Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I am continuing a series entitled The Soulcial Revolution—an expansive spirituality built for the modern era.

The underlying principle of the revolution is learning to integrate the complexity of our existence in five areas: self, spirituality, people, the planet, and the cosmos.

In this post, I answer the question: What does it mean to integrate the complexity of the planet?

Introduction

I’ll start with the ending in mind.

You are an earth rider.

And so is everyone else.

And so are the plants, animals, and ecosystems on this magnificent planet.

You and I—along with every species—are riding atop an organic ball as it skips across an endless universe. And we have a responsibility to take care of one another.

Everyone and everything.

This identity reframes all aspects of life.

New Lenses

The concept of an earth rider originated with a remarkable wedding experience.

What began as an outpouring of emotion for one couple, eventually carried me into the stratosphere on a cosmic river of love. Up there, riding the earth, with the vastness of the universe before me, I was filled with a deep sense of wonder, love and connection to all life, people, planet, even the cosmos.

When I “returned” from that strange encounter, I immediately internalized several things in my body and soul.

Our Beautiful Planet

I fell in awe of our beautiful planet, not unlike the astronauts of Apollo 8 who snapped the iconic image of the earth from space—fragile but whole. Instead of feeling insignificant against the backdrop of an infinite void, the opposite occurred. This earth and its precious cargo—together in motion—became the most important things to me.

Perhaps you have felt this too, watching a documentary on this amazing world, or as you sat before a mountain stream. That nudge that says maybe you are not separate from this spinning globe but rather sense your deep belonging to it.

Beautiful People

I fell in love with people, maybe for the first time, if I’m honest. You and I and every person on this organic rock share an unbreakable bond as human beings.

That is our starting point.

Our cultural narrative teaches us that conflict and division are normal parts of the human condition: liberal vs. conservative, men vs. women, one race against another. Yes, identity, ethnicity, and nationalities are important, and make us unique individuals. But from that higher perspective, polarity now seems impossible to me.

We are one global human race.

Beautiful Nature

This was the most surprising reframe of all. I fell in love with nature, again, for the first time.

I once taught that we had dominion over the planet, over the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field. And I’m not gonna lie, this idea shaped my relationship to the natural order. We were the kings and queens of the hill, so to speak.

But after that event—where I was running beside the foxes—I saw every plant, tree, and animal in a different light. I felt compassion. I wanted to care for them in every possible way.

I also knew in my bones that I was not separate from nature. I was but one extension of it. Not above, not below, but a unique expression forged from the same elements as the leaves on a tree and the stars of a distant galaxy.

The “Mother Earth” Cup

While in Quebec City, I ran across this beautiful cup by indigenous artist Maxine Noel. I immediately bought it because I wanted more art and inspiration in my life.

But on many occasions, as I’ve enjoyed my morning coffee, I have found myself staring intently at the image. And then, I have been filled with an uncontrollable emotion, for the artist, for her people, and for the struggle that history has laid upon them. And then more love and concern pours out from me, for this wonderful world, and its natural ecosystems.

All from a little cup? No. All because that experience reframed my relationships to people and planet.

A Closing Invitation

So, wherever you are now, I want to invite you to stop for a moment. Get near a window or go outside, and see if you can spot another person, and some part of the natural world.

Just watch them for a bit. Relax. Breathe a little.

Then close your eyes, keep those images in your mind, and feel the ground beneath your feet.

You, and the person, and the plant, everyone and everything, are moving at cosmic speed—interconnected and together—whether you notice it or not.

Love you earth riders.

Til next time, where I will talk about the uni-verse, and integrating the complexity of the cosmos.

Gustavo

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I am continuing a series entitled The Soulcial Revolution, a philosophy of life built for the modern world. The underlying principle of the revolution is learning to integrate the complexity of life in five areas: self, spirituality, people, the planet, and the cosmos.

In this post we answer the question: What does it mean to integrate the complexity of people?

Introduction

“I see you.”

I was moved the first time I heard this greeting. It is how Neytiri welcomed JakeSully in the movie Avatar. It is a moment of deep intimacy despite the gaping differences between them—she is a Na’vi, he is a human being.

Yet Neytiri’s acceptance of JakeSully is personal, absolute, and wholly welcoming. She bridges every facet that would divide them, and that would separate her people from JakeSully’s.

I remember thinking how much the world could change if we greeted every person with such an intentional embrace.

I see you.

Our Vision is Binary

Unfortunately, we have been taught to see people in binary terms—good vs. evil, saved vs. sinner, us vs. them. Whether the divide is ethnic or economic, racial or political, there is always a palpable distance between different groups of people.

The current political climate in the U.S. is but one permutation. There are only two options—the morally correct way or Satan’s way! Unfortunately, this is how both sides regard the other. The impasse is automatic and the visceral dislike for “those people” makes true communication or compassion impossible.

But this is a profound misunderstanding of the magnificent complexity of our human nature. For starters, we are not born as sinful human creatures. That is a simplistic idea of pre-modern and pre-scientific minds.

Instead, we are deeply layered and multifaceted beings. Nothing about our makeup is simple: not the growth of our fingernails, the path to our beliefs, nor the casting of our votes.

When we learn to see people in their full, wondrous, and irreducible humanity, we have access to a different way of relating, one where grace, love, and patience can blossom in previously impossible places.

But let me be clear, embracing a person’s complexity does not mean excusing harmful behavior. There are cultural norms and laws to guard against that. And when those fail, we can turn to protests as well!

Here is one final implication of affirming the unfathomable humanity of every person.

There is no us vs. them.

We are one human race aboard the U.S.S. Eden as it hurtles through space at cosmic speed. We have a responsibility to take care of each other—despite our natural inclinations to fracture.

Indeed, wars are beneath our greatness as human beings.

We Are Connected

In The Wedding Effect, I described the one song that pulses through the cosmos—the uni-verse. It is a symphony of infinite love, infinite connection, and infinite complexity. This isn’t mere poetry. Our DNA, biochemistry, and shared human experience confirm this integral link.

We are bound together, physically and metaphysically.

One of the beautiful storylines of Lost was how each character’s choices rippled across time, distance, even death—shaping lives in ways they could never see or understand. Those fifteen interconnected figures served as a microcosm for what happens on a global scale.

Thus, every purchase I make, every Netflix show I stream, every kind word I speak contributes to the world we all inhabit. We are creating the shared reality in which we move and have our being, one choice at a time.

An Invitation to Another Lens

This method of seeing people envelopes all identities, ideologies, and divisions that give the appearance of a world that is splitting apart at the seams. Yes, we have serious issues to tackle. However, only sensational headlines get amplified and all the good, noble, and courageous actions that we could celebrate get excluded.

My invitation, is that:

1. We would recognize the human grandeur of every individual—whether on the freeway, our newsfeed, or the voting booth.

2. We would see every person as beloved, complex, and worthy in their humanity without needing to resort to metaphysics.

3. We would recognize that our choices, though seemingly insignificant, have an outsized impact on people and the world that we create.

4. We would not live as isolated or divided creatures, but as members of one tightly connected human race.

I see you dear reader, as a miracle and a wonder. And I am trying to see everyone else in the same way and live according to that principle.

Til next time when I answer the question: What does it mean to integrate the complexity of the planet?

Gustavo

Take a look at this illustration.

This is your basic Augustinian framework on the nature of each complex human being. It is also the view of your average Christian pastor if they defend Christian orthodoxy.

Three Dots

Three dots. That is how Christian orthodoxy defines your existence.

The first dot represents the view that you are born sinful and corrupt from birth. You don’t need a DNA test. It’s in your genes because you are a child of Adam.

The second dot is your path if you are saved—loosely defined as “giving your life to Jesus who forgives your sins.” This removes the stain of original sin, but places you in an endless conflict with yourself.

Now you take on a Romans 7 existence, where “You want to do good but can’t. You don’t want to do bad, but you do.” It’s the endless battle between your sinful and redeemed nature, the former still remaining even after salvation.

The third dot is nightmarish.

Again, according to Christian orthodoxy, if you do not accept the gift of salvation, you will remain in a morally corrupted state for your entire life. Finally, if you never hear the gospel or you reject it, you will suffer eternal conscious torment in a lake of burning fire.

Your Are Infinitely Complex

Human nature cannot be this simple to illustrate.

As a former Bible professor of twenty years, I am sorry to say I upheld and taught these beliefs to my students.

They are inhumane. They are not true.

You are an infinitely complex human being, with one brilliant nature that displays itself in endlessly good and bad tendencies.

You are the [great] one.

You are the [amazing] one.

And it’s an honor to meet you.

Thanks for reading.

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I am continuing a series entitled The Soulcial Revolution—a philosophy of life for the modern world. The Soulcial Revolution is the integration of a complex universe in five areas of life: self, spirituality, people, earth, and the cosmos. Up next is the integration of a complex spirituality.

What do you get with a human Bible and a human Jesus?

Introduction

I’ll get right to the point.

This is how we define a complex spirituality within the Soulcial Revolution.

First, we treat the Bible as ancient wisdom literature and not as sacred text. Secondly, our primary interest is on the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). They give us a similar portrait of the carpenter from Nazareth.

John, I love you, but you turned a human Jesus into a cosmic one!

