Hillsong documentary. The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Willow Creek and Bill Hybels. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
How do we reconcile this epidemic? What is wrong with Christianity? That question is part of the problem, unless we ask it to truly discover instead of to accuse and bail out.
Since the 1990s it has been my quest and assignment to help people find genuine freedom. Since it seemed to be the mission of Jesus, I made it mine as well.
In 30 years I have had to look through different eyes to find meaningful answers. You could say I began deconstructing 30 years ago.
The first shift for me was the Gospel. What if Jesus, during His life, proclaimed a gospel that changed people before the cross and resurrection ever happened?
Not “what if?” Clearly He did. He proclaimed the Gospel of the Kingdom.
I had to admit at the time I did not know what that was, and it almost felt heretical to consider a gospel other than the Atonement. But while Jesus was demonstrating and teaching others, the Atonement was still in the future.
I began to read and ask. The Gospel of the Kingdom: the restoration of God’s Presence active and powerful among men, ready to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Power available, not requirements demanded. The Kingdom of God is at hand. The Power of God is available.
Two realms, with two different natures, once integrated, being reintegrated one moment, one circumstance, one miracle, one surrender at a time.
The heavens inserting themselves into our material existence to restore us and creation to its factory settings.
Then I began to think about how God is available. Is He a future reward, holding off until we attain, or is He a living, breathing, still creating, still speaking God?
I came to believe the Bible is a book about a speaking, creating God who speaks and creates to this day.
The quest to hear Him is the single most important activity in the restoration of all things. Not to memorize verses, not to use information and willpower to change, but to hear His living and active voice.
Then I really went out on a limb, literally. I began to rethink the problem Jesus came to solve by rereading Genesis 3, the chapter where we see the step that necessitated Jesus’ advent and death, and yet a chapter that does not contain the word “sin.”
Genesis 3, this world-altering chapter, focused less on disobedience and much more on the shift from the Tree of Life, God to us, in us, and through us, to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: my ideas, my willpower, my initiative.
How do we end up with Mars Hill, Willow Creek, Hillsong, RZIM, and hundreds of other Christian catastrophes?
I believe we have built much of the church on some harmful foundations, specifically the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This makes faith about trying hard to avoid evil and do good.
The number of dynamics set up by this one faulty foundation are countless and fatal.
It divides people into the clergy, experts at the knowledge of good and evil, and the laity, those who need to learn to get it right from the experts.
It makes us all look at outward performance and not at heart and motive.
It makes the Gospel sin-focused, getting bad people to be good, instead of resurrection-focused, getting dead people to be alive.
It takes us back to shame-drivenness instead of allowing our shame to be absorbed on the cross.
In focusing on outward performance, we are led to comparison based on appearances, not long-term fruit-bearing.
Fruit-bearing becomes defined as building large organizations instead of developing the Fruit of the Spirit in yourself and others.
Knowledge is elevated above encounter. Therefore we focus on data transfer instead of facilitating encounter.
This list could go on almost eternally. What you see is that people are raised to visible positions of leadership for things that are almost exclusively materially based, and spiritually empowered characteristics may not even be considered.
So you can end up with men and women driven by knowledge and willpower, what people can do, yet still in an environment charged with spiritual forces of both light and darkness.
Data has no authority over darkness.
Institutions are not designed to bear the image of God. People are. When we come together, God is there among us.
We might even organize, but when we move from organizing around the presence and activity of God to organizing around structure and strategy, we have empowered the wrong tree.
The path ahead is still darkened by the shadow of both trees. Learn to breathe in the breath of life, and learn to spot the tempting, right-seeming but deadly fragrance of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Call it deconstruction or call it reformation. Either way, find God.