Belonging Together

Part 2 of 5: Being the Church Together

Welcome is Not Enough, the Church Must Become a Family

TL;DR: Belonging is more than being allowed in the worship space. It is being received into the life of a people. Too many churches welcome attendance but never practice the kind of presence, honesty, and shared life that turns strangers into family. If belovedness is the starting point, then belonging becomes more than a slogan. It becomes a culture where people are known, held, challenged, and loved across real difference.

We Were Made to Belong

A church can offer someone a seat in the sanctuary, without offering them belonging in the family.

There is a difference between finding an open chair as you scan the worship center, and finding your place to be known, to be valued, to be loved, and to belong.

Most of us know that difference in our minds, but we feel the difference in our bodies.

You can walk into a room and see plenty of empty seats, but still feel like there is nowhere for you to sit. You can be greeted at the door and still feel like nobody really saw you. You can sing the songs, hear the sermon, shake a hand or two, and still leave with the quiet ache that you were near something called community without ever being gathered into it.

That is what I keep thinking about as we move from Beloved Together to Belonging Together.

Belovedness is the truth underneath everything. You are loved by God before you prove anything. Before you become useful. Before you believe correctly. Before you know how to fit.

But if belovedness is true, then it has to become visible somewhere.

Belovedness has to become embodied.

It has to become a family room where people can be themselves, and just breathe.

That is where belonging begins.

Not with a membership form.
Not with a name tag.
Not with a handshake during the greeting time.

Those things are not bad. They can be good. But they are not the same as belonging.

Belonging is what happens when people are no longer treated like guests in someone else’s house.

They are received as family.

Welcome is Not the Same as Belonging

Welcome opens the door. Belonging makes a home.

A lot of churches say, “Everyone is welcome.”
Our church says it each and every Sunday.

I believe most churches mean it.

But welcome can still keep people at a distance.

Welcome can mean, “You may enter our space.”
Belonging means, “Your life matters here.”

Welcome can mean, “We are glad you came.”
Belonging means, “We would miss you if you were gone.”

Welcome can be polite.
Belonging has to become personal.

This is where churches often get stuck. We confuse friendliness with belonging. We confuse attendance with community. We confuse being nice to people with making room for their actual lives.

A person can be welcomed every Sunday and still never be known.
They can be invited to attend and never invited to belong.

They can be told, “We’re glad you’re here,” while also receiving a hundred quiet signals that they will only really belong if they become more like us.

That is the old pattern.

The world sorts people all the time. By race. By class. By politics. By education. By family structure. By usefulness. By taste. By comfort. By whether someone feels familiar enough not to threaten us.

The church is supposed to be different.

Not because difference is easy.

It is not.

But because Jesus keeps building a family out of people who would not have chosen each other on their own.

When Church Accidentally Keeps People Lonely

Sometimes the church promises belonging, then hands people a program and hopes it works.

David Kim, in Made to Belong, describes something he calls the “Unintentional Church Cycle.” The phrase stuck with me because I think I have seen it. I have probably helped create it without meaning to.

It starts with a good invitation.

The church says, “You belong here.”

The lonely person believes it enough to show up.

Then the church offers the usual pathway:

Join a small group.
Serve on a team.
Support the mission.
Come to more things.
Get involved.

Again, none of that is wrong.

Small groups can be beautiful. Serving can help people feel connected. Shared mission matters. But if those are the only pathways we offer, we may accidentally place the burden of belonging back on the very person who came to us already lonely.

And when it does not work, they often blame themselves.

They think, “I tried church. It didn’t work.”

Or maybe worse, “I must be the problem.”

That breaks my heart.

Because sometimes the problem is not that people failed to try hard enough.

Sometimes the problem is that our churches have not thought deeply enough about how belonging actually happens.

We have created systems for involvement.
We have not always created cultures of belonging.

There is a difference.

A system can tell someone where to go.
A culture teaches a community how to receive them.

A system can move people into groups.
A culture helps people become safe enough to tell the truth.

A system can ask people to serve.
A culture makes sure people are loved before they are useful.

A system can create activity.
A culture creates room for life.

That is what lonely people are longing for.
Not just another thing to attend.
A place to be known.

When We Tried to Assimilate People

Sometimes we don’t even realize how backward our language has become.

I remember a church I served where we had a staff position called Pastor of Assimilation.

At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.

That was just the language. That was just what churches did. The role was to help people move along a pathway. To get connected. To plug in. To become part of the church.

And honestly, there was a lot of good intention behind it.

We wanted people to feel at home.
We wanted people to stay.
We wanted people to find community.

But a few years in, something started to bother me.

Then one day, it finally clicked.

Assimilation.

The goal was to help people become like us.

To learn our rhythms.
Our language.
Our culture.
Our way of being church.

And I realized… that’s the backward part.

Because the goal of the church is not to make people more like us.

The goal is to become the kind of people who can receive others as they are.

Not as projects.
Not as outsiders who need to be brought in.
But as beloved people who already belong.

It means we stop asking, “How do we get them to fit?”

And start asking, “How do we create a culture where they are seen, valued, known, and loved?”

A culture where people do not have to shrink to stay.
A culture where difference is not managed, but received.
A culture where belonging is not the reward for becoming like us.

It is the starting point because they are already beloved.

That is a very different kind of church.

And if I’m honest, we are still learning how to become that kind of people.

The Table Has to Become a Way of Life

If the table says everyone is received by Christ, the church has to learn how to live that way after the meal is over.

Yesterday, I wrote about the communion table.

I cannot get away from that image.

Bread passed from hand to hand. Cup shared. People looking at each other across difference. Rich and poor. Jew and Gentile. Slave and free. Men and women. People whose lives had been organized by boundaries suddenly learning to receive one another as members of one body.

That did not happen because everybody became the same.

It happened because Christ became the center.

And when Christ becomes the center, belonging no longer depends on sameness.

That is the difference between a bounded-set church and a centered-set church.

• A bounded-set church spends most of its energy deciding who is in and who is out. It protects the edges. It polices the lines. It asks people to prove they belong before they are treated as family.

• A centered-set church keeps asking a different question. Are we moving toward Jesus together? That does not mean anything goes. It does not mean truth disappears. It does not mean harm is ignored. It means the center is not our comfort, our culture, our politics, our preferences, or our need to be surrounded by people who already make sense to us.

The center is Jesus. And around Jesus, people who are different from one another begin to discover that they are held by the same love.

That is what the table is supposed to teach us.

But the table has to become more than a moment in worship. It has to become a way of life.

If we receive the bread and cup, then go back to protecting our circles, avoiding discomfort, and keeping people at the edge of our lives, something is broken.

Not just in our hospitality. In our imagination.

Belonging Takes Time

You cannot microwave family.

This is the part that makes belonging difficult. It takes time.

A church can create an event quickly. It can design a program quickly. It can launch a campaign quickly. It can print signs, build a website, organize a welcome team, and teach people to smile at the door.

But family takes longer.

Belonging grows at the speed of presence.

It grows when people linger.
When stories are shared.
When someone remembers your name.
When someone notices you were gone.

When there is room to say, “I’m not okay,” without everyone panicking or trying to fix you too quickly.

When meals last longer than necessary.
When people pray for each other and then check in later.
When the church calendar leaves enough breathing room for actual relationships.

That sounds simple. It is not.

Most churches are not built for that kind of slowness. We are built for production. We know how to schedule, announce, promote, and evaluate. We know how to count attendance. We are less practiced at noticing tears, repairs, reconciliations, and quiet moments of courage.

But belonging does not happen because a church is busy.
Sometimes busyness keeps belonging from happening.

People do not need more religious activity as much as they need a people who can stay present long enough for love to become believable.

Belonging Requires Stories

People do not become family by sharing a room.
They become family by sharing their lives.

One of the strongest things Kim names is the ache to be seen, known, and included. He writes about people who are surrounded by relationships and still feel deeply alone. That is the part we sometimes miss.

Loneliness is not always the absence of people.
Sometimes loneliness is the absence of being known.

You can have people around you and still feel hidden.
You can sit in church every week and still feel unseen.
You can join the group and still keep your real life folded up inside you because you are not sure the room can hold it.

This is why belonging requires stories.

Not dramatic vulnerability for effect.
Not forced sharing.
Not everyone spilling everything at once.

Just the slow, honest work of letting ourselves be known.

Where we came from.
What we carry.
What we hope for.
What has hurt us.
What we are still learning.

This is one reason churches can stay shallow even when people have known each other for years. We can know names without knowing stories. We can know roles without knowing wounds. We can know opinions without knowing fears.

And when stories are missing, stereotypes fill the gap.

That person becomes “the conservative one.”
That person becomes “the progressive one.”
That person becomes “the divorced one.”
That person becomes “the new family.”
That person becomes “the one who complains.”
That person becomes “the one who never helps.”
That person becomes a category.

Belonging begins when stories disprove our categories.

Not because stories excuse everything, but because stories help us realize we are not alone.

“What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
— C.S. Lewis

It is harder to dismiss someone once you have heard what they survived.
It is harder to fear someone once you have eaten with them.
It is harder to keep someone at the edge once their grief has a name.

That is not sentimentality.
That is incarnation.

Love has to take flesh somewhere.

Belonging Does Not Erase Difference

The goal is not sameness. The goal is communion.

Belonging does not mean pretending our differences do not matter.

They do.

Race matters.
Class matters.
Politics matter.
Gender matters.
Disability matters.
History matters.
Power matters.

The ways people have been harmed matter.
The ways Scripture has been used to exclude people matter.
The ways church culture has centered certain people and sidelined others matter.

Belonging is not a blanket we throw over all of that so everyone feels better.
Belonging is the harder work of telling the truth and staying at the table.
It is the work of refusing both exclusion and cheap unity.

Because cheap unity says, “Let’s not talk about what hurts.”
Beloved belonging says, “We will tell the truth, but we will not use truth as a weapon to humiliate one another.”

Cheap unity says, “Let’s all be the same so no one feels uncomfortable.”
Beloved belonging says, “The Spirit gives different gifts, different stories, different experiences, and we need the whole body.”

Cheap unity says, “Keep the peace.”
Beloved belonging says, “Christ is our peace, and Christ makes peace by breaking down dividing walls.”

That kind of belonging is not easy.

It will ask more of us than politeness.
It will ask for repentance.
It will ask for listening.
It will ask for changed practices, not just softer language.
It will ask us to stop confusing comfort with love.

The Difference Between Clique and Click

Belonging makes room for deep friendship without closing the circle to others.

David Kim makes a helpful distinction between a clique and a click. I wish I had known that language earlier. Because churches often struggle here.

On one side, we have closed circles where nobody new can find their way in.

On the other side, we sometimes become suspicious of close friendship itself, as if real connection is somehow unfair to everyone else.

But belonging is not the death of close friendship.

Jesus had crowds.
Jesus had the twelve.
Jesus had Peter, James, and John.

That does not mean Jesus loved everyone else less. It means human life has circles of care. We cannot be equally close to everyone. We are finite. We have limits. We need particular people with whom we can be deeply known.

The problem is not when people click.
The problem is when the click becomes a clique.

A click says, “We have found a real bond, and we are grateful.”
A clique says, “This bond is ours, and others should stay outside.”

A click becomes a gift to the wider body.
A clique becomes a wall.

A click helps people become more loving.
A clique trains people to protect comfort.

The church needs real friendships. Deep ones. Honest ones. The kind where someone can say, “I’m not okay,” and not be left alone. The kind where someone can be challenged without being discarded. The kind where laughter and grief can sit at the same table.

But those friendships should make us more open, not less.

If our belonging makes us less attentive to the lonely, less curious about the stranger, less available to the person outside our circle, then it has started to bend inward.

And love always bends outward.

The Church as a Family, Not as a Club

A club gathers around preference.
A family learns how to belong through love.

A club can be wonderful.

People join clubs because they share interests. Same hobby. Same taste. Same stage of life. Same goals. Same assumptions.

But the church is not a club.
Or at least it is not supposed to be.

A club is built around affinity.
A church is built around Christ.

A club can say, “These are our kind of people.” The church has to say, “These are God’s beloved people, and somehow, by grace, they are ours.”

It means the person who does not naturally fit may be exactly the person through whom Christ wants to stretch us.

It means the person whose story unsettles us may be the person who helps us see a fuller picture of grace.

It means belonging is not only about whether I feel comfortable. It is also about whether I am willing to be changed by love.

That is hard for me.

I like my familiar circles too.
I like people who understand me quickly.
I like spaces where I do not have to translate myself.

Most of us do.

So when I write about belonging, I am not writing as someone who has mastered it. I am writing as someone who still feels the pull of the safer table.

The one where people already know the rules.
The one where nobody asks too much of me.
The one where I do not have to confront the limits of my love.

But Jesus keeps inviting us to a bigger table.

A table where belovedness comes first, and because belovedness comes first, belonging becomes possible even when difference remains.

Becoming a People Who Make Room

Belonging becomes real when people no longer have to change to fit-in.

So what would it look like for a church to practice belonging?

Maybe it starts small.

• A few people learn to linger.

• Someone tells the truth after years of smiling.

• A Sunday school class makes room for questions instead of rushing to the “right” answer.

• A church meal becomes more than food on tables.

• A newcomer is not only greeted, but invited into someone’s life.

• A person on the margins is not treated like a ministry project, but like a member of the family.

• A challenging conversation happens without contempt.

• Someone says, “I was wrong.”

• Someone else says, “I’m still here.”

That is how belonging begins to take flesh.

Not all at once. Not perfectly.

But in ordinary practices that tell the truth of the gospel with more than words.

You belong here.

Not because you are the same as us.
Not because you have figured everything out.
Not because you can help us grow the church.
Not because you know how to perform the right kind of faith.

You belong because you are beloved.

And if you are beloved by God, then the church has to learn how to receive you as family.

Maybe the future of the church will not be found first in better branding, bigger platforms, or more impressive programs.

Maybe it will begin with a slower, braver question:

Can we become the kind of people with whom others can truly belong?

Not just attend.
Not just observe.
Not just sit politely near the edge.

Belong.

At the table.
In the story.
As family.

Let’s Chat

• When have you felt the difference between being welcomed and truly belonging?

• What practices help a church become family instead of simply an event people attend?

• Who might your church need to make room for, not as a guest, but as part of the body?

Leave a comment

Next in the Series

Series note: This is Essay 2 of 5 in the series Being the Church Together. We began with belovedness, the truth that every person is loved by God before they prove anything. Today we moved from belovedness into belonging, asking what it would mean for the church to become a family where people are known, received, and held across real difference.

Preview for next essay: Essay 3 turns toward Becoming Together. Belonging is not the end of the path. It is the soil where transformation begins. What if discipleship is not becoming more religious, but becoming more fully human in Christ, together?

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Beloved Together

Part 1 of 5: Being The Church Together

Why people still hunger for church as family, and why so many only find a service to attend

TL;DR: The good news begins with belovedness. God loves everyone, and the cross is the sign of that self-giving love. But too often the church does not make that love tangible. People come looking for family and find a room full of strangers managing the same ritual. They come looking for belovedness and feel otherness instead. If the church is to become a sign of Christ again, it must recover beloved community, not as a slogan, but as a way of life shaped by love, justice, communion, and the full diversity of the body of Christ.

The Grief Beneath The Numbers

What is vanishing is not only churches. It is the lived experience of belonging.

Ryan Burge opens The Vanishing Church with a painful little scene. A pastor looks out on a Sunday morning and counts nine people in the room. Nine. He counts again, hoping he missed someone. He hadn’t.

It is a small scene, but it carries a much bigger grief.

Because what is vanishing is not only church buildings, budgets, or old denominational structures. What is vanishing, in too many places, is the experience of church as a place where people are known, loved, and gathered into something like family.

Burge names something many people feel but cannot quite explain:

“Americans who want to be part of a faith community but just can’t find a house of worship that makes sense to them.”
— Ryan Burge

That connects because it names something deeper than decline. Many people have not stopped longing for church. They have stopped believing church has room for their actual life.

They come carrying grief, doubt, difference, questions, fatigue, or old wounds. They come hoping for home. Too often, they find a performance.

Burge also says the growing polarization of American religion has left us “lonelier, angrier, sicker, and more divided.” That is not just a line about politics. It is a line about souls. We have not only lost institutions. We have lost places where people once learned how to stay human with one another.

The Starting Point We Keep Losing

The church begins with the good news that every person is loved by God.

The starting point of church is not style, certainty, ideology, or tribal comfort. The starting point is the good news.

God loves everyone.

Not only the respectable few. Not only the people who already know how to fit. Not only the ones who can speak the language, hold the right views, or move through church culture without awkwardness. Everyone.

Christians say that love took flesh in Jesus. He lived in a real human body, with all the vulnerability and beauty that comes with being alive. He gave up his life, his body broken and his blood poured out, for the sin of the whole world. Every single person who has ever lived or ever will live.

That should change the whole culture of church.

If we really begin there, then church should feel less like a test and more like a welcome. Less like a place where people are measured and more like a place where they are received. Less like a service to attend and more like a people learning how to live in the love of God together.

But somehow that starting point often does not connect.

People come looking for church as family and instead find a room full of strangers managing the same ritual. A sermon. A few songs. A handshake. The long walk back to the parking lot. They were near community without ever being brought into it.

They do not experience belovedness. They experience otherness.

A Table In The Middle

The table is supposed to teach us what kind of people we are becoming.

Around 2012, our church did a sermon series on Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.

We had been taking communion about every three months, which was simply what the church had always done. Most people did not know why. The practice had roots in the old days of circuit-riding clergy, when pastors had to make their way from church to church and could only serve communion quarterly. Times changed, but the custom stayed.

I wanted to give our congregation some historical context, not just to teach information, but to help us feel the beauty and significance of the table. To encounter the love of Christ together in the bread and cup. My hope was that by understanding the practice of communion, we would grow a culture of presence, belonging, and mission. That we would be blessed, broken, given, and poured out for one another and for the world as we participate in the life of Christ.

So we changed the sanctuary. We put the chairs in the round and set a table with bread and cup in the center. The series was titled Jesus at the Center.

Each week we looked at the meal from a different angle. Communion as thanksgiving. Communion as remembrance of Christ’s passion. Communion as foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Communion as unity. Communion as shared life in Christ.

Week by week, we tried to imagine ourselves not in a modern church building but in a house church. We imagined the agape feast, the love feast. Bread being passed. Cup being passed. People close enough to see each other’s faces.

And as we imagined those early gatherings, I kept thinking about the strange beauty of what was happening in those little communities scattered across the Roman Empire. Rich passing bread to poor. Gentile passing cup to Jew. Men and women, slave and free, all eating from the same loaf and drinking from the same cup.

That kind of life together did not happen because all their differences suddenly vanished. It happened because they were learning a new starting point. Before tribe. Before status. Before purity codes. Before the usual sorting of the world into insiders and outsiders, they were being taught to see each other as beloved by God.

If belovedness is where you begin, then the old habits of clique and tribe do not get to rule the room in the same way. The person across from you is no longer first a threat, or a rival, or a category. They are someone Christ has welcomed. Someone Christ has loved. Someone standing at the same table with empty hands, just like you.

That unity in the middle of difference was not a side note. It was what it meant to be the body of Christ for the sake of the world.

The early church did not amaze the world because it had flawless services. It amazed the world because people who had every reason to remain strangers, rivals, or enemies were learning to become family in Christ. Agape was being embodied in the love feast, then practiced through the week in ordinary relationships. The mystery was becoming visible in and through the family of God: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Of course, it did not always work. Read 1 Corinthians and you will see real problems at the table. The meal itself became a place where division, pride, and disregard for the poor were exposed. Even then, the church struggled to live what it was given.

I find myself wondering if we have our own problems at the communion table.

I do not mean arguments about sacramental theology. I mean something closer to home.

How does the meaning of the bread and the cup transfer into the practices and culture of the church family?

Does the welcome of the table shape the welcome of the congregation?

Does the shared loaf teach us how to share life?

Does the cup of Christ make us more ready to receive people who are not like us?

Or do we come to the table and then go back to protecting our distance from one another?

Belovedness Before Performance

Belovedness is not sentimental language.
Belovedness is the deepest truth of Christian identity.

Henri Nouwen keeps bringing us back to the truth we keep forgetting:

“You are not what you do.
You are not what you have.
You are not what people say about you.
You are a beloved child of God."
— Henri Nouwen

Beneath our roles, our output, our wounds, and our failures, there is a deeper identity.

We are beloved.

Nouwen writes, “Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.”

That is not soft religious comfort. It is resistance. It resists a world that values people by usefulness, productivity, relevance, and success. It resists church cultures that reward fluency, confidence, and fitting in. It resists the lie that your place among God’s people must be earned.

It also tells the truth about why church can wound so deeply. If I walk into Christian community already wondering whether I will be welcomed, whether I will be understood, whether my whole self can survive the room, then every cold glance, every coded phrase, every narrow assumption confirms my fear that I am still outside.

Nouwen understood that fear from the inside. He writes about the louder voices that tell us to prove we are worth something, to do something relevant or powerful, and then maybe we will earn the love we desire. A lot of church life accidentally amplifies those voices.

We say love, but people feel evaluation.
We say welcome, but people feel sorting.
We say beloved, but people feel they must become acceptable first.

Nouwen also helps us see that belovedness is not meant to stay trapped inside private spirituality. In Community, he describes church as “a house of love where we can receive forgiveness and offer it in return.” That is the church at its best.

Not an audience.
Not a weekly product.
Not a perfected religious experience.

A house of love.

A place where people do not have to hide their wounds to stay in the room.

Why Otherness Wins

The church often fails at beloved community because it has been shaped more by segregation, partisanship, and performance than by agape.

Martin Luther King Jr. named this long before we did:

“11 o’clock is the segregated hour in Christian America.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

The line still convicts because it still tells too much truth.

Our churches remain sorted. By race. By class. By ideology. By comfort. By culture. By what kind of person can walk in and feel instantly legible.

King’s vision of beloved community was never a dream of vague niceness. He said:

“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

In his thought, beloved community is rooted in agape, the love of God operating in the human heart. This is not shallow harmony. It is life together shaped by justice, reconciliation, and a refusal to build human community on humiliation, contempt, or fear.

That is the missing thing.

Many churches have become good at gathering similarity. They are not as good at forming love. And when love is thin, otherness grows thick.

Stephanie Spellers gets at this in The Church Cracked Open. She argues that much of the church’s present disruption is also an invitation. Something has cracked open. Privilege has cracked open. Empire has cracked open. The old jar is not holding. Painful as that is, she sees in it the possibility of kenosis, of pouring out what has kept the church from becoming a true community of love.

Yes!

Because some of what we call church health is really the protection of power. Some of what we call faithfulness is the preservation of our comfort zones. Some of what we call unity is only sameness with better music.

And the visitor feels that right away. The grieving one. The queer one. The poor one. The politically out-of-step one. The disabled one. The doubting one. The one who does not know the script. The one whose life is too messy for easy categories.

They may be welcomed politely. They may still feel like they are outside looking in.

The Fullness Of Christ

A narrow church cannot reveal the full Christ, because Christ’s fullness is known in the whole body.

The Apostle Paul does not imagine the church as a weekly audience. In his letter to the Ephesians, he imagines a body being joined together and growing into “the fullness of Christ.” The gifts are diverse. The callings are diverse. The members need one another. Elsewhere Paul says the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.

That is not just a nice metaphor about teamwork. It is ecclesiology. It is the way the church has been designed.

