The news about Joshua Harris backing out of his past ideas, his marriage, and his faith has been filling my feeds for the past few weeks. In the wake of so many spiritual leaders either failing morally or falling away from the faith entirely, I’m beginning to have difficulty mustering up an appropriate response. I recognize the disappointing nature of it, the anger and the fear involved. No one wants this. This isn’t the way it should be.
But when the news broke, forgive me… the first thing that entered my head was the line “another one bites the dust.”
I’ve begun, in other words (and for better or worse), to expect this kind of thing of “Christian” leaders when they get to a certain station in their careers. I don’t want to expect it, but it’s too normal now for me to be shocked by it.
I’m not all that curious about his reasons for “deconstruction” as he calls it, nor do I think the current obsession in finding out exactly why people “fall away” has much merit. Maybe behind the obsession is the all-too-human desire to discover the factors that contribute to failure and never, ever, EVER let those happen to us. I’m in Aslan’s camp on this: no one is told any story but their own.
But the recent glut of news on this subject, combined with the continually depressing sparring over politics and belief systems on every public forum available, has left me feeling heavier than usual. Coming as it did with a rush of “Christians” of all stripes certain that they knew what it really meant, Joshua Harris’s announcement still ended up giving me pause. I’m a young, Christ-following writer with hopes of getting my words out to more people, after all.
I have two thoughts that keep spinning around inside my head. Maybe they will be of service to you.
Be More Uninspired
I’ve written before about God owning our words. But here’s a reminder to myself and to you as writers and readers: as much as I know that God is involved in the creative process, and that I and many other writers want to honor Him with our words, none of us are capital-I Inspired. I know that this might seem really obvious, but the way we act sometimes doesn’t suggest that we know it.
We get so precious about our own words and ideas, about their rightness and soundness and excellence. We forget that in a couple of years we might have completely changed our minds about how important these things are or whether they are even accurate. We forget, in the heat of a passionate argument about how our viewpoint is correct, that we are dust and so, too, are all of our fancy ideas and systems. And when God uses someone else’s words profoundly in our hearts, we tend to elevate them in our minds to prophetic or divine status. We look past the flaws of their work and tell everyone about how it changed our lives. We forget, too, that they are dust.
I’m not suggesting that we go around totally skeptical of everything, or that we don’t passionately enjoy good writing, or least of all that God doesn’t work through the words of His people. I do suggest, as both a reader and a writer, that we invest some effort to keep it all in its place, and practice a higher level of discernment.
Just think about what a horrible weight we put on Christ-following communicators when we lift them up as Inspired by God. Remember how much of the “Christian” community did this with Joshua Harris, a 20-something who wasn’t even married at the time his book exploded? The impact of doing so has hurt a lot of people, not least of all Harris himself. Is it any surprise that unearthing the crumbling foundation of that system left so many other systems vulnerable for him?
When confronted by such elevated expectations and potential misuse of our words, communicators everywhere should follow the example of Paul and Barnabas by rending their clothes and shouting their shoddy humanity until it echoes in the streets. Paul said it well: follow me only as I follow Christ. Forget about names and titles and bestsellers. It doesn’t matter if Apollos or Paul or Joshua or Chris or Balaam’s ass said it. Test every word by the Word and follow Jesus, not all of us overly-voluble humans who can’t even lead ourselves.
This means that we’re embracing a culture of discernment, not just a culture of answers or a culture of questions.
Be Less “Christian” and More Like Christ
One of the telling statements from Harris’s announcement is the following: “By all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”
It is all too easy for us to intertwine “being a Christian” with other things that have nothing to do with following Christ, like our political affiliation, cultural values, or standards of holiness. Joshua’s statement is personal, of course, but what does it say of “Christians” that a young leader nurtured in the thick of the evangelical sub-culture missed the essence of following Christ, or at least was able to fake it for years before realizing he didn’t believe it?
I have to wonder if Harris’s understanding of “being a Christian” relied more on a Christianized culture of sorts (in this instance, the reactionary culture that birthed the purity movement) than on the Gospel.
We have to make a distinction between the systems and trappings of an oft-confused “Christian culture” and true faith in Jesus.
Anymore, I hesitate to use the word “Christian” without clarifying it (it was, after all, applied to early believers by the society around them). I also rarely use “evangelical” unless I’m describing a cultural state, and that not flatteringly. I try to avoid these terms now because, to quote the Princess Bride, I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean. Instead, I’m gravitating to the hyphenated term “Christ-follower” or the simpler idea of being a “believer in Jesus Christ.”
Those capture more of the essence of what I mean when I talk about my faith than the other words. Our faith is, in the end, not something based on right knowledge or right action or right politics or right culture. It’s not based on being right in any way except being made right with God. The essence of the Gospel is Christ in me, the hope of glory. To unite us to His Father, Christ came down to our level, lived, died, and rose again for us, and now resides in us in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is biblical, and experiential, and vital. Life is not and never will be found in anything else.
I find myself feeling more and more lost in this world, and more and more found in Christ. I have no clue what political affiliation I have now, but I know that I am in Christ. I have no idea where I fit culturally, but I know that I am in Christ. I don’t feel like I can honestly claim a denomination, and even the words we typically use to align ourselves beyond denominational lines are losing their meaning. And from what I can tell, I’m not the only believer feeling this way.
Some might claim that we have commitment issues. But the crux is that we’re loyal to something higher than all of those other categories. We look to Jesus Christ, and we’re learning to be okay with all the rest falling away.
Contrary to having arrived in some safe place, however, relying on Christ for our identity is both home and journey. It is now and not yet. In Him I grow and in Him I remain. The burden is easy and the yoke is light. I die and I live. And all of this makes me less anxious about the larger world or some distant future and more present where He puts me. I am to focus on doing the next thing, loving the next person, living a quiet life, and working with my hands. I’m learning to make the choices that confront me instead of the choices I imagine I will be forced to make. I’m learning what it means to be in the world but not of it, and again — what I mean by that phrase is not anywhere near what many “Christians” or “evangelicals” mean by it.
What I’m getting at (perhaps poorly), is that as soon as man-made categories become more important to us as believers than those that Christ established (for instance, the sheep and the goats) we’re losing the gist of a living faith. And His categories travel across party lines, beyond the people of the pew, beyond our religious systems, our moral standards, and our cultural values.
How shall we then live?
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!
But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:10-18)
Look to the day of the Lord, saints, and release the fear and pride that says we need to reduce a living faith into the right boxes and systems to be able to maintain it. Look to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of your faith, not to the “Christian” rulers and influencers and celebrities that populate the world. Let God be true, and every human uninspired.