty that comes with sin, which is an eternity without him (i.e., hell) Don’t believe me? Read Romans 6:23 and Romans 3:23 and John 14:6 and __________ and _________.

For a good number of folks, that line of reasoning works. I mean, who wants to go to hell? And you’ve got directions for a different destination? I’m in.

THE END IN MIND here is heaven, not hell. Streets of gold, not eternal flames. Being reunited with your very religious grandmother (who adored you!), not winding up where your alky uncle Steve surely did.

There are a few reasons this “atonement theory” (what makes us “one” again with God) has been so pervasive in the western world over the past few centuries:

We feel guilty over things we’ve done. Accepting Christ’s forgiveness resolves this.

Our nation practices retributive justice. The “make them pay” mentality aligns well.

It is clear, and it offers us safety – two things every human craves.

When an idea is repeated long enough, it begins to feel like the only possible truth.

The “truth” is most of us reading this have never heard it any other way, though what we’ve heard may have been a touch longer, like this (remember the END GAME is HEAVEN):

• God created the world and it was perfect.

• Adam and Eve came along and screwed it up for everyone.

• God was angry, and had to punish humankind for messing up God’s world.

• Instead, God punishes Jesus, who stood in our place, as a penalty for our sin.

• The blood of Jesus pays the price for humankind messing up the world.

• Accept this free offer of love, and you’re in (heaven).

• Don’t accept it, and you’re toast (see what I did there?).

But a few follow up questions to your local pastor will garner a few more insights.

• How does Jesus’ death on the cross pay for my sins?

• What was happening on the cross?

• Who killed Jesus?

A standard pastor in a local congregation will likely have one of three responses:

1 - Oh, shit! No one has ever asked that before.

2 - The “wages of sin is death” but Jesus absorbed it so you can freely live. (This is actually a non-answer. Pastors can be slippery when need be!).

If you’re lucky, though, your pastor will pull the curtain all the way back and say:

3 - God is holy. God cannot stand to look at or be near anything unholy. The stench of sin demands separation from God. But out of great love for humanity God killed his own son on our behalf, pouring his wrath out on Jesus at the cross – reiterating there must be a payment for sin in order to reunite us with our Heavenly Father.

If you saw this in a Marvel movie, you’d roll your eyes. (Stan Lee would never…) But, no, this turn-or-burn message machine has been on full tilt for hundreds of years in order to help you understand the following blunt reality:

God loves you so much he’s willing to send you to hell if you don’t love him in return.

This is Penal Substitutionary Atonement (or Satisfaction Theory, for short).

Like M&M’s on an empty stomach – it temporarily satisfies our soul’s craving for freedom. This is the theological food I ate for the first thirty years of my life, and it has been the dominant theory running roughshod over the story we find in scripture for the past one thousand years.

HOWEVER – and this is a big, juicy, HOWEVER…

The Satisfaction Theory was not the explanation for why Jesus died during the first one thousand years of church history.

Translation: those who actually saw Jesus die didn’t primarily interpret his death this way. Neither did the earliest generations of Christians for many centuries.

Around the year 1098, Anselm of Canterbury wrote Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), a book that systematized the idea that Jesus’ death satisfied the debt humanity owed to God. He did this, not by using biblical terminology, but by borrowing concepts and images from the medieval world of lords and vassals. Over time, this framework reshaped how much of Western Christianity understood the cross.

In his book Rediscovering the Scandal of the Cross, Dr. Mark Baker underlines one point that Satisfaction Theory gets right: It takes sin seriously.

Unfortunately, of the many ways Satisfaction Theory misses the mark (pun intended), the following will make you wonder how this theory ever became so popular.

Where Satisfaction Theory Goes Off the Rails

1. Satisfaction Theory presents sin as a barrier between God and humans. But the Bible doesn’t do this. You might be screaming: But sin separates us from God! To that, I say nah. Paul writes in Romans that nothing can separate us from God – not trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword. Not death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.

2. Satisfaction Theory states that God cannot stand the stench of unholiness! Whoever first said that apparently missed all the places where Jesus hung out with, touched, held, healed, and embraced those who were unholy “sinners.” And wasn’t it King David – you know, the guy who had Bathsheba’s husband knocked off in battle after he took advantage of her – who wrote: The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

3. With Satisfaction Theory, the cross is nothing more than a legal ruling that changes our eternal destination but in no way transforms our life. Satisfaction Theory turns out to be nothing more than an escape hatch for individuals who don’t wanna make Daddy mad.