If the church narrows itself to one race, one class, one ideology, one spiritual gift, one emotional style, one social location, one version of respectability, then it cannot present the fullness of Jesus Christ to the world. It can present a slice. A preferred version. A familiar reflection of itself.

But not the fullness.

Eastern Christian wisdom helps here. The church is not just a place where religious information is delivered. It is communion. It is participation. It is a people being drawn into the life of Christ together. Theosis, in this sense, is not spiritual elitism. It is the healing of our humanity through participation in divine love. We become more fully human by being drawn into Christ’s own life, and that life is never solitary.

So a segregated church is not only a social failure. It is a theological failure. It should be impossible.

A church built on sameness does not just limit community. It limits revelation. It makes Christ appear smaller than he is.

Becoming Beloved Together

The church’s calling is not to become more impressive, but more like a place where belovedness can be experienced.

Maybe the question is not only why people are leaving.

Maybe the deeper question is whether people can actually experience the loving presence of God in the room.

Can they breathe there?

Can they grieve there?

Can they be incomplete there?

Can they bring their difference without being quietly asked to translate themselves into acceptability?

Can they be met not as a problem, not as a category, not as a threat, but as a beloved child of God?

That is the church I hunger for. Not a perfect church. Not a conflict-free church. Not a church where deep theology disappears. A church where love is deep enough to hold truth without humiliation. A church where justice and tenderness belong together. A church where belovedness becomes a communal reality.

A church where people no longer have to choose between showing up and being whole.

A church where family is more than a metaphor.

A church where otherness is not erased, but gathered into a deeper belonging.

A church where the meaning of the table spills over into the life of the people.

A church where, little by little, we become beloved together.

Let’s Chat

• When have you experienced church as a place of real belonging, not just attendance? What made it feel that way?

• Where do you see the difference between the meaning of the table and the actual practices of church life?

• What would need to change for your church to feel more like a family shaped by belovedness than a gathering shaped by comfort or similarity?

Leave a comment

Next In The Series

Series note: This is Essay 1 of 5 in the series Being the Church Together. What if we’ve gotten church backward? In a lonely world, the church should be a place of belovedness, belonging, healing, and shared life. Too often, it has become a place of hoops, sameness, and performance. This week, we’re exploring different ways to be the church together.

Preview for next essay: Essay 2 moves from diagnosis to practice. What does beloved community actually ask of a church? What habits turn a service into a family, and a table into a way of life?

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NEW SERIES: Being the Church Together

Loneliness, belonging, and the church we may have gotten backward

TL;DR: What if we’ve gotten church backward? In a lonely world, the church should be a place of belovedness, belonging, healing, and shared life. Too often, it has become a place of hoops, sameness, and performance. This week, we’re going to explore different ways to be the church together.

Loneliness in the Lunchroom

I still remember lunch tables.

Not one lunch table, really. A whole room full of them.

You could feel the map of the school without anyone explaining it. These kids sat here. Those kids sat there. The cliques: jocks, preps, populars, brains, band kids, nerds, stoners, geeks, goth/emo, theater kids, etc. There were kids who moved easily through the room. And there were kids who desperately looked for an open seat and wondered if they would be welcome to sit there, or if someone would say “that seat is taken.”

You could technically eat in the cafeteria and still feel completely alone.

You could have a seat at the table and still not belong.

Lately, I have not been able to shake the feeling that a lot of churches work the same way.

Of course, we would not say it like that. We would say all the right things. We would say everyone is welcome. We would say come as you are. We would say there is a place for you here.

And sometimes we mean it.

But if we are honest, many churches have become places where people can attend without ever becoming family. You can come through the door, sit in the room, sing the songs, maybe even serve on a team, and still feel like you are standing just outside the circle. Close enough to watch. Not quite close enough to be yourself.

That ache matters more than we tend to admit.

Backwards Church

We are living in a lonely time.

People are more connected than ever and more isolated than ever. We carry whole worlds around in our pockets, and many of us still ache for one good conversation. We know how to build platforms, brands, and systems, but we are not always sure how to build a life together. We know how to gather crowds. We are less sure how to become a people.

And the tragedy is this:

The church should be one of the great answers to loneliness.

Not because it is efficient. Not because it is impressive. Not because it is growing fast.

Because it is supposed to be a family.

A beloved community. A field hospital. A place where people do not have to earn their worth before they receive love.

But somewhere along the way, many of us learned a different script.

We learned that belonging comes after believing the right things. Or after behaving the right way. Or after fitting the culture. Or after proving we are committed enough, polished enough, stable enough, straight enough, conservative enough, progressive enough, successful enough, whatever enough.

We learned the hoops, even if nobody called them hoops.

And that is one reason I want to spend the next week writing about church, belonging, and what it means to be together.

Because I am starting to wonder if we have gotten church backwards.

• What if we have put first what Jesus wanted last?

• What if we have treated belief like a front gate instead of a shared confession that grows inside a community of love?

• What if we have confused uniformity with unity?

• What if we have built churches where people who look like us, think like us, vote like us, and talk like us belong easily, while everyone else is left hovering at the edge of the room?

• What if our obsession with growth has made this worse?

I have been wrestling with this question for a while now.

A lot of modern church culture has been shaped by the assumption that:

If we can grow the church, we can save the church.

If we can attract enough people, raise enough money, build enough momentum, hire enough staff, improve enough systems, then maybe we can secure the future.

I understand the instinct. I really do.

Churches need resources. Buildings need care. Ministries cost money. Pastors and staff need support. None of that is imaginary.

But the deeper culture underneath it often feels less like the kingdom of God and more like capitalism’s faith in escalation.

Bigger means better. Faster means healthier. More visible means more valuable. Growth becomes the proof of life.

And once that vision gets in the bloodstream, it changes everything.

We start building for the people most likely to help us succeed. We shape worship around impact. We shape discipleship around productivity. We shape belonging around cultural fit. We create communities where some people are easy to celebrate and others are easy to overlook.

The elderly. The grieving. The poor. The disabled. The awkward. The doubting. The politically inconvenient. The ones who carry pain into the room. The ones who cannot help the church “grow” in the ways that matter to church growth metrics.

They may still be allowed in the room.

But do they belong?

That is a different question.

Belonging in the Bible

When I read the Gospels, Jesus seems remarkably uninterested in building a community of people who have it all together. He keeps crossing boundaries that respectable religion works hard to maintain. He touches the unclean. He eats with the wrong people. He tells stories where the outsider becomes the neighbor. He keeps opening the table wider than the religious gatekeepers would like.

And then I read Acts and see that this did not get easier after Easter.

The early church was not perfect. Not even close.

Acts is not a glorified blueprint we can just photocopy into the present. Context changes. History changes. Communities change. Every church lives in a real place with real limits and real problems.

But still, Acts shows us something important.

It shows us a people being remade around Jesus.

It shows us prayer, shared life, common meals, economic generosity, healing, courage, and the strange witness of a community trying to live like family across lines that the world assumed were fixed. Jew and Gentile. Rich and poor. Women and men. Slave and free. Different languages. Different histories. Different instincts. Different wounds.

That diversity was not a side issue. It was part of the witness.

It was one of the ways the church revealed that something new had happened in Christ.

And yet the struggle was real, even then.

Peter himself pulled back from the Gentile table. That moment in Galatians always gets me (Galatians 2:11-14).

Peter knew better. Peter had already lived through the Spirit’s disruption. Peter had already seen God cross lines that religion wanted to keep in place. And still, when the pressure rose, he drifted back to the safer table.

Back to the familiar tribe. Back to the people who made belonging easier.

I know that move. I have made that move in subtler ways myself.

Maybe you have too.

It is the move back to comfort. Back to predictability. Back to people who mirror us. Back to the church lunch table where we do not have to feel the strain of real difference.

That is why this series matters to me. Not as an abstract theology project. Not as a trendy take on community. But as a real question about whether the church can become the kind of place where belovedness comes first, belonging grows deep, character is formed in love, wounds are tended, and faith is centered on Jesus rather than managed through fear.

Where We Are Headed This Week

• Essay 1: On Monday (tomorrow), we will begin with Beloved Together. Because if people do not know they are loved before they are useful, church will always become another machine for proving worth.

• Essay 2: On Tuesday, we will move into Belonging Together. We will talk about the difference between being welcomed in theory and being embraced as family in practice.

• Essay 3: On Wednesday, we will explore Becoming Together. Because discipleship is not about becoming more religious. It is about becoming more fully human in Christ, and that kind of transformation does not happen alone.

• Essay 4: On Thursday, we will turn toward Blessing Together. We will ask what happens when a community rooted in love becomes a place of healing, shared bread, prayer, generosity, repair, and public good.

• Essay 5: And on Friday, we will close with Believing Together. Because belief matters, but maybe not in the order we were taught. Maybe faith is not the price of admission. Maybe it is a shared life of trust, questioning, confession, and hope that grows in the company of others.

I keep coming back to a question that feels both uncomfortable and necessary:

Are we building churches where people can come, or communities where people can belong?

Those are not the same thing.

Another Haunting Question

And beneath that question is another one that will haunt the whole week:

If Jesus showed up in many of our churches now, would he be welcomed at the center, or would he find himself outside knocking?

I do not ask this to stir the pot. I ask it because I think some of us feel that way ourselves.

Outside looking in.

Close enough to hear the music. Not sure the door will open.

If that is you, I hope you will read along this week.

If you are lonely, read along.
If church has felt more like a club than a family, read along.
If you are tired of conditions masquerading as community, read along.
If you still love the church, but sometimes wonder whether we have lost the plot, read along.

And if you are trying to help your own church become more like Jesus and less like the world’s systems of sorting, striving, and selling, then maybe this week can be a small act of hope.

Not because we will solve everything.

We won’t.

The early church did not solve everything either.

But they kept learning how to cross the room. How to stay at the table. How to pray together. How to share what they had. How to let the Spirit stretch their idea of who belongs.

Maybe that is still the work.
Maybe that is still the witness.
Maybe that is still what it means to be the church.

I will see you tomorrow.

We will begin where we have to begin.

With belovedness.

Let’s Talk

• Have you ever been part of a church where you could show up, but never quite felt at home?

• Have you ever found a community where you could breathe, tell the truth, and feel like you were family?

• And when you think about the church Jesus dreams of, what do you most hope it could become?

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Next in the Series

Tomorrow, we’ll begin with Beloved Together.

Before we talk about belonging, belief, or what the church is supposed to become, we have to start deeper than all of that. We have to start with love. Because if the church does not know how to tell people they are beloved before they are useful, certain, polished, or productive, then it will never become a true home for the lonely.

Monday’s essay is about the truth beneath everything else: we are loved by God before we do anything to earn it. And that changes what church can be.

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What Does Fear-Based Theology Do to Us?

An open and relational response to the forms of faith that teach people to fear God more than trust divine love.

TL;DR: Fear-based theology distorts the face of God, wounds the inner life, trains people in shame and control, and forms churches that struggle to love well. In John 20, Jesus does not meet frightened disciples with threat or blame. He comes through locked doors and says, “Peace be with you.” From an open and relational perspective, that is the gospel in miniature: God does not coerce, terrorize, or dominate. God comes near in uncontrolling love.

The Fear That Stunts Us

There is one common thread I hear again and again from people who grew up in legalistic church culture: their spiritual maturity was stunted by fear of not making it to heaven.

I know that thread because it runs through my own story too.

I belonged to a holiness church.
I heard my share of fear-based theology.
I also preached some of those messages.

When fear is the air you breathe, it is hard to imagine faith any other way.

You learn to measure spiritual life by anxiety. You learn to ask whether you are safe with God. You learn to wonder whether you are good enough, pure enough, faithful enough, or sincere enough to make it in.

When we are afraid of hell, we do not grow in love. We grow in fear.

Fear stunts our growth because it narrows belovedness. It limits how beloved we believe we are, and how beloved we believe other people are too. It makes faith defensive. Tense. Guarded. Drenched in self-protection.

I have known the shame of not feeling good enough to make it to heaven. Not good enough to be a pastor. Not good enough to write on Substack.

Maybe some of that wears the modern name imposter syndrome. But if I am being honest, it is probably something older and deeper than that.

Fear.

And once fear takes hold, it is hard to break.

What Fear-Based Theology Trains in Us

“Children raised in authoritarian religions often enter adulthood feeling ‘starved for love’ because their parents consistently prioritized obedience and compliance over nurture and connection.”
― Brian Recker

Fear-based theology may look different from church to church, but its logic is familiar.

Fear-based theology tells us fear is useful. Fear keeps us obedient. Fear keeps us pure. Fear keeps us from drifting. Fear keeps us close to God.

But that is not how love works.

From an open and relational perspective, fear-based theology does deep damage because it tells the truth poorly about God.

Love is not one attribute of God among many. Love is at the center of who God is. If that is true, then any theology that depends on terror, coercion, or threat is already out of step with God’s character.

Fear-based theology makes fear feel holy, but fear is a poor teacher of love.

Fear can enforce compliance for a while. It can make people perform. It can make people hide. It can make them cautious, polished, and outwardly devout. But it cannot make them whole.

It cannot make them trust. It cannot make them love.

The Shame Fear Leaves Behind

When fear becomes the engine of faith, it gets into the body.

People formed by fear-heavy religion often do not experience faith as rest. They experience it as vigilance. They monitor themselves. They second-guess their motives. They confuse shame with conviction. They confuse anxiety with reverence.

That kind of formation leaves people exhausted.

It also leaves people fragmented. They may say the right things in public while carrying deep private panic underneath. Am I saved enough? Sincere enough? Clean enough? Chosen enough? Worthy enough?

Fear shrinks the soul because it teaches us to live as if belovedness must always be earned.

That is one reason fear-based theology stunts growth. Growth in Christ does not happen in an atmosphere of chronic terror. Love needs room to breathe. Trust needs room to grow. Honest prayer needs room to tell the truth.

Fear closes all of that down.

Jesus in the Locked Room

That is why John 20 matters so much.

The disciples are in the upper room on Easter night behind locked doors. Their fear is not abstract. Their rabbi has been executed by the empire. They know what can happen to people associated with him. They are afraid they may share his fate.

And then Jesus comes to them.

He does not wait for them to calm themselves down. He does not stand outside the door until they have stronger faith. He comes right into the room where fear has shut them in and speaks one word: Shalom.

Usually we translate that word as “peace,” and that is true as far as it goes. But shalom means more than the absence of conflict or a private feeling of calm.

Shalom means wholeness. Completeness. Restored relationship. Well-being. Life set right.

It is peace with depth in it. Peace that gathers up what has been scattered. Peace that puts the soul back together.

Jesus does not merely calm frightened disciples.
Jesus speaks wholeness over them.

That is what shalom does in the room. Shalom interrupts panic. It loosens the grip of fear. It reminds them they are not abandoned. It restores their belonging. It turns a room of hiding into a room of sending.

Jesus does not shame them for their fear. He does not lecture them for their failure. He gives them shalom. Then he breathes the Spirit on them.

In other words, he gives frightened people peace, presence, and breath before he gives them a mission.

That is a very different theology from the one many of us inherited.

Fear Produces the Wrong God

Fear-based theology usually rests on a distorted image of God.

It teaches us to imagine God as the one who could control every event, override every freedom, and stop every tragedy, yet often chooses not to.

That kind of theology leaves hurting people with terrible questions. Did God send this? Is this punishment? Is this meant to teach me something? Is this what divine love looks like?

I have pastored people who have spent their whole lives in church and still wonder whether they have done enough. That question does not come from nowhere. It comes from a distorted image of God shaped more by fear than by love.

Have we been formed so deeply by the god of fear that we no longer know how to trust the God Jesus reveals?

Open and relational theology offers a different vision.

God is not absent. God is not indifferent. But God’s love is uncontrolling, not coercive. God works faithfully, relationally, and persuasively for healing, justice, and wholeness. Evil is real. Freedom is real. Suffering is real. And God is not the author of our ruin.

God is not the one we need to hide from in the locked room. God is the one who brings shalom into the locked room.

That changes how we pray. It changes how we read Scripture. It changes how we understand salvation.

Prayer becomes less like bargaining with a dangerous ruler and more like opening ourselves to the healing work of divine love.

Salvation becomes less about escaping punishment and more about being made whole in love.

Faith becomes less about staying scared enough to behave and more about learning to trust the God who keeps coming near.

What Fear Does to Communities

“When has shame and guilt ever restored someone’s life? When has punishing the victim ever transformed a heart or life? So it is with sin. As a disease, it cannot be punished out of us! We don’t need a punishing Judge, but rather, a great Physician.”
― Bradley Jersak

Fear does not stay private. It shapes communities too.

Frightened people often become controlling people.

Churches formed by fear can become suspicious, rigid, and harsh. They police boundaries. They reward performance. They confuse conformity with maturity.

And because fear narrows belovedness, it becomes harder to see other people as sacred too.

Fear-based theology does not just wound individuals. Fear-based theology teaches whole communities how to live with less mercy.

That is one reason fear-based theology blends so easily with legalism, exclusion, and authoritarian religion. Fear needs enemies. Fear needs certainty. Fear needs someone to blame.

Love does not work that way. Love can still tell the truth about harm. Love can still name sin. But from an open and relational perspective, sin is not mainly the breaking of arbitrary rules. Sin is the refusal of love. It is whatever diminishes flourishing, distorts dignity, deepens isolation, or resists God’s healing work.

The result of sin is wounding. We wound ourselves. We wound one another. We wound our families, our churches, our neighborhoods, and the good creation God loves.

And salvation, in this vision, is not merely rescue from punishment. It is the healing of our wounds and the repairing of shalom.

The Love That Casts Out Fear

“What sinners need (shall we say deserve?) is love and healing, not torture and death. We are worthy of God’s love and healing not on the basis of personal merit but because of the image we bear: the very image of God. Original blessing is more original than original sin!”
― Brian Zahnd

The only thing that removes fear is the love of God shared with us.

Not fear of punishment. Not tighter control. Not more anxious religion.

Love.

That is why 1 John says perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. That is not a sentimental line. It is a diagnosis.

If punishment is what we believe holds the world together, fear will rule us.

But if love is deeper than punishment, deeper than control, deeper than death itself, then another kind of life becomes possible.

The gospel does not heal fear by becoming scarier than fear. The gospel heals fear with God’s self-giving love.

That is the gift of Easter night.

The doors are locked. The fear is real. The wounds are real.

But Jesus still comes near. He still speaks shalom. He still breathes Spirit into anxious lungs.

Maybe healing begins there. Not by pretending fear was never real. Not by denying that the doors were locked. But by hearing Christ speak shalom into the places fear has ruled for too long, and by slowly discovering that God was never the one keeping us trapped inside.

Shalom.

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Let’s Talk

• Where has fear, rather than love, shaped your understanding of God or salvation?

• What does Jesus’ word shalom in John 20 awaken in you when you picture him standing in that locked room?

• What might begin to change in your life if you believed belovedness was stronger than fear?

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Blessed Are the Honest

A Theology of Love - John Wesley’s Sermons for Today (Sermon #21)

"Upon Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Discourse One" preached in 1730 or 1731.

TL;DR: Poverty of spirit is not self-hatred. It is the honesty that knows we cannot heal ourselves. Mourning is the grief we carry. Lament is that grief telling the truth to God. Wesley took sin seriously, but he did not believe the fall erased the image of God in us. Christ comes not only to pardon, but to heal, restore, and sanctify us in love.

Where Jesus Begins

John Wesley opens Sermon 21 where Jesus opens the Beatitudes:

“Happy are the poor in spirit.”

Wesley calls this

“the first step to all real, substantial happiness.”

That can sound dangerous to modern ears, especially for those of us who have lived under harsh religion.

“Poor in spirit” can sound like Jesus is asking us to think badly about ourselves.
It can sound like holiness begins with self-contempt.

I do not think that is what Jesus is saying.
And I do not think that is the truest way to read Wesley either.

To be poor in spirit is not to believe you are worthless.
To be poor in spirit is to stop pretending you are whole on your own.

It is to come to God without the polished version of yourself.
Without the performance.
Without the mask of spiritual competence.

It is the moment when you stop managing how you appear before God and simply tell the truth.

A lot of us have been formed by a faith of image management.

We learn how to sound faithful,
how to look steady,
how to hide fear,
how to appear strong.

But Jesus blesses people who have given up on the spiritual fascade.
Jesus blesses people who know they need mercy.

Honesty is where grace can finally get in.

Broken, not Worthless

There is a difference between humility and shame.

Shame says, “There is nothing in me worth loving.”
Humility says, “I cannot save myself, but I do not have to hide.”

The trouble with total depravity is not only where it lands theologically, but where it lands pastorally.

It can leave people thinking in crushingly negative ways about themselves.
It can sound like there is
nothing in us but corruption,
nothing in us but ruin,
nothing in us that God could possibly delight in.

Wesley took sin seriously.
He believed the fall wounded human nature deeply.
He believed original sin bent us inward and left us unable to heal ourselves apart from grace.
But he did not believe the image of God had been erased from us.

We are broken, yes. But we are not nothing.

We are fallen, but still marked by God.

That changes the tone of salvation.

If total depravity becomes the whole story, grace starts to feel like God tolerating what is disgusting.

But if the image of God remains, though marred and distorted, then grace becomes something far more beautiful.

Grace is God restoring what is wounded.
Grace is God healing what has been bent out of shape.
Grace is God renewing in us the image of divine love.

That feels much closer to Jesus.
And I believe it is closer to the best of Wesley too.

Sin as Sickness, Grace as Healing

This is one place where Wesley feels closer to the Eastern Christian instinct than to some later Western accounts of sin and total depravity.

Wesley knew how deep the wound runs.

But he also understood that sin is not only guilt.

Sin is sickness.
Sin is dis-ease.
Sin is a deep inward distortion of our loves, desires, motives, and wills.

Sin is not just the wrong things we do.
Sin is what has gone wrong within us.

It shows up in pride, fear, self-protection, vanity, and the instinct to curve inward on ourselves.

It shows up even in the good we do when those good things get tangled up with ego, self-interest, or the need to be seen a certain way.

That does not mean human beings are as evil as they could possibly be.
It means no part of us is untouched by the wound.

And if sin is a sickness, then Christ comes as healer.

Not only judge.
Not only lawgiver.
Not only the one who pardons.

The healer.

Eastern theology gives us a better grammar here.

Salvation is not only acquittal.
Salvation is restoration.
Salvation is union (theosis).
Participation in the life of God.

St. Athanasius said,

“For He was made man that we might be made God.”

Not divine by nature, but drawn into God’s life by grace.

Christ does not come simply to get us into heaven.
Christ comes to make us whole in love.

Mourning is What Love Does

Wesley next turns to Jesus’ words,

“Blessed are those who mourn.”

Beneath some of Wesley’s older severity is a deep truth that still lives.

We live with many false comforts.
Noise. Busyness. Scrolling. Consumption. Religious performance.
Ways of staying defended so we do not have to feel what is real.

But Jesus blesses mourners.

Not because pain is good.
Not because sadness is spiritually superior.
Not because grief is something to admire for its own sake.

Jesus blesses mourners because:

Mourning is what love feels like in a broken world.

We mourn because we love.

We mourn what has been lost.
We mourn what has been wounded.
We mourn people we miss.
We mourn churches that broke trust.
We mourn the harm we have done.
We mourn a world where fear and violence keep dressing themselves up as wisdom.

If you love, you will mourn.

That mourning is not a lack of faith.

Sometimes it is one of the deepest signs of faith still left in us.
It means our hearts have not gone numb.
It means we have not made peace with what love cannot bless.

Mourning and Lament

For me, mourning and lament are closely related, but they are not exactly the same.

