What if I’m wrong?

Some would advise against playing one of my favorite games: worst case scenario. I hope that this isn’t an actual board game. If it is, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the game that a lot of anxious people (read: me) play in their mind every time they leave their house, “What’s the worst thing that could happen and how can I prepare for it?” It’s not a great way to live your day-to-day life, but I think that a version of this game is actually a great way to think about your faith. Let me explain.

To recap: I’ve been writing about examining the faith that you have in Jesus. I’ve been encouraging you to ask yourself why you believe what you believe, where those beliefs came from, and if you think that any of them are what the Bible or Jesus actually has to say about life and the good world that God made. In common cultural language, this is called deconstruction and is popular among people who identify as “exvangelical”. As in, they’ve examined the evangelical movement, found it lacking, and have left it behind. Until it’s proven to me that this is an unhealthy way to identify myself, I’m in this crowd.

If you’ve been reading along, you’ve hopefully taken some time to think about your own experience of faith in Jesus and the Church. I hope that you’ve found both some good and some bad in things that you once took for granted. Today, I want to address what often comes next, after you have decided that you want to throw some beliefs out with the garbage and maybe even pick up a few new ones as you go deeper in your relationship with God: fear.

For me, whenever I would start to examine some deeply held belief in the evangelical world, I would start to get a little anxious. Questions like, “what if I’m wrong about this?” would start to swirl in my head. I would agonize over my beliefs about women, sexuality, and a biblical lifestyle, to name a few. I would waffle back and forth, losing sleep, and fretting about “getting it wrong”.

This is one of the major wounds that evangelicalism left me with: a bone-chilling fear that, if I was wrong, then I would go to hell. Or maybe I never knew Jesus to start with. Or perhaps, and this word was thrown around far too casually, I was a heretic. The implication there was that a heretic’s faith is inauthentic, they don’t really know Jesus, and they are destined for eternal damnation. To be clear, I believe that the Bible teaches that our beliefs and our actions have consequences and, without the grace of God through the blood of Jesus, we are bound for an eternity apart from him. I don’t know exactly what hell is like because the Bible is actually not super clear, but I know that it’s real and that Jesus won’t be there. What I don’t believe is a fire and brimstone version of hell and that you’ll go there for having wrong ideas or having the audacity to not become perfect the second that you give cognitive assent to those ideas.

As I started to think about what I really believed about all the evangelical doctrines that were thrown at me during my time in Radford, I was deeply fearful. Even though I had questions about some of what they were teaching me, underneath it all, I had bought into their theology of fear and right ideas above all else hook, line, and sinker. It was devastating and it took me a really long time to figure it out.

Now, it’s time for the good version of my favorite game: what’s the worst that could happen? As I started to come out of that damaging and abusive community, I was able to ask myself this question. What if I am wrong about God’s design for women? What’s the worst that could happen? Does God send people to hell for being egalitarian? (side note: I never considered until recently the opposite of this question, does God send people to hell for being complementarian, during all of this. You can see how deeply they had got to me.) The answer, of course, is no! In case no one has ever told you, I’m going to do it in all caps, GOD DOES NOT SEND PEOPLE TO HELL FOR HAVING WRONG IDEAS. The Scriptures are pretty clear that the only “unforgivable sin” is not listening to or trusting the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32). That’s ironic since that’s just about all that evangelicalism teaches people how to do: not even consider the inklings and intuitions inside themselves, which are often the Holy Spirit.

We end up separated from God in this life and into eternity because of a lack of faith, not because of wrong ideas. What I mean is that, even if I have all the wrong ideas in the world, but I have faith in God as he is revealed in his world and in the Holy Scriptures, then the worst thing that can happen to me is not that bad. God is not cruel. If I have wrong ideas about something and I’m earnestly seeking to know the truth, can he not be trusted to redirect me? Can he not be trusted to teach me differently? Am I not allowed to change my mind? 

Do you see how this version of the game is helpful? When you start to consider your faith in light of the Scriptures, through the council of the Saints, and while listening to the Holy Spirit, the worst thing that can happen is that you’re wrong about something. But as long as you maintain a humble and earnest heart, God is faithful to show you the truth.

I used to not be able to understand how we could consider ourselves or other people “good” if we were all sinners and sin was inherently “bad”. I even got into heated discussions and confronted people publicly about it. This was something I’d never considered until I got into evangelical circles, but I now realize that an over-emphasis on the doctrine of depravity is central to the evangelical brand. It was one of the later things that I deconstructed, but it’s something that God has been faithful to change my mind about. I don’t believe that, especially as a follower of Jesus, “sinner” is central to my identity. Creation itself has been marred by humanity’s sin (Gn. 3:17-19; Rm. 8:20-22), but I’ve never heard an evangelical pastor refer to creation as bad. God didn’t say that it was bad and he didn’t say that people were bad either, as a result of sin. He said that we were doomed to die, corrupted, and fractured, but never bad. Therefore, it stands to reason, that if God called both humanity and creation good in the beginning and he never said otherwise, then we can still be good while being impacted by sin. Why else would he save us, if there was nothing good to save? His image alone is enough!

So, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Will you be misunderstood? Cast out? Talked down to or about? Questioned? I wish that I could tell you that none of these things will happen to you, but all of them happened to me and many others that I know. When you’re trying to leave an abusive, controlling system, it comes with the territory.

But what’s the worst thing that could happen if you let all of those legitimate questions and fears win the day? What’s the worst thing that will happen if you stay in a faith system that you have fundamental philosophical issues with? I think that there’s a lot of terrible things that could happen, but I’ll only list a few. You could completely lose yourself. You could live in never-ending cognitive dissonance between your culture and what you know is true. You could silence the voice of the Holy Spirit within you. You could live the rest of your days with a hollowed-out version of the life Jesus purchased for you on the cross.

So, which will it be? Unfortunately, there’s not easy or comfortable answers when it comes to deconstructing a faith system that some people who you dearly love are deeply committed to, that you were deeply committed to.

I can’t promise that it won’t be painful, but I can promise that it will get better. The worst that could happen is possible whether you choose to deconstruct or not. Wouldn’t you rather know who you are, where you stand, and what you actually think about the faith that you’ve come to hold dear? Or would you rather just tow the line for the sake of “belonging”? (Spoiler: that’s not belonging at all, it’s enslavement.)

I hope you find the courage to choose the former and find the hope of the unshakeable Gospel waiting for you at the bottom of it all.