But this next one wins the award for “Most Likely to Miss the ENTIRE POINT of Jesus’ life,” and it’s a two-time (4 & 5) *winner.*

4. Satisfaction Theory sees no meaning in the Gospels’ affirmation that Jesus’ life and teachings led to his death. This theory could have seen Jesus killed as a baby and it wouldn’t change its position in any way.

This is why you see almost zero mention of Jesus’ actual life in the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed. It’s all about believing that the blood of Jesus saves us.

Because Satisfaction Theory is all about Heaven as the END GAME.

It’s clear: Believe in Jesus as your savior.

It’s safe: Accept his forgiveness, and you’re in.

5. It also justifies violence as a path to solving problems. God killed Jesus. This is the story that satisfies? A payment had to be made, and it had to be Jesus.

When the central act of God’s salvation is an act of violence, violence will always find a way to justify itself in God’s name.

Today we see pastors and Christian politicians blessing wars, praying over missiles, and invoking God’s name to sanctify violence carried out in the pursuit of power. But if the central act of God’s salvation is God killing his own Son, why would we expect anything different?

Your theology of the cross will shape how you see God.

And how you see God will shape what you believe is justified in God’s name.

With Satisfaction Theory, the END GAME may be heaven – but apparently God puts humanity through hell before saving us from his own wrath.

Two thoughts before we get to our next atonement theory:

First, the scriptures (both Old and New Testament) are replete with stories of God and Jesus forgiving all sorts of people – no payment, no sacrifice needed. In order to forgive, God chooses to forgive. No sacrifice. No blood on the altar. No weeping and wailing. (You’re free to do so, but that’s more about your needs than God’s demand).

Second, if you’ve been scratching your nails on the chalkboard while reading this, wondering how in the world we’re going to reconcile Isaiah 53 (Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with affliction…) with the heresy above, you’re in for a real treat. We’ll get to that in the coming weeks, but let’s end on some questions:

What is God’s END GAME? God’s great hope for humanity? And how do we get there?

Because if we misunderstand the cross, we may end up worshiping a God who looks nothing like Jesus.

(Read Part 3 here)

Let me explain.

How you get somewhere is just as important as getting there.

If I invited you over for dinner, I’d give you my address. Tell you to show up around 7. Maybe ask you to bring a bottle of wine or a dessert.

After that, the details are up to you. Bike, skateboard, Uber, walk backwards, take the bus, or have your sweet aunt drop you off. Check the weather. Take the scenic route. Get lost and circle the block three times. I don’t really care. Just be here by 7.

But what works for a dinner invitation doesn’t work for everything in life.

Take raising a child.

You can raise a responsible kid who takes out the trash and does their chores through fear, threats, and emotional manipulation. Plenty of people try. Or you can cultivate a healthy relationship that includes boundaries, accountability, honesty, and mutual respect.

Either way, the trash might get taken out. But the goal isn’t simply a clean kitchen. And the end goal isn’t even just a “responsible child.” The end goal, in part, is a healthy adult – someone who can move through the world with discipline, compassion, humility, and a basic ability to live alongside other human beings.

How you get somewhere is just as important as getting there.

This isn’t the cliché about it being the journey, not the destination. No, this is about formation. It’s about what kind of people we become along the way.

And as we move closer to Good Friday and Easter Sunday, this question becomes urgent. Because far too many of us have focused on the destination of the Christian story without asking serious questions about the path that got us there.

Most Christians say, “Jesus died for our sins.” But what does that actually mean? Who killed Jesus? What was happening on the cross? Why did Jesus die?

For centuries both the religious and non-religious have wrestled with those questions. And the answers have not all been the same, even though a few of you are currently scratching your head: Jesus died to forgive us of our sins. What else is there to know?

Actually, there are at least seven different “theories” of the cross (often called “atonement theories.”). We’re going to cover the four most well-known ways the church has tried to understand the cross.

Some believe the cross is about punishment and satisfaction.
Some see it as a moral example of radical love.
Some understand it as God standing in solidarity with the oppressed.
Others see it as God’s victory over the powers of evil and death.

