Stage Five - Colombia 2.0 and The Final Deconstruction Domino Falls (2020-2024)

Teaching a history of religions course that spells the end of my career, ministry, and faith in the Bible

Setting the Context

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 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?

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