So, with those requirements, what do you get with a human Bible and a human Jesus?

The Brilliance of the Storytellers and Richness of the Story

First, you get brilliant storytellers—the Shakespeares of their day. They took disparate sources and wove them into one of the most compelling figures of ancient history. I don’t think we give them enough credit for their work. The portrait of Jesus that everyone loves is their portrait. The voice against injustice that we hear in the “words of Jesus,” is their voice.

They are the original social justice writers.

Secondly, you get a rich storyline that is pulsating with history, politics, and religion. And you as a mere mortal—or dear reader of Tuesdays with Doctor G.—get to approach this story from the other side of history.

Most come at Jesus from the present looking back via Luther, Augustine, and Paul. You get to approach from the in-between period, between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This is a rare vantage point as you arrive “on the scene” before Jesus, and before the gospel writers, Paul or any ancient theologian has commented on his life. There are no doctrines or beliefs you must uphold to enter the story.

Most notably, as I have emphasized elsewhere on TWDG, every significant doctrine of the New Testament—Satan, hell, original sin, among others—stems from the historical context of this era. Same goes for every important institution or figure (Pharisees, Sadducees, synagogue, Roman Empire, etc.)

This historical current provides the color and tension that make these stories crackle with life and deep insight into the human condition and human flourishing.

The Wonder of the Carpenter from Nazareth

Third you get the amazing carpenter from Nazareth. The original social justice warrior. He is on the side of the poor, marginalized, oppressed, and everyone who has ever suffered.

He is one voice against two empires.

In the grand scheme, he is facing back toward the Hebrew scriptures and shalom. Paul is facing in the opposite direction towards the Greek New Testament and eirenes, a fractured “peace” with principalities and powers, demons and the whole infernal lot that snuck into history with 1 Enoch.

Shalom as a philosophical idea is oneness, wholeness, global social justice, harmony, and unity. It’s flourishing along every dimension. And that’s the message of the carpenter from Nazareth, the kingdom as shalom in action.

Finally, shalom is a program of this earth and for this earth. It’s what you do in this life that matters.

An Inspired Community

Here’s an idea.

You get 6-8 people around a table, with lots of good food and flowing wine. Someone embodies one of the stories in the gospels. Not as sermons to be obeyed, but as rich literature with a radical, expansive, and people-first message.

Then, we heartily discuss the stories, the clash of life and power, and their implications for our modern world. We have the privilege of coming at these issues from an ancient analog perspective within beautiful narratives of human empowerment. In a world that has gone into warp speed with AI, this is the exact opposite, and a much needed antidote.

Once we are done, we walk away enriched, closer to one another, and inspired to keep making a difference in our world.

That is an Introduction to a complex spirituality, the second pillar of the Soulcial Revolution. In the coming issues, I’ll provide more details and examples for how this would work in practice.

I’d be interested to hear your take on this pillar. Drop your comments below. Til next time, where I’ll discuss the integration of complexity of people and relationships.

Gustavo

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I’m writing a series on the Soulcial Revolution—a philosophy of life for the modern world.

In this post, I’d like to describe the visions that gave rise to the Revolution. I haven’t written about these experiences for fear of being labeled, judged, or dismissed.

But I’m past that now. So, without further ado, here is The Wedding Effect.

A Vision of Love

In January of this year, I attended a wedding for my friend’s son.

Here’s the context. I had been grieving for seven months after retiring from full-time ministry. I was in a deep funk—angry and depressed. As I sat in the pew, the groom walked to the front with his mom, kissed her, and turned to wait for the bride.

And then it began.

A rush of emotion came over me. Wave after wave of love began pouring out towards the groom, in pulsating currents, and then to the bride when she appeared in the back of the sanctuary. When the couple came together, the raw energy exploded across the stage enveloping the parents and the wedding party.

Then love broke through the stage, spreading out over the entire church. Like a vortex. And in that moment, I felt a deep connection and intimacy with every single person in that church.

Most incredibly, all my anger and grief disappeared—swept away by that sacred current.

At the reception, I could not stop dancing for three hours. My heart was alive for people, and my feet felt electric.

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A Vision of Cosmic Love

Soon after, I was driving down a lonely stretch of road at night, basking in the memory of that scene, when the same groundswell of love burst forth and smashed right through the windshield.

Was it a dream, a flash, a vision? Don’t know. Don’t care.

Because now, I was riding that highway of love as it raced above the ground. And I was running beside the foxes. In that moment, I felt a deep and exhilarating love for all animals and people, even the cars and buildings.

Everyone and everything.

Up ahead, the track hit the horizon and shot straight into the night sky.

And now I was riding on the earth as it cut through space at cosmic speed. I spun my head to the left and whipped around the sun with the other planets, leaning in as I did at Space Mountain. I glanced to my right and swung around the Milky Way.

And then I noticed it.

Every planet, every star, every galaxy, all the universe, was hurtling along the same cosmic river of love. I stared straight ahead, looking into the vastness, and immediately took in billions of galaxies, billions of light years ahead.

In that moment, I saw eternity, and eternity saw me!

Then I became the current—and I felt love, joy, meaning, peace, and connection with every shred of the cosmos.

How is that possible? Without mushrooms of course!

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I Am an Earth Rider

I could not say how long this feeling of bliss lasted, but then I was pulled back, and I was straddling the earth again.

And then it hit me.

I am an earth rider atop a beautiful organic ball—a literal Garden of Eden—as it skips through an eternal sky. And you are an earth rider too, along with the plants and the animals.

We are riding the USS Eden together. And we have a responsibility to take care of one another. Every plant, every species, every person.

Here’s what I internalized about what it means to be an earth rider.

First, you are an amazingly beautiful human being. Full stop. No explanation needed. No divine restoration required. You are the miracle. You are the wonder that you seek. When you finally realize that and step into your greatness, you will discover a joy, meaning, and richness to life beyond anything you could imagine.

Second, being an earth rider means you are connected to everyone on this earth via a supreme current of love. There is no you, me, us or them. We cannot be divided against ourselves. We are one human race.

Third, being an earth rider means that we are connected to all plants and animals, earth and cosmos. Our DNA and chemistry unite us in one uninterrupted stream of life, love, and energy.

Here’s what I ultimately learned from that encounter in the church.

Love is what fuels the universe.

It is that overwhelming current of love that courses through every molecule of the cosmos. It does heal. It can close all ruptures. It does inspires flourishing along every dimension.

It’s infinite love and connection.

That’s the Wedding Effect!

Til next time. Don’t forget to spread the love y’all!

Gustavo

I’ve been sitting on a newsletter for much longer than is normal—even for a slow writer like me. So rather than more self flagellation, I’m sending this personal message to touch base and to share what’s really going on, underneath the surface.

When I began writing in January, I had completed six months of reflection on my career after two decades of full-time ministry. To that I added an equal amount of grief after losing a life and community that I deeply loved. Finally, I realized that I too had been wounded by a religion gone sour.

I was an emotional wreck, to put it mildly.

This gave me two reasons to write: as a way to heal, and to call out these harmful effects of the soul.

But Then Wonder Happened

Around the same time I began to publish, I experienced a spiritual awakening that was so intense, I had to reach for Eastern philosophy to explain it. I call it the Wedding Effect, and it began with a vision of love as big as the cosmos. That’s when I glimpsed eternity, and took on the role of an earth rider.

Most incredibly, all of my anger and grief disappeared. In addition, I stopped feeling resentment for those with different theological or political perspectives. In the end, I was left with a feeling of overwhelming love for life, people, and this planet that has yet to abate.

So here’s the crux of the problem.

I am now orbiting two very different worlds—deconstruction vs. awakening.

The first one swims in the language of authoritarian religion and faith-based trauma. It is confrontational and divisive. The other one speaks to our human greatness and our connection to everyone and everything. It is expansive and dissolves every conflict we experience, whether with self, others, or the planet.

I would much rather build in the second world. Thus, I have felt fractured and paralyzed as I’ve wrestled with the direction of Tuesdays with Doctor G.

From Jesus to the Buddha

Here’s what I realized after pausing (procrastinating!) to reflect and regroup:

First, it is the whole spiritual arc that matters—from Jesus to the Buddha. It isn’t just one part, nor one part opposing the other. Every aspect is important in order to weave a complete spiritual tapestry.

I must embrace both sides with fervor.

Second, I’ve been every kind of Christian—and in the end, a non-Christian. I have stumbled through every stage of deconstruction, while in the throes of despair. I’ve stood at the edge, staring into the darkness where no god could be found. And now I have awakened to the wondrous complexity of the real world, and to the sheer gift of this present moment.

So, wherever you find yourself, whether you are suffering the soul scars of your faith or walking the lonely path of deconstruction, I can help with empathy and guidance for the journey.

Third, though I don’t wish for conflict, I must continue sharing my story to demonstrate the damaging effects of a distorted religion. Some Christian leaders now see me as a false prophet and a danger to the flock (their words). The tragic irony is that they are blind to how their teachings perpetuate the spiritual injuries I describe. Millions of believers have streamed out of the church (myself included) even as its leaders continue to defend these beliefs.

