It was at a funeral where a friend of long ago asked if I was ‘still deconstructing’. I said I was. Later, the question prompted me to think about this lengthy and disconcerting process of deconstructing my faith.
I had imagined that when all had been dismantled and discarded, re-building would start on that bare foundation. I have been building houses all my life, so it seemed to me a natural thing to do – a new one to replace the old.
Now I am not so sure. Living on the foundation seems preferable. There is an uncomplicated simplicity about it that has much appeal. All we need. ‘We’ being two old best-friends, a dog, and the colourful birds we feed. Yes, it is a problem for visitors, for they so often give suggestions that would make things better for us – as they see it. For it bothers them that we have discarded so many things they couldn’t live without. Like the blueprints of their faith; it bothers them that we have discarded those as well yet seem to be fine without them.
Actually, I have a very old blueprint that shows that in the foundation I have enough. A bit ill-defined in parts, but with enough detail to know what could be done without, and what represents part of the foundation. That blueprint is the early followers of Jesus. Notice I didn’t say ‘early church’ for that is another set of blueprints with all sorts of structures added that obscure the foundation so completely, it is prudent to make a distinction between these two groups.
While the history of the Christian church is authoritative and well documented, the material on the early followers of Jesus is sparse. Histories are written by the elite, the literate, and the men; not by the followers who were essentially poor, nearly all illiterate, and predominately women. What fragments we have of the time were written by people who despised them, so much thoughtful conjecture is required to be able to speak with any authority of the early followers of Jesus.
There are, however, some things we can be sure about. Perhaps the most significant is the sensational growth while surrounded by hostility, persecution, and concerted efforts to destroy them. In the early years they had no leader, no bible, no church buildings, no creeds, only a few memorized passages from what people could remember Jesus saying on the mountain, as well as some powerful prophecies from Isaiah. One could call it foundational to be discerning; to retain vital parts from this library of ancient writings, and avoid treating the rest with a reverence it does not deserve. If the early followers had enough to inform their faith practice, probably that’s enough for us too.
Also surprising is the fact that they did not evangelize. They believed the ‘great commission’ was for that time only, and besides, there is little point in trying to persuade people to embrace a way of life that is both illegal and dangerous. And yet this counter-cultural way of life spread throughout the Mediterranean region at a rate something like forty percent each decade, and reaching an estimated six million at the time Emperor Constantine made it the state religion.
They may not have left much in the way of historical material, but they certainly left us convincing proof that embracing what Jesus said and living their lives accordingly, is a formidable transforming cultural power for good. Not just for the elites, but for ordinary people, and therein lies its power. The ‘Gospel of Jesus Christ’ was good news for all, not just some. Foundational one could say.
It is not difficult to see the contrast between these followers of Jesus and the Christian churches today. I believe the point of difference is the gospel – the ‘good news’ message of Jesus Christ. One a message so persuasive it gives life and sustains an other-centered, counter-cultural life orientation for all who embrace it; the other a message so unconvincing it is largely ignored, except for a dwindling number of mostly elderly believers. And for the masses who have replaced this central message with smoke and mirrors, coloured lights and music.
So, one could ask, what is foundational about this persuasive message? It is a message that presents God as father, and puts an end to the idea of god-as-deity. When his disciples asked Jesus about praying, he said start this way: “Our Father …” It may not seem a big deal for us, but for his listeners it was huge. They were the first people in a long and well documented history of their race to be given that opportunity to address God as ‘Father’. A shift from a name-that-must-never-be-spoken, to one reflecting intimacy and allowing for relationship and conversation.
As well as the message prompting a change of mind about who God is, it changed their minds about themselves. Instead of living in fear of the capricious wrath of a far-off deity, they could live at ease within the love of a father and his family. All made convincing and possible for them because the speaker turned out to be who he said he was: the savior of the world. One who by his death and rising from the grave, brought right relationship between God and his creation.
The early followers may have been poor and illiterate, but they understood the message of good news. They would have heard about the time John the Baptizer pointed to Jesus and declared to his disciples, “Look … the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. A declaration they would have believed, for John got that insight from his father, and he got it from the angel Gabriel himself. And the good news for them was that the thing that Jesus took away was a false view of who they were. No longer did they see themselves as fear-driven creatures trying to appease a distant angry god, but loved and provided for by a father who wants the best for all his children.
That is very different from what we have always believed – sin as wrongdoing. And our identity, instead of children made in the father’s image, we became sinners and depraved. The idea of ‘image-bearers’ was linked to the fall so convincingly that we dare not consider it. Those brave deconstructing souls however, do consider it, and grapple with the notion of Jesus either completing his mission or not. I prefer to use the more accurate definition of sin, and rejoice in the assurance that Jesus’ work was finished and our mistaken identity was taken away. A foundational assurance.
Jesus gave his disciples a good description of his central mission: “to seek and to save the lost”, and the early followers, used to living unnoticed lives, felt sought-out and known. And the word ‘saved’, they took it as it was meant, a verb meaning ‘to heal, deliver or preserve’ rather than what we have done by making it a noun ‘salvation’. The verb is foundational; the noun has opened up a whole belief structure that I have been happy to live without.
The early followers also appreciated being delivered from false thinking about God and themselves, and delivered from ‘lost-ness’ with all its attendant perplexity and confusion. They now lived with purpose and direction. Foundational. If we put these verses together, the first one is about knowing who we are, and the second one knowing where we are going. That was a persuasive good news message.
Similarly, the object of their devotion dying in agony, cried out “It is finished” and they took this finished work to be the sin of the world (believing a lie about themselves) had been taken away. The finished work to them was that they had been found, and put in right relationship with God and each other.
