It’s always a little embarrassing when you come out swinging and there’s nobody there to fight with you. I think that’s how a lot of us felt when we realized that the world wasn’t asking the questions we had learned to answer. Many of us who grew up in the church or received Christian educations were under the impression that the world was full of atheists and agnostics and that the greatest threat against Christianity was the rise of secular humanism. But what we found upon entering the real world was that most of our peers were receptive to spiritual things. Most believed in God, were open to the supernatural, and respected religious ideas so long as they were not forced upon them. Most were like Sam. They weren’t searching for historical evidence in support of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. They were searching for some signs of life among his followers.
Not once after graduating from Bryan was I asked to make a case for the scientific feasibility of miracles, but often I was asked why Christians aren’t more like Jesus. I may have met one or two people who rejected Christianity because they had difficulties with the deity of Christ, but most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, and unkind. People didn’t argue with me about the problem of evil; they argued about why Christians aren’t doing more to alleviate human suffering, support the poor, and oppose violence and war. Most weren’t looking for a faith that provided all the answers; they were looking for one in which they were free to ask questions.
Before long, those of us who were supposed to be ready with the answers started asking questions too. As we encountered new cultures and traditions, it became harder and harder to convince ourselves and others that evangelical Christians in America had a monopoly on absolute truth. Some of my friends who were raised to despise Roman Catholicism, for example, felt suddenly drawn to the tradition’s beautiful liturgy and its appreciation for historical Christianity. Others who had been taught that mainline Protestants were too liberal found their commitment to social justice refreshing, if not essential to the faith. Many of us who had once considered religions like Buddhism to be one-dimensionally evil were finding spiritual enrichment in practicing mindfulness and yoga. We’d gone from a world in which the United States was the only big player to one in which multiple countries were contributing to a colorful and vibrant marketplace of ideas. The assumption that God belongs to a certain country, political party, denomination, or religion seemed absurd.
My generation is perhaps more equipped than any other to defend the uniqueness of Christianity, but we are also the most capable of seeing things from a different perspective. So we began to deconstruct — to think more critically about our faith, pick it apart, examine all the pieces, and debate which parts are essential and which, for the sake of our survival, we might have to let go. Within a three-year period, my faith changed dramatically, and I sensed I was not alone. I sensed that the cultural climate was changing and that other people of faith were probably asking some of the same questions that I was asking. So, like any good, self-aware millennial, I started a blog.
I called it Evolving in Monkey Town, and I wrote about the process of trying to figure out which parts of my faith are fundamental and which are not. Before long, a little online community developed, and as the comments rolled in, so did the survival stories. Some people had struggled with religious pluralism, others with the Bible. Some had questions about homosexuality, others about hypocrisy. Some doubted the existence of God; others doubted the effectiveness of the church. As I struck up correspondence with several of my readers, I found that most of the time it wasn’t the weight of the questions themselves that burdened their faith but rather the notion that they shouldn’t be asking them, that it wasn’t allowed. What was happening on my blog was happening on many others. It was happening in living rooms and churches, in coffee shops and bars, in the US and around the world. The environment was changing, and Christianity was changing with it.
I didn’t really know what it was like to be on the outside of the evangelical bubble looking in until the fall of 2008, when I voted for Barack Obama.
I wasn’t exactly a fanatic. I had no Shepard Fairey “Hope” posters on my bedroom wall, no Obama/Biden bumper stickers on my car. I disagreed with some of Obama’s positions, particularly concerning abortion, and I had concerns about his experience. But on most issues, including health care, foreign policy, the environment, poverty, and the economy, I preferred his perspective to John McCain’s. I also admired his leadership style and ability to communicate.
I’m no shrinking violet when it comes to talking politics, but even I was overwhelmed by the hostile responses I received from many of my conservative friends. I was called a socialist and a baby killer. People questioned my commitment to my faith and my country, some suggesting that I may face eternal consequences for my decision at the ballot box. One friend compared Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden, another suggested he might be the Antichrist, and another asked why I would vote for someone who would undoubtedly usher in the great tribulation. Women I respected called Hillary Clinton crude names and made jokes about her going to hell. A Christian coworker said he thought Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor was a result of divine intervention. I got email after email with subject lines like “Jesus Hates Welfare” and “Vote Your Christian Values.” Pastors and teachers implied that my decision at the ballot box was the most important decision I would make all year.
As far as I’m concerned, the teachings of Jesus are far too radical to be embodied in a political platform or represented by a single candidate. It’s not up to some politician to represent my Christian values to the world; it’s up to me. That’s why I’m always a little perplexed when someone finds out that I’m not a Republican and asks, “How can you call yourself a Christian?”
It seems that a whole lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians, are under the impression that you can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat, you can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution, you can’t be a Christian and be gay, you can’t be a Christian and have questions about the Bible, you can’t be a Christian and be tolerant of other religions, you can’t be a Christian and be a feminist, you can’t be a Christian and drink or smoke, you can’t be a Christian and read the New York Times, you can’t be a Christian and support gay rights, you can’t be a Christian and get depressed, you can’t be a Christian and doubt. In fact, I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals. False fundamentals make it impossible for faith to adapt to change. The longer the list of requirements and contingencies and prerequisites, the more vulnerable faith becomes to shifting environments and the more likely it is to fade slowly into extinction. When the gospel gets all entangled with extras, dangerous ultimatums threaten to take it down with them. The yoke gets too heavy and we stumble beneath it.