Mourning is the grief itself.
Lament is that grief telling the truth to God.

Mourning is the ache we carry.
It is the sorrow, the heaviness, the wound, the longing.

Lament is what happens when that ache becomes prayer.
Lament is mourning that finds its voice in the presence of God.

That distinction matters to me.

Faith does not ask us to deny our grief.
Faith invites us to bring it somewhere.

The Psalms know this.
The prophets know this.
Jesus knows this.

Lament is not a failure of trust.
It is one of the purest forms of trust we have.

Lament believes God can bear the truth.
Lament refuses to tidy up what is broken too quickly.
Lament tells the truth without giving up on relationship.

So when I read Wesley on mourning, I want to say it this way now:

Blessed are those who do not deaden their sorrow,
and blessed are those who bring that sorrow honestly before God.

Where grief is told truthfully before God, love is still alive.

And where love is still alive, grace is already at work.

The Kingdom Within

Wesley speaks of

“the kingdom of heaven, or of God, which is within us; even ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’”

That is not the language of humiliation.
That is the language of inward healing.

Wesley’s hope was not merely that people would feel bad enough to be forgiven.

His hope was that grace would reach deeply enough to transform them.
That they would become people whose inner lives were being remade in love.

We might say that God does not coerce us into wholeness.
God loves us toward wholeness.

God works through invitation, persuasion, presence, patience, and communion.
God does not stand over the wounded soul with contempt.
God comes near.

Grace is not God tolerating us.
Grace is God restoring us.

That is why poverty of spirit matters.
That is why mourning matters.
That is why lament matters.

These are not religious achievements.
They are the truthful places where the healing life of God can meet us.

The Blessed Beginning

Maybe that is the best way to hear Jesus here.

Not as a demand to become miserable.
Not as praise for collapse.
Not as a call to perform humility.

But as an invitation to live uncovered before God.

Blessed are those who have run out of spiritual hype.
Blessed are those who can still weep.
Blessed are those who know they need mercy.
Blessed are those who refuse numbness.
Blessed are those who come with empty hands.

Because that is where the kingdom
begins to feel less like a theory
and more like bread.

That is where grace gets in.
That is where healing starts.

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Let’s Talk

• When you hear “poor in spirit,” what rises first in you: shame, relief, resistance, or hope?

• What is the difference in your own life between mourning and lament?

• How might your faith change if salvation felt less like passing a test and more like healing into communion with God?

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Did God Really Say to Wipe Out the Amalekites?

Part 5 of 5: Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

What 1 Samuel 15 Forces Us to Decide About God

TL;DR: 1 Samuel 15 is one of the hardest texts in the Bible because it does not hide the violence. Saul is commanded to wipe out a people, including children and animals. If we treat that command as the clearest picture of God, we run straight into Jesus. This is not a passage that invites easy defense. It forces us to decide whether we will trust the violent command or the crucified Christ.

The Scripture We Can’t Hide From

1 Samuel 15 is disturbing because it says the violent part plainly.

Some passages in Scripture trouble us because they are hard to interpret. They are strange, symbolic, layered, or distant. This is not one of those passages.

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” — 1 Samuel 15:2-3

Saul is told to attack Amalek and spare no one.
Men. Women. Children. Infants. Even the animals.

There is very little room to lessen the weight of that.

That passage does not leave much to the imagination. It names the destruction directly.

“Saul defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. He took King Agag of the Amalekites alive but utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the cattle and of the fatted calves, and the lambs, and all that was valuable and would not utterly destroy them; all that was despised and worthless they utterly destroyed.” — 1 Samuel 15:7-9

And then the story makes the whole thing worse.

Samuel confronts King Saul with these words:

“Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” — 1 Samuel 15:19

Saul’s failure is not that he was too violent. It is that he was not violent enough. He showed mercy where the command said mercy should not be shown. And as Samuel said in verse 19, mercy is a sin in the eyes of God.

That doesn’t compute. How can the God who is perfectly revealed in Jesus be upset about showing someone mercy?

If a passage like this no longer shocks us, then something in us has learned to live too easily with violence done in God’s name.

The Default Justification

The instinct to rescue God’s reputation by defending cruelty usually ends up damaging our own souls.

A lot of people have tried to explain this passage away.

• The Amalekites were especially wicked.

• Their judgment had been delayed long enough.

• God was protecting Israel.

• The children would have grown up to be violent too.

• God gives life, so God has the right to take it.

I know those arguments. I understand why people reach for them. If you believe every picture of God in the Bible must be defended in exactly the same way, then you almost have to say those things.

But something happens to us when we do.

We start calling slaughter righteous if it comes with enough religious certainty.
We start making peace with dead children if the right authority approved it.
We start trusting power more than mercy.

And before long, a faith shaped that way starts finding new Amalekites.

That is one reason this passage still matters. It is not just about something ancient. It shows how quickly human beings can bless cruelty once we are convinced God is behind it.

It helps to name the kind of violence we are dealing with here. The language of the passage is the language of herem, something devoted to destruction. Total war, made sacred.

Nothing is to be kept back. Nothing is to be spared.

This is not just violence in battle. This is violence wrapped in obedience, purity, and devotion.

Once violence becomes holy, resisting it becomes nearly impossible.

The Stated Reason Makes It All Worse

The scripture’s own logic makes this passage harder, not easier.

The reason the text gives does not solve the problem.
The reason deepens the problem.

The command is tied to what Amalek did generations earlier when Israel came out of Egypt. The violence in 1 Samuel 15 comes centuries later.

So this is not simply about stopping an immediate threat. It is presented as inherited vengeance. An old wound carried forward until it deforms into sacred revenge.

That troubles me for all kinds of reasons, but one matters most.

Jesus does not teach inherited vengeance. Jesus does not tell us to kill descendants for the sins of their ancestors. Jesus does not confuse justice with annihilation.

Deuteronomy makes the old memory more specific.

Amalek is remembered as the people who attacked Israel when they were weary, striking those who lagged behind. It is the memory of the strong preying on the weak.

“Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget.” — Deuteronomy 25:17-19

That helps us understand why Amalek became such a loaded name in Israel’s memory.

But it does not make 1 Samuel 15 look more like Jesus.

It gives the command a history. It does not give it holiness.

This is where people usually start adding explanations the text itself never gives.

We say the Amalekites were beyond repair.
We say their culture was incurable.
We say there must have been reasons God chose not to spell out.

Those explanations might help people feel more secure, but they do not come from the scripture. Most of the time they come from our discomfort with what the passage actually says.

Sometimes religious people try so hard to defend the Bible that they end up saying things the Bible never says.

Religion or God?

This passage may tell us more about human vengeance speaking in God’s name than about God’s eternal character.

At this point I think the deeper question is not whether the text is a text of terror.
We already know that it is presented that way to us.

The deeper question is what kind of God we believe in.

If Jesus is the clearest revelation of God, then 1 Samuel 15 cannot be the final word on God’s heart.

I know that is the decisive methodology in this whole series, and the way that I read the Bible.

I also know that for some people it still feels dangerous. But seriously, I do not know another way through a passage like this without fixing my eyes upon Jesus, exact image of who God has always been.

Because what are we going to do here?

Are we going to let this command define for us who God is?

Or are we going to let Jesus tell us who God is, and then come back to this passage with grief, honesty, and moral clarity?

I choose Jesus.

That does not mean I think this text has nothing to say.

I think it tells the truth about something. But not the truth a flat reading wants to force on us.

It tells the truth about what trauma can become when it is left to harden hearts, similar to the way Pharoah’s heart was hardened as he continued down the pathway of dehumanization and violence against the Hebrews.

It tells the truth about the way religion can turn old pain into sacred vengeance. That is the reason I say at the Haven Church, everyone needs a therapist, because we are all wounded. If we don’t heal our trauma, we will spread it to those closest to us.

It tells the truth about how easily human beings put their rage into the mouth of God. Human beings have done this from the beginning, and we are doing it today with Christian Nationalism.

Maybe that is part of why this story remains in Scripture.

Not because it is a positive example to follow. (It isn’t)

Because we are supposed to see what happens to humans when violence borrows divine authority.

Scripture becomes a mirror showing us who we are. Which brings us to Jonah.

Jonah Stands Nearby

Jonah helps expose the spiritual desire underneath texts like this: mercy for us, destruction for them.

We talked about Jonah at the beginning of this series.
And Jonah belongs near the end of this conversation too.

Jonah wanted mercy for his people and judgment for Nineveh.

That is not far from what is happening here.

1 Samuel 15 shows what it looks like when tribal pain, memory, and vengeance are given sacred force. It shows what people still want from God. Not only justice. Not only protection. Final destruction for the people we have decided are beyond mercy.

That temptation is still with us.

We want God to be tender toward our grief and merciless toward theirs.
We want God to understand why our violence is different.
We want reassurance that our enemies are not really our neighbors after all.

But in Jesus we meet the God Jonah resisted and Samuel could not yet see clearly.

The God who loves enemies.
The God who keeps mercy on the table longer than we think is reasonable.
The God who will not let revenge define holiness.

Evil is real.
Goodness is real.
And every human being carries some of both.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil does not run between nations or parties or classes, but through every human heart:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

That feels closer to the truth than the old urge to divide the world into the righteous and the disposable.

God does not answer evil with evil.

God’s desire is not revenge, but restoration.

God loves everyone, not just people like us.

Esther and the Making of Enemies

1 Samuel 15 forces Christians to decide whether Jesus is really the lens, or just a comforting addition.

Esther helps us see how old wounds get carried forward.

Haman is called an Agagite. And Mordecai is linked back to the family line of Saul.

The story reaches backward into the old Amalek conflict and pulls that memory into a later crisis.

That is part of what makes these passages worth wrestling with. They show how history keeps living inside people.

An old wound can become more than memory.

It can become identity.
It can become a script for how we see the world.

A people can stop being people and become the latest version of an ancient threat.

We still know how to do that.

We take real fear, real injury, real history, and turn them into a permanent category.

We gather up the worst acts of some and spread them across a whole people.

We learn to speak about human beings as invaders, traitors, criminals, infestations, dangers, enemies of the nation.

We repeat the story until contempt feels responsible and suspicion feels wise.

That is how propaganda works.

It does not begin with killing. It begins with naming.

It teaches us who to fear. Who does not belong. Who will ruin everything if they are not stopped. Who deserves what is coming.

After a while, revenge no longer feels cruel. It feels necessary.
Violence no longer feels shameful. It feels justified.
History shows how fast that can happen.

Once a people is cast as the old enemy, cruelty starts sounding like duty.

That is why these passages still need careful reading. The danger is not trapped in the ancient world. We are still capable of taking old pain and using it to bless new violence.

Once you see that, 1 Samuel 15 stops being only a problem in the Bible.

It becomes a warning about us.

What This Text Forces Us to Decide

The end of this struggle is not certainty, but the trembling choice to trust that God is like Jesus.

I think this is the passage that finally forces the issue.

It forces Christians to decide whether Jesus is really our lens, or whether he is just a quieter voice we place beside harsher texts we do not want to question.

Because if we can read 1 Samuel 15 and say, without trembling, “Yes, this is exactly what God is like,” then I am not sure what Jesus is left to reveal.

At that point Jesus becomes a kinder face on the same violent God.
At that point enemy love becomes a temporary teaching, not the heart of God.
At that point the cross stops being revelation and becomes one more religious event.

We do not take Scripture seriously by flattening everything out. A flat-reading of scripture can easily turn the Bible into an idol.

We take Scripture seriously by reading it through the One we confess is the fullest revelation of God.

If Jesus tells us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and shows us the Father by refusing to answer violence with violence, then 1 Samuel 15 cannot be the clearest picture of God’s heart.

It may tell us something true about Israel’s fear, trauma, memory, and vengeance.
It may tell us something true about the terrible seriousness of evil.
But it cannot tell us more about God than Jesus does.

If Jesus really is the image of the invisible God, then 1 Samuel 15 has to be read under Christ, not over him.

That does not mean cutting the passage out of the Bible.

It means reading it honestly.
It means admitting how quick we are to justify whatever is on the page simply because it is on the page.
It means naming the terror in the story.
It means refusing to call it morally beautiful.
It means letting the passage expose the human urge to sanctify vengeance.

And then it means letting Jesus show us the face of God again.

For me, that is not a betrayal of Scripture. It is the only way I know to stay with Scripture without betraying Christ.

Trust Over Certainty

The end of this struggle is not certainty, but the trembling choice to trust that God is like Jesus.

I do not think 1 Samuel 15 can be made easy.

I do not think a few historical notes or theological qualifiers can take away the ache.

Some texts remain wounds.

I also do not think the answer is shame.

The answer is honesty.
The answer is telling the truth.

The truth about the passage.
The truth about the damage done by violent images of God.
The truth about the human craving for sacred revenge.
And the truth about Jesus.

Jesus does not show us a God who commands the slaughter of children.
Jesus shows us a God who gathers children.

Jesus does not show us a God who destroys enemies to prove righteousness.
Jesus shows us a God who loves enemies and calls that holiness.

Jesus does not show us a God who saves by killing.
Jesus shows us a God who saves by giving himself away.

So this is where I end the series.|
Not with everything solved.
Not with all the hard passages neatly accounted for.

Just here.
With this confession.

I trust Jesus more than I trust my ability to explain away violence in Scripture.
And I do not think that is the end of faith.
I think it may be the beginning of a faith that looks more like Jesus.

Let’s Talk

• What has this passage taught you, whether loudly or quietly, about the character of God?

• Do you feel more pressure to defend this text, or to avoid it?

• What changes if you read 1 Samuel 15 as human vengeance projected onto God rather than as a clear revelation of God’s heart?

Leave a comment

What Is Next?

This essay ends the series, but not the work of reading difficult texts faithfully.

There are still more difficult passages ahead.

Maybe that is part of what it means to keep reading the Bible as a Christian. Not pretending every page is easy. Not forcing every wound shut. Just bringing what we find back to Jesus, again and again, and refusing any reading that asks us to admire what should break our hearts.

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Did God Kill Egypt’s Firstborn?

Part 4 of 5 - Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

How We Read Judgment and Liberation Through the Lens of Jesus

TL;DR: The death of Egypt’s firstborn is one of the Bible’s most painful stories because it stands inside one of the Bible’s great liberation stories. We should not deny the horror of slavery. And we should not deny the horror of children dying. If Jesus is the clearest revelation of God, then we have to read this story in a way that honors the cry of the oppressed without turning God into a sanctified version of Pharaoh.

A Story of Freedom with Blood on the Door

Exodus is both a liberation story and a story of terrible grief, and faithful reading refuses to erase either Israel’s suffering or Egypt’s pain.

This text is challenging because liberation and terror are standing side by side.

The Exodus story has carried hope for generations. Enslaved people have heard in it the sound of God siding with the oppressed. People crushed under empire have heard in it the promise that cruelty does not get the last word. It is one of Scripture’s great liberation stories.

And still, inside that story, there is this night.

A night of blood on the doors.
A night of cries in Egypt.
A night when the firstborn die.

We should not rush past the devastation.

It is possible to read this story in a way that makes Israel’s suffering so central that Egyptian grief disappears. It is also possible to recoil from the final plague so strongly that Israel’s bondage fades into the background.

I do not think either move is faithful to the heart of Christ.

The story makes us hold all of this together:

• Israel is enslaved.

• Egypt is brutal.

• And children die.

One of the things that I noticed in reading Jewish reflections on this passage is the insistence that the plague is meant to be felt as devastation across the whole land.

Not just in Pharaoh’s house.
Not just among the powerful.

The text says it reaches all the way down to the slave girl behind the millstones.

This is a key insight. It is the writer’s way of saying that this night does not stay in Pharaoh’s palace or among the ruling class. It runs from the throne to the grinding stone. From the most powerful household in Egypt to the most powerless.

Grinding grain by hand was exhausting, repetitive labor, and in the ancient world it was work usually given to female slaves at the very bottom of the social order.

So when the text names Pharaoh on his throne and the slave girl behind the millstones, it is using the two far ends of society to tell us that the grief reaches everywhere.

No household is untouched.
No social class is spared.

The whole land is pulled into the terror of that night.

Humanity grieves the loss of our children.

That does not solve this text of terror.
But it tells the truth no one wants to deal with.

I would rather talk about:
Our side winning.
They are getting what they deserve.
God is good.

Because if we make this night easier than it is, we will not read it truthfully.
And if we make liberation easier than it is, we will not read that truthfully either.

God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed

The story begins with God’s solidarity with the enslaved, which means liberation matters deeply and oppression is never morally neutral.

Whatever else this story means, it begins with a God who does not ignore suffering.

Before the plagues.
Before Moses confronts Pharaoh.
Before the sea parts.
Exodus tells us something essential.

God always hears the cry of the oppressed.

The story does not begin with a violent God looking for a target.
It begins with crushed bodies, forced labor, stolen dignity,
and a ruler who has built his world on the suffering of other people.

Exodus begins with the cry of people who have been
worked, beaten, used, and treated as disposable.

God is not neutral in that story.
And that is good news.

A God who remains unmoved by oppression would not be holy.

A God who shrugs at empire would not be love.

A God who hears the cry of the enslaved is much closer to the God Jesus reveals than a God who blesses the strong and tells the weak to be patient.

Exodus is not wrong to care about liberation.
It is not wrong to say that God stands against systems that devour people.
It is not wrong to say that empire will not stand forever.

The problem comes when we imagine judgment in ways that make God look like a holier, stronger, more sacred version of the tyrant being judged.

Because Pharaoh also rules through death.
Pharaoh also builds order through fear.
Pharaoh also decides that some children can die so his world can go on.

And if our reading of Exodus ends with God looking like a greater Pharaoh, then something has gone badly wrong.

Does God Really Harden Pharaoh’s Heart?

Pharaoh’s hardening is not God making an innocent man evil, but a violent ruler becoming more fixed in the dehumanizing path he has already chosen.

This is one place where many of us were taught too simple of an interpretation.

We were told that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, full stop, and that was that.

But the text is more layered than that.

If you read the story slowly, a pattern begins to appear.

Early on, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Only later does the text more directly say that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. That does not erase the moral problem. But it see that Pharaoh set his own direction first.

Because Pharaoh is not portrayed as a helpless man trapped inside a story written against his will.

Pharaoh is already the kind of ruler who has built a death-dealing world.
He has already ordered Hebrew children killed.
He has already resisted release again and again.
He has already chosen the path of domination.

Then something happens.

Pharaoh becomes more and more like what he loves.
Pharaoh is deformed by what he focuses his attention on.

He is becoming more unable to turn because of his love of power.
He is becoming more unable to imagine mercy because of the gains of oppression.
He is becoming more incapable of surrendering the world he has built because it gives him glory.

Maybe the hardening is not God turning a neutral man evil.

Maybe it is what happens when a ruler gives himself over, again and again, to domination.

Maybe it is the sealing of a character already bent toward violence.

A soul can become so committed to control that it can no longer imagine freedom, mercy, or another way of being in the world.

Jewish interpreters have wrestled with this for centuries.

Some say God confirms Pharaoh in the direction Pharaoh has already chosen.
Some say Pharaoh loses the freedom to repent after repeated cruelty.
Some try to hold together divine justice and human responsibility.

They do not all agree, and they recognize that the story is complex.

Honestly, I find that comforting.

It means faithful readers have not been pretending this is easy.

It means they have looked directly at the ethical problem and said there is more than one way to look at this.

Both sides have a point.

And maybe that is part of the warning.

Evil does not only wound its victims.
Evil also deforms the one who practices it.

When you dehumanize others, part of you is dehumanized too.

A heart can become so bent toward fear, control, and cruelty that it loses the ability to recognize the humanity of others, and eventually its own.

That is frightening. And it should be.

This story warns us that violence hardens not only our hearts, but also our families, neighborhoods, and our world.

Violence numbs our sense of what it means to be human.

The Violence Comes Home

The death of the firstborn can be read as the awful recoil of a death-dealing system, where the violence Pharaoh unleashed returns through the world he built.

There is another layer here that is hard to ignore.

Pharaoh began by ordering the death of Hebrew boys because we was afraid of power in their numbers.

Pharaoh built his power on the suffering of Israelite children.
He tried to secure his future by making other families bury theirs.

So when the story reaches the death of Egypt’s firstborn, the horror does not feel random.

It feels like the violence Pharaoh unleashed has come back through his own house.

Not as karma.
Not as something beautiful.
And certainly not as something to celebrate.

But as the terrible rebounding force of a world built on death.

Systems of oppression do not only crush the people under them. In time, they also deform the people inside them.

The death machine does not stay pointed in one direction forever.

Maybe that is one of the oldest truths in Scripture:

Empires do not only destroy others. In time, they destroy themselves.

Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome. Again and again, the Bible tells the same truth.

The violence that makes an empire look strong is the same violence that hollows it out.

That does not mean every person in the empire is equally guilty.
It does not mean every victim of imperial collapse deserves what happens.

It means the system itself is already rotting from within.

And that is part of what judgment may mean here.

Pharaoh and Herod

Pharaoh and Herod reveal the same truth about empire: fearful power protects itself by making children expendable, while Jesus exposes that whole order.

Matthew seems to know this pattern too.

Pharaoh kills boys because he fears losing control.
Herod kills boys because he fears losing his throne.

In both stories, empire reveals itself most clearly when it decides that children are expendable.

In both stories, one child is preserved.
Moses lives. Jesus lives.

That does not make the stories identical.
Herod’s slaughter is easier to name morally.
The tenth plague is much harder.

Still, the connection matters.

Both Pharaoh and Herod show us what power does when it is ruled by fear.
Both turn on children to protect a world they cannot bear to lose.
Both reveal that empire will sacrifice innocence to keep itself alive.

And Jesus enters that world
not as a stronger Herod,
not as a holier Pharaoh,
but as the one who exposes that whole order for what it is.

The God We Want and the God Jesus Reveals

We often want God to defeat evil through greater violence, but Jesus reveals that God confronts evil through self-giving love rather than becoming its mirror.

Jesus does not reveal a God who achieves victory through violence. This is one of religion’s oldest temptations.

We want God to save by crushing.
We want God to judge by overpowering.
We want God to answer the violence of empire with bigger violence.

I understand that impulse.

There are days when mercy feels too weak for the world we live in.

There are days when people who have been harmed do not want a sermon about compassion.

They want the machinery of cruelty broken for good.

That desire is not hard to understand.

But Christians have to ask a deeper question.

When God confronts evil, what does God look like?

Does God finally look like Pharaoh with better motives?
Does God defeat terror by reflecting it back?
Or does God look like Jesus?

Because Jesus does confront evil.

He is not passive.
He is not indifferent.
He is not soft on domination, hypocrisy, greed, or religious cruelty.

But Jesus does not confront evil by slaughtering his enemies.

Jesus confronts evil by exposing it.
By enduring it.
By absorbing it.
By forgiving from inside it.
By breaking its spell without becoming its mirror.

In Jesus, the power of God does not look like the glory of empire.
It looks like self-giving love.
It looks like suffering solidarity.
It looks like mercy that refuses to become cruelty.

When I read about Egypt’s firstborn through the lens of Jesus, I cannot believe the clearest truth about God is that God kills children to make a point.

I can believe the story is wrestling with judgment, liberation, and the collapse of empire.

I can believe the text comes to us through an ancient world that attributed catastrophe directly to divine action.

I can believe the biblical writers are telling the truth as they were able to tell it from inside their own time and imagination.

But I cannot believe this story reveals God more clearly than Christ does.

Jesus is not a footnote to Exodus.