Finally, wherever you find yourself on this search for meaning, there is a wondrous beauty beyond deconstruction. It is astonishing, radiant, and alive. The stark truth is that every ideology divides us. Every ideology diminishes our humanity. Every ideology flattens the richness of the real world. Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s institutional Christianity.

But you were not born for living within narrow systems. You are a highly evolved and complex human being. You are the [great] one. You are an earth rider. That’s where we’re headed even if we have to go through deconstruction.

Next up, the Wedding Effect, where I discuss my trip to the edge of the universe.

Gustavo

P.S. If you to talk about any of the issues I’ve discussed, hit reply and share your burden.

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I am continuing a series entitled, “Pivot to a Soulcial Revolution: A Reconstruction Story in Two Parts.”

In the first post, I covered the transition from losing my faith to gaining an extraordinary gift on the other side—integration. I then provided an outline of the series where I would extend the concept of integration into five domains: self, spirituality, people, the planet, and the universe—the spokes of a Soulcial Revolution.

First up is the integration of the self via the story of two brothers in the Lost series.

Introduction

The entire storyline of Lost is an answer to this question:

What is human nature like?

It’s an important inquiry since it touches on everything from personal identity, to your relationships to self and others, and even how you view and treat your fellow human beings.

In the show, two brothers make a Job-like bet to answer this people puzzle. What are they like, at their core? Here are their answers, which connect to the first integration—the integration of the self.

Augustine’s Framework

One brother, always dressed in black, believes this about people: They come, they destroy, they fight, they corrupt. It always ends the same.

In other words, human beings are cruel and violent, by nature.

This is your basic Augustinian framework as I illustrated above.

According to this view, you are born sinful and corrupt from birth. You don’t need a DNA test. It’s in your genes because you are a child of Adam. Afterward, you are either saved into endless conflict or not saved into endless torture.

This is the perspective of Christian orthodoxy. This is what I taught and defended for twenty years.

The doctrine of original sin is attractive because it appears self-evident. Of course people are corrupt by nature. Open your eyes! Recently, a friend of mine relayed how they could better process Trump 2.0 because at least the Bible was honest about the source—innate human corruption.

This is a common viewpoint now and you can feel its residue, like a thin film, in Western culture.

It’s a collective belief.

People are intrinsically evil. They are born that way.

Jacob’s Framework

This is Jacob’s take on humanity—the second brother, who is always dressed in white.

Jacob grants everything his brother just repeated. He agrees that people are absolutely horrible. In fact, he’s going to bring 30+ characters to the island to demonstrate exactly how dastardly they can be.

For example, Sawyer cons women for a living and kills an innocent man to pay off his debts. Kate staged the death of her abusive step-father, then killed the man she loved as he was trying to help her escape from the law.

Jacob affirms that people do all those bad things, but they are not born hopelessly and intrinsically evil. Look at all the good they do, essentially on their own, as they live their lives, and are forced to make choices. They are courageous, morally conscious, and self-sacrificial. They will die for love, one another, and purely unselfish reasons. When things get rough, they will perform under pressure as the noble human beings they are.

Two Views on Human Nature

I cannot be certain, but it appears that the show’s creators are comparing a Christian worldview with an ancient Jewish one (with some Buddhist influences). As I’ve highlighted, the first framework is from Augustine’s playbook and Christian orthodoxy. The second is from a character named Jacob (father of ancient Israel in the Bible).

There is no original sin in Jacob’s world. People are not born morally corrupt in need of a divine fix. Every person is responsible for their actions—regardless of their past circumstances. There is no devil or a sin condition to blame for one’s behavior. There is no duality with Jacob. People do not have two warring natures. Instead they are complex human beings with infinitely good and bad behaviors.

By contrast, the man in black’s perspective (Augustine’s view) is horribly one-sided and simplistic. In practice, and in society, it has caused untold psychological trauma, individual and collective self-hatred, and relational conflicts in this world.

This is beyond dispute.

If you want to know why I was compelled to leave my ministry and the entire Christian industrial complex, Augustine’s perspective is a big reason.

You Are a Complex and Integrated Human Being

This is what DNA, biology, and evolution tell us about our humanity.

We are incredibly complex human beings

This is why you should question any premodern or pre-scientific opinion about you. Ancient writers or theologians had no special insight into the human condition. They were describing “how things appeared” to them. Christian orthodoxy took their words and made them into doctrines of “how things are” for us.

But you cannot be reduced to such ideas.

You are not born sinful, morally corrupt, damned, wicked, or impure. Instead, you are an integrated and infinitely complex human being. You make infinitely good and bad choices. You have infinitely good and bad motivations, actions, and perspectives all at the same time, in all different directions.

You are one harmonious self. All of the complexity of life is contained within you. There is nothing that needs to be “redeemed” inside you in order to make you spiritually whole.

In the same way, you do not have two natures. You do not need to be at war with yourself. Your shadow side, your dark passenger as Dexter calls it, is part of your complex being. Some day you are going to need this part of your essence, the Wildman or Wildwoman of literature, because life is a dangerous game as Lost taught and you may be called upon to fight real monsters.

Of course, you can learn to minimize your harmful behaviors toward yourself, others, and the planet. But you do that out of the wholeness of your integrated being, not from a fractured nature or a Romans 7 existence (if you are a Christian).

The Perfect Christmas Tree

There is a Christmas tree growing in our backyard. We planted it too close to another tree. But no matter, it has grown in the shadow of its neighbor, only now, it’s leaning a bit to the right.

To catch as many rays as it can.

Life found a way—as Goldblum reminded us. It found a way to seek more light so that it could develop into the the most beautiful expression of a Christmas tree that it could become.

That’s how I see people now. That’s how I see you.

Beautiful, amazing, and complex just like that tree taking in the energy of a distant star, transforming it together with the soil, nutrients, roots, branches, and leaves into something special.

The whole process is intricate and a wonder to behold. But there is no duality there. You cannot tell where the shadow ends and the light begins.

It’s one tree.

The first and most important integration is to the self.

You don’t need to live in self-hatred, or split your self into two natures—always in conflict with one another. You are fearfully and wonderfully made, to use a biblical metaphor, or evolved, for the more secular minded.

That’s you, in the complexity of your full humanity.

Time to live out your harmonious self!

Til next time.

Gustavo

I’d like to begin a new series on Tuesdays with Doctor G. entitled, Pivot to a Soulcial Revolution. This will lay the groundwork for what came after deconstruction, which is the more remarkable story.

Up to this point in my writing, I have shared what happened during my biblical deconstruction and the reasons for losing faith in the Bible, and in faith altogether.

I’m grateful I was able share that story because it allowed me to break the silence around my spiritual struggles. It was liberating actually. I hope those initial posts will spark honest conversations about issues of faith and about the Bible a book few people understand, but which has immense power over their lives.

Now I’d like to pivot to reconstruction.

Letting go of my faith was a devastating loss. Like death actually. But what I gained on the other side was nothing short of extraordinary. In this introductory post, I will describe the spiritual transition from loss to gain and lay out the core theme for the series—the integration of complexity.

At the end of this post, I will outline the remainder of the series by extending the concept of integration into five domains of our human existence.

These are the spokes of a Soulcial Revolution.

My Immersive and Conflictive Christian Experience

In order to understand the importance of integration to the Soulcial Revolution, I must begin near the other end, with division, and specifically the kind produced by conflict.

Here’s the truth.

The fundamental orientation of the Bible is one of conflict, a battle between the forces of good and evil. Whether it’s the “people of God” (PoG) taking out the non-PoGs in the Hebrew Bible, or early Christians battling Satan in the New Testament, warfare is baked into nearly every page.

After my conversion, I put on the supernatural goggles of the Bible. Without realizing it, I began to see the modern world through the eyes of King David or the apostle Paul. They perceived people, groups, and nations in binary terms (in or out of the holy club) and they were insiders, of course.

And if you were an outsider? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Over the entirety of my Christian life, this perception of people and the world got into my system. I took on the identify of a soldier of the Lord, complete with full body armor and a special sword. I swam in the violence and bloodshed celebrating victories over pagan nations as worship. And I had to be ever vigilant for that super predator Satan “who prowls around like a lion seeking whom he may devour.”

Being a Christian was an anxious affair—always wrestling against unseens forces in order to protect my soul, and the souls of those I loved.

In my time as a professor, I taught Augustine’s primitive vision of human corruption where every person was fundamentally flawed at birth and could not be trusted unless transformed by God. Finally, I even had an adversarial relationship with the planet as Genesis 1 had given me complete dominion over the earth and its creatures.

My worldview as a Christian was defined by this ever-present war. It seemed I was always in conflict with my nature, other people, the planet, as well as the Bible which was causing equal parts good and harm.

The Supernatural Power Goes Out

I mentioned at the start that losing my faith was devastating. Toward the end of my deconstruction period, I was in a spiral of despair. I was losing everything in my life—ministry, community, purpose and a faith that had sustained me for decades.

I call it grieving the loss of eternity.

As I’ve shared my story, folks often ask me if I prayed or sought the Spirit enough, implying I could have avoided this outcome. I get the question, but it’s insensitive given what I went through. I gave my life to this experiment—as did my family, who had little choice—so yes, I did enough.

I did not desire, choose, or seek out this route.

