Stage Six: Post Mission Reflection - Unplugging the Text and Discovering the Carpenter from Nazareth

When everything about my life as a Christian finally made sense

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.