Each of these interpretations leads somewhere. And while some pastors or theologians say it doesn’t matter how one gets to the cross as long as it ends with belief in Jesus as the Savior of the world, here’s the part we often miss:

How you understand the cross will shape how you live in the world.

Your theology of the cross will shape how you see God.

And how you see God will shape how you treat your neighbor.

Your enemy.
Your nation.
Your politics.
Your violence.
Your mercy.

History shows us this again and again.

Some understandings of the cross have been used to justify holy wars and sacred violence against other children of God. Others have inspired movements of nonviolence, liberation, and radical love.

And while some preach that every theory ultimately lands with the same end goal (heaven), the truth is far more complex. Different roads actually lead us to different destinations.

Over the next four weeks, we’re going to wrestle with the question that sits at the center of the Christian story. It may be the most dangerous question in Christianity:

Why did Jesus die?

We’ll explore four primary ways the cross has been understood – where they came from, what they get right, where they fall short, and why they still shape our world.

So before we rush to Easter morning, we’re going to slow down and take a long, honest look at the cross. Because how we get there matters. In other words:

Tell me why Jesus died, and I’ll tell you what kind of God you believe in. Because how you understand the cross will shape how you live in the world.

A new post every Thursday, March 12 - April 2.

Read Part 2 here.

Imagine two men born on the same day in 1960. Daniel is born in rural Ohio. Kareem is born in southern Turkey. Geography shapes them. Daniel grows up in church and becomes a cultural Christian. Kareem grows up in a devout Muslim family and becomes a practicing Muslim.

Daniel learns all the right doctrines. He can quote verses. He posts Bible memes. But he nurses resentment. He hoards his wealth. He mocks immigrants. He despises Muslims in particular, even those born on U.S. soil – go back to where you came from is a common muttering.

Kareem prays five times a day. He fasts. But more than that, he is known in his neighborhood for generosity. He quietly pays medical bills. He shelters refugees. He visits the sick. He loves God as he understands God, and he loves his neighbor without qualification.

In a strange coincidence, they both die on the same afternoon.

Here’s our starter question: Is your theology so small that Daniel is ushered into glory while Kareem is cast into torment?

You might say, “Only Jesus saves!” before scrambling to find the chapter and verse to aid your claim. Okay, let’s roll with that for a minute. If the only way to the Father is through Jesus, here’s our next question:

“Who are we to tell Jesus whom he can and cannot save?”

If the above questions feel like a threat to your worldview, let me momentarily divert your attention. To understand Daniel and Kareem, we have to begin with basic math.

On Arithmetic and Ascending to the Heavens

When we’re young, we learn arithmetic. Two plus two equals four. Subtraction makes things smaller. Without these basic foundational truths, we cannot move forward. Teachers drive this home through a zillion examples: three apples plus two apples equals _____.

But then you grow up and enter a more complex reality:

You discover negative numbers, and suddenly subtraction doesn’t always make things smaller. Five minus negative three equals _____.

Later you encounter imaginary numbers, and somehow √−1 exists. While it feels like the rules from elementary school were broken, the system has simply expanded.

A negative times a negative equals a positive.

Higher math doesn’t contradict basic math. The earlier rules simply assumed something you weren’t yet mature enough to understand.

A first grade student counts from 1 - 10. Imagine asking them how many numbers there are between 1 and 2 (an infinite amount!). Until a foundation is set, they have no way to understand a more complex reality.

Life works the same way.

As children, we learn moral arithmetic: Tell the truth. Don’t hit. Share. Obey.

It’s 2+2 = 4 ethics. A five-year-old does not need nuance; they need guardrails.

But as we grow we enter a more complex reality filled with questions like:

What if telling the truth endangers someone? What if disobeying authority protects the vulnerable? What if breaking a rule is the most faithful thing you can do?

Maturing doesn’t mean abandoning the original lessons, but they are understood anew within a larger framework. However, some people never move beyond moral arithmetic. They cling to early formulas because complexity feels like chaos. But refusing to expand doesn’t preserve the truth. It shrinks it.

The same thing happens with our understanding of God.

Many of us learned about God through stories: Adam and Eve. Noah and the flood. David and Goliath. Jonah and the big fish. Illustrations popped off the page in Children’s Bibles and Sunday School lessons. The giant rainbow is a reminder of God’s promises to us.

But the subtle or, in some cases, not-so-subtle takeaways were a bit more harrowing.