Centuries before anyone had ever heard of biological evolution, Saint Augustine warned of creating false fundamentals in regard to our interpretation of the book of Genesis. “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision,” he wrote, “we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”14
Through the blog, I encountered all kinds of people, young and old, who no longer considered themselves Christians because of false fundamentals. “I took a biology class and was convinced that the theory of evolution was sound,” said one. “I’m tired of fighting the culture wars,” said another. “I couldn’t live with the thought of all non-Christians going to hell,” said another. I’m frustrated and sad to think of all the good people who have abandoned Christianity because they felt they had to choose between their faith and their intellectual integrity or between their religion and their compassion. I’m heartbroken to think of all the new ideas they could have contributed had someone not told them that new ideas were unwelcome.
Of course, we all carry around false fundamentals. We all have unexamined assumptions and lists of rules, both spoken and unspoken, that weigh down our faith. We’ve all got little measuring sticks that help us determine who’s “in” and who’s “out,” and we’ve all got truths we don’t want to face because we’re afraid that our faith can’t withstand any change. It’s not just conservative Christians. Many of us who consider ourselves more progressive can be tolerant of everyone except the intolerant, judgmental toward those we deem judgmental, and unfairly critical of tradition or authority or doctrine or the establishment or whatever it is we’re in the process of deconstructing at the moment. In a way, we’re all fundamentalists. We all have pet theological systems, political positions, and standards of morality that are not essential to the gospel but that we cling to so tightly that we leave fingernail marks on the palms of our hands.
Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28 – 30).
Once, a guy asked Jesus about his yoke, or teaching. He asked Jesus what he thought was the most important of all the Jewish laws. Jesus, who often responded to one question with another, chose this time to answer the man directly.
He said, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:37 – 40).
Love.
It’s that simple and that profound. It’s that easy and that hard.
Taking on the yoke of Jesus is not about signing a doctrinal statement or making an intellectual commitment to a set of propositions. It isn’t about being right or getting our facts straight. It is about loving God and loving other people. The yoke is hard because the teachings of Jesus are radical: enemy love, unconditional forgiveness, extreme generosity. The yoke is easy because it is accessible to all — the studied and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the religious and the nonreligious. Whether we like it or not, love is available to all people everywhere to be interpreted differently, applied differently, screwed up differently, and manifested differently. Love is bigger than faith, and it’s bigger than works, for it inhabits and transcends both.
The apostle John, who is described in the Gospels as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” explained it like this in his letter to Christian churches across Asia Minor: “Dear friends,” he wrote, “let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. . . . No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:7 – 8, 12).
How ironic that the most important fundamental element of the Christian faith is something that is relative, something that cannot be measured with science, systematized with theology, or managed with rules. How fitting and how strange that God should hide his biggest secret in that present yet elusive thing that poets and artists and musicians and theologians and philosophers have spent centuries trying to capture in some form but that we all know the minute we experience it. How lovely and how terrible that absolute truth exists in something that cannot really be named.
One of my favorite TV series of all time is BBC’s Planet Earth. I love it because narrator David Attenborough can make a colony of cockroaches feeding on a hundred-meter-high mound of bat dung sound like the most wonderful thing in the world, and I love it because it shows how magnificently living organisms can adapt to their environments. From the extra-thick eyelashes of the wild Bactrian camel, to the dense white fur of the Arctic hare, to the sticky yellow toes of the gliding leaf frog, each animal has its unique way of thriving in its habitat, be it a dusty desert, a snowy tundra, or the tops of trees.
Take cave angelfish, for example. These little fish are perhaps the most specialized creatures on earth, as they’ve specifically adapted for life in cave waterfalls. While marine angelfish are known throughout the world for their colorful fins and attractiveness in aquariums, cave angelfish are ugly as sin. Having lost the pigment in their skin, they look more like ghostly, winged snakes than fish. Microscopic hooks on their fins allow them to cling to cave walls like bats. Positioned just right, they can feed on bacteria rushing down the waterfalls. Their eye sockets are empty, their bodies elongated and slimy.
Scientists believe that a group of marine angelfish must have migrated to the caves millions of years ago to escape predators or to adjust to climate change. Like many cave dwellers, over the years they evolved blindness and improved other sensory functions because in their environment eyesight was no longer useful. Cave angelfish live exclusively in a few remote caves in Thailand, and the Planet Earth crew went to all kinds of trouble to capture footage of these little survivors in their natural habitat. Of course, Attenborough — who I imagine looks a bit like Bilbo Baggins — makes it sound as though they’d discovered Middle Earth.
Cave angelfish illustrate how survival isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it involves growing claws on fins, or going blind in order to see. My story isn’t pretty either. It isn’t even finished yet. But I’m telling it because it’s the best evidence I’ve got in support of my theory of evolution, that faith must adapt in order to survive.
The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17 NASB). Followers of Jesus Christ are a transitional species. The Christian life, on both an individual and a collective level, is comprised of an awkward assemblage of the old and the new, the necessary and the unnecessary, the good and the bad, the sinful and the redeemed. Adapting to a new environment is challenging because it’s hard to know which fundamentals are false and need to be shed and which fundamentals are truly essential and need to develop and grow. I’m sure that at times we look a little strange, like angelfish clinging to the walls of a cave.
I’m not yet thirty, but I feel as if over the past few years, my faith has experienced a lifetime of change. I’ve rethought some of my fundamental beliefs about the Bible, salvation, science, religion, the cosmic lottery, Jesus, and truth. The process has been ugly at times, but each day I feel a little closer to having the kind of faith that can survive the volatility of constant change, the kind of faith that can outlive my doubt and fear. I can’t always say that I feel closer to God — the doubts often return — but I think I’m finally beginning to understand that it’s me who’s moving, not him. Like salvation, evolution is an everyday process. I’m still changing, and I expect I always will be.