I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but there came an “oh shyte” moment when the Bible changed from God’s holy word to ancient human literature. In the blink of an eye, I had unplugged the power of divinity going into the text and the power of the text going into my mind.

After realizing I had been an unwitting character in Augustine’s nightmare, thirty years of constructed reality came crashing to the ground.

The Gustavo who saw the world in supernatural conflict died that day.

And I experienced darkness.

…

…

The Wonder of Awakening

When I awoke, having taken off the supernatural lenses of ancient authors, the world exploded into a trillion colors of complexity. That’s the only way I can describe it. In one of my Substack Notes I called it a terra forming of the mind.

What happened in that mental exchange was more than a shift in my theological perspective. It was a Matrix-like moment that rewired my mind and consciousness. For three decades, I had seen the world through the eyes of Bronze Age warriors, and ancient apocalyptic writers.

Binary, adversarial, and in constant discord.

Now I was staring straight into a universe of infinite complexity where everything was transformed—politics, sexuality, human nature, religion, the world, and people, especially people.

I was left with a feeling of wonder and elation that I’ve never experienced before. Most importantly, every whisper of internal strife coming from the Bible disappeared from my life. I was no longer divided against myself, others, the Bible, or the planet.

This is what I came to define as a deep and abiding integration—almost Zen like.

The Spokes of the Soulcial Revolution

By letting go of a supernatural Bible, or rather, by being forced to let go, I stepped into a new way of thinking and being in the world. About seven months after I retired from full-time ministry, I experienced an unprecedented vision of overwhelming love and connection with everyone and everything in the world. You can read about that in the Wedding Effect.

This is why I would describe my reconstruction as a two-part story.

In the rest of this series, I’ll explore this idea of integration in five areas of our human existence. Two will focus on the inner world (soul), and three on the outer world (social). Both combine to form the critical integrations to begin embodying a Soulcial Revolution.

Here is the series outline:

PART ONE - INTEGRATING THE COMPLEXITY OF OUR HUMANITY (SOUL)

1. First Integration: From Self-Loathing to Self-Acceptance - Integrating the complexity of our humanity moves beyond the beliefs that we are “fundamentally broken” at birth or that we have two warring natures—one good, the other shameful and lurking like a monster waiting to devour us. It is a beautiful thing to move from self-hatred to complete self-acceptance as a person.

2. Second Integration: From Divine Words to Ancient Wisdom - Integrating the complexity of a human Bible, and human Jesus, we can approach this figure without any commentary, doctrine or belief. This is a pretty remarkable exercise in itself. We also bring the focus back to the radical message of the carpenter from Nazareth—the original social justice warrior. One other benefit? Anyone of any religious or non-religious stripe can approach this figure in this way.

PART TWO - INTEGRATING THE COMPLEXITY OF OUR WORLD (SOCIAL)

1. Third Integration - From Confrontation to a Shared Humanity - Integrating the complexity of people allows us to move beyond binary thinking in relationships. We are not in conflict with other people, cultures, or religions. We can love people as complicated human beings without having to convert them to a worldview of eternal warfare.

2. Fourth Integration - From Dominion to Solidarity - In this post, I’ll introduce the concept of an earth rider. We are all one planet, riding to eternity at cosmic speed, together. We do not have dominion over the earth or its creatures. We cannot do with either as we wish. We have a profound responsibility to protect and care for all of life on this beautiful blue and green ball of yarn—our home.

3. Fifth Integration - From Cosmic Battle to Universal Connection - In a vision that could only be explained through Eastern philosophy, I experienced a universe of infinite love and connection. This is overflowing love as the force that can transform people and our world.

Integrating the complexity of my humanity and the world removed the spiritual strife that was a part of my Christian existence. The result was an awakening to a radical and open spirituality—a Soulcial Revolution.

This is what I’m now trying to live out and build.

Til the next post.

Gustavo

P.S. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on which of the integrations appealed to you most.

P.P.S. Also, we are all learning from one another. If you have a different take on something, please share that as well. If you don’t feel comfortable, then please share it with me directly.

Running late this week!

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G.—where I’m sharing my story of teaching and deconstructing the Bible across two decades and the spiritual aftershocks. This is my post-mission analysis where I finally made sense of my life and vocation.

Previously on Tuesdays with Doctor G. - In this series, I’ve walked through a career long battle of embracing and then letting go of a “divinely inspired” Bible. I shifted from strict inerrancy at my conversion to seeing the Bible as ancient wisdom literature—and human. I’ve shared the academic discoveries, the personal fallout, and the harmful impact from calling scripture “God-breathed.” Now for the home stretch.

Crash Landing

In June 2024, Rochelle and I said goodbye to Colombia and the campus in Medellín after a fulfilling twenty-year run—three countries, a PhD, classes of all shapes and sizes, and traveling throughout Latin America as a family. Best of all, we met so many beautiful people and communities.

But I had rough landing back in Boston. The loss was heavy, not only a career but faith too. However, as a form of self-therapy, I walked, talked, and ranted my way around my neighborhood. I relived my greatest and ghastliest moments of ministry and hashed out the early ideas for Tuesdays with Doctor G.

It’s a rare privilege to lay a twenty-year body of work before you and examine it critically for six months. The process was cathartic and liberating. Ultimately, a picture emerged that made sense of my entire journey.

It was based on one single idea.

The Tyranny of the Text

This is difficult to say as a former evangelical Bible professor but here it is:

An inspired Bible produces harmful Christianity.

Spiritual abuse and anxiety, weaponized scriptures, doctrinal warfare, and the most damaging outcome, the celebration of a violent God. The claim of inspiration is the driver of every negative consequence—and of my lengthy spiritual battle.

When you slap a “divine” label on the biblical text it warps everything inside.

Ancient violence and practices are sanitized. We are no longer scandalized by what we read. I recall a sermon that treated Israel’s exile like a historical footnote and not as the rape and pillage of people by a terrorizing army. God would do that to his own people? Yes, according to scripture.

An inspired Bible turns Christians into decoders of ancient words and practices, even as they try to make sense of the muddle of interpretations coming from the Christian landscape. And every institution morphs to participate in defining the words, books, history and doctrines of the Bible—including the seminary, church, and the Bible study industry.

The Sermon Centered Church

Pause a moment and think of the structure of your worship service. If it is like 99% of Protestant churches worldwide, every element will lead to the sermon. Moreover the people will be arranged as a passive audience taking in the “word of the Lord” from the pulpit which is always front and center.

I believe this shift happened with Luther and sola scriptura. Before his 95 theses, the center of the worship experience was the encounter with the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The homily was short but centered on the gospel stories. Now the center of the experience comes from any part of scripture in an expertly prepared expositions of 45 minutes (with illustrations).

You can thank me for training your pastors.

Looking back over my entire career, I realized that every element of my Christian life and ministry, whether from institutional Christianity, toxic Christianity, or the near worship of the Bible could be laid at the foot of an inspired text. Without it, we do not fight over words or care what Augustine, Luther, doctrines, creeds, or councils have to say about Jesus.

Finally, the ongoing injury to my conscious was sharing Jesus but also handing over the Bible. I was telling people, here is the gift of life, but you have to read him through this book that’s going to cause you harm and confusion. Oh, and you have to believe he was born of a virgin too!

Pulling the Plug

Toward the end of my career, I stopped giving the text power over my life. It was as simple as unplugging it from its divine source and from the grip it had over my mind.

Oof! Liberation.

Exhilaration.

Decades of relief washed over me.

1. No more word studies to figure out why Paul warns people they can die if they screw up communion

2. No more doctrinal battles or figuring out whether a Greek verb is in the accusative or genitive

3. No more having to defend a portrait of a cruel or violent God

4. No more having to defend a dreadful doctrine like hell

5. No more judgments of atheists, the LGBT community, or those who vote differently than I do

6. No more toxic Christianity or institutional Christianity to trip over

I could keep writing for hours about everything that I shed.

One more outcome that I was not expecting—the incredible love I felt for people again. Not manufactured. Not because “the love of Christ compelled me.”

It was because I stopped seeing people as saints or sinners. Now I was free to enjoy them as people and not as corrupt creatures in need of redemption—via my evangelism toolkit.

Jesus Unplugged

One final result of my reflection was the rediscovery of the carpenter from Nazareth.

When I first became a Christian, I signed up for a wild Jesus movement of love and service but eventually graduated into a tightly-controlled institutional container of doctrines, councils, and creeds. That radical love and fierce solidarity with the poor, women, and the oppressed was in constant competition with the historical commentary that tried to define him.

But an incredible thing happened on my way to deconstruction. By letting go of a sacred text, I rediscovered the figure of Jesus—not as an icon of worship, but as a man. I know, I know, C.S. Lewis said he is either a liar, lunatic or Lord. But the beloved apologist left out one option => legend. And that too entered the Bible.

No matter, I could not deconstruct out of the figure of Jesus. I could not explain how ancient first century authors could create such a compelling figure? The beauty, depth, and skill with which Jesus challenges the values of two empires, one religious and the other political, is breathtaking.

He needs no doctrinal scaffolding. Rediscovering his audacious humanity was a special and unexpected surprise.

A Final Thought

Try this tonight.