Obey God, or else. Tell the truth, always. Submit, or experience God’s wrath.

Adam and Eve were displaced from their home due to disobedience.

Saving only Noah and a few animals, God killed every other living human.

David’s victory over Goliath came through God-ordained violence.

Jonah learned the hard way what it meant to disobey God’s commands.

God became a fixed equation. Obey = in. Disobey = out. 2 + 2 = 4.

But that’s not the full story of Scripture. Though not usually taught to first graders, these same scriptures reveal Hebrew midwives named Shiprah and Puah who lie to Pharaoh, and God blesses them for their mistruths.

In Genesis 38 we meet Tamar, who prostituted herself in order to subvert a patriarchal system. She was called “righteous,” a survivor in a world built only for men.

And when we get to a minor prophet named Micah, he asks a deeper question:

“What does the Lord require of you?” Not blind obedience. Not honesty at all cost.

Do justice.
Love mercy.
Walk humbly.

In order to do justice, we may need to disobey unjust laws. Like the apostles. Like Jesus. Like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Filipinos living under dictatorial rule.

To love mercy is to be grateful people do not get what they deserve. Including us! Most Christians base their entire understanding of Jesus’ death on the cross as a radical act of mercy – a violation of “law and order.”

Walk humbly. There is always more to learn. We don’t have it all figured out.

With Micah’s words, our understanding of God expands. Not from holiness to permissiveness – as some might be triggered to think – but from rigid rule-keeping to an ever-increasing grace-filled wisdom.

And – getting back to our friends Daniel and Kareem – from tribal favoritism to covenant love that spills out in every direction.

Let’s look to Jesus for some deeper truth:

In Luke 8 Jesus is visited by his mother Mary and his brothers. He is surrounded by a crowd, each of them seeking healing and hope. Mary sends a message to Jesus, “We want to see you!”

His reply initially sounds offensive:

“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

Jesus is actually widening the circle of belonging, not rejecting his own mother. He’s redefining the family of God.

In the ancient world, family was everything. Blood determined belonging. Tribe defined identity. But Jesus says the family of God is not determined by bloodline. It’s determined by a shared commitment to love.

Not ancestry. Not ethnicity. Not even a religious label. (Remember, Jesus was not a Christian. Jesus was Jewish. He was speaking to a Jewish audience).

Jesus shares a parable in Matthew 25 in which he “separates the sheep from the goats.” In our basic understanding of God, we may have understood this to mean:

Sheep = good / heaven. Goats = bad / hell.

But Jesus is, of course, teaching a deeper truth. He’s helping listeners understand that being a part of God’s family isn’t about a bloodline or a strict set of beliefs. It’s not about repeating the right creed but, rather, living a compassionate life.

The nations are gathered before him, and he says to one group:

“I was hungry and you fed me.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

To the other:

“I was hungry and you didn’t feed me.
I was thirsty and you offered me no drink.
I was a stranger and you refused to welcome me.”

Both groups were shocked to learn they were serving – or denying – Christ all along.

“When did we see you hungry?” they both ask. Jesus tells them the way they have treated the poor, those without homes, those who are naked, is the same way they have treated Jesus himself. To be a part of the family of God, Jesus says in Matthew 25, Luke 8, and elsewhere in scripture: love your neighbor as yourself.

In the Gospels we see references to the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God, and our western minds immediately race to life in the hereafter — and all the requirements to get from here to there.

But these references are not about ascension. Instead, they are about the reign of God: God’s gracious government breaking into the world. A domination free-order, a love-saturated reality. What Martin Luther King calls the Beloved Community: a place where everyone is cared for, absent of poverty, hunger and hate.

Jesus spent his entire ministry announcing and enacting that kingdom. In parables. In table fellowship with “sinners.” In healing the sick. In confronting empire. In forgiving enemies. In teaching us to pray: Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done – ON EARTH as it is in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is where God gets what God wants.

And what does God want? Justice, mercy, and humility. Love embodied.

In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov there is a character named Elder Zosima who speaks of his understanding of hell. To him, “hell is the suffering of being no longer able to love.”

Sheep in. Goats out. This isn’t a math equation. It’s about compassion. The Kingdom of heaven begins whenever we recover the capacity to love. In Luke 8 and Matthew 25, Jesus is telling us My family is anyone who lives the way of love. Remember, refusing to expand our understanding doesn’t preserve the truth. It shrinks it.