Jesus is the clearest revelation of who God has always been.

So whatever I say about this text, I cannot say it in a way that makes Jesus less true.

Judgment is Real, But It May Not Look the Way We Were Taught

God’s judgment may be less about divine violence inflicted from above and more about what happens when a death-dealing world is finally handed over to what it has become.

One of the hardest things in Scripture is that the Bible does not always separate things the way we want it to.

It does not always distinguish between God causing destruction and God giving people over to the destruction already set in motion by their own violence.

Ancient writers often spoke of whatever happened in history as something God did.

That does not make them foolish.

It means they lived in a world where divine causation was imagined differently than many of us imagine it now.

It means they were bearing witness in the language they had.

And sometimes the deeper truth sits just underneath the surface:

Pharaoh has built a world of death.

He has ordered Hebrew children killed.
He has hardened himself against warning, mercy, and release.
Egypt has become a machine of domination.

In a world like that, judgment does come.

But perhaps judgment is not best imagined as God turning into a killer.

Perhaps it is what happens when a regime built on death finally collapses under the weight of its own resistance to life.

Perhaps it is what happens when God no longer shields an empire from the consequences already lodged deep within its own cruelty.

That way of seeing judgment has helped me.

Writers like Brian Zahnd and Brad Jersak have named divine wrath less as God flying into rage and more as God giving people over to what they insist on having. Not abandonment in the emotional sense. Not God becoming cruel. But God allowing a death-dealing way of life to reveal what it really is.

There is something almost parental in that, though even that analogy can only go so far.

Sometimes love lets reality teach the lesson we refused to learn any other way.

That does not make the story painless.
It does not answer every question.
It does not quiet the cries in Egypt.

But it matters whether we imagine judgment as the deepest revelation of God’s character or as the tragic outworking of a world bent against God’s life.

Jesus leads me toward the second.

Because in Jesus, judgment is real.

But it looks like truth telling.
It looks like a diagnosis.
It looks like unmasking.
It looks like the collapse of lies.
It looks like empire being exposed for what it is.
It does not look like God becoming morally indistinguishable from the empire being judged.

Passover is About Protection,
Not Divine Bloodlust

The heart of Passover is deliverance and shelter, not God’s need for violence before mercy can begin.

There is another mistake Christians sometimes make with this story.

We read Passover backward through later theories that make God hungry for blood. We imagine the blood on the doors as if mercy cannot happen until violence has first been fed.

But that is not what the story says.

The blood marks out a people under protection.

The meal is a meal of readiness, trust, and urgent departure.

The emotional center of the text is not that God finally gets blood.
The emotional center is that God is bringing people out.

Jesus does not come to save us from a bloodthirsty Father.

Jesus reveals the Father.

And if we are not careful, we can turn Exodus into one more story where violence is the deepest truth and mercy only arrives after enough damage has been done.

But in Jesus, mercy is older than our theories.

Mercy is not Plan B.
Mercy is not what is left after wrath burns itself out.
Mercy is at the heart of God.

So even here, in one of Scripture’s darkest nights, I want to keep listening for the deeper note of deliverance.

Not because I want to romanticize the story.
Not because I want to make it cleaner than it is.
But because I do not want a theology where love
only appears after violence has had the final word.

The God Jesus reveals does not discover mercy late.

God has always been merciful.

The Cry of Israel and the Cry of Egypt

Faithful reading here means refusing to erase either the suffering of the enslaved or the grief of Egyptian families.

I think this is where we have to be especially careful.

Because Exodus has been life-giving to oppressed people for a reason.

When enslaved Black Christians sang about Moses and Pharaoh, they were not playing with ideas. They were naming their world.

When liberation theologians say God is on the side of the oppressed, they are not reaching for a slogan. They are trying to tell the truth about a God who hears the cry of those crushed by history.

We should not cheapen that.

But neither should we cheapen Egypt’s grief.

If children die in the story, we do not call that beautiful. We do not speak about it lightly. Those children had names. The parent’s grief is real and raw. And woven through the grief is innocence. Not everyone participated in the empire’s oppression.

We do not act as though those cries matter less because they belong to the wrong side of the story.

That is where Jesus keeps saving us from becoming less than human.

Jesus does not teach us to care only about our own dead.
Jesus does not teach us to reserve compassion for our own tribe.
Jesus does not teach us to bless suffering when it falls on those we have been taught to hate.

Jesus teaches us to weep.

Jesus teaches us to love our enemies.

So maybe the most faithful thing we can do here is refuse the lie that we must choose between caring about Israel’s slavery and caring about Egypt’s grief.

We can hold both.
We must hold both.

Because if we let liberation erase compassion, we will become cruel. And if we let compassion erase liberation, we will become sentimental about oppression.

Jesus will not let us become either.

Reading This Story Without Losing Our Soul

The only faithful way to stay with this text is to keep bringing it back to Jesus, so we can name oppression, grieve innocent suffering, and resist calling cruelty righteous.

So maybe this is the best I can say right now.

I believe God hears the cry of the oppressed.
I believe God stands against systems that devour life.
I believe empire does not stand forever.
And I believe God looks like Jesus.

Which means I cannot treat the death of Egypt’s firstborn as the clearest picture of who God is. I have to read it through the one who welcomed children, healed enemies, and revealed divine power as mercy.

That does not solve the whole text.

But it keeps me from calling darkness light.

And sometimes that is where faithful reading begins.

I do not need this story to become easy in order to stay with it.

I do not need every edge sanded down.
I do not need one clever interpretation that makes the tears disappear.

What I need is a way to read it without losing my soul.

A way to honor the enslaved without blessing the death of children.
A way to say that God stands against empire without making God into empire with better theology.
A way to confess that judgment is real without forgetting that Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s being.

So I will keep bringing this story back to Jesus.

Not because Jesus helps me dodge Scripture.

Because Jesus shows me the face of the Father.

Because Jesus is what God looks like when God is not hidden behind our fear, our rage, or our need to make violence holy.

And if that means I am left with questions, then so be it.

I would rather live with unresolved questions than train myself to call cruelty righteous.

I would rather admit that this story wounds me than force myself to admire what should break my heart.

I would rather stand before this text with trembling than become the kind of person who can speak lightly about dead children because the theology seems tidy.

And maybe faithful reading includes protest.

Maybe part of loving Scripture is refusing to explain away innocent suffering too quickly. Maybe part of faith is letting grief speak when the text wounds us. Maybe conscience is not the enemy here. Maybe conscience is one of the ways mercy stays alive in us.

Maybe some of you know that feeling too.

Maybe you have heard the cry of the enslaved in one ear and the cry in Egypt in the other.
Maybe you have felt pulled in two directions at once.
Maybe you have wondered whether honesty will cost you your faith.

I do not think honesty is the enemy of faith.

I think dishonesty is.

And maybe that ache you feel here, that refusal to turn pain into doctrine too quickly, that resistance to calling violence good, maybe that is not unbelief.

Maybe that is conscience still alive.
Maybe that is mercy still breathing.
Maybe that is Jesus refusing to let us read Scripture in a way that makes us less human than he is.

And if a reading of the Bible requires me to call the death of children good, then I will say it plainly: that reading is not worthy of Jesus.

Let’s Talk

• What feels hardest for you in this story: the suffering of Israel, the death in Egypt, or trying to hold both together?

• How were you taught to understand Pharaoh’s hardened heart, and does that reading still make sense to you now?

• What changes when Jesus becomes the clearest picture of how God confronts evil?

Leave a comment

Next in the Series

Series Note: This is the fourth essay in a five-part series on violent Old Testament texts. In the first essay, we set the lens: Christians read the hardest texts through Jesus. In the second, we sat with the flood. In the third, we faced the conquest texts. Today we turn to Egypt’s firstborn. Next we will end with one of the starkest and hardest passages in all of Scripture: the command to wipe out the Amalekites.

Next we will end the series with one of the starkest and most disturbing texts in Scripture: 1 Samuel 15 and the command to wipe out the Amalekites. It is the passage that forces the question into the open. What do we do when the text seems to flatly collide with Jesus?

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Did God Command Genocide in Canaan?

Part 3 of 5 - Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

Reading Joshua Through the Lens of Jesus

TL;DR: The conquest texts are some of the hardest passages in the Bible because they really do sound like genocide. We should not sanitize that. We should not rush past it. But Christians do not meet God most clearly in Joshua's violence. We meet God most clearly in Jesus. That means these texts must be read honestly, historically, and painfully, but never as the final revelation of God's heart.

When the Bible Sounds Like Genocide

“If we accept that the God who is depicted as engaging in horrendous violence is supremely beautiful, logical consistency requires us to also accept that the biblical portraits of God smashing parents and children together... contradict the revelation of the enemy-loving, nonviolent God.”
— Gregory A. Boyd

Sometimes the faithful thing is to stop, tell the truth, and admit what the text is doing to you.

The first time I tried to read the Bible straight through, I barely made it through Leviticus. But I eventually survived, and kept reading.

But when I got to Joshua, the struggle changed.

I was no longer just trying to stay focused. I was disturbed.

I came to the conquest stories, read the words on the page, and then closed my Bible and walked away. Because what I was reading sounded like genocide.

“They utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old”
— Joshua 6:21

Then again at Ai:

“all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand”
— Joshua 8:25

What do you do when the Bible itself leaves you staring at the page?

I remember reaching for commentaries after that, hoping someone would help me. And I found the same explanations over and over again.

• The Canaanites were wicked.

• God was carrying out judgment.

• God was protecting Israel from corruption.

• As Creator, God has the right to give life and take it.

• Who are we to question what God commands?

I understood what those explanations were trying to do. They were trying to protect faith.

But I remember thinking: this is not enough. I need more.

What left me unsatisfied was not that these writers had no answers.

It was that most of the answers did not seem to take Jesus seriously enough.

They were still trying to justify God authorizing the destruction of a people group. And I could not square that with the Jesus I had already met in the Gospels. The Jesus who crossed borders. The Jesus who spoke with a Canaanite woman. The Jesus who told us to love our enemies.

“Genocide always bothers me, especially when it’s in the Bible. And I get the idea that maybe it’s supposed to.”
— Rachel Held Evans

So this essay is not my final word on Joshua. It is more like a first journal entry. This story deserves more research and more prayer than I can give it in one sitting. But I wanted to begin here, with the trouble.

The Temptation to Defend God

“The fact that so many biblical commentaries continue to attempt to justify the biblical genocide accounts reveals a profoundly disturbing disconnect between biblical scholarship and ethics.”
— Derek Flood

If we have to shut down mercy to defend our reading of God, something has already gone wrong.

A lot of us were taught that if God commanded it, then it must have been right. For example, John Piper: “It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life.”

If your whole faith has been built on the idea that every portrait of God in Scripture must be defended in exactly the same way, then any protest starts to feel dangerous. If one piece wobbles, everything seems at risk of collapsing.

I do not think faithfulness requires us to call evil good.

I do not think Jesus asks us to kill our conscience in order to remain biblical.

Rachel Held Evans tells the story of asking a youth leader whether the slaughter in Joshua bothered him. His answer was chilling: “Not if it’s in the Bible.”

That kind of certainty can deaden a soul. And I can’t imagine what that does to the faith of teenagers who are already questioning and desire conversation over certainty.

Once we can look at the killing of children and call it holy without trembling, we have not preserved faith. We have numbed mercy.

And Jesus will not let me do that. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”

Mercy is not a minor theme in the life of Christ.
Mercy is the shape of his life.

Have you ever been handed an explanation that seemed more interested in protecting a system than telling the truth?

The World Behind the Story

“Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC. The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation.”
— Paul Copan

Joshua comes to us through a violent world, and Scripture does not hide the confusion of the people telling the story.

One thing that helps me, at least a little, is remembering that Joshua comes to us from a very violent world.

That does not make the violence okay. It does not take away the ache. But it does remind me that these stories were told by people living in a world where war was normal, survival was everything, and almost everybody assumed their god fought on their side.

Ancient nations did not usually say, we wanted more land, or we were afraid, or we wanted control. They said their god gave them the victory. That was the air people breathed in the ancient world.

Israel told its story from inside that world.

And that critical in trying to understand violence in the Scriptures.

It also matters to ask when stories like Joshua took the shape we now have. Israel did not tell its story from nowhere. These traditions were gathered, preserved, and shaped by a people who had known defeat, exile, and humiliation.

Jacob Wright argues that much of Israel’s Scripture took form in the long shadow of Babylon’s devastation, as a way of helping a shattered people remember who they were and how they might live after catastrophe.

That insight does not solve Joshua for me. But it does help me see that this book may be doing more than giving us a bare transcript of the past. It may also be speaking to a broken people in the present, trying to give courage, identity, and a future to those who had lost almost everything.

History is often told in ways that serve the needs of the present. We know that because it still happens now. Just think about the ongoing attempts to retell the history of slavery in America in ways that make the nation sound more innocent than it was.

I wonder if something like that is happening here too. Not simple deceit. Something more human, and more dangerous than that. Memory being shaped into a national story for survival.

So when we read Joshua, we are not reading something untouched by history or fear. We are reading the testimony of a people trying to understand God from inside a brutal tribal world.

Scripture does not erase the blind spots of the people telling the story.

• The fear is still there.

• The violence is still there.

• And so is that old human habit of calling our tribal instincts the will of God.

Peter Enns stresses that Scripture comes to us through genuinely human voices and historical settings.

Some biblical writers saw God’s love more clearly than others. The Bible does not read like a polished system lowered from heaven. It reads like a long, painful, sacred wrestling match.

And God keeps showing up in the middle of that wrestling.

Brad Jersak argues that Christians must read Scripture toward Christ, not away from him. In that sense, Scripture is not less sacred because it bears the marks of human limitation, rhetoric, struggle, and partial sight. It is sacred precisely because God keeps meeting humanity there and leading us, slowly, toward Jesus.

In the Eastern tradition, Jesus is not simply one revelation among many. Jesus is the icon of the invisible God, the one in whom the Father is made visible.

We do not begin with a theory of divine violence and then try to fit Jesus into it. We begin with Christ.

Not because Christ rescues us from Scripture. Because Christ reveals what Scripture has been moving toward all along.

Joshua Is Less Clean Than We Were Told

“In other words, archaeology and the biblical story don’t line up well at all.”
— Peter Enns

Even Joshua resists the clean, absolute reading many of us were handed.

If you grew up hearing the conquest story in simple terms, it probably sounded absolute.

God said it.
Joshua did it.
End of story.

But Joshua itself is not that clean.

• Rahab survives.

• The Gibeonites survive.

• Joshua 8 speaks of “both foreigner and native” standing together in the worshiping assembly.

• And later in the book, plenty of the land is still not fully taken.

That does not erase the violence. But it does mean Joshua is not handing us a simple, airtight record of total annihilation.

L. Daniel Hawk and other scholars point out that Joshua uses sweeping, stylized conquest language. The rhetoric sounds total. The effect is absolute. But even within the book itself, the details do not stay that clean.

Archeology isn’t certain that the genocide even happened:

“Archeologists have exposed destruction layers at several ancient cities mentioned in the book of Joshua, but most now date these layers to different periods, both long before and long after the time Joshua was supposed to have lived.”
— Dan McClellan

“At the end of the thirteenth century, when Israel is believed to have entered Canaan, it appears there was nobody in Jericho to conquer.”
— Eric A. Seibert

Some of the certainty people bring to Joshua does not actually come from Joshua. It comes from our need to make the Bible simpler than it is.

But Joshua is not simple.
The history is not simple.
The theology is not simple.

And maybe that is one reason this story should be read on our knees, not with absolute certainty.

Jesus Will Not Let Violence Be the Final Word

“Viewed through the lens of the cross, these genocidal portraits of God rather reflect the fallen heart and mind of Moses and of God’s people as a whole at this point in history.”
— Gregory A. Boyd

Christians do not read Joshua apart from Jesus, because Jesus is the clearest revelation of who God has always been.

This is where everything changes for me.

The question is not whether Joshua is in the Bible. It is in there.

The question is whether Joshua gets to tell us more about God than Jesus does.

I do not believe Joshua does.

Jesus says,

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”
— Matthew 5:44
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”
— John 14:9

Hebrews says he is “the exact imprint” of God’s very being (Hebrews 1:3).

That means Jesus is not Plan B. He is not the kinder face of a harsher God. He is the perfect revelation of who God has always been.

“As the full and final revelation of God, Jesus is ‘the criterion’ for evaluating scripture, the prism through which the Hebrew scriptures must be read.”
— C.S. Cowles

God has always been love.
Not sentimental love.
God’s essence is self-giving love (1 John 3:16)

So if Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, then conquest cannot be the clearest revelation of God’s heart. We cannot let the sword interpret the cross. We cannot let tribal violence speak louder than enemy love.

The clearest face of God is not found in Joshua’s killing fields.

It is found in Jesus.

In Jesus healing.
In Jesus forgiving.
In Jesus refusing retaliation.
In Jesus absorbing violence rather than commanding it.

He does not ride into Jerusalem ready to crush his enemies. He rides in weeping.

He does not bless revenge. He prays, “Father, forgive them.”

He does not cross borders to destroy outsiders. He crosses them to restore them.

That is why I keep coming back to the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. I come back to her because Matthew names her as Canaanite on purpose. He could have called her a Gentile. He could have simply called her a woman from that region. But he says Canaanite, which means the old story in Joshua is standing in the room.

And that is what makes the scene so powerful.

In Joshua, Canaanites appear as the people marked for destruction, the ones supposedly standing in the way of God’s purposes. But in Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman stands before Jesus not as a threat, but as a mother pleading for her daughter. She is not a faceless enemy in a battle account. She is a suffering human being with a voice, a body, and a child she loves.

Yes, the exchange is hard. Jesus begins by speaking from within Israel’s historical vocation and uses language that does not let the tension disappear. We should not pretend otherwise.

But the direction of the story matters.

It does not move toward exclusion, but toward mercy.
It does not end in erasure, but in recognition.

Jesus receives her persistence, honors her faith, and heals her daughter. That matters theologically.

Because if Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, then this is what God looks like when a Canaanite woman stands in front of him.

Not a sword raised in holy war.
Not a people marked as disposable.
Not tribal purity protected through bloodshed.

What we see instead is mercy making room.
We see enemy language giving way to healing.
We see a daughter restored and a mother honored.

That does not make every question about Joshua disappear. But it does tell us which way the gospel leans.

When Joshua and Jesus seem to pull in opposite directions, Christians must ask which one gives us the clearest vision of God’s heart.

And the New Testament’s answer is not unclear. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9)

So when a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus, Christians are not just watching a moving story about faith. We are seeing the character of God unveiled.

And that means the Canaanite woman is not a side note. She is a hermeneutical crisis for any reading of Joshua that tries to make Canaanite lives expendable.

In Jesus, the one Israel called Lord meets a Canaanite woman:
Not with extermination, but with compassion.
Not with conquest, but with healing.

That does not answer every historical question. But it tells us that the deepest truth about God is not genocide. It is mercy.

So when Joshua seems to place genocide in the mouth of God, I do not think faithfulness means forcing Jesus to fit around it. I think faithfulness means letting Jesus tell us what God is like.

If our reading of Joshua makes Jesus look less true, less merciful, less revealing of the Father, then I think we are reading Joshua badly.

What if the real question is not,
How do I defend this text?

What if the real question is,
How does Jesus teach me to read it?

These Texts Still Tell the Truth About Us

“The violent story of Israel refuses to be quiet, however we try to overcome it, because this story of destruction, loss, and suffering is our own.”
— Susan Niditch

Joshua is not only about ancient violence. It exposes the old human instinct to drag God into our battles and call it righteousness.

Joshua is not only about them.

Joshua is also a mirror that shows us who we are.

Because the old instinct behind these stories is still alive in us.

We still want God on our side.
We still want God to bless our tribe.
We still want our fear to sound holy.
We still want our enemies to look less human than we are.

We still reach for a God who will back our cause, protect our people, and give us moral permission to do what we already wanted to do.

That instinct is everywhere.

It shows up in Christian nationalism.
It shows up in racism.
It shows up in settler thinking.
It shows up anywhere the church starts confusing the kingdom of God with our group winning.

That is one reason Joshua still matters. Not because it gives us a clean blueprint, but because it exposes how easily human beings drag God into our battles and call it righteousness.

How quickly fear becomes theology.
How easily religion becomes a weapon.
How often power wants a blessing.

And Jesus stands against all of that.

He shows us a God who does not need our enemies to be disposable in order to be holy.

So How Do We Read Joshua Now?

“When we interpret these divine portraits with the resolved conviction that the true character of God is fully revealed in the crucified Christ, we are able to see beyond the surface appearance of these portraits... and discern the cruciform character of God in their ‘depth’.”
— Gregory A. Boyd

We read honestly, we refuse to glorify the violence, and we keep bringing the whole thing back to Jesus.

I do not think we help anybody by pretending these texts are fine.

I do not think we help anybody by building a theology of holy violence out of them.

And I do not think we help anybody by reaching for one clever explanation that makes the tension disappear.

• I think we tell the truth about what is on the page.

• I think we admit how hard this is.

• I think we pay attention to the violent world that shaped the story.

• I think we notice that Joshua itself is more complicated than people often say.

And, most importantly, we keep bringing the whole story back to Jesus.

Not because Jesus helps us dodge Scripture.

Because Jesus shows us the face of the Father.

Because Jesus is the exact imprint.

Because if God has always been love, then whatever else we say about Joshua, we cannot say more than Jesus says.

I would rather live with questions than call genocide good. I would rather admit that a text troubles me than train myself to defend the killing of children.

And I suspect many of you know that tension in your own bones.

Maybe that is not weak faith.

Maybe that is what it looks like when faith refuses to lie.

Let’s Talk

• Have you ever read a passage of Scripture that made you close your Bible and walk away for a while?

• Which explanation of the conquest stories were you taught, and why did it satisfy you or fail you?

• What changes when you place Joshua beside Jesus instead of trying to read Jesus through Joshua?

Leave a comment

Series Note

This is the third essay in a five-part series: “Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus”. In the first essay, we set the lens: Christians read the difficult texts through Jesus, not Jesus through the difficult texts. In the second essay, we read the story of the flood in Genesis through the lens of Jesus.

Tomorrow we turn to one of the Bible’s most painful stories of judgment and liberation: the death of Egypt’s firstborn. We will ask how to honor the cry of the oppressed without turning God into a sanctified version of empire, and how to keep reading Exodus with the tears of the mothers still in view.

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“This literature is best described as theological parables. Just as Jesus told parables... the authors of these stories were telling theological parables.”
— Rolf A. Jacobson and Tripp Fuller

“Over and over again, Christians have forgotten that God the Warrior became the Crucified God.”
— Peter Craigie

Did God Drown the World?

Part 2 of 5: Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

Reading the Flood Through Violence, Image-Bearing, and the Mercy of Christ

TL;DR: The flood story is hard because it stands in the shadow of mass death. But read through Jesus, it does not reveal a God who delights in violence. It reveals a God grieving a world filled with violence, preserving life, and refusing to give up on creation.

The Story We Learned Too Early

“I think it’s important to name the fact that stories like Noah and the Great Flood aren’t kid friendly. Have you ever paid attention to the covers on children’s Bibles? Usually it’s a smiling Noah, with a long white beard, on the ark, surrounded by smiling animals, with a rainbow as a backdrop. Yet, in reality, this is a story about an extinction event." — Josh Scott

Many of us met the flood as a children’s story before we were old enough to feel its horror.

The flood is often introduced to people through nursery designs and children’s bibles.

Two by two.
A rainbow.
A smiling ark.
A floating zoo.

