Reconciling
Parts of this reflection was originally posted about a year ago in the word from below, at Street Psalms. I have taken the liberty to revisit what I wrote and edit it for the purpose of this publication. Part of what led me to do so was the fact that I preached on John 17 two Sundays ago. Preaching reminded me of what I will share with you.
When I was in seminary, I stopped going to the traditional evangelical church where my dad was a pastor. I started attending a neo-pentecostal-Hillsong-like mega-church. I moved from a stream of Christian spirituality that focused solely in the reading and interpretation of the Bible as a rule book to a more Spirit led and emotionally oriented spirituality. When my seminary friends and classmates heard about my experience, I began receiving strong criticism and rejection. During the first year that I attended this church I received about half a dozen intervention like meetings from people who wanted to bring me back to the healthy and true doctrine side of things.
I felt ostracized, rejected, and diminished. I was treated as if I was ignorant, blind, or plain dumb. As a result, I embarked on a crusade to prove them all wrong. I became divisive, intellectually aggressive, and arrogant. I studied hard not to prove them wrong, but to make them feel stupid. I was immersed in a rivalrous violent cicle that brought division.
During my time in the mega church, I experienced many things that I cannot explain. Some of them felt like the Holy Spirit, and others felt like a creation of my imagination. I have a hard time telling them apart. I also went deep into the magical thinking of health and wealth prosperity gospel. I was all in. I even gave money believing that God would bless me financially if I gave enough to the church.
After eight years in the neopentecostal-Hillsong-like mega-church, I went back to a more balanced space in my spiritual and theological journey. As a result, I started to slowly drift away from all forms of evangelicalism. However, the further away I went, the more ashamed I felt of the ways I used to believe and the things I did. That is why, I stopped identifying as evangelical and hid that part of my story.
In the gospel of John, Jesus prays: “I am no longer going to be in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are one” (Jn 17:11).
As I read this verse, I see two ways in which Jesus is inviting us to be one. The first one is to be one with one another. Jesus did not come so we could debate what it means to be one. Jesus came to reconcile everything and everybody so we all can be one human family. In other words, we don’t need to believe in order to belong. we are one because Jesus is the incarnated God.
The second invitation feels difficult to me. My body feels uncomfortable just by thinking of it. I believe Jesus is inviting us to be one, integrated, within ourselves. That means that we ought to work in bringing together the fragments of our stories, including the ones that we are most ashamed of. In my case, I must make peace and reconcile with the fact that I was deep into the magical thinking of health and wealth prosperity gospel at a Hillsong-lke-mega-church.
I have not shared about this fragment of my story in a while. Perhaps, this is a sign that I am becoming more integrated because I am in relationship with friends and family who belong to many different streams of Christian spirituality. Or perhaps, I finally got over myself and accepted that I was in a cult like church. Either way, the more we make peace with the apparently shameful fragments of our stories, the more human, like Jesus, we become.
If you have not gotten a copy of my latest book, A Human Catechism, get one and let me know what you think.
When a faith cult comes against a hope cult it can cause irreparable damage to its members. I’m glad the Lord led you out of both into love.