Having given a bit of background and overview in my last two posts on some of my prior beliefs about the nature of the Bible (beliefs that later served as one of the two major areas of struggle for me and that, in part, eventually led to my crisis of faith), in this post I’d like to focus on doing something similar with the other major area of struggle along my journey thus far; namely, how I understood the nature of the Christian life.

Perhaps the most crucial aspect in how I viewed the Christian life, and that led to significant struggle later on, was the way in which I saw the relationship between faith and belief. During this stage of my journey, to have faith meant (most centrally, if not at least in part) to believe some core set of doctrines to be true (usually literally true). This core set of doctrines could be either fairly short or fairly long depending on which stream or tradition of Christianity one belonged to; however, regardless of the number of doctrines, to have genuine faith required that you believe at least some core set of doctrines to be true (often times including a set of beliefs about the Bible, and always including a set of beliefs about things mentioned in it). As you can imagine, this would become a significant stumbling block for me as I began to struggle with many of my beliefs about the nature of the Bible (and, consequently, many of the doctrines typically grounded in those beliefs). Since I could write at length on just this one particular facet of the Christian life alone (and indeed already have to a significant degree in my book), I’ll leave it at that for now and save much more of what I have to say on this topic for its own series of posts down the road (but suffice it to say that this was probably the single largest area of struggle and subsequent breakthrough for me).

Moving along for now though, the next important aspect of how I viewed the Christian life (that I would later have trouble making much sense of) was the degree to which the central focus was almost entirely on the afterlife. Growing up (and for most of my life, in fact), it was the promise of an afterlife that served to motivate my faith more than anything else. With the promise of heaven and the threat of hell looming quite large in my worldview, it was the centrality of securing my place in the afterlife (hopefully the “good place”) that was, at bottom, my ultimate reason for being a Christian. Indeed, if you would have been able to persuade me during this stage of my life that there was no afterlife, I would’ve probably had absolutely no idea why I should even be a Christian. Although I also believed in the importance of spiritual transformation through reconciliation with God on this side of the grave, that was ultimately secondary in nature. As I saw it, the most important question wasn’t whether, or to what degree, one experienced transformation in this life; rather, the most important question was: where will you spend eternity? That was the ultimate question to be answered, and as such the most central motivating factor for being or becoming a Christian, at least as I saw it.

As a result, I ended up seeing the Christian life as essentially a system of requirements and rewards, with the idea of “going to heaven when you die” being the ultimate reward (a slightly morbid reward in one sense now that I think about it). Of course, certain requirements had to be met in order for one to receive that reward. This made sense to me at the time given that, assuming the existence of heaven, it didn’t seem very fair that anyone and everyone would get to go to there one day irregardless of what they believed or how they lived. That is, it seemed that something must determine who gets in and who doesn’t, and unless that “something” is God (who predestines some people for heaven and other people for hell – which, although some Christians believe, most haven’t throughout history and at least I never really did), then it must be something that we believe or do. And since in that case the quality of our afterlife (the reward) depends on something we believe or do (the requirements), I not only began to see my faith as a complex system of rewards and requirements, but consequently turned most of my focus (quite understandably) towards making sure I was meeting all of the necessary requirements. Of course, I later realized that what one takes to be included as a part of these necessary requirements is very much (like a great many other things) a matter of disagreement among Christians.

Indeed, the extent of diversity and disagreement within Christianity, let alone religion in general, came to play a fairly major role in causing me to eventually question or doubt many of my own beliefs. Given that so many people around the world and throughout time have disagreed on religious matters – people not only much smarter and more confident than me in their beliefs, but who have also displayed more evidence of the Spirit in their lives than my own – how could I be so sure that I was one of the few lucky ones that “got it right”? However, at this stage in my journey, I was still fairly ignorant of much of that diversity and disagreement (which, truth be told, was quite “blissful” in a sense, as the saying goes). As such, and given my overall lack of exposure to traditions outside of the primarily fundamentalist / conservative evangelical tradition that had characterized much of my own upbringing, I tended to believe that the bare minimum requirement, at least, was that one be a Christian. The rationale for this was pretty straightforward: since the Bible clearly teaches that “Jesus is the only way,” I was pretty certain that only Christians could be “saved.” And since being baptized didn’t seem sufficient for someone to be a Christian (for surely a mere ritual isn’t enough – as my inner Baptist saw it, at least), then one must in some sense be the “right kind” of Christian (i.e. either believe the right things and/or live the right way). However, since it had already been drilled into my head (quite rightly, I think) that one couldn’t be “saved by works,” then surely “living the right way” couldn’t be one of the necessary requirements.