What we usually did not meet was the terror.

We did not meet the families outside the ark.
We did not meet the animals left in the rising water.
We did not meet the emotional weight of a story in which almost every breathing creature dies.

We are not talking about an ancient version of The Little Mermaid.
It’s more like The Walking Dead or any other post-apocalyptic story.

When grown adults come back to Genesis 6 through 9 and feel sick, confused, or afraid, that is not a failure of faith. It may be the first time they ever read the story for what it really says in the bible.

Some of us were taught that to have faith means to rush past the negative feelings surrounding this story and focus on certainty:

Explain it. Defend it. Soften it.
Say something about judgment and move on.

But this is one of those places where rushing past the ugliness of the story is a form of dishonesty. And eventually that dishonesty will catch up with us.

The flood story should trouble us.
The flood story is a text of terror.

And if it terrifies you,
I do not think that means your faith is weak.
I think it may mean you still have a conscious.

Learning to Read the Story Differently

"Keep in mind, too, that folks back in those days didn’t travel much, so their idea of what the world encompassed was pretty small. If a large area was flooded out, it might well seem to them as if the whole world, at least their world, was under water." — Christian Piatt

Part of what makes the flood story so difficult is that many of us were taught to read it with the wrong questions.

We come to it asking modern questions.

How much water would that take?
Did it cover every mountain?
Could one boat hold all those animals?
Was the whole planet underwater?

And I understand why we ask those questions.
But those are not the questions the ancient writers were trying to answer.

They were not writing from outer space, looking down at a globe.

They were writing from the ground.
From memory.
From grief.
From a world trying to make sense of catastrophe.

But there is something even deeper happening here. It is not just that ancient people had a smaller view of the world, so a local flood felt global to them.

That may be true. But the biblical writers are also doing something very intentional with language.

They are using hyperbole.

Hyperbole is when we use exaggerated language to tell the emotional or theological truth of something.

We do this all the time.

“I’ve told you a thousand times.”
“Everyone was there.”
“My whole world fell apart.”

We don’t usually mean those things literally.

We mean:
This mattered.
This was overwhelming.
This felt bigger than ordinary language could describe.

That is the kind of language the flood story uses.

The writers are not trying to describe the exact physical size of the flood.
They are telling the story in a way that shows its spiritual weight.

A devastating flood becomes a cosmic story.
A regional catastrophe becomes a picture of creation itself coming undone.

Why?

Because for Israel, this was not just about rain.
It was about violence.

The world God made for life had become filled with death.
The garden had become a battlefield.
Creation was being pulled backward into chaos.

So the story uses massive language because the meaning is massive.

The waters rise.
The boundaries fail.
The ordered world slips back toward the deep.

This is creation in reverse.

So yes, the language is enormous.

But that does not mean Genesis is asking us to imagine satellite footage of a global extinction event.

It is asking us to feel the horror of a world overwhelmed by violence.

And we should feel that horror.

This story contains death on a scale that should trouble us.
We should not rush past it.
We should not explain it away too neatly.
We should not pretend it is easy.

But we also have to remember what kind of story we are reading.

Genesis is not giving us raw video footage of an ancient disaster.
It is giving us a theological interpretation.

A remembered catastrophe becomes a sacred story about what violence does to creation, and what God does when the world begins to collapse under the weight of dehumanization.

So maybe the best question is not, “Did this happen exactly like this?”

Maybe the better question is:

“What is this story trying to show us about violence, creation, and the God who refuses to let chaos have the last word?”

When Violence Fills the Earth

“Violence distresses, disrupts, and destroys the land. An ecology of violence refers to the way that violence tears at the moral bonds holding together humans and the land, and in some cases tears the entire fabric holding together God, humans, and the land.” — Matthew Lynch

The flood story begins with a diagnosis.
Something has gone terribly wrong.

The world God called good has become saturated with violence.

And violence is never just one bad thing among many.
Violence tears at the fabric of creation.

Violence does not just wound people.
Violence unravels creation itself.

Violence enters speech, memory, politics, families, imaginations.
It teaches us to stop seeing one another as sacred.
It turns neighbors into threats and suffering into collateral damage.
It hollows out the very world we were meant to tend.

In the ancient imagination, creation was not mainly about God making “stuff” out of nothing.

Creation was about God bringing order.

God takes the deep, the waters, the chaos, the formlessness, and begins to make a world where life can flourish.

A world with rhythm.
Boundaries.
Beauty.
Place.
Purpose.

A world meant to become filled with Eden is filled violence instead.

Human violence pulls creation in the opposite direction of the shalom of the garden.

Violence takes what God is ordering toward flourishing
and bends it back toward chaos.

That is why the flood feels like more than punishment.
It feels like collapse.

“Violence is anti-creation.”
— Matthew Lynch

The waters return.
The boundaries give way.
The ordered world comes undone.

In that sense, the flood is an anti-creation story.
It is creation in reverse.

The world is being returned to the waters it came from, not because God delights in destruction, but because violence has made the world unlivable.

The flood is a kind of terrible reset.
A washing away of the disorder violence has unleashed.

The Great Symbiosis vs. The Grieving Parent

“The narrative is centered in the grief of God,
whose heart knows about our hearts.
What we find there is not an angry tyrant,
but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation.”
- Walter Brueggemann

This story does not portray God as emotionally detached by the ruin of creation.

Long before Genesis was written down,
Israel’s neighbors were already telling flood stories.

These stories carried the memory of something terrible.

Something devastating.
Something region-shaping.
Something people could not forget.

But Israel did not simply repeat the stories around them.

Israel told the story differently.

In some of the older Mesopotamian flood stories, the gods are needy. They create human beings because they do not want to do the work themselves. Humans exist to serve the gods, feed the gods, and keep the whole divine system running.

The relationship is transactional.
The gods need labor.
Humans provide it.

Scholars sometimes call this the “Great Symbiosis,”
this arrangement where humans serve the gods so the gods will keep the world going.

But in those stories, humanity becomes too much.

Too many people.
Too much noise.
Too much disruption.

So the gods send a flood.

Not because the world has become violent.
Not because creation is breaking under the weight of injustice.
But because humans are irritating.

They are keeping the gods awake.

And after the flood, the gods regret what they have done, not because their hearts break over the dead, but because there is no one left to feed them with sacrifices. When the survivor offers a sacrifice, the gods gather around it “like flies.”

Genesis tells a different story.

Genesis says God is not hungry.

God does not create human beings because God needs workers, food, or religious maintenance.

God creates because God desires relationship.
God creates because love overflows.
God creates a world where life can flourish.

So when violence fills the earth,
God is not annoyed.
God is grieved.

That difference matters.

Genesis does not give us a petty god who destroys the world because people are too loud.

It gives us a God wounded by what violence has done to creation.

A God who looks at the world and sees that something precious has been terribly distorted.

Not an angry tyrant hovering above the wreckage.

A grieving parent.

A God whose heart breaks because the world made for communion has become soaked in violence.

Reading From Outside the Ark

“if our wrestling with this material is to be authentic, we must try to read Scripture ‘from below,’ with a special attention to ‘the defeated, the excluded, the non-chosen’ and ‘the stories of the outsiders.’”
— Gregory A. Boyd

Faithful reading means refusing to identify only with the rescued and never with those outside the boat.

One of the dangers in stories like this is that religious people instinctively place themselves on the safe side.

Inside the ark.
Inside the covenant.
Inside the rescue.

We imagine ourselves as Noah.

But faithful reading sometimes means refusing to stand only with the survivors. It means letting the dead remain visible. It means refusing to make peace with our own safety too quickly.

Because once we only learn to read from inside the ark,
we start doing the same thing everywhere else:

We stop seeing those outside our boat.
We bless our security without naming its cost.
We call exclusion wisdom.
We call someone else’s suffering necessary.

That habit does not stay in Bible reading.
It spills into politics, church life, and public witness.

So I think the flood story should slow us down.

Slow to justify.
Slow to defend.
Slow to turn catastrophe into righteousness.

Jesus does not make us less sensitive to suffering.
He makes us more so.

The Bow in the Clouds

“Here God laid down his bow and transforms it into a colorful sign of peace and hope – the two predominant characteristics of his covenant with creation. He would protect creation from ever again collapsing.”
— Matthew Lynch

After the flood, God’s sign is not another weapon raised against the earth, but a bow hung up in the sky.

When the waters recede,
the story feels like a beginning.
Almost like Genesis all over again.

A new start.
A new world.
A new human family.

“Be fruitful and multiply.”

But something has changed.
And the clearest sign of that change is not Noah.

It is the rainbow.

The Hebrew word for rainbow is not a child’s rainbow in the sentimental sense.

The Hebrew word for rainbow is really a bow of war.
A weapon.
A war bow hung in the clouds.

“God disarmed. And God will protect.”
— Matthew Lynch

The rainbow is not just a pretty ending.
It is a restraint.

A limit God places on God’s own power.

A promise that even though violence still lives in the human story,
God will not respond by undoing creation again.

The sign in the sky is not another threat.
It is the transformation of threat into promise.

The bow remains in the storm clouds, not far away from them.
Mercy appears in the very place that would have terrified flood survivors most.

That is the surprise.
God’s power is not shown in overwhelming force.
It is shown in self-limitation.
In choosing not to destroy.

In staying faithful to a world that is
still unfinished,
still fragile,
still capable of harm.

That is the kind of God this story is trying to show us.

Not a God who cannot act.
But a God who chooses, out of love, to hold back..

What Jesus Changes

“If the God of the Bible is true, and if God became flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ... then God would rather die by violence than commit it.”
— Rachel Held Evans

Jesus does not erase the flood story, but he tells us what kind of God Christians must finally believe we are dealing with.

Jesus does not erase the flood story. But he tells Christians what kind of God we must finally believe we are dealing with.

If I read the flood story in isolation, I can end up with an image of God that is hard to recognize in the Gospels.

But Christians do not read Genesis by the light of Genesis alone.

We read it in the light of Christ.

And in Christ we meet the God who refuses the sword.
The God who rebukes vengeance.
The God who exposes violence rather than baptizing it.
The God who enters the worst of human history in order to heal,
not to sanctify destruction.

“God is not a monster. God is love.
Jesus reveals this to us.”
— Brian Zahnd

This does not make the flood story easy.

It still leaves me with questions.
It still leaves me with sorrow.
It still leaves me standing in water that feels too deep.

But it also keeps me from settling for the worst reading of God.

I can read the flood as a dark witness to what violence does to creation.

I can read it as the collapse of a world that has turned against its own calling.

I can read it as a story where grief and judgment are tangled together in ways I cannot neatly solve.

I can read it as a theological history where God hits the “order reset” button on a world collapsing under its own brutality.

But I cannot read it as the final truth about God.

The final truth about God is Jesus.

And in Jesus, the deepest instinct of God is not retaliation, but mercy.
Not annihilation, but covenant.
Not the drowning of enemies, but the stubborn rescue of creation.

God’s final word over creation is not fury, but self-giving love.

Let’s Talk

• When you hear the flood story, do you instinctively picture the ark or the people and creatures outside it?

• How does the story change when you notice that the earth is filled with violence before the waters rise?

• What happens when you see the rainbow not only as a beautiful sign, but as a bow hung up in the clouds?

Leave a comment

Series Note

This is the second essay in a five-part series: “Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus”. In the first essay, we set the lens: Christians read the difficult texts through Jesus, not Jesus through the difficult texts.

Tomorrow we turn to the conquest stories and the question many readers cannot avoid: did God really command genocide in Canaan, and what happens when those stories are read through Jesus instead of through ancient war logic?

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When the Bible Looks Unlike Jesus

Part 1 of 5: Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

Why Christians Read the Texts of Terror Through Christ

TL;DR: Some of the Bible’s most violent passages have terrorized faithful people for a long time. The answer is not to pretend they are easy, or to throw Scripture away. The Christian answer is to let Jesus be our clearest window into God. If God looks like Jesus, then we do not read Jesus through the texts of terror. We read the texts of terror through Jesus.

The Question I had Been Dreading

When my daughter Rebecca was five years old, the question came that I had been quietly dreading.

Not the birds-and-bees question.

The flood question.

Rebecca is our oldest child. She is a pastor now, which still makes me smile when I think about how early she was already asking the real questions.

At the time, she was just a little girl in the church we were pastoring. Her classroom was decorated with Noah’s ark murals. Bright animals. Smiling giraffes. Floating pairs of every kind. The whole thing had the usual feel of a nursery story.

And then she listened closely enough to realize what the story was actually about.

She came to me, looked straight into my eyes, and asked:

“Daddy, is that true? Did God flood the world and kill all those people?”

I remember the feeling of that moment in my body.

Because suddenly the question was no longer about ancient interpretation or theological frameworks or how to handle a difficult text in seminary.

It was about whether I could look into the face of my child and tell her that this is what God is like.

The Knot in my Stomach

Sometimes the trouble we feel in Scripture is not a lack of faith.
Sometimes it is the heart refusing to make peace with cruelty.

There are parts of the Bible that faithful people read with a knot in their stomach.

They read certain passages and something in them tightens
because the God on the page seems cruel.
Violent.
Unrecognizable.

The flood.
Jericho.
Egypt’s firstborn.
Amalek.

A lot of us were taught what to do next.

Defend it.
Explain it.
Call it justice.

Say God’s ways are higher than ours.
Say our discomfort is a modern problem.
Say faith means accepting it without flinching.

But that answer has not brought peace to everyone.

For some people it has brought fear.
Or confusion.
Or a quiet grief they have carried for years.

"Some of us read the Scriptures—especially the OT—with embarrassment, if not outrage, because we find so much of it unfitting, disgusting, even wicked. We wonder how this could be the work of the God of Jesus Christ"
— Chris E.W. Green

Because beneath all of this is a question that is not academic at all.

If this is what God is really like,
then what are we supposed to do with Jesus?

That is the question that is critically important to me.

I do not want to lie about what is in the Bible.
And I do not want to lie about Jesus either.

Some of us have been told that mature faith means never wrestling.

I do not believe that.

Jacob was blessed in the struggle.
He limped away, but he was blessed.

God gave the Jacob the name “Israel”,
which means “one who wrestles with God".

The name itself tells the truth about faith.

Faith is not blind obedience.
It is often struggle, persistence, honest questioning,
and refusing to let go until the blessing comes.

I think a lot of people need permission to hear that again.

You are allowed to tell the truth about the texts that trouble you.

Go ahead, wrestle with God.
Wrestle with the Bible.

And if you walk away with more ache than answers,
you are still in the company of the faithful.

Jesus is Not a Side Note

For Christians, Jesus is not one voice among many.
Jesus is the clearest revelation of who God has always been.

At the center of Christian faith is not a theory about the Bible.
At the center of Christian faith is a person, Jesus Christ.

That does not make the Bible unimportant.
It tells us why the Bible matters.

Scripture bears witness.
Scripture leads us.
Scripture forms us.
But it does all of that by bringing us to Christ.

• Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

• Paul says Christ is “the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15)

• Hebrews says he is “the exact imprint” of God’s being. (Hebrews 1:3)

That means when we want to know what God is like, we do not begin with Pharaoh’s defeat. or Joshua’s battles, or Samuel’s rage.

We begin with Jesus.

We begin with the one who heals instead of crushing.
The one who forgives enemies instead of calling down fire on them.
The one who would rather die than kill.
The one who reveals divine power not as coercion, but as self-giving love.

“While we are searching the Bible to find out what God is like, the Bible is all the while resolutely pointing us to Jesus.”
— Brad Jersak

If Jesus is the clearest revelation of God,
then we cannot use violent portrayals of God to correct him.

We cannot make Jesus less merciful so that older texts feel easier to defend.

We cannot turn the Sermon on the Mount into an embarrassing exception clause.

If God looks like Jesus, then Jesus has to be the lens.

The clearest window into God's character is Jesus Christ, and therefore, all Scripture should be read through Him.

This way of reading is not a modern escape hatch. It reaches deep into the church’s oldest instincts about how Scripture is read and fulfilled.

Scripture is Sacred, and Scripture is Human

The Bible tells the truth, but it often tells the truth through human voices that do not yet see God with full clarity.

I think one reason people panic here is that they assume there are only two choices.

Either every portrait of God in Scripture must be defended in exactly the same way, or the whole thing collapses.

But the Bible itself is not flat like that.

The Bible is a library, not a machine.

It contains law, poetry, prophecy, lament, memory, protest, argument, parable, apocalypse, grief, and praise.

It sounds less like a dictation transcript and more like a long, holy struggle of people trying to understand their experience of God in the middle of history.

The people who wrote Scripture did not live outside culture.

They lived inside ancient worlds where every nation imagined its god as a warrior, where violence was tied to survival, where conquest was praised, where enemies were easily turned into symbols of evil.

The biblical writers were not dropped from heaven free of all that.
They were formed inside their culture.

And yet God did not abandon them.

God met them there.

This is where the old Christian idea of divine accommodation helps me.

God stoops.
God meets people where they are.

God works patiently within
human limitation,
human fear,
human stubbornness,
and human misunderstanding.

God does not wait until people see clearly before beginning a relationship with them.

“The Bible is a product of God’s accommodation. God condescended to human limitations by self-communicating using our language and cultural context, as this is the only way human beings would be able to understand God’s communication”
— Karen R. Keen

And as Greg Boyd notes, many portraits of God in Scripture reflect that same accommodation. To the degree that they do, they show not so much the way God is in God’s own life, but the way God appears to people within their limits.

That does not mean everything said about God is equally clear.
It means God is faithful enough to keep speaking through people who are still learning.

That is not a threat to Scripture for me. It is part of its holiness.

Because what we find in the Bible is not polished religion pretending humanity has no fingerprints on it. We find a God willing to stay in covenant with real people, in real history, and keep leading them forward.

Jonah Knows More About Us Than We Like

Our deepest struggle is not only with violent texts. Our deepest struggle is with a God whose love reaches people we do not want loved.

This is where Jonah comes in.

Jonah is often treated like a children’s story with a fish in it.
But it is a fierce little book. And one reason it matters so much here
is that Jonah exposes a tension many of us still carry.

Jonah does not want Nineveh spared.

He knows they are violent.
He knows they have done evil.
He knows what they are capable of.

And what terrifies him is not only their cruelty. It is the possibility that God might be compassionate toward them.

That is the scandal.

In Jonah, Scripture becomes a mirror.

We see how badly we want mercy for ourselves and judgment for everyone we fear.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer suggests rather than viewing the text as hopelessly flawed, these violent texts can function "as a mirror that reveals . . . our habit of projecting our own un-Christlike images onto God, especially in the form of religious violence"

Jonah wants the kind of God many people still want.
A God who is tender toward us and severe toward them.
A God who blesses our people and crushes our enemies.
A God whose love has borders.

But Jonah runs straight into the terrible mercy of God.

God loves the people Jonah hates.
God grieves the people Jonah would rather see burned.

God does not excuse evil.
But neither does God stop being God in the presence of evil.

And because God is love,
God keeps leaning toward mercy in ways Jonah cannot stand.

I think this is a sticking point for many readers of violent texts.

We do not only want to know whether God is loving.
We want to know whether God will reserve that love for the right people.
We want assurance that the people
we fear, or blame, or condemn
will not receive too much compassion.

Jonah reveals how deep that instinct runs.

Jonah also reveals why Jesus matters so much.

Because in Jesus we see the God Jonah feared.
The God who loves enemies.
The God who tells stories where the outsider becomes neighbor.
The God who prays forgiveness over his executioners.
The God whose mercy keeps breaking the fences we build around it.

Why This Matters Right Now

How we read violent texts does not stay on the page. It forms our imagination, our mercy, and our witness.

This is not just about solving a Bible problem.

Interpretation forms communities.

Interpretation teaches people what kind of God they are dealing with.

And the God we think we worship is always shaping the kind of people we become.

If the God at the center of our faith is fundamentally violent, then violence will always be waiting in the wings of our theology.

Maybe dressed up as justice.
Maybe softened with religious language.
Maybe aimed only at the people we call wicked.
But it will be there.

That is part of why these texts matter right now.

They have been used to justify conquest, slavery, abuse, colonialism, Christian nationalism, and all kinds of cruelty wrapped in holy language.

And Scripture is still being used to justify things that look nothing like Jesus.

People are still blessing what Jesus would have wept over.

So we have to read carefully.

And I do not mean carefully in a cold, technical way. I mean carefully with our whole formation at stake.

If a reading of Scripture makes us less merciful, less humane, less honest, less like Jesus, then something has gone wrong.

That does not mean we dismiss the violent texts.

It means we refuse to read them in a way that asks us to betray Christ.

The Way Forward

Faithfulness is not defending violence in God’s name.
Faithfulness is reading Scripture in the light of Jesus.

So this is the invitation for the week:

Abide with Jesus as we stay honest about Scripture.

Abide means:

Remain.
Stay.
Keep company with him.
Make your home there.

Stay with Scripture.
Stay with the ache.
Stay with Jesus.

Abide.

Let the violent texts be difficult.
Let them trouble us.
Let them expose the places where religion has made peace with cruelty.
Let them show us how often human beings project vengeance into the mouth of God.

And then let Jesus speak.

Let Jesus show us the face of God again.

Let Jesus teach us how to read toward mercy, truth, enemy love, healing, and the kind of holiness that does not need a sword.

As Karen Keen writes, if we know a Creator who kneels down and washes our feet, we will know how to read and apply the Bible.

I do not think that weakens the Bible at all.

I think it is taking the Christ and the Bible more seriously than a flat-reading.

And I think it may be the only way many wounded people can keep reading it honestly.

Maybe that is where faith begins again.

Faith begins in the trembling decision to trust that God is at least as beautiful as Jesus.

Let’s Talk

1. Which violent biblical text has been hardest for you to read honestly?

2. Have you ever felt pressure to defend a passage that your conscience could not make peace with?

3. What changes when you begin with Jesus, instead of beginning with the hardest texts?

Leave a comment

Series Note: Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

This is the first essay in a five-part series on violent Old Testament texts. Today sets the lens for the week. The next four essays will sit directly with four of the passages that trouble readers most: the flood, the conquest texts, the death of Egypt’s firstborn, and the command to wipe out the Amalekites.

Tomorrow we will sit with the flood story. Not to explain away its terror, but to ask what kind of God we are really seeing there, and what changes when we read that story through grief, violence, covenant, and the mercy revealed in Christ.

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"Throughout Scripture, God mercifully stoops to accommodate people's nonideal circumstances. This divine condescension is a profound expression of God's humility and love, and should influence a cross-centered approach to interpreting divine violence"
— Greg Boyd

NEW SERIES: Violent Texts Through the Lens of Jesus

Wrestling with the Bible Without Letting Go of Christ

TL;DR: This week we are going to sit with some of the most troubling texts in the Bible. Not to explain them away. Not to throw Scripture out. But to ask a hard and necessary question: if Jesus is the clearest revelation of God, how do we read passages that seem to show us a God who looks unlike him?

Series Note: This is the preview essay for a five-part series on violent Old Testament texts. Over the next week, we will move from the big question to four of the passages readers struggle with most: the flood, the conquest texts, the death of Egypt’s firstborn, and the command to wipe out the Amalekites.

Reading the Old Testament for the First Time

This series is not really about finding the correct interpretations.
This series is about whether wounded people can still trust God.

I remember reading the Old Testament for the first time as a brand new Christian and feeling deeply uncomfortable with the violence attributed to God.

I did not know what to do with those texts of terror.