Open to one of your favorite gospel stories, and pretend no one ever called it sacred. Read it out loud like someone in the first century would have heard it as few owned books or could read. Read it without any confession or belief lurking in your mind.

Feel the emotions. Where does it speak, not as a voice of God, but as a challenge to the values of a society that forgot the value of people.

That’s the carpenter knocking.

Til next time.

I had hoped to push out Stage Six of my deconstruction story but hit a serious time snag. Plus, I am a notoriously slow writer.

Rather than rush it, I thought I would share an illustration that perfectly sums up my spiritual journey. It’s also a warm-up for the themes I’ll be discussing in the final stage.

Here is what I wrote in a Substack note about this picture.

=====

This simple illustration captures my spiritual journey.

I signed up for the dude on the left thirty years ago.

Then for twenty years, I studied and taught everything on the right, but believed I was mostly teaching people about the dude on the left.

That’s when I retired from the world on the right.

Now I just want to focus on the dude on the left, without any of the stuff on the right.

======

To read the Jesus stories stripped of 2,000 years of theological baggage is one helluva spiritual trip, in a mind expanding way.

That’s where my journey has taken me, and that’s what I’m trying to process, think, and write about on my Substack.

=====

That’s all for now until I can get the next stage written.

Gustavo

In 2020, Rochelle and I returned to the university campus in Medellín without the kids.

It was a surreal experience.

It had been five years since we were navigating the harrowing streets of Medellín, with three kids in the back seat. But all were safely tucked in schools now. Thus, we returned so I could resume teaching at the Bible college.

When I came back to Colombia, my faith was in turmoil, but mostly because my faith in the Bible was in turmoil. My PhD program had taken me through a comparative religions crash course. Suddenly, the Hebrew Bible seemed very human—an ancient culture’s recollection of their experiences with the divine, and not a divine word from on high.

But I returned to my ministry on campus for many reasons.

First, I was not ready to give up on my vocation or life’s work, despite the growing mountain of doubts. I had been teaching for nearly two decades. Secondly, since I was a New Testament professor, I could sidestep the academic study of the Hebrew scriptures, and focus on the main event, which was Jesus and his life and ministry. And finally, I could think of no better place to work through my spiritual struggles than on this beautiful campus, among my students, and with beloved colleagues who were not only brilliant scholars, but also, some of my closest friends.

I taught for four years in our Colombia 2.0 ministry, and then retired as a Bible professor, and overseas missionary in June 2024. These final years were some of the most difficult of my life and career, and yet I count them as my happiest moments and proudest achievements as a professor.

The Final Domino: History of Religions

In 2021, I began developing a course for our master's program entitled The Jewish Cultural Context of the New Testament. It would change the trajectory of my life, vocation, and spiritual beliefs as the course permanently altered my view of the Bible.

The Jewish Cultural Context of the New Testament covers the time period between the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. It spans about 600 years after the exile and the reconstruction of the temple (516 BCE) until its subsequent destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. During this period, Israel sought to explain its oppression and persecution under foreign rule. At one time, it was even threatened with mass extinction.

This raised serious theological questions:

1. How did we end up at the bottom, where we once ruled as an independent nation?

2. Where is God in the midst of this oppression and persecution?

3. Why are so many of our people being tortured or killed by pagan rulers?

4. How can this kind of evil exist (theodicy)?

Ancient Israel responded by writing hundreds of books—many of which borrowed ideas from Babylonian, Persian, and Greek cultures during and after its captivity. These had little support in the Hebrew scriptures.

These are seven ideas they acquired, internalized, and eventually adopted.

1. Individual and corporal bodily resurrection - There is no formal teaching of the afterlife in Jewish theology.

2. Satan as a powerful figure that opposes God and his people - In the Hebrew scriptures, Satan is a nobody. And the notion that God would permit a powerful being such as this to rule over or destroy his creation is preposterous.

3. Legions of angels and demons - The Hebrew Bible names two archangels. The literature in between the Testaments names all seven, and in the Book of Tobit, the archangel Michael is Tobit's faithful companion and supernatural helper.

4. Original sin - The Hebrew scriptures do not blame Adam for passing on his moral corruption to his progeny. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.

5. The judgement of the righteous and the wicked - Since Israel is suffering under foreign rule, the wicked have to be punished, if not in this life, then the next one.

6. Hell as a place of eternal conscious torment - Sheol, the Hebrew equivalent is a shadowy home of the dead. In between the Testaments, it is replaced by the concrete Danteesque qualities of demons torturing humans for eternity.

7. Strong dualism - You are either children of light or children of Satan. If you read John’s gospel with these lenses you will note the author’s disturbing treatment of ancient Jewish leadership.

After developing this course, and teaching it in 2022, it was like spiritual checkmate—the last domino to fall. Israel was like any other nation. It’s leaders had evolved seven major doctrines during and after their time of captivity. They had put them into the atmosphere through writings that that blended these foreign ideas with their scriptures. Most importantly for my deconstruction, All seven of those adoptions were major Christian doctrines. They did not exist before the exile.

At that point, I came to believe that the Bible was a 100% human document written by ancient cultures to express their encounters with the divine.

Then immediately came the next question, Now what the heck do I do?

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An Ethical Dilemma and the Choice of Silence

Of all the parts of this story, this is the one I wrestled with most. In the two years leading up to my retirement from the seminary, I continued to teach Jewish history and Greco-Roman history, delivering those courses two more times. I know some will question my integrity, perhaps even feel betrayed, that I chose silence about my evolving view of scripture while serving as a Bible professor in a conservative institution.

But people and life are complex. As am I.

I carried a tangle of conflicted emotions. Again, I didn’t want to leave my vocation or the students I cared so deeply about. I felt a quiet shame over where I had landed spiritually, and I could not risk losing my job so abruptly. In the end, I neither had the courage nor the words to articulate everything I had internalized.

But in the retelling of this story, I find myself slowly recovering both the courage and the language I once lacked. Sharing it is also part of my healing—an ongoing process of coming to terms with the religious trauma I carried in silence for far too long (a subject I’ll explore more fully in a future newsletter). My deeper hope is that these reflections might open the door to the kinds of bold, honest conversations I wish I’d had before my departure.

Finally, if I can name one regret, it would be that I did not fully share my burden with my colleagues on campus. That was a shame. If any group of professionals could have understood what was happening, whether in academics, teaching, or faith, it would have been that group. I now believe they would have embraced me as a brother regardless of my theological convictions. And they would have heartily debated me about my conclusions on that front.

My Sweetest Moments as a Professor

The sweet irony of my final semesters of teaching is that once I began sharing a more academic version of the Bible—freely acknowledging its humanity—my master's students didn’t recoil. They leaned in. And they responded with maturity, depth, and an eagerness for serious theological reflection.

Many of them had quietly wrestled with doubts about the Bible for years, unsure about how to express them. It was difficult to broach these issues in a conservative institution or denomination for fear of being labelled too liberal and unemployable.

But in this class, the Bible’s humanity was raw, visible, and entangled with history. And so it forced the kinds of honest questions that often threaten faith institutions—about inherited beliefs, the inspiration and interpretation of the Bible, and the pressures of orthodox Christianity to conform to its doctrines.

In that shared vulnerability, I experienced so much joy. Inexpressible actually. That joy didn’t erase the heartbreak. But it gave those last years a sublime grace.

Conclusion

Leaving my vocation, Colombia, and the campus in Medellín was heartbreaking. Ironically, the more I deconstructed, the more my love expanded for my students, colleagues, every person on that campus, the seminary, and the people of Colombia. I did not leave in anger, but in sorrow. I had spent decades in this world, and now I had decided to walk way. I had not just undergone a theological crisis. I had lost my spiritual home, identity, and purpose.

But an amazing thing happened on my way to deconstruction.

Til the final stage,

Gustavo

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G., where I share my journey of teaching and deconstructing the Bible over two decades of ministerial work and the radical spiritual reawakening that I experienced in the aftermath.

This is Stage Four of a series entitled "My Deconstruction of the Bible in Six Stages." It incorporates our first mission to Colombia and my doctoral work.

Setting the Scenery

After four formative years teaching in Paraguay and a second master’s, my academic journey led me to London School of Theology in 2009, where I pursued a PhD in New Testament studies. While immersed in doctoral work, Park Street Church commissioned our family to serve at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia in Medellín. By 2011, we arrived on campus where I would spend thirteen fulfilling years teaching New Testament courses until my retirement as a seminary professor in June 2024.

Colombia indelibly marked my soul. Looking over Medellín's dynamic and majestic cityscape, teaching and doing life with colleagues and students on that hillside campus, and traveling to colonial towns evoke a bittersweet blend of joy, gratitude, and longing.

Colombia transcends its narco-trafficker mythology. Beyond Pablo Escobar's shadow lies a geographical paradise of breathtaking canyons and lush plateaus. Here thrives a rich culture and a warm, embracing, and resilient people tempered, but not broken, by decades of armed conflict.

This conflict has raged for six decades, as government forces, militias, and cartels have turned Colombia’s countryside into a battleground. Ordinary citizens have been caught in the crossfire. Many villages were uprooted overnight, and families were sent fleeing into the mountains with only the shirts on their backs. Meanwhile, violent militias left a trail of rape, murder and torture in their wake. A staggering 6.8 million people—second only to Syria's displaced population—carry the scars of this national tragedy.