Even with their enemies. For this message was good news for all humankind. It was a message for all people; divisions and barriers had been broken down with the spreading of love to all. It was a message that disallowed ‘us and them’ thinking, for it held that God has no favourites. Now there’s a foundation for us.
More than that, they had no fear of death. Jesus had demonstrated his power was greater than death, and promised them they too, would pass through a corridor from this life to the next. And while the idea of final judgement was part of the message, the notion of hell for those who didn’t hear the message, wasn’t. No wonder the early followers didn’t have to evangelize; the way they lived with such assurance and confidence was enough.
It is my view that this addition of hell to the central message of Jesus has done more than any other to render good news into bad news. Like, Very Bad news. The pain of burning is bad enough, the proposition that it is forever; that there is no escape, not even death itself, is beyond imagination. Then to add that this is the declared fate of more than three quarters of the earth’s people. No wonder so many don’t regard this as good news, and don’t want anything to do with people who say it is. I can state that there is no act of discarding that has given me so much delight, than that notion of hell.
It is possible to see how ideas like eternal conscious torment in hell for non-believers crept in to the gospel message of later centuries. My belief is that it started with Paul not taking seriously enough Jesus commandment to love your neighbour, even ones you don’t like, and to treat others like you would like to be treated. He didn’t want to upset the elites of his time, so the buying, selling and ownership of slaves was never challenged in his writings that became blueprints for the church.
Similarly, being a product of the elites himself in that patriarchal society, even after his miraculous conversion, he retained a view of women that Jesus didn’t hold. He wasn’t used to them being any part of the serious religious talk, and disliked their questioning when they were included later. No doubt the busy women questioned so much of Paul’s emphasis on stuff that didn’t involve them. It wasn’t foundational to their life orientation of helping others, including women and slaves.
Later influential church leaders, such as Augustine, also played to the elites of his day. They had private armies, and while somewhat impressed with Augustine’s remarkable intellect and his gospel message, they refused to countenance this ‘love your enemies’ bit. Hence, they were accommodated by Augustine’s ‘just war’ theory, a blueprint that meant every war from that time to the present is fought with the absurd notion that God is on their side.
The early followers had too much regard for what Jesus said to discard anything. They held to the prophecy that God will do a new work and their swords will become ploughshares, their spears pruning hooks, and there will be no more war. They had no difficulty living with this hope and following to the letter, what Jesus had taught. They loved their enemies. They decided they may as get along with them, having discarded ‘us and them’ thinking and embracing as they did, the ultimate restoration of all. We know this because the artifacts with Isaiah’s words outnumber any other quotation by a large margin. It was a foundational tenet of their life orientation. I do wonder how many Jesus followers live this way today. I don’t wonder about how many are on one side in the current unholy mess in the Holy Land.
Paul’s thinking influenced the writers of the gospels. While the four individual writers give us a wonderful glimpse of what Jesus said and did, Paul’s training and background ensured the sacrifice and atonement thinking remained in the structure. He placed too much emphasis on the sacrifice of Jesus and his blood shed for the atonement of sin. All very important to the Jewish mind, but, being more influenced by the Essene-type teachers, Jesus had no regard for sacrifice or bloodshed. Take his outburst in the temple that got him killed. While we read his disappointment was that the house of prayer had become a ‘den of thieves’ the word is actually ‘flesh tearers’ or slaughter-men. More like an abattoir than a place of worship. No wonder he put an end to it all. Seeing he discarded it, so can we.
So I regard it as disappointing and ultimately detrimental to the gospel message, that ideas of blood, sacrifice and atonement become so emphasised. Take blood for example. Jesus is supposed to have said ‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’. It caused massive headaches for the early followers, because their taking in of abandoned babies was seen by their hostile neighbours as child sacrifice and cultish practices. As I discarded the inerrancy of scripture doctrine long ago, I am free to question if Jesus actually said such a thing. The earliest fragment found with that reference is from partway through the second century. Scholars are certain John never wrote it, and chances are that Jesus never said it.
Similarly, much of Paul’s writing focuses on a theory of atonement – another very Jewish concept. Scholars point out that Luke, the only non-Jewish gospel writer, while copying much of Mark’s writing, in every passage where Mark has atonement language, Luke changes it, or gets rid of it altogether without replacing it. Perhaps we can too, only replacing it with a gospel that has Jesus at its centre.
We would be in good company. The scroll material being examined now is showing that the discarded ‘gospels’, point to a Christ-figure whose primary emphasis is on what his followers were to do, not just believe. He is presented as the ‘sent one’, a miracle healer, and the great teacher of righteousness. Sadly, these writings, ordered to be burned by the church fathers, are regarded as heresy, mainly because they lacked the ‘high Christology of Apostolic thought’.
With or without high Christology, I believe these mis-placed emphases on such theoretical concepts have been a distraction. The Gospel message, instead of a gift prompting a life orientation, becomes conditional on believing a set of ideas. A set of ideas that, don’t seem to have much appeal among today’s easily distracted, non-believing people. Clearly they are not foundational.
I believe that people living like the first century followers of Jesus would be intriguing enough to be taken seriously today. They may not have a mission statement, nor could they explain high Christology or atonement; they wouldn’t have the time. For, dealing with widows (read single mothers), orphans, homeless, the sick, and getting rid of demons in people takes people working together and cooperating. It takes a lot of love as well as a lot of time, and it relies on an other-centered, self-giving life orientation. The message that enables people to live like this is clearly good news, a foundational message.
No, I am no longer deconstructing. Nor am I re-building. The foundation is all I need to flourish as a Jesus follower.
I must give my friend this current answer in case he thinks with more deconstructing, the foundation will disappear along with everything else.