Arithmetic still matters. Two times two still equals four. But once you encounter calculus, you realize that four may be part of something moving — part of a curve, part of a larger reality. The basics are not abandoned. They are transcended and included.

In the same way, holiness is not abandoned. It is fulfilled in justice, mercy, and humility. In a world obsessed with bloodlines, party lines, and religious lines, Jesus draws a different line: the line of love.

Shared values. Shared praxis. A shared commitment to justice and mercy. That is what unites us. Not ethnicity. Not nationality. Not even religious affiliation alone. We are not being told to abandon our heritage or to give up our family’s identity. We are simply being asked to:

Feed the hungry.
Welcome the stranger.
Refuse exploitation.
Love your neighbor.

Jesus helps us understand the family of God is wider, deeper, and bigger than we thought. And that is not a threat. It’s what we call good news.

*Kudos to my friend Neil, the math genius, for his direction.

(Five minus negative three equals eight!)

*Kudos to my former professor, Brian Zahnd, for his instruction.

Ten days earlier, Ja had declared that God answered his prayers.

“JESUS SAVED ME,” he shouted through the phone. “I’m free!”

After a grotesque childhood, Ja’s neural pathways were so tangled that electroconvulsive therapy was prescribed as the only solution. He would spend days in the psych ward, then emerge with what felt like a blank slate. “Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose” became his mantra as he stepped back into the great wide open with another pocket full of dreams.

The healing would soon dissipate. Sleeping on subway cars in winter, undocumented and unable to find meaningful work, unknown in a city of eight million – all had a way of wearing out what the doctors ordered.

But this time was different, he assured me.

“I don’t need more medicine. I’m done with therapy. God set me free, Brian. He set me free!”

The confidence in his voice. The strength in his soul. The smile I could feel across the airwaves. It all sounded like — answered prayer?

I wanted to believe him. If all things are possible with God, isn’t complete healing on the table? Can God do far more than we ask or imagine – or are miracles reserved only for the Holy Book?

But I knew Ja was desperate. To him, medication meant he was still broken. Every pill swallowed was a reminder of his past. Another stay in the psych ward (ironically the only place he slept well) felt like defeat. He longed to be free.

Yet after his bold declaration of being cured, he went dark. Calls went unanswered. No response to my texts. I had lost him again. Many nights I walked the streets we once wandered, praying for a miracle of my own.

And there he stood in the cool of the night, wearing sweatpants and slippers while I was bundled up and warm. I crossed from east to west, waving and shouting his name. Two grown men hugging and heaving tears up from the soles of our feet.

“Why did this happen to me? Why can’t I be free?”

Like me, Ja was raised in a culture that counted pain as punishment for the sins of our past. He had internalized his father’s abandonment and the abuse he endured as his own fault.

“Is my wickedness impeding God’s blessings?”

When the cacophony in his mind blared like a five-alarm fire, Ja would isolate. Stow away from the madness. Lock himself out from the breaking glass inside his brain. Nothing worked. Answered prayers were a mirage. The great wide open was nothing but a journey into the abyss.

And I realized I had nothing to offer.

My own prayers were rejected. I wasn’t a doctor, social worker, psychotherapist, or philanthropist. I could do nothing about his homelessness, his undocumented status, or the frenzy inside this beaten-down boy weeping as a million New Yorkers whizzed past. My own theology could not withstand the weight of the questions that emerged from an orphan in state-issued slippers screaming into the void.

Fumbling for something to say, I pulled back, my hands still on his shoulders. His eyes looked like Mike Tyson had just finished the fourth round on his face. I took a long look at my friend from the bottom of his powder blue slippers to the top of his matted hair, then I let it slip.

“Bro, I really like the style you’re going for here. You look ready for the runway.”

The tears kept coming, but a wry smile broke through.

With his wrinkled V-neck tucked into gray sweats, and his black socks stuffed into oversized slippers, Ja began posing like a Greek god on the corner of 35th and 3rd. Not a single passerby was fazed by his performance. Like John Travolta, he started to strut. He wiped the tears from his eyes, and we cackled like junior-high kids.

It would take us months to understand the mystical experience on the city sidewalk that evening.