Despite this difficult backdrop, I arrived in Colombia with renewed purpose. I had processed the painful lessons from Paraguay but had not fully attributed these difficulties to scripture itself. My academic studies had yielded a theological compromise—viewing the Bible as both human and divine—that temporarily resolved my intellectual concerns. Finally, I still believed that properly training pastors in biblical interpretation would solve the church's persistent problems.

I was literally on top of the world. My home was at the highest point on the campus, and every morning I would bound out the door exclaiming, “Good Morning Medellín!” I was teaching at one of the top Bible colleges on the continent, serving eager undergraduate students, and living in a vibrant city amongst a passionate community.

It was a vocational dream.

But you can probably guess what happened next.

The Steady Drip of Uncertainty

There wasn't one singular moment in Colombia that continued my declining faith in the Bible—rather, it was a steady drip of unsettling realities I had trouble ignoring.

The doctrinal fragmentation I witnessed in my work highlighted a troubling aspect of biblical authority. Unlike Paraguay, where I worked with a single denomination, our seminary hosted students from thirty-three different denominations—each with their own interpretations of the same text.

These divisions were stark and consequential: Baptists barred women from pastoring churches, while Pentecostals welcomed them. Wesleyans and Calvinists waged endless debates over salvation, free will, and predestination. In my classes, I would tell students, “You must embrace both positions because the Bible embraces both.” Believing the Bible had a single divine author, I assumed it conveyed a unified theology. So, when faced with doctrines that simply didn’t align, I often reached for words like “mystery” or “paradox” to hold them together.

The academic rigor of seminary only intensified this focus. Students devoted four years of their lives to learning how to study, interpret, and preach the Bible. We also equipped them with research tools and hermeneutical frameworks. Most of our students were preparing to pastor churches, so this work was needed so that they could “preach sound doctrine.”

Over time, I realized that the Bible had become the cornerstone of institutional Christianity. Seminaries trained students in exegesis, hermeneutics, and homiletics to ensure they could “rightly handle the word of God.” Preaching a sermon became the centerpiece of a Protestant worship service, while the Bible study industry reinforced the cycle, urging believers to cultivate their relationship with God through daily devotions and quiet time.

Yet many questions lurked beneath the surface which kept gnawing at me: Why was there any disagreement at all in a book penned by God himself? Why did we have 6,000 Protestant denominations splitting over doctrine or arguing about every topic? The irony wasn't lost on me—we were teaching precision in interpretation while the broader Christian landscape demonstrated a complete lack of interpretive clarity.

Bracketing the Violence of God

Another aspect which caused much spiritual anxiety was the violence attributed to God in scripture. While Joshua's narratives had always troubled me, "Put every man and woman, young and old, and every beast under the sword," I had compartmentalized these passages, separating them from their human implications: the slaughter of infants, pregnant women, and entire communities.

What ultimately shattered my defenses were the songs. In both ancient text and modern worship, I heard celebrations of divine violence (God drowning his enemies, defeating nations, wiping out populations). These weren't just difficult accounts that needed to be contextualized; they were being celebrated as demonstrations of God's power and faithfulness.

I had become the Great Apologist. For years, I offered the standard explanations: their sins had reached "full measure," they were sacrificing children, this was "holy war" with specific rules, it was necessary to establish God's people in the Promised Land. In this way, I was echoing John Piper's disconcerting theology: "It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.” And if you doubt he said that, just Google it.

Even Sunday schools were alarming. We were teaching children to “walk around the walls of Jericho til they came tumbling down.” We had sanitized violence for children, turning a massacre into felt-board stories with a moral lesson.

Most revealing was how we discussed the Exile—treating it as a period in Israel’s history rather than what it truly was: brutally violent armies overrunning villages, slaughtering people, raping women, and carrying captives into foreign lands. The biblical framing presented this horror as divine judgment, God's righteous response to Israel's disobedience.

Really? God did this to his people?

Looking back now, I was too immersed in my beliefs to see the parallels with Colombia’s armed conflict. What was the difference between a militia group terrorizing Colombian villages and the Babylonian army that God supposedly "sent" against Jerusalem? Both left trails of destruction, created refugees, and inflicted generational trauma. We just called it The Exile, and moved on.

My seminary students included victims of Colombia's armed conflict—people who had lost family members, homes, and security to violence. I don’t know why they never saw the irony. All of us were justifying this violence saying that it was right when sanctioned by God. Midway through my time in Colombia, the cognitive dissonance became so unbearable that I bracketed that part of the Bible. I was a New Testament scholar, after all—where Jesus preached love for enemies and turning the other cheek.

The Second Domino - Comparative Religions

The second major domino in my deconstruction of the Bible fell when my PhD research brought me face-to-face with the ancient civilizations that preceded Israel, Mesopotamia and Egypt.

These cultures, separated by vast distances and centuries, had developed religious systems with striking similarities to Israel's. They had priests and ritual sacrifices. They established intricate purity laws and ethical codes. They documented creation stories and flood narratives—including the account of a dove that is released and comes back because the waters had not receded. And the most striking similarity to Israel’s stories, all featured gods and kings who bore the title "shepherd" of their people.

In Mesopotamian texts, Marduk was described as a "faithful shepherd" who provided grazing lands, drinking places, rainfall, and vegetation. He was portrayed as just and wise, frustrating the plans of enemies and blotting out evildoers—yet possessing a sympathetic heart that turned want into plenty. The Egyptian hymns to Amun-Re declared him creator of all things, including animals, men, and fields. He was husband to widows and father to orphans, a deliverer of prisoners and healer of the sick, because he was "a shepherd, who loves his flock."

These ancient cultures had maintained elaborate theological systems for over two millennia. They built temples, performed rituals, and lived as if their gods were real. They interpreted prosperity as divine blessing and catastrophe as divine judgment. They believed their kings were established by gods for just rule.

The question lodged in my brain like a splinter: If these cultures could maintain a theological facade, inventing gods and attributing natural events to divine intervention for thousands of years, was Israel any different?

This was the series of questions that sent the boulder rolling downhill. The driving force behind my faith, studies, and ministry had always been the nature of the Bible. But this discovery opened a loop in my mind that I could not close. The evidence suggested that Israel, like its neighbors, had developed its religious system through natural cultural processes rather than divine revelation.

Conclusion

In 2015, my family and I returned to Boston so our kids could attend a traditional high school. I continued teaching at the seminary but had transitioned to virtual instruction. After nearly twenty years of studying and teaching the Bible, my faith in the "good book" had taken many serious hits.

It’s a testament to the power of belief that even with all of these doubts, I searched for a way to preserve the Bible’s inspiration. At this stage, I still saw it as both human and divine—but increasingly, the weight tilted toward the human.

When I returned to Colombia four years later, they would prove to be the most spiritually challenging, culminating in a breaking point when I taught the Jewish cultural context of the New Testament.

Til the next stage.

Gustavo

Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G, where I share my journey of teaching and deconstructing the Bible over two decades of ministerial work and the aftermath of that transformation.

Through these reflections, I aim to cultivate a soulful revolution—a radical and open spirituality inspired by the life of Jesus that speaks to those wounded by institutional religion or who wrestle with its darker realities.

This is the third post in a series entitled "My Deconstruction of the Bible in Six Stages."

The Difficulty of Telling This Story

Before proceeding to the next stage, I want to recognize the difficulty of telling a story like this—one that is both beautiful and painful, and speaks honestly about the challenges I experienced in the church and ministry.

For thirty years, my family and I were integral members of Park Street Church, serving on committees, leading ministries, and twice venturing overseas to develop pastors and leaders for the church in the Latin America.

As I write, memories flood my mind—the joyous and smiling faces of devoted colleagues, passionate students, supportive friends, and countless brothers and sisters who welcomed us with open arms in the churches where we ministered overseas. These relationships were the heart of our life and ministry, spanning churches, seminaries, and faith communities in the U.S. and across Latin America.

Yet love compels me to speak frankly. Christianity, despite everything good and wonderful that it represented, kept causing unintended harm. During my time on the field I repeatedly witnessed how certain doctrines and structures and a particular approach to the Bible bred spiritual anxiety, doctrinal conflicts, legalism, exclusion, and even abuse. This is not a story of condemnation, but of seeking truth and reform. Also, it is a narrative I tell with tremendous love and respect for the spiritual communities that shaped me.

Our First Mission in Paraguay

In 2004, Park Street Church commissioned our family to serve in Paraguay, a bean-shaped, landlocked nation tucked away in the heart of South America that few could even locate on a map. There aren’t many experiences as exhilarating as moving to a foreign country to fulfill a mission I believed was divinely placed on my heart.

With our three young children in tow (ages 6, 4, and 2), Rochelle and I embarked on a spiritual journey, arriving in one of the poorest countries in the continent.

We spent four adventurous years in Paraguay, two in the crowded capital of Asunción and two more in the charming colonial town of Yaguaron—population 7,000, if you don’t count the oxen. These gentle beasts would lumber down the cobblestone streets past our home, occasionally pausing to poke their noses through our shutters.