Was I supposed to ignore them?
Was I supposed to assume that whatever troubled me must simply be my lack of understanding?
Was I supposed to tell myself that God’s ways are higher than mine and leave it there?
Was I supposed to question Scripture itself?

The questions kept coming.

So I took them to the pastor of the church we just started attending.

I still remember the look on his face. It was the look of someone who did not really want the question he had just been handed.

I asked him:

What do we do when parts of the Bible seem to show us a God who looks unlike Jesus?

His answer was the answer a lot of us have heard in one form or another:

“Don’t doubt what God does. Just trust God. He has a plan we don’t fully understand, and the violence must have been necessary. One day, when we get to heaven, we’ll get our answers. Until then, trust God.”

At the time, I was too new to realize how many people have heard some version of that same response.

I was also too new to realize how quickly an answer like that can shut a person down.

A lot of people do not feel safe asking questions like these because they are afraid the answer will simply be, “Don’t ask. Just trust.”

But the question I asked that day is not a strange question.
It is a question many ordinary Christians have carried for years.

Some have carried it in shame.
Some have carried it in fear.
Some have carried it until they finally closed the Bible altogether
because they could not keep pretending the problem was not there.

I get that.

Because the issue is not only whether a difficult passage can be explained.
The issue is whether the God we are being asked to trust is actually good.

And if the God on the page sometimes looks cruel, tribal, or violently certain,
then the struggle is not academic anymore.

The struggle becomes personal.

Why This Series Matters

This is bigger than a Bible problem.
It is about the kind of God people think stands at the center of Christianity.

Interpretation is never just about ideas.

The way we read Scripture shapes our picture of God.
And our picture of God shapes
the kind of faith we live with,
the kind of church we build,
and the kinds of violence we excuse.

If the God at the center of our faith is fundamentally violent,
then violence will never be far from our theology.

Maybe softened.
Maybe dressed up as justice.
Maybe aimed only at the people we fear or call evil.
But it will be there.

And violence always breeds more violence.

People have used violent readings of Scripture to justify conquest, slavery, colonialism, Christian nationalism, abuse, exclusion, and cruelty in holy language.

So this week is not only about the most difficult texts.

It is about the damage done when bad interpretation is treated as gospel.
And it is about whether Jesus still gets to tell us what God is like.

The Lens We Will Use

Christians do not read Jesus through the hardest texts.
We read the hardest texts through Jesus.

This series is not:

• Not an attempt to get rid of the Old Testament.

• Not an attempt to shrink Scripture down to the verses we already like.

• Not an attempt to avoid wrestling.

This series is an attempt to read as Christians.

That means beginning with Jesus.

Jesus is not one voice among many.
He is the image of the invisible God.
He is the one who says,

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
— John 14:9

“Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory
and the exact imprint of God’s very being”
— Hebrews 1:3

Jesus is the exact imprint of who God has always been.

So when we come to texts that seem to authorize violence,
the question is whether that reading sounds like Jesus.

That will be the lens for the whole week.

Not because the Jesus lens makes interpretation easy.
Because it keeps Christ at the center.

The Deeper Problem Jonah Exposes

Many of us do not only struggle with violent texts.
We struggle with a God whose mercy reaches the wrong kind of people.

Jonah is not one of the four main texts we are focusing on this week,
but he is standing in the background of the whole series.

Because Jonah knows something about us.

He wants mercy for his own people.
He wants judgment for Nineveh.
He does not only fear Assyria’s violence.
He fears God’s compassion.

That tension is still alive in us.

We want a God who is loving to us and severe toward them.
We want a God who understands why our people need mercy
and why our enemies need destruction.
We want a God whose love has borders.

But in Jesus, we meet the God Jonah feared.

The God who loves enemies.
The God who keeps leaning toward mercy.
The God who does not stop being love in the presence of evil.

That is one reason this series matters.
Beneath the violent texts lies a more searching question:

Do we actually want the God Jesus reveals?

Where We Are Headed This Week

Essay 1 (Monday 4.27.26) - When the Bible Looks Unlike Jesus

We’ll begin with the lens itself: why Christians read the hardest texts through Jesus, and why that is not a betrayal of Scripture but one of the deepest ways of honoring it.

Essay 2 (Tuesday 4.28.26) - Did God Drown the World?

We’ll sit with the flood story and ask whether it reveals a God who delights in destruction, or a world collapsing under violence while God still preserves life and covenant.

Essay 3 (Wednesday 4.29.26) - Did God Command Genocide in Canaan?

We’ll turn to the conquest texts and ask whether Christians are really called to defend genocide in order to stay faithful.

Essay 4 (Thursday 4.30.26) - Did God Kill Egypt’s Firstborn?

We’ll face one of Scripture’s most painful stories, where liberation and grief stand in the same room, and ask how to honor the cry of the oppressed without turning God into a sanctified version of empire.

Essay 5 (Friday 5.1.26) - Did God Really Say to Wipe Out the Amalekites?

We’ll end with 1 Samuel 15, the passage that may force the whole question into the open: what do we do when a text seems to flatly collide with Jesus?

My hope for the week is this:

• I hope wounded readers feel less alone.

• I hope frightened readers feel permission to be honest.

• I hope people who love Scripture but have struggled with these texts discover that they do not have to choose between Jesus and their conscience.

The Invitation

The invitation this week is not to certainty.
The invitation this week is to wrestle with God and the Scriptures.

So this is the invitation.

Stay.
Stay with Scripture.
Stay with the ache.
Stay with Jesus.

Let the difficult texts be difficult.
Let them trouble us.
Let them expose the places where religion has made peace with cruelty.

And then let Christ show us the face of God again.

Wrestling may be the only way some of us can keep reading honestly.

And if you walk through this week with a few more questions than answers,
that may not mean the series failed.

It may simply mean you wrestled all week and ended up with a limp.

Let’s Talk

• What Bible passage has most made you wonder what kind of God you are being asked to trust?

• Have you ever felt pressure to defend a text that troubled you deeply?

• What would it mean for you to stay with Scripture without shutting down the heart?

Leave a comment

Next in the Series

Next we will begin with the lens itself: why Christians read the difficult texts through Jesus, and why that is not a betrayal of Scripture but one of the deepest ways of honoring it.

See you tomorrow morning for Essay 1: When the Bible Looks Unlike Jesus

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Why Have Christians Used Theology to Exclude People?

An Open and Relational Response to Fear, Power, and the Misuse of God

TL;DR: Christians have often used theology to exclude because fear, control, and certainty can feel safer than love. When God is imagined as controlling, exclusion can seem justified. But if God is relational love, then exclusion is always a distortion. God is always moving toward connection, healing, and restoration. Any theology that consistently pushes people out is already out of step with the heart of God.

Toxic Theology

This is not just a question “out there.”
It is not about those Christians.
It is about us.

About our history.
Our traditions.
Our instincts.

Because if we are honest, theology has not only been used to heal.

Theology has also been used to wound.

To draw lines.
To gate-keep belonging.
To justify silence in the face of harm.

And sometimes, to do all of that while believing we were being faithful.
That is the part we have to face.

The Fear Beneath the Certainty

At its core, exclusion is rarely about clarity.

Exclusion is about fear.

Fear of being wrong.
Fear of losing control.
Fear of a world that feels unstable and unpredictable.

Theology can become a way to manage fear.

If we can define God clearly,
if we can draw boundaries tightly,
if we can decide who is “in” and who is “out,”
then maybe the world feels more secure.

But there is a cost.

A theology built to eliminate uncertainty will almost always eliminate people too.

Because real people are complex.
Messy.
Unfinished.

Just like us.

When God is Imagined as Controlling

The way we imagine God shapes the way we treat people.

If God is controlling, then control becomes holy.
If God chooses some and rejects others, then exclusion can feel like obedience.

But what if that picture of God is part of the problem?

Open and relational theology offers a different starting point.

Not control. But love.

Thomas Jay Oord’s open and relational theology presses this point:
if God is love, then God’s power is not controlling power.

Oord describes God’s love as inherently uncontrolling,
a love that works through influence rather than control.

If God does not control, then exclusion cannot be justified as “God’s way.”

The Illusion of Purity

Sometimes exclusion is not just about fear.
Exclusion is about purity.

The desire to stay clean.
To stay separate.
To avoid what we have been taught is unworthy or unsafe.

But when you look at Jesus, something shifts.

He does not avoid impurity.
He moves toward it.

Toward lepers.
Toward sinners.
Toward those labeled unclean.

And instead of being contaminated, he brings healing.

Which means holiness is not about distance.
Holiness is about presence.

The Role of Power

Theology has often been shaped not just by sincere belief,
but by those who had the authority to define it.

And power has a way of protecting itself.

Exclusion becomes useful when it:

• preserves systems

• maintains hierarchy

• avoids disruption

History bears this out.

Scripture has been used to justify slavery.
To silence women.
To exclude entire groups of people made in the image of God.

And we still see it today.

In the ways theology is used to exclude LGBTQ+ people.
To draw lines around who belongs.
To decide who is worthy of full dignity.

Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace
is built around the moral and theological danger of exclusion,
especially the ways communities define themselves by casting others out.

History tell us that Volf is correct.
Exclusion is dangerous.

The Tragedy of Misusing Scripture

This is where it becomes especially painful.
Because many of these exclusions were rooted in the Bible.
Or at least, in certain readings of it.

But Scripture is not a flat rulebook.
It is a story.

A long, unfolding witness to a God
who keeps moving toward people
even when they misunderstand that movement.

At its center is Jesus.

And Jesus does something unsettling.

Jesus consistently moves toward the people others excluded.

Tax collectors.
Sinners.
Women.
Outsiders.
Enemies.

Not to affirm harm.
But to restore dignity.

To heal.
To reconnect.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote:

“What has not been assumed has not been healed.”
— St. Gregory of Nazianzus

A gospel that excludes is a gospel that refuses healing.

Jesus is the Clearest Revelation of God

Jesus is not just an example of inclusion.

Jesus is the clearest revelation of what God has always been like.

And what do we see?

Not coercion.
Not control.
Not exclusion.

We see:

• compassion

• healing

• self-giving love

Even when faced with violence,
Jesus does not return it.

He absorbs it.
He exposes it.
He refuses to become it.

Which means any theology that consistently excludes
has drifted from the clearest picture we have of God.

Why We Keep Repeating the Pattern

Even knowing all of this, the pattern continues.

Why?

Because exclusion is easier than love.

Love requires humility.
Listening.
Change.

Love asks us to loosen our grip on certainty.
To admit we might be wrong.
To stay in relationship when it would be easier to walk away.

And that is difficult.

Especially when we have been taught that being right is more important than being loving.

A More Faithful Way Forward

If God is relational, then faith is relational too.

Which means theology should not be a weapon.
Theology should be a bridge.
A way of helping us participate more fully
in the love that is already at work in the world.

Thomas Jay Oord defines love:

“To love is to act intentionally and with sympathetic response to God and others to promote overall well‑being.”
— Thomas Jay Oord, Pluriform Love

So the question changes.

Not: Who is in and who is out?
But:

• Where is love being invited here?

• Who is being left out of the story?

• What would it look like to move toward them instead of away?

Who do I Exclude?

Before we rush to fix the Church,
there is a quieter place to begin.

In our own hearts.

• Where do I feel the pull to exclude?

• Who is hardest for me to make room for?

• What fears are shaping that response?

Because this is not just a theological issue.
It is a spiritual issue.

Christians have used theology to exclude people for many reasons.
Fear.
Power.
Certainty.

But none of those are the final word.

The final word is found in a God who does not control, but loves.
A God who does not shut doors, but keeps opening them.

And if we are honest,
any theology that consistently excludes
in the name of that God
deserves to be questioned.

Because God is always moving toward people.
Always healing.
Always inviting.
Always making room.

Love can reshape not just what we believe, but how we belong.

Let’s Talk

• Where have you seen theology used to exclude people?

• How were you taught to think about “who belongs”? Has that changed?

• What would it look like for love, not fear or certainty, to shape how you see others?

Leave a comment

What Should We Wrestle With Next?

This series is shaped by real questions.

What is a question about God, faith, or life
that you’ve carried…
but never felt safe enough to ask out loud?

There’s a good chance it will become part of this series.

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Discipleship is about Becoming More Fully Human

Following Jesus as the path into a more whole and compassionate life

TL;DR: Discipleship, at its heart, is not about adopting a label but entering a process of becoming more fully human. Christians see Jesus, the Human One, as the clearest picture of that life. To follow his way is to grow into love, presence, and connection. An invitation that remains open to anyone drawn toward a more humane way of being.

Where We Begin

The word discipleship can land in very different ways.

For some, it feels like home.
For others, it carries weight or distance.

So it helps to begin here.

Before religion.
Before identity.

With something we all share.

The quiet, ongoing question
of what it means to be human.

Whether we name it or not,
we are always being formed.

By what we pay attention to.
By what we fear.
By what we love.

Our lives are not static.

They are being shaped,
slowly and continuously,
into a certain kind of person.

The question is not whether we are being formed.

It is whether that formation is moving us
toward love,
or away from it.

What if all of us have been created by Love and for Love?

Jesus, the Human One

Within the Christian story,
Jesus often refers to himself as the Son of Man.
A phrase that is better translated as the Human One.

Not simply a title.
But a clue.

I believe that in Jesus
we see humanity as it was intended.

A life rooted in love.
Attentive to God.
Open to others.
Courageous in the face of suffering.
Gentle with the vulnerable.
Uncompromising in dignity.

For those within the faith,
Jesus is more than example.
But he is never less.

Jesus shows us what a fully human life can look like.

To follow Jesus is not only to believe something about him.
To follow Jesus is to walk a way shaped by him.

A way that moves toward compassion.
A way that resists dehumanization in all its forms.
A way that holds space for healing, justice, and mercy.

For Christians, this is discipleship.
For others, it may simply be recognized as a deeply human path.

Either way, the invitation remains.

To become more patient.
More present.
More attuned to the sacredness of others.
More loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, disciplined.
To become more fully human.

Discipleship is about becoming fully human, not becoming more religious.

Becoming Together

This kind of becoming does not happen alone.
This kind of becoming unfolds in community.

In shared meals.
In honest conversations.
In acts of care and repair.

The Christian tradition calls this the church.
At its best, it is not a gatekeeping institution
but a living, imperfect community
learning how to be human together.

At the center of this way is a simple but demanding truth.

A life being formed in love
becomes a life given for others.

Hospitality grows.
Compassion deepens.
We begin to notice who is hurting.
And we move toward them.

This is not about moral achievement.
It is about transformation.

The slow reshaping of a life
into something more open,
more generous,
more alive.

Jesus doesn’t call us to join a religious institution.
Jesus calls us to be part of the New Humanity community.
A community of people becoming more fully human together.

The Deeper Thread

Some streams of the Christian tradition speak of this
as returning to union with God.

That to be truly human
is to live connected
to the Source of life itself.

Others may describe this differently.

As alignment.
As wholeness.
As integration.

The language may vary.
But the longing feels shared.

To follow Jesus is a sacred calling.

And at the same time,
the way he lived and loved
points toward something deeply human.

Something recognizable.
Something needed.

Not a narrowing of life.
But an opening to life.

To follow Jesus is the journey of becoming fully human.

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• What does “becoming more fully human” mean to you right now?

• Where do you see invitations toward greater compassion or presence in your daily life?

• What practices, relationships, or rhythms are shaping the kind of person you are becoming?

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The Love That Holds Us Together

A Theology of Love: John Wesley’s Sermons for Today (Sermon #20)

Original Wesley Sermon: The Lord Our Righteousness

TL;DR: Righteousness is not something we achieve so God will love us. Righteousness is what love heals in us because God already does. Christ is our righteousness. Which means we are held before we are healed. And because we are held, healing can begin.

Series Note: This series listens to John Wesley as a pastor for today, translating his sermons for a world still shaped by fear, exhaustion, and longing for healing. The goal is not to preserve his language unchanged, but to recover his conviction that grace must be experienced, and that love must take shape in how we live.

Trying to Be Enough

I remember when I moved from being a youth pastor to becoming a senior pastor in the early 2000s.

As a youth pastor, I was allowed to be less formal.

Fun.
Silly.
A little unconventional.

That was part of the job.

But when I became the senior pastor,
I felt this quiet expectation to become
something else.
Someone else.

More serious.
More polished.
More eloquent.
More “holy.”

More like whatever image people had in their minds when they heard the word pastor.

And the problem was,
I still felt like the same guy.
I was exactly the same guy.

I didn’t suddenly become more formal.
I didn’t suddenly become more impressive.
I didn’t suddenly feel more righteous.

I was just me.

And because I was just me, I felt like an imposter.
I thought that to be enough, I had to fake it.
I had to perform a version of myself that looked more like a “real pastor.”
Because surely, if people got to know the real me, they wouldn’t like what they found.

I was wrong about that.

Over time, when I finally let people meet the real me,
most people loved me better that way.

But before I learned that,
I wounded myself trying to become someone I was never called to be.

And I wonder how many of us have done the same thing with faith.

We were told righteousness meant becoming something more impressive.
More polished.
More controlled.
More spiritually acceptable.

But what if righteousness was never about pretending to be someone else?

When Righteousness Becomes Pressure

For a lot of us,
righteousness doesn’t feel like good news.
It feels like pressure.

Am I doing enough?
Praying enough?
Changing enough?
Growing enough?

Am I becoming the kind of person God is pleased with?

And even when we are trying,
it never quite feels like enough.

There is always one more thing to fix.
One more failure to carry.
One more reason to wonder if we fall short.

This is the quiet burden many people carry.
And carrying it leads to exhaustion.

And this is exactly where Wesley speaks.

Christ is Our Righteousness

Wesley does not begin with our effort.
He begins with Christ.

“The righteousness of Christ
is the whole and sole foundation of all our hope.”
— John Wesley

Not our performance.
Not our progress.
Not our ability to get everything right.

Christ.

This is the paradigm shift we need:

We are held before we are healed.

Because if our hope depends on our spiritual life holding together, it will collapse.

We know ourselves too well.

Our patience wears thin.
Our attention drifts.
Our love falters.
Our fear rises.

But Wesley insists:

Christ is our righteousness before we become righteous.

Which means:
Grace does not begin when we finally become enough.
Grace begins where we actually are.

What Righteousness Really Means

The word itself can mislead us.

Righteousness sounds like moral performance.

Like being correct.
Proper.
Clean.

But in Scripture, righteousness is much bigger than that.

In Hebrew and Greek,
the words we often translate as
righteousness and justice
are deeply connected.

Sometimes they are two ways of naming the same reality.

So righteousness is not only about private morality.
Righteousness is about right relationship.

Right relationship with God.
Right relationship with neighbor.
Right relationship within ourselves.
Right relationship with creation.

Righteousness is love set right.

And justice is what righteousness looks like when it becomes visible.

That means righteousness is never just inward.

If it does not restore people,
if it does not repair harm,
if it does not move toward mercy,
if it does not make us more faithful neighbors,

it may not be righteousness at all.

Righteousness is not religious performance.
It is love becoming right relationship.

Righteousness as Healing

The early Church helps us here.

They did not primarily describe sin as rule-breaking.

They described sin as sickness.
A fragmentation of the soul.
A disordered way of living.
A life turned inward in fear.

So if sin is sickness,
then righteousness is not achievement.

Righteousness is healing.

Not something we prove.
Something we receive.

And not healing for us alone.

Healing for our relationships.
Healing for our communities.
Healing for the world God loves.

Because if righteousness and justice belong together,
then the healing of the heart
and the healing of the world
cannot be separated.

A healed heart moves toward a healed world.

Jesus Shows Us What This Looks Like

If we want to know what righteousness actually is,
we don’t have to define it.

We can watch Jesus.

Jesus touches the unclean.
Jesus eats with those others avoid.
Jesus forgives from the cross.
Jesus refuses to dehumanize.

Jesus welcomes the excluded.
Jesus confronts the powerful.
Jesus restores dignity.
Jesus makes mercy visible.

Jesus is not anxious about being righteous.

Jesus is rooted in love.
And everything flows from there.

Righteousness looks like love in motion.

Which means if our version of righteousness
makes us harsh, closed, or fearful,
something has gone wrong.

Because:

Righteousness that does not look like Jesus is not righteousness.

Not Just For Us, But In Us

Wesley refuses to stop at comfort.

Because grace is not only pardon.
Grace is healing.

He saw people use “Christ is our righteousness”
as a way to avoid transformation.
As if nothing needed to change.

But Wesley knew better.
Because if Christ truly meets us,
something begins to be transformed.

Christ does not only hold us.
Christ begins to heal us.

And as Christ heals us,
righteousness becomes more than a word.

Righteousness becomes a life.

A life of mercy.
A life of repair.
A life of justice.
A life shaped by love.

The Life We Are Being Drawn Into

The early Church had a word for this.

Theosis.

Participation in the life of God.
Sharing in the love of Christ.

Growing into Love.
Being shaped by Love.
Living from Love.

This is not about becoming something artificial.
It is about becoming more fully human.

More whole.
More open.
More alive.

We are not trying to become someone else.
We are learning to live from the life of Christ within us.

And the life of Christ always moves outward.

Toward the wounded.
Toward the excluded.
Toward the poor.
Toward the enemy.
Toward creation groaning for renewal.

Because

Christ’s righteousness is never separated from Christ’s justice.
Justice is love restoring what has been broken.

Where This Becomes Real

This is not just some theological idea.
This is real and it shows up in ordinary moments:

The moment you want to react…
and something in you pauses.

The moment you want to shut down…
and something in you stays open.

The moment you want to protect yourself…
and something in you chooses love instead.

These small shifts in our attitude and behavior
are signs that Christ in us,
is healing is from the inside out.

Union.
Communion.
Wholeness.
Healing.
Salvation.
Righteousness.

Christ in us, the hope of Glory.

And it shows up beyond us too.

In apologies offered.
In relationships repaired.
In dignity protected.
In neighbors defended.
In wounds tended.
In systems questioned.
In mercy practiced.

Righteousness is personal.
But it is never private.

When Righteousness Gets Twisted

We have to be honest about this.

Righteousness has often been used as a weapon.

To shame.
To exclude.
To control.
To divide.

But Jesus never used righteousness that way.

He used it to restore.

To welcome.
To heal.
To dignify.

So if righteousness creates distance instead of connection…
If it makes us cruel instead of compassionate…
If it makes us obsessed with being correct while ignoring who is being harmed…
It is not the righteousness of Christ.

It is fear wearing religious language.

Everyone Belongs

Righteousness is not what makes you belong.

You already belong.

From God’s side, that has never been in question.

Righteousness is what begins to grow as we awaken to that belonging.

As we trust it.
As we live from it.

Righteousness is not the condition of belonging.
It is the healing that grows from belonging.

Being Made Whole

Maybe the question has never been:

“Am I righteous enough?”

Maybe the deeper question is:

“Am I willing to be held while love makes me whole?”

Because what we see in Jesus isn’t pressure or performance.
We see Presence.

The kind of presence that holds us steady when we cannot hold ourselves.
The kind of love that tells the truth without letting go.
The kind of grace that does not leave us where we are
but never begins by rejecting us.

Christ is our righteousness.

And Christ’s righteousness is not cold or formal or distant.

It is mercy.
It is justice.
It is healing.
It is love setting things right.

And in Christ,
slowly,
honestly,
patiently,
we are being made whole.

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Let’s Talk

• Where has righteousness felt like pressure in your life?

• What changes when you hear, “You are held before you are healed”?

• Where do you see healing beginning, even in small ways?