Searching for answers to questions that have none, we instead stumbled into the salvation we had longed for but never found. In the middle of relentless grief, we found each other. Ja spun in his slippers while I snapped a hundred photos – future blackmail material – discovering in one another what we had been begging God to provide. There may not be a cure for every wound. But that night, we were healed – if only for a moment.

“The Kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus said, and that night we both caught a glimpse of the glory of God emerging from the rubble of broken promises and unanswered prayers.

On science and solidarity

It’s true. God works through science and medicine – through research, study, and the brilliance of trained professionals. Today, Ja participates willingly in that process.

But during Lent, we remember something else about Jesus: he healed through touch. Through presence. Through unwavering solidarity with those on the underside of power.

“I am with you always, to the very end.”

He invites us to find God in one another – to embrace the divinity and humanity in every person – and to trust that solidarity with others will be our salvation. This is precisely how Jesus loved us, and it is the kind of love that transforms us into who we were meant to be.

A few years later, Ja would return the favor. When my own family spiraled into crisis, I called him in the middle of the night. We met at the corner of 6th and Avenue A. At one o’clock in the morning, he held me as I sobbed into his shoulder.

The only difference between us?

I was wearing sneakers.

“I don’t believe in charity.
I believe in solidarity.
Charity is vertical.
It goes from top to bottom.
Solidarity is horizontal.”
—Eduardo Galeano

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You can read more about the book I’m co-authoring with Ja here, here, and here!

My mother died when I was only 15 — carrying the same disease that took Derek’s life.

My best friend is an undocumented immigrant – fearing deportation every day, back to a country his family escaped five decades ago.

People in our church are wrestling with dementia, acute strokes, cancer treatments, and the torment that comes with an unknown future. Others in our world are going hungry, dying of preventable disease, and hiding from the impending doom that may soon knock at their door.

It’s heartbreaking how cruel our world can be, at times. Unanswered prayers linger. Doubts about a God who seems indifferent. Questions that never appear to be heard.

To be faithful, we’re often told, we must stop doubting and believe. But in the lives of my friends, family, and scattered throughout Scripture, we often see doubt and belief accompanying one another through the trials — as if they were meant to co-exist.

In Psalm 13 the agony in David’s heart spills out in prayer:

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Yet as we come to the end of the passage, this same heart also declares:

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord’s praise,

for God has been good to me.

Can we sing praise to God while also questioning God’s presence in our lives? What if doubt turns out to be a faithful response to a world filled with so much pain and injustice? As our hearts grieve the loss and our souls are mired with longing, we are also being invited to partner with God to create a better world. To hold both praise and doubt, grieving and going forward — together — is the path laid out for us.

Trouble Will Soon Be Over

My friend, Derek, wrote a Lenten Devotional years ago titled Blues For Lent. Each day a Psalm from scripture was paired with a song of lament. From Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign to Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, or even Nina Simone’s Old Jim Crow, each artist bellowed from their soul about the ache that comes when the world is not as it should be.

Blind Willie Johnson, born deep in the heart of Texas, grew up in poverty and was made blind by his father, a sharecropper, by the time he was seven. He learned to play a cigar box guitar, put words to what was burning in his heart, and sang the gospel blues on the streets of his hometown.

His family’s life ravaged by the effects of slavery, with his own perilous condition causing doubts about his rightful place in this world, Johnson’s lyrics mirrored the Psalms we find in scripture (Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I call to You all day long), and yet accompanying the desperate cries was an assurance that God was walking with him through the chaos and injustice, giving him the confidence to carry on…

Well, Christ is my burden bearer, He’s my only friend

Till the end of my sorrow and tells me to lean on Him

Oh, trouble’ll soon be over, sorrow will have an end

God is my strong protection, He’s my bosom friend

Trouble arose all around me, I know who will take me in

Oh, trouble’ll soon be over, sorrow will have an end

Blind Willie Johnson would later be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, his songs covered by Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Sinead O’Connor, and more – all serving to reveal how the depth of his pain and the resolve in his heart is universal.

Whatever we’re carrying. Whatever we’re going through. If the pain is unbearable and we cannot imagine another day.

If our heart is screaming How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

May the gospel blues bring us back to Jesus, who tells us to lean on Him.

Trouble will soon be over, sorrow will have an end

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To honor my friend Derek during this Season of Lent:

Monday - Saturday I will post a short reflection (only on Substack notes).