Our house had no windows, only metal bars to guard against thieves.

I spent those years teaching at a Bible institute, training pastors and church leaders for a national denomination. My vision was idealistic yet sincere: equip these leaders with solid biblical training, and they could help the church mature and overcome its deeply entrenched challenges.

Thus, once a month, students would travel from across the country, staying on campus for a week of intensive coursework, with room and board provided.

Alongside my teaching, I pastored a small rural church of fifty members, nestled at the entrance of a lush seventeen-acre campground owned by the denomination. I was completely fulfilled in my vocation, brimming with purpose and passion.

Yet, tension simmered beneath the surface. While I was driven by a vision of nurturing and growth, our ministry partner embodied a markedly different, and far more demanding style of Christianity.

The Weight of Legalism

Our first real difficulty in Paraguay wasn’t adjusting to the culture, it was the weight of legalism that dominated the church. From the top down, denominational leaders and pastors were constantly policing behavior.

Christian don’t do those things, wear those clothes, or watch those movies. One youth pastor in particular was disciplined and stripped of his ministry for an entire year for telling the kids that it was OK to listen to secular music.

On another occasion, I walked into a church one day wearing a soccer jersey, and was promptly scolded. The reason? because Psalm 1 says, “you should not sit in the seat of mockers.” Ummm, in a country where soccer is practically a sacred national ritual, this was probably not a winning evangelistic strategy.

I call this form of faith straightjacket Christianity, and it was suffocating.

Authoritarian Leadership

Another difficult and distressing challenge we faced was an authoritarian leadership structure in which the pastor reigned as an unquestioned authority—always a man, as women were excluded from pastoral roles. The hierarchy was clear: God speaks to the pastor, and the pastor speaks to the congregation. After all, this was the way God spoke to Moses, King David, and the prophets of old.

One small but telling example came during my very first interview of prospective students for our Bible Institute. I was sitting in, learning the ropes, when I heard the first question posed to those preparing to dedicate three years of their lives to studying the Bible, theology, and church history:

“Do you submit to the authority of your pastor?”

I nearly fell out of my chair.

Coming from a Neo-evangelical church with a congregational model, led by a pastor alongside twelve elders, I was unprepared for such an emphasis on unquestioning obedience to a leader. During four years of ministry, time and again, I witnessed pastors publicly scolding congregants during sermons, dictating ministry assignments regardless of personal objections, and reinforcing a rigid hierarchy where submission was paramount.

I’ve always believed that those who speak the loudest about spiritual authority, are the least qualified to exercise it.

What Was the Cause?

At the time, I didn’t fully grasp what was driving such toxic behavior. Again, I believed that if pastors had a better understanding of the Bible, we could curb or even eliminate these harmful dynamics.

That’s why I was there. And that’s why my family had to be there as well, at great sacrifice to them.

It would take many years before I began to recognize the true source of the problem— the Bible itself, or rather, a particular approach to the Bible.

Serving in Paraguay was one of the great highlights of my life, yet in hindsight, it was also among the most spiritually stressful. It’s difficult to overstate the strain of living in a Christian environment where obedience to the Bible and submission to its preachers are held up as ultimate virtues.

The Beauty Amidst the Challenges

Despite the challenges, our years in Paraguay were filled with beauty, adventure, and deep connection, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, that I fell in love with soccer after witnessing my first World Cup while cheering for Paraguay’s national team.

I cannot overstate the warmth and hospitality of the people we met, the privilege of serving as a family in a cross-cultural context, and the friendships we formed with fellow pastors, missionaries, and students.

My students deserve special mention. Despite the great sacrifices they made to show up every month, they were always passionate about their faith and eager to learn. It was a teacher’s dream, and I remain humbled by their example.

A Shift in My Theology

In 2009, we returned to Boston, and I embarked on a Master of Theology (ThM) in New Testament in preparation for doctoral work the following year. I took classes outside of the evangelical bubble at institutions like Harvard Divinity School and Andover Newton, where I was exposed to a scholarly world that contradicted what I had previously understood about biblical interpretation.

Here, the Bible was no longer an inspired text handed down from God, but a complex historical document shaped by human hands, contexts, and understanding.

But even as I was learning new and more liberal ideas about biblical interpretation, I did not lose my faith in the Bible, nor was my faith in peril. Nevertheless, my experiences in Paraguay began to cast long shadows over my spiritual life. I could no longer comfortably wear the label of evangelical. "Moderate Christian" became my tentative new identity.

At the heart of my struggle was this tension: How could a message so life-giving, so transformative, be packaged in a framework that also caused this much harm and abuse? This was a question that would haunt me for the rest of my ministerial career until I finally had a satisfactory answer.

But you’ll have to read to the end to understand how I solved that thorny knot.

As I prepared for doctoral studies, I did recognize that my theological foundation was slowly being eroded. A deep dive into comparative religions in my PhD, and my experiences of teaching in a Bible College in Colombia only widened those cracks.

Til the next stage.

Gustavo

Greetings everyone,

This is the beginning of Stage Two of what is a series entitled My Deconstruction of the Bible in Six Stages.

If you didn’t get a chance, you can read Stage One where I talk about my conversion to Christianity, and the spiritual backpack I received upon my declaration of faith.

Boston Calling

In March 1995, I received a call from a gentleman from Boston about a promising software. At the time, I was living the corporate life, with a corner office on the 26th floor of a bank in Los Angeles. Despite the daily suit and tie routine, the views from my desk were spectacular.

I agreed to see the sales rep who promptly dazzled me with his software. It was going to replace my manual reporting process and dramatically improve my productivity. My boss would be thrilled.

The sales rep left me a demo and promised to follow-up soon.

After popping the floppy disk into my machine (which I later learned had been programmed by my future wife), my machine made a few gurgles, and then promptly crashed!

Well this wasn’t a good sign.

I had a top of the line 486 Compaq computer with 16 MBs of RAM. That was greased lighting, right there. As I write, it is a remarkable to consider the technological revolution of the past thirty years.

Do you remember a world without iPhones, the Internet, or social media?

Mmmm. Sounds dreamy, right? Hold on, someone is sending me a reel! :)

She Had Me at Hello

I called the software company in Boston, and a woman answered the phone

Hello.

She had a slight southern accent. And she didn’t just have me at hello. She arrested me at hello.

It was love at first sound. Had to be.

The woman on the other end was prompt, polite, and efficient. As for me, something was happening in my heart, or it could have been my loins! I don’t know. She had such a great voice.

That evening I shared the news with my roomie, also a Pepperdine grad, “I met this amazing girl, she’s in tech support.” And he replied, “Dude, that's like falling in love with the MCI operator. They're supposed to be nice!”

“Well, I think there is something different about her,” I replied.

And I was right.

Because nine months later, I packed my few belongings, found a home for my cat, and moved to Boston—all for Rochelle, my tech support savior. This also meant that I would endure my first Boston winter which had a historic snowfall in 1995.

Of course!

Boston and Park Street Church

Los Angeles was glamorous, but Boston was unique among U.S. cities: 400 years of history, the American Revolution, Paul Revere, home to 44 universities including Harvard and MIT, and a rabid and historic sports fan base.

By the way, I arrived in Boston six years before one of the greatest runs of titles by a city: thirteen over twenty five years. It is one of the highlights of my life as I am a huge sports fan.

Rochelle was attending historic Park Street Church, established in 1809 as a trinitarian congregation in response to the Unitarian movement (also started in Boston).

Park Street was part of the Neo-evangelical movement which aimed to engage constructively with science, academia, and society after the perceived cultural isolationism of fundamentalist Christianity going back to the 1920s.

But this also meant that there was a broad spectrum of people in the congregation, both politically and religiously. Indeed, when I came to Boston, I didn't know one could be both a Christian and a Democrat. I know it’s wild to say that, but I was fairly strict in my beliefs. I had learned that the other side was evil because they believed in abortion.

In addition, my charismatic beliefs clashed with the staid New England style of worship. No one raised their hands. “Where was the Spirit,” I kept insisting naively? Finally, a dear sister (who was probably tired of my rantings) gave me Chuck Colson’s The Body which opened my eyes to the variety of Christian worship and expression.

In these two incidences, it is unsettling to see how quickly I judged entire groups of people based on my beliefs. I was trying to live out the ideas and theology that I had learned in my previous church, but I kept running into conflicts with my particular views on faith and the Bible.

From Corporate Life to Ministry

Rochelle and I married ten months after I arrived in Boston. It took five months to the engagement, and four months to plan a destination wedding in San Diego.

Who needs more time than that?

Three years in—having finally adjusted to Boston culture, which was harder than adjusting to a foreign culture—I began contemplating a change in vocation. I considered graduate programs in education or psychology, but then Rochelle suggested I try ministry instead.

"You always light up when you are doing ministry," she continued. I used to say that God speaks to some people through dreams or a still small voice, but he speaks to me through Rochelle because she has a brain!

Duh. She was absolutely right, knowing me better than I knew myself.

Even back in Los Angeles, when I was leading worship at retreats or sharing my testimony in youth prisons, I always thought, “It would be really cool to do this full-time.” So I applied and was accepted into Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Master of Divinity program.