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The Vineyard Restored

Part 5 of 5 – The Vineyard We Were Meant to Be

Where This Story Is Going

TL;DR: The story doesn’t end with a broken vineyard or a valley of dry bones. In Jesus, the true vine, and through the Spirit, life returns. That life begins to form a new kind of humanity. The end of the story is restoration. A new creation where the garden finally grows to fill the earth.

Series Note: This week we’re tracing a thread that runs through all of Scripture. From the garden in Genesis to the vineyard in Isaiah, from dry bones in Ezekiel to the words of Jesus, this is a story about fruit and what it means to be human. Not just what we believe, but the kind of life we are created to live. And now, in Jesus, we begin to see that life fully revealed.

“I’ll Fly Away”: The Story I Inherited

I grew up singing this song.

“I’ll fly away, oh glory… I’ll fly away.”

It was catchy.
It seemed to be a church favorite.

One day, this life would be over.
The pain, the struggle, the weight of it all.

And I would leave.

Fly away to heaven.
Somewhere above all of this.
Somewhere better.

And for a long time, that was the story I held onto.

This world was temporary.
Heaven was somewhere else.
And the goal was to get there.

Over time, though, that story started to feel… thin.
Incomplete in its vision.

When you start paying attention to Scripture,
you begin to notice something surprising.

The story doesn’t end with us leaving the earth.
The story ends with heaven coming here.

“See, the home of God is among mortals.”
— Revelation 21:3 (NRSVue)

Restoration.
New creation.

Writers like N. T. Wright helped me see this more clearly.

The end of the story is not floating somewhere in the clouds.
The end of the story is far more grounded than that.

More physical.
More embodied.
More real.

A new creation.

Heaven and earth coming together.
Not as separate places, but as one.
Union.
Communion.

Resurrected bodies.
Restored relationships.
A world where everything broken is made whole.

The garden of the beginning is spreading until it fills everything.

And once you see that, something changes.

Hope starts to feel different:
Less about leaving and more about what God is bringing.
Less about escape and more about healing.
Less about someday far away, and more about a future that is already beginning to grow.

We Know This isn’t the End

You don’t need someone to explain that the world is broken.

You can feel it deep in our dry bones.

In the world around you.
In relationships that don’t quite hold together the way they should.
Some days, even in your own body.

There’s a quiet awareness most of us carry,
that things aren’t what they were meant to be.

Shalom is torn.
The beautiful tapestry has frayed.
Image-bearers slip through the cracks.

Things are not the way they ought to be.

And over the past few days,
we’ve confessed the truth about life as we know it.

• We’ve seen the vineyard when the fruit turns bitter.

• We’ve stood in the valley where everything feels dry and lifeless.

• We’ve felt what it’s like when connection is lost and life doesn’t seem to flow the way it should.

And even after all of that, there’s still a deeper question underneath it:

Is this where the story ends?
Is this as good as it gets?

And those questions lead us to ask a deeper question:

Where is the ache pointing us to?

The Story Has Always Been Moving Toward Life

From the very beginning, this story had direction.

It starts in a garden.

“Be fruitful… fill the earth.”
— Genesis 1:28, NRSVue

That was never just about survival.
It was never just about existing.

It was about life spreading.

Goodness multiplying.
Creation becoming more and more alive with the presence of God.

The vision was always bigger than Eden.

The garden was meant to flourish.
To fill the earth with the glory of God.

But somewhere along the way,
that flourishing vision felt like it slipped through our fingers.

The garden didn’t expand the way we imagined.
The vineyard began to produce rotten fruit.
The garden gave way to a valley of dry bones.

And yet…

that’s not the whole story.

Life Keeps Breaking Through

Because even now, life has a way of showing up.

In Jesus, something begins again.

The vine is alive.

In the Spirit, breath returns.

The same breath that once filled dust with life
is still moving in the world.

You can see it, if you slow down enough to notice.

It doesn’t usually show up in big, spectacular ways.

It’s in moments that feel almost easy to miss:

• A conversation where someone is truly heard.

• A moment of patience where frustration could have taken over.

• A choice to forgive that interrupts a cycle that’s been repeating for years.

Those moments are telling the truth about something deeper:

Life hasn’t stopped.
The garden is still growing.

“Small things done with great love will change the world”
— Mother Teresa

A Garden at the Center of Resurrection

There’s a detail in the resurrection story that feels almost too intentional to overlook.

When Jesus rises from the dead, it happens in a garden.

And Mary, standing there in grief and confusion,
mistakes Him for the gardener.
— John 20:15

At first, it feels like a simple mistake.

But when you step back,
it starts to feel like something more.

Because in a way… she’s not wrong.
Jesus in a gardener.
Jesus is the new Adam.
Jesus is the Human One.

Resurrection is not just about life after death.
Resurrection is the beginning of new creation.

The garden is starting again.
As the beginning of what has been coming all along.

The Vineyard is Not Abandoned

The prophets never spoke as if failure was final.

Even after everything that went wrong, they kept pointing forward.

“On that day: A pleasant vineyard… I, the Lord, am its keeper.”
— Isaiah 27:2–3 (NRSVue)

The vineyard is not discarded.

It is tended again.
Cared for.
Restored.

What once produced bitter fruit is being healed.

And over time, something begins to emerge

The vineyard starts to resemble a garden again.

A place where life flourishes.
Where people thrive.
Where goodness is shared.

What It Means to Be Human

This is where everything in this series has been leading.

The deeper question underneath all of it:

What does it actually mean to be human?

To be human is to be fully alive.

Alive with the breath of God.
Rooted in the life of God.
Bearing the fruit of God into the world.

This is what we see in Jesus.

The Human One.

Fully alive.
Fully present.
Fully given in love.

And through the Spirit, that same life begins to take shape in us.

A new kind of humanity is emerging.

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.

This is the fruit of a life connected to God.

The fruit that the Spirit of Christ generates in us and among us.
The fruit is the sign of the life of love taking root.

A Different Kind of Movement

Somewhere along the way,
we shrunk this down way too small.

We turned it into a system.
A set of beliefs.
A structure to manage.

A religion that divides:
Us and them.
Insiders and outsiders.

But what Jesus began was never meant to be a religion of us vs. them.

Jesus started a human movement.

Humanity learning how to live again.
Learning how to be present.
How to be connected.
How to be fully alive in a way that reflects the life of God.

And when that kind of life takes hold, it doesn’t stay contained.

That kind of fruit multiplies.

At the end of the story, the image from the beginning returns.

A garden.

And right at the center of it:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
— Revelation 22:2 (NRSVue)

Life that heals.
Life that restores.
Life that moves outward, beyond itself.

This is what the fruit was always meant to be.
Fruit that gives life to others.
Fruit that heals the wounds of our neighbors.

The fruit was always meant to heal.

There’s another place where Scripture gives us a glimpse of this future.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”
— Isaiah 65:21 (NRSVue)

People building.
Planting.
Living.

Enjoying the work of their own hands.

Notice what isn’t there anymore:
No more exploitation.
No one taking what isn’t theirs.
No wasted labor

Isaiah gives us a picture of the future that is a about justice and righteousness for everyone.

The kind of life that feels whole.
That kind of creation feels very good (tov).

The vineyard that once produced bitter fruit
is now a garden of abundance and joy.

Living in the In-Between

We’re still in the middle.

Somewhere between what has begun
and what has not yet fully arrived.

You can feel both at the same time.

Moments where life is real and present.
And moments where everything feels dry again.

That tension doesn’t mean something is broken beyond repair.
It means we’re living in the middle of the story.

And hope lives here.

In the Eastern Christian tradition,
this is the heart of everything:

• A life being restored.

• A person becoming whole.

• Humanity slowly becoming what it was created to be.

It doesn’t happen all at once.
It unfolds.
Gradually
Over time.

What This Means for Us

So what do we do with all of this?

We keep showing up.
We keep tending.
We keep pulling weeds in our little piece of the community garden.
We pay attention to where life is growing.

Because every act of love matters.
Every moment of patience matters.
Every choice toward peace matters.

Nothing is wasted.

Every act of love becomes part of what God is growing.

Practice: Tend One Living Thing

Take a few minutes today and choose
one small place where life can grow.

Not everything.
Just one thing.

It might be:

• a conversation you’ve been avoiding

• a relationship that needs attention

• a moment where you can slow down and really listen

• a quiet act of kindness no one else will see

Instead of trying to fix everything…
or carry the weight of the whole world…

simply ask:

Where is life already trying to grow here?
And then:
How can I tend it?

• offering patience instead of reacting

• choosing presence instead of distraction

• speaking truth with gentleness

• making space for someone to be seen

Small things.
But real things.

Because this is how the garden grows.
In small, faithful acts of love.

You are not responsible for the whole garden.

But you are invited to tend
the part that has been placed in your hands.

Let’s Talk

• When you think about the future God is bringing: new creation, a restored world; what stirs in you most: hope, longing, skepticism, something else?

• Where are you already seeing small signs of that future breaking into the present?

• What might it look like for you to live this week as someone who is part of that new creation, not just waiting for it?

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Gardening

The story began with a garden.
The story will end with a garden.

But this time, nothing will be lost.

Nothing will be wasted.
Nothing will be left outside the reach of life.

Everything that was broken will be gathered.
Everything that was dry will breathe again.

And the life we’ve only known in fragments…
will finally be whole.

And we will find ourselves there,
not striving to become something…
but fully, freely,
finally alive.

Human.

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When the Breath Returns

Part 4 of 5 – The Vineyard We Were Meant to Be

The Life We Were Always Meant to Live

TL;DR: Humanity was created to live by the breath of God. When that breath is lost, life withers. But in Jesus, the breath returns. The Spirit fills what was empty, bringing life where there was none. And the fruit that grows from that life - love, joy, peace - is not extra. It is what we were created for from the beginning.

Series Note: This week we’re tracing a thread that runs through all of Scripture. From the garden in Genesis to the vineyard in Isaiah, from dry bones in Ezekiel to the words of Jesus, this is a story about fruit and what it means to be human. Not just what we believe, but the kind of life we are created to live. And now, in Jesus, we begin to see that life fully revealed.

You Can Feel the Difference

You probably know the feeling.

The difference between just getting through the day…
and actually feeling alive in it.

There are moments when something in you feels grounded.
Present.
Connected.
Flow.

And then there are other moments.

When everything looks the same on the outside,
but inside… something feels off.

Flat.
Distant.
Dry.

Scripture has a word for that difference.

Breath.

Before the Vineyard, There was Breath

Before there were vines and branches…
before fruit ever became part of the story…
there was breath.

“Then the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being.”
— Genesis 2:7, NRSVue

It’s such a simple image.

God forming something out of the earth…
and then leaning in close enough to breathe life into it.

Dust and breath.

That’s what we are.

And that breath… it’s not just something that happened once.

It’s what sustains us.

The rise and fall of your chest.
Air filling your lungs.
The quiet reminder that your life is being held.

In the Eastern Christian tradition,
this is where the story really begins.

Not with what went wrong.
But with what we were made for.

A life shared with God.
A life received, not achieved.

There’s an ancient idea in the Hebrew tradition.

That speaking the very name of God sounds like breathing.

Y.H.W.H.

Not spoken in the usual way.
But whispered in the rhythm of inhale and exhale.
As if every breath we take
is quietly speaking the name of God.
Whether we realize it or not.

The sound of God’s name is described as the sound of breathing.

Yah -Weh
Yah -Weh
Yah -Weh

To breathe is to say the very name of God!

When the Breath is Lost

By the time we get to Ezekiel, the picture has changed.

The vineyard has failed.
The fruit has turned bitter.
The people are in exile.

And Ezekiel is given a vision.

“There were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.”
— Ezekiel 37:2, NRSVue

It’s hard to miss how stark that is.

Valley.
Dry.
Bones.

And there’s something about that image that feels familiar.

We have lived in that valley before.
Where everything is dry and dying.
Where something that once felt alive…
doesn’t anymore.

Where faith feels distant.
Where relationships feel strained.
Where you’re still showing up…
but it feels like something deeper is missing.

Ezekiel names it clearly.

What’s missing is breath.

“I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”
— Ezekiel 37:5, NRSVue

That’s always been the need.

Breath = Life

The Same Breath, Given Again

And then Jesus does something beautiful.

After the resurrection,
Jesus enters the fear-drenched upper room
where there is:

No wind.
No breath.
No spirit.
No life.

What does he do?

He simply breathes.

“He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
— John 20:22, NRSVue

It’s such a quick line.
Easy to miss.
But it is loaded with life.

It is a thread woven through Scripture:

It’s Genesis all over again.
It’s Ezekiel coming to life.

The same God who once breathed life into dust…
is now breathing life into His people.

The breath has returned.

When the Wind Fills the House

And then, not long after, it happens again, but louder and weirder.

“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house.”
— Acts 2:2, NRSVue

The breath becomes wind.

And this time, it fills the whole space.

Not just one person.
A community.

The life that was in Jesus…
is now alive in them.

Shared.
Flowing.
Moving between them.

Breath. Wind. Spirit. Fire. Life.

What Begins to Grow

And when that kind of life is present…
When breath has filled our lungs,
something begins to grow.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
— Galatians 5:22–23, NRSVue

This isn’t a list to work through.
It’s a picture of life in Eden.

This is what life looks like when it’s actually alive.

This Was Always the Design

Go back to the beginning.

“Be fruitful.”
“Fill the earth.”

With what?
With this.

Love.
Joy.
Peace.

A world where people are seen.
Where dignity is honored.
Where relationships are whole.

This isn’t something new.
This is what we were created for.

We all are created by Love for Love.

Growing in love is what it means to be fully human.

Not Something You Do Alone

And this kind of life doesn’t happen in isolation.

You can’t practice patience by yourself.
You can’t embody kindness alone.

This is the kind of life that grows between people.

In conversations.
In relationships.
In community.

It’s shared.

This is where so much pressure begins to lift.

Because this kind of fruit…
isn’t something you force.

You don’t wake up and decide to manufacture joy.
You don’t push yourself into peace.

You receive life.
And over time…
Fruit grows.
Love blooms.

The Order Matters

We’ve often flipped it.

Try to be loving.
Try to be patient.
Try to be peaceful.

Hoping that effort will eventually lead to life.

But Scripture always tells it the same way:

Breath.
Life.
Fruit.

The Spirit fills.
And then something begins to grow.

This isn’t about becoming impressive.
It’s about becoming whole.

Being restored to the life you were created for.

There are still days when I feel that dryness.
Days when getting out of bed takes more than it used to.
When energy is limited.
When even small things feel heavier.

And in those moments, I’m learning something I didn’t always know how to trust.

I don’t have to create life.

I receive it.

Sometimes it feels small.
Sometimes quiet.

But it’s real.

So the invitation isn’t: Try harder.
It’s simpler than that. Receive.

Make space.
Pay attention.
Stay open.

Because the breath that once filled the garden…
is still being given.

And where that breath is received…
life begins again.

And then love begins to grow.

A Tending Practice

Practice: Breathe and Receive

Take a few minutes today.
Sit quietly.
Notice your breath.

Yah -Weh
Yah -Weh
Yah -Weh
To breathe is to say the very name of God!

As you inhale:
Gently remind yourself:
This is gift.

As you exhale:

Let go of whatever you’ve been holding.
Pull the weeds of performance and pressure.

And just experience presence.

Yah -Weh
Yah -Weh
Yah -Weh

Let’s Talk

• Which part of the fruit of the Spirit feels most natural to you right now? Which feels hardest?

• Where have you noticed even a small sense of life returning?

• What might it look like this week to receive life instead of trying to produce it?

Leave a comment

Next in the Series

We’ve followed the story from the garden…
to the vineyard…
to the valley…
to the vine…
and now to the breath returning.

So where does this all lead?

In Part 5, The Vineyard Restored, we’ll step into what Scripture points toward—
a world made new, where the life of God fills not just a people…
but everything.

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The True Vine

Part 3 of 5 – The Vineyard We Were Meant to Be

What It Looks Like to Be Fully Human

TL;DR: Israel was called to be the vine, to bear the fruit of God’s life into the world.
But the fruit turned bitter, and the vineyard became a valley of dry bones. Then Jesus steps into that story and says: “I am the true vine.” He is not just teaching. He is embodying what humanity was meant to be. And He invites us not to strive harder, but to abide. Because fruit is not forced. It grows from sharing in the life of God.

Series Note: This week we’re tracing a thread that runs through all of Scripture. From the garden in Genesis to the vineyard in Isaiah, from dry bones in Ezekiel to the words of Jesus, this is a story about fruit and what it means to be human. Not just what we believe, but the kind of life we are created to live. And now, in Jesus, we begin to see that life fully revealed.

Standing in the Valley

We ended in a valley.

Dry bones.
No breath.
No life.

And a question hanging in the air:

“Mortal, can these bones live?”
— Ezekiel 37:3, NRSVue

Not a question about improvement.
A question about life.

Can what has been disconnected become alive again?

Jesus Steps Into the Story

And into that story…

Jesus speaks.

Not first with instruction.
But with identity.

“I am the true vine.”
— John 15:1, NRSVue

That line would have landed with weight.

Because everyone listening knew the story.
Israel was the vine.

A people planted by God
to bear the fruit of justice, love, and life into the world.

But the fruit had failed.
The vineyard had withered.

The story had led to exile…
and eventually to something that felt like dry bones.

And now Jesus says:

“I am the true vine.”

Fulfillment Not Replacement

Jesus is not discarding the story.
Jesus is fulfilling it.

He is stepping into the role Israel was meant to play and living it out fully.

Jesus shows us what it looks like to be truly human.

The abundant life:

• rooted in the Father

• open to the Spirit

• poured out in love

Where the fruit is not bitter.
The fruit is life-giving.

And there is something even deeper happening.

The same God who once breathed life into dust…
the same breath that was lost in the valley…
is now standing among us in flesh.

The life that had been missing
is present again in Him.

Not as an idea.
As a person.

The Temple Reimagined

In the temple, the vine was a symbol.

A golden image, reminding the people who they were meant to be.

But it had become something else.

A system.
A structure.
Something external.

Now Jesus stands in that same story and says:

The vine is no longer a symbol.
The vine is a person.

Not a structure to gather around…
but a life to be joined to.

Jesus doesn’t just claim to be the vine.
He explains how life actually works.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me you can do nothing.”
— John 15:5, NRSVue

That last line is everything.

Apart from me… you can do nothing.

Not because we can’t act.
Not because we can’t produce activity.

But because we cannot produce life
apart from the source of life.

We’ve Been Trying to Do This Alone

Many of us were taught to focus on fruit.

Be more loving.
Be more patient.
Be more faithful.

Try harder.

But Jesus doesn’t start there.
He starts with connection.

Because fruit is not something you produce.

It is something that grows from the life you are rooted in.

The word Jesus uses is simple.

Abide.

Remain.
Stay.
Live from.

“As the Father has loved me,
so I have loved you; abide in my love.”
— John 15:9, NRSVue

But this is more than staying connected in a general sense.

Abiding is participation.

Sharing in the very life that flows between the Father and the Son.

We share in God’s life.
This is what salvation is.
Not just forgiveness.

Union.

A life slowly becoming alive with the life of God.

The Life That Flows

A branch has no independent life.

It does not generate its own energy.
It does not produce fruit by effort.

Its entire existence depends on connection.

The life flows from the vine.

Nutrients.
Water.
Everything needed for fruit.

Cut off the branch…
and nothing grows.

Not because the branch is bad.
But because it is disconnected.

This is a Shared Life

Jesus is not speaking to individuals in isolation.
He is speaking to a community.

Branches. Plural.

This is a shared life.

We are connected:

• to Christ

• and to each other

The same life flows through all of us.

Which means fruit is not just personal.
Fruit is communal.

This is not just about what grows in you.
It is about what grows between you.

Love.
Patience.
Forgiveness.
Justice.

These only exist in relationship.

From Garden to Vine to Christ

If you trace the thread, it all comes together.

In Genesis:

• humanity is formed from dust and given breath

• placed in a garden

• called to be fruitful

In Isaiah:

• the vineyard carries that calling

• but the fruit turns bitter

In Ezekiel:

• the vineyard becomes dry bones

And now, in Jesus:

The vine lives again.

Not as a system.
Not as a symbol.
But as a living, breathing source of life.

The Life We Could Not Produce

Jesus is not just showing us what to do.
He is giving us access to a life we could never produce on our own.

The goal is not imitation.
The goal is participation.

We don’t stand outside and try to copy Him.
We are invited inside the life He shares with the Father.

An abundant life where:

• love is not forced

• peace is not manufactured

• goodness is not performed

But grows.
Flourishes.
Thrives>

Because the source is alive.

An Invitation

There have been seasons where I’ve felt the disconnect.

Where I’ve wanted the fruit…
but didn’t feel the life.

Where trying harder only led to more exhaustion.

And slowly, I’ve had to learn this again:

The question is not:
Am I producing enough?

The question is:
Am I connected?

Because everything flows from there.

Stay connected, fruit happens!

The vine is alive.
And the invitation is open.

A Tending Practice

Practice: Stay Connected

Take a few minutes today and simply notice:

Where do I feel most connected to God right now?
Where do I feel disconnected?

Don’t rush to fix it.

Just notice.

And then gently return.

Through prayer.
Through stillness.
Through attention.

Abiding is not complicated.
But it is intentional.

Let’s Talk

• What have you been taught about “bearing fruit”? Has it felt like pressure or invitation?

• Where in your life right now do you sense connection… or disconnection?

• What might it look like this week to focus less on producing fruit and more on sharing in the life of God?

Leave a comment

Next in the Series:

If Jesus is the true vine, the question becomes: how does that life actually reach us? How does what is alive in Him become alive in us? In Part 4, When the Breath Returns, we follow the story into the Spirit. From the breath in Genesis to the valley of dry bones, to Jesus breathing on His disciples and the wind of Pentecost, we’ll see how the life of God fills a people again, and what begins to grow when it does.

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When the Fruit Turns Bitter

Part 2 of 5 – The Vineyard We Were Meant to Be

When a Life Meant for Love Produces Violence Instead

TL;DR: God’s vineyard was planted in love and tended with care. But the fruit it produced was not life-giving. It was bitter. Isaiah calls it what it is: injustice, oppression, and cries of distress. This is what happens when a people lose connection to the life of God. And over time, that loss leads not just to bad fruit… but to the absence of life itself. The question that remains is this: Can what has lost its life live again?

Series Note: This week we’re tracing the story Scripture tells about what it means to be human in a series titled, “The Vineyard We Were Meant to Be”. From the garden of Genesis to the vineyard of Isaiah, from dry bones to new life in Christ, this is a journey about fruit, failure, and the God who continues to tend what we cannot restore on our own.

A Love Song That Goes Bad

Isaiah 5 speaks these words into a time when Israel looked strong on the surface. Worship continued.
Systems were in place.

But underneath,
injustice,
inequality,
and exploitation had taken root.

Isaiah does not begin with a warning.
The chapter begins as a love song.

“Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard”
— Isaiah 5:1, NRSVue

That beginning sets the stage.

The tone is not anger.
The lyrics show affection.

The God of love is singing a love song over his beloved vineyard.

God is not distant, evaluating performance from afar.
God is singing as one who loves what has been planted.

And then the song unfolds.

A vineyard carefully prepared:

“He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it
and hewed out a wine vat in it”
— Isaiah 5:2, NRSVue

Nothing neglected.
Nothing rushed.

This is not casual care.
This is intentional love.

What More Could Love Have Done?

Then comes one of the most vulnerable questions in all of Scripture:

“What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?”
— Isaiah 5:4, NRSVue

What more could love have done?