Thus, the only candidate left seemed to be the requirement of “believing the right things” – which (as mentioned earlier) eventually became equated with how I understood the nature of faith itself. As I saw it, we are saved by faith, where faith is essentially (or at least heavily dependent upon) believing the right things. As such, it was believing that ultimately “saves” us. But what are the “right things” one must believe? Early on, the list of things I thought one must believe was quite long, although it eventually began to shorten in discrete increments over time as I became more and more aware of the diversity within different expressions of Christianity. However, at its core, such a list of beliefs would have perhaps most importantly included many of the central claims about the gospel message I believed at the time (and which in some sense, at least, I still believe today): namely, that there is a God, that Jesus is the Son of God, that he was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died for our sins, rose from the dead, etc. Of course, I also believed it was important that one not just believe all of the right things, but that one also seek to live in accordance with those beliefs – but it was believing that was the most important. And although I knew of many Christians who would say that all you needed to do was “believe in Jesus,” I quickly came to find out that in most cases “believing in Jesus” for them entailed believing quite a long list of things, or at least not believing quite a long list of things.

Although I never felt compelled to believe many of the modern “heresies” that many have thought to be incompatible with Christianity (e.g. the theory of evolution, the idea that all people will eventually be “saved”, etc.), I also never really felt compelled to deny them. Similarly, although I never really felt compelled to deny many of the beliefs thought to be essential to the faith by many Christians (e.g. the inerrancy of the Bible, the existence of a literal heaven and hell, etc.), I also decreasingly felt compelled to believe them. That is, I slowly began to become more and more agnostic as many things became more or less “open questions” for me, and not because I was trying to willfully resist them (for whatever reason), but rather because they honestly became things which no longer seemed to be true or false to me. Although in one sense this brought a great sense of intellectual freedom and excitement about exploring such things with a sense of genuine openness and curiosity, in another sense it also brought a great sense of anxiety and fear. Anxiety and fear driven not only by (what I perceived to be) a quite visceral reaction of dismay towards such openness on my part by some Christians (a reaction that in many ways seemed no different than as if I was beginning to abandon Christianity altogether), but an anxiety and fear driven also by my projection of such a reaction onto how I saw the very nature and character of God.

The way I saw it, and the way it ultimately seemed to be portrayed by the expressions of Christianity most familiar to me, you could do or be all the right things (love God, love others, live a life filled with the fruits of the Spirit, etc.), but if you didn’t also believe the right things, then it ultimately didn’t matter. After all, that’s why I thought atheists and people of other religious faiths weren’t “saved” – not because they didn’t necessarily lead good lives or even display many fruits of the Spirit, but because they believed the “wrong” things (or at least didn’t believe the “right” things). As such, although I had begun to lose many of my beliefs over to a more generally agnostic outlook, the importance of having the “right” beliefs continued to persist in my thinking and became increasingly central in my understanding of the Christian life. This became a rather unfortunate scenario for me in that it not only began to warp my understanding of God (who then became a sort of intellectual tyrant that cared more about the beliefs in my head than anything else), but also caused me to begin idolizing the notion of believing the right things, an idol that I would begin to pursue with an almost obsessive level of intensity (especially when it came to my beliefs about the Bible). A pursuit that, once combined with the degree of doubt I experienced concerning many of my beliefs, ultimately led to a place of spiritual anxiety, angst, and (eventually) despair. Although I still believed in “salvation by grace” at this stage of my journey, it didn’t dawn on me until later that the way I had come to view the Christian life had, in effect, nullified the very concept of grace (for grace with conditions attached is, in a very real sense, no longer grace).

Although I will go into more detail later on into how my understanding of all of this has since changed, my hope is that the above will give at least a general overview of some of the core elements of how I once viewed the Christian life (and perhaps a glimpse into how it became a source of struggle for me later on). And although I decided to split the background and overview of the two major sources of my struggle (the Bible and the Christian life) into separate posts for the sake of convenience, it is important to note that the two were very much intertwined for me for a very long time, as it wasn’t until much later (in hindsight) that I was able to gain more clarity in the ways in which they were both related and different in nature. However, to summarize the two as succinctly as I can, the way that I viewed things during this stage of my journey was essentially this: to believe the right things now for the sake of going to heaven later – heaven was the reward, believing the right things was the requirement, and the Bible was the God-written instruction manual (all of which would dramatically change in my thinking).

In the next few posts, my hope is to help explain some of the things I later discovered about much of what I used to believe, as well as give a glimpse into how my thinking has shifted since then. Since much of what I hope to cover will be expounded in much more detail later on, my intention isn’t to get too deep but, like my previous posts, to more or less give an overview of sorts on where I’m at today in my journey. 

Until then, thanks again for reading and – as always – stay curious, seek truth, and love well.

Cheers,