Sunday mornings I will share a post for the coming week.

Please be sure you are subscribed, and download the Substack app (if needed).

Show your solidarity

Also, every dollar raised during this Season of Lent will go directly to support our immigrant neighbors.

Has a pastor ever made righteous declarations that turned out to be deceptive?

Have you ever felt manipulated by a message coming from ‘on high’?

Slave preachers leveraged scripture to demand obedience.

Senators have blasphemed God’s name to pass a bill.

Satan repeatedly used “God’s word” to tempt Jesus.

But what does the text actually say about responding to powerful people who are leveraging God’s name to do their own dirty work?

The birth story of Jesus gives us insight.

Non-cooperation with evil is our moral obligation

Inside the Gospel of Matthew we read about Herod, a tyrannical ‘client King’ who reigned over Judea – but was directly under the ruling thumb of Caesar in Rome. Herod wasn’t simply a tyrant, he was also a paranoid, ruthless ruler who instituted what today would be called a police-state, complete with loyalty oaths, surveillance, imprisonment, torture, and brutal retaliation against any serious dissent.

After having two of his own children executed (both who were in line to succeed him), Caesar himself said it would be better to be one of Herod’s pigs than one of his sons.

So it comes as no surprise that when Herod heard about a “King of the Jews” being born right smack dab in the middle of his own territory he became a bit – let’s say – delusional.

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Herod met with the chief priests, rulers, and Magi from the east to learn more about this would-be King, then instructed them to “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

A frantic leader, seeing his own rule threatened, plays a hand he believes will win him the necessary allegiance to work his master plan of dominion for years to come. The ‘King’ whose mantra was “I alone can save you” suddenly, and conveniently, found religion.

But what comes next reveals God’s unwavering solidarity with those who are at risk, oppressed, or targeted by unjust power.

First, God appears in a dream to the Magi, and they evade Herod’s instructions.

Next, God speaks to Joseph in a dream, and the newborn’s family flees to Egypt.

Two Important Lessons

First, any time someone speaks on behalf of God – or courts others by using religious language – we must ask the questions: Who is benefiting from this? Whose lives are improved if we say and do what the leader/politician/pastor is declaring – in God’s name – we must do?

This reminds me of my friend, Ja, undocumented and homeless, who was invited by his Pastor to “pray and believe” and – of course – “give” so the blessings of the good Lord would come down upon him. As soon as the Pastor collected enough donations, he skipped town for good.

A politician prepares a passage they know the crowd will love — filling up their hearts as wallets are lifted from pockets and the land beneath their feet suddenly disappears. One is enriched; the other, dispossessed — using God’s name to manage political outcomes.

If Jesus came to preach good news to the poor, to free the oppressed, and to set the captives free – then anything contrary to that message must be dismissed.

If the message isn’t good news for everyone, then it isn’t good news…

Second, rather than confronting Herod, God routes around him. He was not to be negotiated with, for one cannot “speak truth” to a delusional, diabolical dictator.

Despite the wooing whispers of a man drunk with ambition – whose own power was propped up through violence – Herod’s command to the Magi was never treated as morally legitimate. This was not a matter of “submitting to the governing authorities” but, rather, a call to action. Instead of preaching acquiescence, God goes rogue – responding to Herod’s deception by protecting the vulnerable through dreams and detours that led them to safety.

Take note: God is not working through the palace, the law, or official channels. There is no pleading for mercy at the hands of an oppressive ruler. Instead, God undermines state violence by rerouting the paths of those in danger – offering defiance as subversive, life-saving solidarity.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

-Gandhi

We are right to express our growing rage with a regime bent on blaspheming God’s name while violating God’s commands, and while we must appeal to a government for compassionate leadership – we also see from the text that God not only dismisses authoritarian rule, but simply carries on with life-saving acts of solidarity in spite of what the oppressive powers demand. You can do the same.

This is the pattern we see in scripture:

• Hebrew midwives mislead Pharaoh, and God blesses them

• Tamar disguises herself, and is counted as righteous

• Paul defies authority in an act of holy rebellion

• Jesus subverts the empire again and again

When authority wraps itself in God-talk to justify its brutality, the Holy One speaks in dreams and diversions, re-routes Her children to a place of refuge, and invites us to join Her in the sacred work of solidarity. Are you ready to go rogue?

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