This is not a question asked for information.
It is a question shaped by grief.

The kind that comes when love has been fully given…
and not returned in kind.

This is not the voice of a God who withholds.
This is the voice of a God who has given fully.

Which means this is not a story about divine failure.

It is a story about something going wrong
in the life of the vineyard itself.

God’s desire is not control.
God’s desire is flourishing.

Love Cannot Be Forced

And this is where something deeper begins to come into focus.

Because love has a nature.

It cannot be coerced.
It cannot be forced.
It cannot be controlled into existence.

Love must be freely given.
And freely received.

Love has always worked this way.
We already know this.

It’s why there are so many love songs.
And just as many heartbreak songs.

Country music figured this out a long time ago.
You can’t make someone love you.
You can’t force it.
You can’t guarantee it.

Love has to be received.
And it has to be returned.

That’s why there are songs full of joy.
And songs full of tears in a glass.

Because love is not control.

It is choice.
It is response.
It is relationship.

Stacy and I had a song at our wedding.
Like most couples do.

It wasn’t about certainty.
It was about promise.

About choosing each other.
And continuing to choose each other.

That’s what love actually is.

Not control.
Not inevitability.

But a living, mutual yes.

And if that’s true for us…
it says something about God too.

The Shock of the Fruit

Isaiah tells us what God expected:

Good grapes.
Fruit that nourishes.
Fruit that reflects the care it has received.

Because this has always been the intention.
From the very beginning.

In Genesis, humanity is placed in a garden and given a calling:

Be fruitful.
Multiply.
Fill the earth.

Not just with people.
But with life.

With the kind of life that reflects God’s own heart.

The garden was never meant to stay in one place.

It was meant to spread.
To grow.
To become a world filled with goodness, justice, and delight.

The vineyard in Isaiah is carrying that same calling.

A people meant to embody that life.
A people through whom the goodness of God would take root in the world.

But instead:

“He expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded rotten grapes”
— Isaiah 5:2, NRSVue

The Hebrew word carries the sense of:

• spoiled fruit

• sour fruit

• fruit that cannot nourish

Not just imperfect.

Bitter.

What Bitter Fruit Actually Is

Isaiah does not leave this vague.

He names it.

“He expected justice, but saw bloodshed;
righteousness, but heard a cry!”
— Isaiah 5:7, NRSVue

Not abstract sin.
Not private failure.

This is:

• injustice embedded in systems

• exploitation of the vulnerable

• communities where some flourish and others are crushed

This is what happens when love is replaced with self-preservation.

When dignity becomes conditional.
When power protects itself.

This is what the prophets call violence.

Not just physical harm.

But any way of organizing life
that diminishes the image of God in others.

Bitter fruit is the breakdown of love in real relationships.

The Vine and the Identity of a People

This image would not have been lost on Israel.
They knew themselves as the vine.

A people planted by God
to reflect God’s life into the world.

The vineyard was never a new idea.
It was an echo of the garden.
A continuation of the life humanity was created for from the beginning.

To be a blessing.
To embody justice.
To live in a way that revealed who God is.

And over time, something subtle began to shift.

The identity remained.
But the fruit changed.

The vineyard was never just about identity.
The vineyard was about fruit.

The vineyard was always meant to be an extension of the garden.
A people through whom the life of Eden would spread into the world.

When the Symbol Becomes the System

By the time of Jesus, this identity had taken physical form.

In the temple stood a massive golden vine.

Ancient historians like Josephus describe it as large and elaborate,
with golden clusters hanging prominently at the entrance.

“The gate opening into the building was, as I said, completely overlaid with gold, as was the whole wall around it. It had, moreover, above it the golden vines, from which depended grape-clusters as tall as a man” — Josephus

It told a story:

We are the vine.
We are God’s people.
We are where life flows.

And people could contribute to it.

If you had the means, you could add gold:

• a leaf

• a branch

• a cluster

It sounds beautiful.

Communal.
Sacred.

But over time, something else began to happen.

A system is formed.
System that sorts people into groups.
Systems always shape people.

Those who could give were seen.
Those who could not were not.

Contribution became visible.
Value became measurable.
Belonging became tied to participation.

No one needed to say it out loud.
The structure said it for them.

And this is where Isaiah’s warning comes into focus.
Because this is not just religion.

This is a community that has begun to organize itself
in ways that quietly diminish some while elevating others.

When worth becomes measurable, love begins to distort.

This is what the prophets are naming.

Violence that does not always look like force.

But feels like exclusion.
Feels like invisibility.
Feels like being pushed to the margins.

This is the kind of fruit that:

• looks beautiful from a distance

• but leaves people starving up close

Not all fruit that grows is good.
Some fruit looks full…
but carries no life.

Bitter fruit.

Jesus and the Rotten Vine

This is why, when Jesus enters the temple,
He does not respond with indifference.

He overturns tables.
He disrupts the system.

“He entered the temple and began to drive out
those who were selling things there… saying,
‘My house shall be a house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of robbers’”
— Luke 19:45–46, NRSVue

This is not anger at commerce alone.

It is a confrontation of a system that:

• excluded the poor

• burdened the vulnerable

• turned worship into transaction

The temple still stood.
The vine was still visible.
But the fruit had turned bitter.

Jesus is not reacting to activity.
Jesus is confronting rotten fruit.

The Slow Movement Toward Exile

And this is where Isaiah’s warning leads.

Not immediate destruction. But slow unraveling.
Because when love is lost, life begins to erode.

Trust breaks down.
Communities fracture.
Systems harden.

And eventually…the people find themselves in exile.

Exile is not just geography.

It is what it feels like when life is no longer flowing.
When something inside you has grown distant.

Disconnected.
Dry.

Exile is a condition of the soul.

You can be surrounded by people and still feel it.
You can keep going through the motions and still feel it.

From Vineyard to Valley

By the time we reach Ezekiel, the image shifts completely.

We are no longer in a vineyard.
We are in a valley.

“He led me all around them;
there were very many lying in the valley,
and they were very dry”
— Ezekiel 37:2, NRSVue

Not struggling vines.
Not weak fruit.

Bones.
Very dry bones.

This valley exposes the deeper diagnosis.

The problem was never just the fruit.
The problem was the life behind the fruit.

Fruit does not fail on its own.
Fruit fails when the life that sustains it is gone.

And in Ezekiel’s vision, what’s missing is not effort.
Not discipline.
Not better behavior.

Something more essential.
No breath.
No wind.
No Spirit.

Not just the absence of power.
The absence of presence.
The absence of the very life that makes us alive.

We Stand in the Valley

And so we stand in the valley.

Not as observers.
But as people who recognize the landscape.

Because we’ve been here before.
And this is where the story loops back to the beginning.

In Genesis, humanity is formed from the dust of the ground.

Earth.
Soil.
Dirt.

And then God breathes.
Breath into dust.
Spirit into earth.

And the human becomes a living being.

That’s what life is.
Not just matter.
Not just structure.

But dust filled with breath.

But here in Ezekiel, the breath is gone.

And what remains…
is what we were without it.

Bones.
Dry bones.

The garden has become ground again.
The vineyard has become dust.

And if we’re honest, we know this place.
Moments when something that once felt alive no longer does.

Faith feels distant.
Relationships feel hollow.
Communities keep functioning,
but something deeper is missing.

Everything still looks like it’s there.
But the life is gone.

And then God asks the question:

“Mortal, can these bones live?”
— Ezekiel 37:3, NRSVue

Not: Can behavior improve?
Not: Can systems adjust?

But: Can life return?

And maybe the most honest response is the one Ezekiel gives:

“O Lord God, you know.”
— Ezekiel 37:3, NRSVue

Because sometimes we don’t know.

We just know where we are.
Standing in the valley.

Hoping… that breath might come again.

A Tending Practice

Practice: Name the Fruit Honestly

Take a few quiet minutes today and ask:

Where do I see good fruit in my life?
Where do I see bitterness or disconnection?

Not with judgment.
But with honesty.

And maybe also:

Where have I learned to accept things that look right…
but don’t actually bring life?

Reflect.
Contemplate.

Naming what is real is the beginning of healing.

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Let’s Talk

• Where have you seen “bitter fruit” show up, not just personally, but in systems or communities around you?

• Have you ever experienced a space that looked healthy on the surface, but felt life-draining up close?

• Where in your life right now feels more like a vineyard… and where feels more like dry bones?

Leave a comment

The Garden We Were Given

Part 1 of 5 - The Vineyard We Were Meant To Be

What it Means to be Human

TL;DR: To be human is to be formed from the earth and filled with the breath of God. We were created to live in communion, to reflect God’s life, and to bear good fruit into the world. Genesis does not begin with sin. It begins with dignity, calling, and possibility. You are not an accident. You are a living image, placed in God’s world to help it come alive.

Before Anything Went Wrong

Most of us were taught to begin the story in Genesis 3.

The fall.
The failure.
The fracture.

But Scripture doesn’t begin there.

The Story of God begins in a garden.

Not with exile.
Not with sin.
Not with separation.

With life.

Because if you start with what went wrong,
you will misunderstand what we were made for.

Genesis 1–2 gives us something older than sin.

It gives us a vision of what it means to be human
before anything was broken.

A Different Kind of Beginning

In the ancient world, many creation stories began in violence.

Stories like the Enuma Elish from Babylon
or the Atrahasis Epic from Mesopotamia.

Gods at war.
Chaos overpowering order.
The world formed out of conflict.

And humans?

Humans were often an afterthought.

Created to serve the gods.
To do their labor.
To keep them satisfied.

Not partners.
Not beloved.

More like servants.
Sometimes slaves.
And even dignity was limited.

Only kings were called the “image” of a god.
Only rulers were seen as carrying divine authority.

Everyone else lived beneath them.

But Genesis Tells a Different Story

No violence.
No rivalry.
No war in the beginning.

Just a God who speaks.
And a world that responds.

Light.
Land.
Sea.
Sky.

Life unfolding,
not from conflict,
but from intention.

And then humanity.
Formed from the dust of the ground.

And then something happens that changes everything.

God breathes.

We Are Dust Filled With Breath

Genesis says that God formed the human from the dust of the ground
and breathed into him the breath of life.

Dust and breath.
Earth and Spirit.

The word for breath is the same word used for wind, for Spirit.

Ruach.

Which means:
You are not just created by God.
You are alive because God’s own life is being shared with you.

This is not just where you came from.
God’s Spirit is what sustains you right now.

Every breath.
Every moment.

A gift.

In the Eastern Christian tradition,
this is where everything begins.

Not with guilt.
With participation.

We live because we are being held in the life of God.

To be human is to be earth,
animated by the life of God.

We Were Made in the Image of God

In the ancient world, if you wanted to encounter a god,
you went to a temple.

And at the center of that temple,
you would find an image.

A statue.
An icon.
A visible representation of the god’s presence.

But Genesis tells a different story.

Creation itself becomes the temple.

And instead of placing a carved image at the center,
God places humanity.

Not just kings.
Not just priests.

Everyone.
Every person.

Formed from dust.
Filled with breath.
Called the image of God.
The icon of God.

The early church held onto this deeply.

Not as a title.
As a calling.

To image God means to reflect God’s life into the world.
To embody something of God’s love, justice, creativity, and care.

Not barely surviving.
Not shrinking back.

But alive.

Every human life is a living icon of God’s presence.

“Image and Likeness” Word Study

“Let us make humans in our image (Hebrew: Tselem, Greek: Eikon),
according to our likeness (Hebrew: Temunah, Greek: Homoiōsis) …
— Genesis 1:26

Key Hebrew Terms for Image:

• Tselem: Shadow, phantom, or representative figure. It is derived from tsel (shadow). Tselem represents how a shadow behaves exactly like the object it shadows (like a person’s shadow). Many scholars suggest it signifies humanity acting on God’s behalf (representative authority) rather than just looking like God.

• Temunah: Likeness, form, or shape, often used for a specific visual appearance.

Key Greek Terms (Septuagint/NT):

• Eikōn: Image, icon, representation (Septuagint translation of tselem).

• Homoiōsis / Homoiōma: Likeness, resemblance, or similarity.

A Life That Grows Into God

The early church never saw the image of God as something static.
The image of God was something we were meant to grow into.

St. Athanasius wrote:

“Jesus became what we are that he might make us what he is”
— St. Athanasius

Not that we become God in essence.
But that we participate in God’s life.

We become more fully what we were created to be.

“God became human so we could become human, too.
In becoming human, we become partakers of the divine nature,
to become like God. This is salvation.”
— Jeff Doles

This is what Eastern theology calls theosis.

Not perfection.
Participation.

A life slowly being transformed by the life of God within it.

To be human is to grow into the life of God.

The Garden Was Meant to Grow

We often imagine Eden as a perfect place that was lost.

But in Genesis,
it is more like a starting point.
A place of communion.
A place where heaven and earth meet.

And humanity is placed there with a calling:
To tend it.
To cultivate it.
To expand its life outward.

The vision was never just a garden in one place.
The vision was a world filled with that kind of life.
A creation saturated with the presence of God.

Humanity was meant to tend Eden
until its life spread to fill the earth.

To take what was true in Eden and allow it to grow.

Eden is not the end of the story.
Eden is just the beginning.

The Trees Were Invitations

In the center of the garden stand two trees.

The Tree of Life.
and
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

These are not arbitrary rules set in place to test humanity.

They are invitations.
But more than that, they are paths.

The Tree of Life represents life as communion.
Life received.
Life shared.
Life rooted in relationship with God.

Not just existence.
Participation.

The other tree is more mysterious.

It is not evil in itself.
It is not a trap.

It represents a kind of knowing humanity was not yet ready to hold.
A grasping for wisdom apart from trust.
A reaching ahead of formation.

The temptation is subtle.

Not just to do something wrong,
but to become something too quickly,
and in the wrong way.

To take what can only be rightly received.
To define good and evil without first being formed in love.

The issue is not knowledge itself.

The issue is timing.
The issue is trust.
The issue is whether we will grow with God
or try to become like God without God.

Will we live as people who receive life as gift,
slowly, relationally, in communion?

Or as people who grasp for it,
impatient, unformed, alone?

Life is not something we seize.
Life is something we are invited to grow into.

We Were Made to Be Fruitful

“Be fruitful and multiply.”

This is not just about reproduction.
It is about what your life produces.

What grows in you.
What grows through you.
What your presence brings into the lives of others.

Genesis describes humanity as:
Gardeners.
Caretakers.
Participants in creation.

Placed in the garden:
To “till it and keep it.”
To tend it.

Tending tells us something important.

Life is not automatic.
It is relational.
It grows where it is nurtured.

To be human is to bear life into the world.

Humanity as the Priest of Creation

In the Eastern tradition,
humanity is often described as the priest of creation.

We stand in the middle.
Receiving life from God.
And extending that life into the world.

We take what God has made
and participate in its flourishing.

We are not here to extract.
We are here to cultivate.

Not to dominate.
But to tend.

We receive life from God and offer it back through the world.

The Garden is Our Lives Together

We live in a world that treats life like a system to manage.

Fix the problem.
Increase the output.
Control the outcome.

But Genesis gives us a different image.

A garden.

And gardens don’t respond to control.
They respond to care.

You don’t force fruit.
You tend the conditions where it can grow.

Which means the question shifts.

Not: How do I fix myself?
But: What am I tending?

What am I giving my attention to?
What am I allowing to take root?
What am I feeding, watering, neglecting?

Because whatever you tend… grows.

Your life is a place where heaven and earth are meant to meet.

Fully Alive Looks Like Love

We often make spirituality abstract.

But Scripture doesn’t.

A life connected to God produces something real.
Something visible.
Something that can be felt.

This is where the story is heading.

Toward a humanity that is:
Loving.
Peaceful.
Just.
Whole.

Not because we try harder.
But because we are rooted in the right source.

The tragedy is not that humans exist.
The tragedy is that we exist without becoming fully alive.

A fully alive life looks like love.

A life rooted in God produces visible, tangible fruit.

A Personal Word

I’ve had to wrestle with this in a different way these past few years.

Cancer.
Lung damage.
An auto-immune disease
A future that is uncertain.

It’s easy to start measuring your life by:
What you can produce.
What you can accomplish.
What you can control.

And in those seasons, the question
“Am I being fruitful?” can feel heavy.

But Genesis reframes it.

Fruitfulness is not about output.

It is about connection.
It is about what kind of life is growing in you
even when everything else feels fragile.

Sometimes the most honest fruit is:
Endurance.
Gentleness.
Trust.

Quiet things.
But real things.

You are not here to survive a broken world.
You are here to participate in a living one.

The Invitation

Before we talk about failure.
Before we talk about sin.
Before we talk about redemption.

We start here.

With a garden.
With breath.
With a calling.

You were made to be fully alive.
You were made to reflect God’s life.
You were made to bear good fruit.

And that kind of life doesn’t happen by accident.

It grows.

Slowly.
Quietly.
Faithfully.

As it is tended.

The spiritual life begins with tending, not fixing.

A Tending Practice

Practice: Notice What Is Growing

Take a few quiet minutes today and ask:

What is growing in me right now?

Not what I wish were growing.
Not what I think should be growing.

What is actually there?

• Where do I see signs of life?

• Where do I feel dryness or disconnection?

• What has been receiving most of my attention?

Don’t judge it.
Don’t rush to fix it.

Just notice.

Because you cannot tend what you refuse to see.

Let’s Talk

• Where do you sense God’s life already at work in you right now, even in small or quiet ways?

• What have you been tending lately… and what kind of fruit is it producing?

• What might it look like this week to receive life from God instead of trying to generate it on your own?

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NEW SERIES: The Vineyard We Were Meant to Be

A wounded healer’s journey through gardens, vines, and the life that actually grows

TL;DR: From the beginning, humanity was created to bear good fruit. But somewhere along the way, what grew in us and through us became distorted.
Scripture tells that story honestly. A garden. A vineyard. A people who lost their way. And then Jesus, who steps into that story as the true vine, showing us what a fully alive, fruitful life actually looks like. This series is about learning to tend the life God is growing in us again.

Something is Always Growing

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is growing in my life.

Not what I say I believe.
Not what I intend to become.

But:
What is actually taking root.
What is quietly forming beneath the surface.
What is showing up in the fruit.

Because whether we pay attention to it or not,
something is always growing:
In us.
Through us.
Between us.

A life is never neutral ground.
It is always a kind of garden.

And gardens don’t take care of themselves.

Gardens have to be tended.

The Story Scripture Tells

When you begin to trace this idea through Scripture,
you start to notice something.

The Bible opens,
not with a system of beliefs,
but with a garden.

A place of life.
A place of relationship.
A place entrusted to human hands.

“Be fruitful”

Not just multiply.
But bear something good.
Reflect something of God’s own life into the world.

That’s the calling.
That’s the purpose.

But the story doesn’t stay there.

Because by the time you reach Isaiah,
the garden has become a vineyard.
Carefully planted.
Intentionally cultivated.
Loved.

And still… something has gone wrong.

God looks for good fruit.

What shows up instead is violence.
Injustice.
A distortion of what was meant to be life-giving.

Not nothing.
Something grew.

Just not what God had in mind.

A Story That Feels Familiar

If we’re honest,
that part of the story doesn’t feel ancient.

It feels familiar.

We know what it’s like to look at our lives
and wonder how something that started with such good intentions
ended up producing something else.

We know what it’s like to see
systems, communities, even churches
that were meant to reflect God’s heart
but instead bear fruit that wounds.

And if we’re really honest,
we know what it’s like to see that same tension within ourselves.

This is not just Israel’s story.
This is our story.

And Then Comes Jesus

Into that story, Jesus says something startling:

“I am the true vine.”

Not just a teacher.
Not just a guide.

The vine.

The place where life actually flows from.
The place where good fruit finally grows.

It’s a claim about Israel’s story.
But it’s also a claim about humanity itself.

Jesus becomes what we could not be on our own.

The true human.
The faithful vine.
The life fully alive.

And then he says something even more surprising:

“Abide in me.”

Stay connected.
Remain.
Receive.

Because fruit is not something you force.
Fruit is something that grows.

Learning to Tend Again

This is where the image keeps pulling me in.

Because if our lives are gardens,
if our lives together are a kind of vineyard,
then the question is not just:

“What should I believe?”
But:
“What am I tending?”

What am I watering?
What am I neglecting?
What am I allowing to take root?

What is growing in me…
and
what is growing through me into the lives of others?

I think a lot of us have been taught to measure faith by beliefs or behaviors.
But Scripture keeps bringing us back to something more organic.

More honest.
More difficult to fake.

Fruit.

A Different Kind of Life

The apostle Paul picks this up later and names it plainly:

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.
Kindness.
Goodness.
Faithfulness.
Gentleness.
Self-control.

Not commands to achieve.
But fruit to be grown.

This is what a life looks like
when it is rooted in the Spirit.
When it is being slowly,
patiently tended by God.

Not perfect.
But alive.

The Invitation

Over the next five essays,
I want to walk through this story together.

From the garden of Genesis
to the vineyard of Isaiah
to the true vine in Jesus
to the fruit of the Spirit
and into the hope of a new creation
where God is replanting the world.

Not as a theological system.
But as a thread through the Story of God
And as a way of seeing our lives.

A way of asking better questions.
A way of paying attention to what is actually growing.

Because the goal is not just to understand the vineyard.

The goal is to become the kind of people
who learn to tend what God is growing in us
and in the world around us.

The Five Movements We’ll Walk Through

Essay 1: The Garden We Were Given (Monday 4.20.26)
We begin where Scripture begins. In a garden. This essay explores what it means that humanity was created to be fruitful, not just alive. We’ll look at Genesis 1–2 and recover the idea that your life was meant to grow something good, something that reflects God’s own life into the world.

Essay 2: The Vineyard That Failed (Tuesday 4.21.26)
In Isaiah 5, God sings a love song over a vineyard that should have flourished. Instead, it produces fruit that wounds. We’ll sit with the grief of that passage and name the uncomfortable truth that sometimes what grows in us, and in our communities, is not life-giving at all.

Essay 3: The True Vine (Wednesday 4.22.26)
Jesus steps into that story and makes a stunning claim: “I am the true vine.” This essay centers on John 15 and the invitation to abide. Not to strive harder, but to stay connected to the source of life itself. This is where the story turns.

Essay 4: The Fruit That Grows (Thursday 4.23.26)
Paul gives us language for what a healed, Spirit-filled life actually produces. Not performance. Not perfection. But fruit. We’ll explore Galatians 5 and what it looks like for love, joy, peace, and the rest to slowly grow in real, imperfect lives.

Essay 5: The World Being Replanted (Friday 4.24.26)
The story doesn’t end with individuals trying to be better. It ends with God renewing everything. A new creation. A new garden. A restored vineyard. This final essay lifts our eyes to the bigger hope. God is not just tending us. God is tending the world.

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A Tending Practice

At the end of each essay this week,
I’ll offer a simple tending practice.

Not something to master.
Not something to add pressure.

Just a small, intentional way to
slow down,
pay attention,
and cooperate with what God is already doing.

Because growth doesn’t happen all at once.
Growth happens through daily, quiet, faithful tending.

Let’s Talk

Before we begin, I’d love for reflect upon a few questions:

• When you think about your life right now, what kind of “fruit” comes to mind?

• Where do you see life growing… and where does something feel off or misaligned?

• What have you been unintentionally tending?

• What might it look like to approach your life less like a problem to fix and more like a garden to care for?

• And maybe most gently… where do you sense God already at work, even if it’s small?

You don’t have to have clear answers yet.
Just begin by noticing.
That’s where tending starts.

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