The First Domino: Textual Criticism

My first crisis of faith (and with the Bible) came with an Introduction to the New Testament class. Here is where I learned about textual criticism which shattered my naive assumption that the Bible had somehow "fallen from the sky" perfect and complete.

"What do you mean there are thousands of manuscripts for the New Testament?" I asked incredulously. In that class I discovered that the New Testament (and the whole Bible for that matter) had been recreated, reconfigured, and pieced together by an army of scholars who had painstakingly poured over thousands of manuscripts over hundreds of years.

This revelation fundamentally changed my understanding: the Bible was clearly a human document. Without a massive human effort, we do not have it in its present form.

Still, I did not lose faith in the Bible at this point because my profs taught me that it was both a human AND divine document. But, I stopped thinking of the Bible as the inerrant, and perfect word of God. No way. The process to put it together was too messy (though some in seminary insisted that God even orchestrated that).

Nevertheless, textual criticism became the first domino to fall in my journey of deconstruction—a journey that would eventually lead me to question the very nature of the Bible itself.

Til the next stage.

Gustavo

P.S. Would love to know what you think. Was there one idea that stuck out?

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Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I am sharing the story of deconstructing and reconstructing my spirituality from a rigid and harmful Christian orthodoxy to a radical and open spirituality.

This is Stage One - Conversion to Christianity and where my life as a Christian began in 1992.

Introduction

I became a Christian in 1992, in a charismatic Foursquare church in Los Angeles, the church of heaven of course, and a denomination founded by a woman. When I came to Boston, and later entered seminary, I was shocked to learn there was a debate about the role of women in ministry.

What was the debate, exactly?

I had just come from a denomination founded by a woman, and a church where female pastors and prophets ministered routinely. I didn’t get it, where was the controversy?

Back to my story.

In 1992, I had what many would describe as a born again experience, like the one that Nicodemus couldn’t wrap his mind around in his encounter with Jesus one night (John 3).

I had a dream, and I was trapped in prison or some kind of military camp. I knew in my heart that everyone here was going to die later that night. As I ran away from my captors, and hid in a small office, I could hear my heart pounding in my chest.

And I was terrified.

Suddenly, I heard a voice call out, Gustavo, Gustavo, like we often hear about in those famous call stories in the Bible. In my dream, I immediately identified the voice as God’s. And the voice said something like, “Trust in me and I will save you from death. Do you trust me?” I immediately said yes, and when I woke up, I felt like I had been converted in my sleep. I also felt that something profound had happened to me, as if I had been rescued from a sure spiritual death.

At that time, I understood absolutely nothing about theology, the Bible, or doctrines. All I knew is “I once was lost, but now I had been found.”

My Spiritual Backpack

Every one of my priorities shifted after that.

I started attending church consistently and immersing myself in the faith. A few weeks in, I remember listening to Pastor Jack Hayford of the renowned Church on the Way in Van Nuys. He stated firmly, “If you are a Christian, you tithe. End of story.” From that day forward, I committed to giving 10% of my income to the church.

Here was the man of God, preaching from the word of God and I wanted to obey it.

Soon after my joyous conversion I was given a spiritual backpack; something I would need for my spiritual journey.

There were three important items in the bag:

The Holy Bible

The holy, inspired, perfect, and inerrant word of God composed of 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. I was later informed that this Bible was also my sword for my spiritual battle against Satan and his legions of demons.

This wasn’t in the fine print by the way.

Still, I learned that as long as I put on the full armor of God, and prayed fervently for spiritual protection, a la Frank Perretti (and for you youngsters, you’ll have to look that up), I could defeat the plans of the enemy.

Method of Interpretation

The second element in the bag was a particular approach to interpreting the Bible. In seminary we call that a hermeneutic. How do I read, interpret, and apply this Bible in a modern context?

My method of interpretation was more literal. God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Doctrines of Christian Orthodoxy

The third element in my bag was a series of doctrines. I later came to know these as the doctrines of Christian orthodoxy. These were beliefs I had to accept if I were to call myself a true believer. This included the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divine inspiration of the Bible, and the belief that Jesus was the only way to God, among others.

I accepted these doctrines without question never once inquiring as to their validity or how they had developed.

At the time, I had no sense of the emotional and spiritual weight this “backpack” would carry. Over the years, the Bible—along with its interpretation and doctrines—became the defining measure of what it meant to be a Christian.

What Did I Believe About the Bible?

After my conversion, and for seven additional years, I was a strict inerrantist. The Bible was the perfect and literal word of God, without error or contradiction.

Thus, I believed everything in the Bible was literally true and that the events that were narrated there happened exactly as they were described.

In other words, God had formed the earth in seven days, he did send a worldwide flood to destroy all of life on this planet, and there really was a lake of sulphur where God’s enemies (and the unsaved) would weep and gnash their teeth for eternity.

I also believed in the worldview and in the picture of spiritual reality presented in the Bible. For example, the apostle Paul writes that every person on the planet is under the dominion of Satan, if they're not saved. Indeed, the whole world is under the control of Satan according to Paul and many other New Testament authors.

What Kind Of Christian?

At this stage of my spiritual development, I was a very conservative Christian.

I remember when I was visiting my future wife (Rochelle) in Boston before I relocated, and she was having a Halloween party at her house, complete with costumes and everything.

I had only been converted three years prior and had been taught that Halloween was a party for Satan and his demons. That’s why our church had a Harvest Festival instead, to give kids the treats, without the “Satanic tricks.”

That day I was helping Rochelle tidy up her apartment, and 5-6 five friends strolled in with big smiles, each carrying a six pack under each arm. I was incredulous. I was going to attend a party for demons, serving drinks for demons!

Rochelle and I disagreed so sharply on this issue that we had an epic argument in the parking lot of the airport as I headed home. It was the first of many clashes caused by my newfound and very strict ideology I had inherited.

Conclusion

For the first seven years of my faith, I didn’t reflect too much on the Bible, my Christian faith, or the conflicts that they engendered here and there. I loved hearing pastors preach sermons about it and I delighted in group Bible studies. Eventually, I learned to play guitar, and began to lead worship for our young single’s group and at a juvenile detention center sharing my testimony (since there were many hispanic youth there unfortunately).

I was happy and fulfilled. I belonged to a vibrant and outward focused community.

But within a few years of my conversion, all of that changed dramatically when I met a girl over the phone.

Til the next stage.

Gustavo

P.S. I would love to hear from each of you. Did you connect with any part of the post more than other parts?

It’s time for a Soulcial Revolution!

But in order to get there we must pass through the ring of experiences (the good, the bad, and the beautiful) that led to a complete transformation of my thinking, worldview, understanding of the Bible, and ultimately, my faith.

I promise to tell the story as honestly and as authentically as I can.

I became a Christian in 1992 and for the next 30 years, I was solid in the evangelical church:

1. I was a member of historic Park Street Church in Boston for nearly three decades

2. I received two Masters and a PhD in New Testament

3. I taught the Bible for twenty years at the certificate, undergraduate, and graduate levels in the U.S. and also in Paraguay and Colombia as an overseas professor

4. I taught within Gordon Conwell Seminary’s Hispanic Ministries division for ten years teaching pastors and church leaders from Mexico, Central America, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, to the tip of Argentina, all Spanish-speaking countries of South America.

What I came to realize after a long career as an academic, overseas minister, professor, and twice a pastor, is that the approach to the Bible that I had inherited, studied, and taught for so many years was the cause of the problems I experienced within the Christian church.

I will cover all of these in due time.

I eventually left my teaching post at a conservative Bible college overseas because I could no longer preach or teach that version of the Bible. Why This Substack?

I am starting this Substack for various reasons:

1. To share my story as an overseas professor and the experiences that profoundly altered my perspectives on the Bible. This is where I disassembled my view of the Bible faith, and spirituality

2. To give you a front row seat into the spiritual and intellectual struggles I experienced as I studied, taught, and put that version of the Bible into practice in my life and in the life of my students and their churches.

3. To facilitate honest, vulnerable, and courageous conversations around a book that few people understand but which has incredible power to define every aspect of their lives.

4. To start building a more radical and open spirituality based on a reengagement with the Jesus narratives on their own terms. This is where I reassembled my view of the Bible and spirituality

Critically Important Distinction

I want to make one thing abundantly clear. My thesis for everything I will write is that the approach to the Bible that I inherited, studied, and taught for twenty years is deeply flawed and problematic.

This is what I am deconstructing.

It was the interpretation of the Bible that I inherited from my pastors and professors, and which they inherited from Edwards, Luther, Augustine, plus ancient church councils and theologians.

There’s a big difference between the biblical stories and the doctrines that have accumulated around them for 2,000 years. Just like there is a big difference between “official” Christianity and being a follower of Jesus.

The biblical literature, if allowed to speak on its own terms, has incredible beauty, depth, pathos, and insights into every aspect of the human condition. This is especially the case with the Jesus narratives in which he takes on two empires, one political, and the other religious, and turns their values upside down.

That message of Soulcial Revolution (#4 above) is what I want to live out and teach going forward. It is where I reassemble my view of the Bible.

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NOTE: All of the illustrations on Tuesday’s with Doctor G. are original. No AI was used unless you count the iPad and pencil.

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