My Faith Is a Hot Mess (Penultimate Edition)

Before I go any further, I owe you some honesty. We were supposed to talk about biblical inerrancy today, and we still will - but first I need to give myself an award. The Bad Pastor of the Week award. It's not the first time I've earned it, and it won't be the last. I'm a pastor, but I'm human, and I make mistakes.

All series long, I've had people text, email, and call to say thank you - thank you for naming the struggle, for acknowledging that Scripture is difficult and that not everyone believes the same way. But I've also had a few of you voicing concern, confusion, and worry about where this is all going. And if people are confused or anxious about the direction of our church, then I'm not communicating well, and my purpose is getting lost in the presentation. So let me try again.

If anything in this series made you feel uncomfortable, angry, or alienated, that was never my intention, and I'm sorry. In trying to encourage our congregation to be considerate of others' beliefs and journeys, I didn't adequately consider all of yours. Please don't assume malice. Assume a good motive, in the name of Jesus, and let me explain what's been weighing on my heart.

Why I felt I had to say all this

Church attendance has fallen by roughly 60% since 1985. That's not because of the gospel of Christ, and it's not simply "the culture." In a lot of ways, the church at large hasn't been addressing the real questions of real people - and has tied itself to politics and movements Jesus would have wanted nothing to do with. Instead of becoming more like Jesus and working on ourselves first, too much of the church has spent its energy demanding that everyone believe, think, act, and dress the same on non-essential matters. People are worn out by it. There's an old line, often attributed to Gandhi and probably apocryphal, about admiring Christ while being put off by Christians who look so little like him. And a lot of people are simply tired of Christians using other parts of the Bible to argue against what Jesus himself said.

The church also lost more than a million people who never came back after the pandemic - people who, given time to think, decided that whatever the church was offering didn't make enough of a difference, or who could no longer reconcile everything that had been bundled into their faith. For some, the church as they'd experienced it had come to symbolize spiritual shackles.

I've read the words of people who've left - not atheists, not agnostics, but Christians who walked away. They describe a faith that became a battleground of ideologies and religious one-upmanship, where nitpicking crowded out the essence of it. They describe longing for God with their whole hearts while being exhausted by the hypocrisy, the judgment, and the pursuit of power. They point out the irony of a church that says "come as you are and be fully accepted" while quietly maintaining a long list of markers about who's really in and who's out. In a place where people are supposed to feel the unconditional love of Christ, the church has too often become the opposite. I don't want Seacoast to be that - not even by accident.

What a heretic actually is

We throw the word heretic around as if it means "anyone who disagrees with me about anything." It doesn't. Church historians use it to mean someone who has departed so far from orthodox Christianity that they're undermining the faith itself - no longer recognizable as a brother or sister in Christ. Christians can disagree about methods of baptism, the roles of women in the church, what inspiration means, biblical literalism, inerrancy - and still not be heretics. It just means we have a difference of opinion while loving the same Savior.

Here's the pattern I'm trying to break. Someone comes to church and to Jesus, and then they question one of our secondary beliefs - and instead of being strengthened by a new member of the flock, we say, "We don't believe that here; go find a church that does." So they do. And there they eventually question some other bonus belief - never whether Jesus is the Son of God who died for our sins, just the extras - and they're shown the door again. Eventually a person who loves God, loves people, and loves Jesus decides they're done with the whole institution, because they never felt safe to be honest or felt heard. That happens at a lot of churches. I don't want it happening here.

The church we keep saying we want to be

Luke describes the early church in Acts 2 - devoted to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread and prayer:

And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. - Acts 2:47

Being devoted to the teaching didn't mean nobody ever disagreed; read the New Testament and church history and you'll find plenty of argument. So let me ask: are we saved by doctrinal uniformity? By getting every jot and tittle right? By a particular view of inerrancy, or the age of the earth? No.

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. - Romans 10:9

I'm a big fan of the Great Commission - to go and make disciples of all nations. I want the most people possible to be saved and added to our flock. That's it. So why bring up all this other stuff? Why say the scary word, deconstruction?

The deconstruction I'm trying to prevent

Because there's a kind of deconstruction that leads to destruction - the abandonment of faith - and it happens when all the bonus beliefs get super-glued to belief in Jesus. Someone is told: to believe in Jesus, you must also believe every word of every story is literal; you must hold to verbal plenary inspiration; you must accept inerrancy - not as interpretations but as non-negotiable facts. And when an honest person can't reconcile those extras with the loving God Jesus reveals, and they've been told it's all or nothing, they throw out the whole thing. Including Jesus. That's tragic, and I've watched it happen.

Take inerrancy - the claim that Scripture contains no errors of any kind. It's one of the easier claims to trouble, and seekers can do it with a quick search. I pointed out two examples in our Daniel series, and nobody lost their minds: Daniel 5 calls Belshazzar king of Babylon when he was really the crown prince and regent, and Daniel 6 calls Darius the Mede a king when history doesn't quite line up. Small things - which is exactly why they shouldn't be a big deal. Or take the sending out of the disciples: in Matthew 10 they're told not to take a walking stick, in Luke 9 to take nothing, and in Mark 6 to take nothing except a walking stick. It's plainly the same event. The simplest explanation - Occam's razor - is that one account differs on a detail.

Think of it like two newspapers reporting the same hockey game. One credits the third assist to one defenseman, the other to a different one. You could write pages reconciling it - video review, a puck clipping a second stick - but the simplest truth is that one of them got a detail wrong. And here's the point: the Ducks still scored the goal. A mistake on the third assist doesn't erase the goal, and it doesn't make the rest of the sports section unreliable. Neither does it in Scripture.

You can hold to inerrancy if you like. But if we super-glue it to being a Christ-follower, we will lose generations of people searching for Jesus - people who find one difficulty online and reject Jesus along with it, plus every life-changing thing Scripture has to offer.

Build on the foundation that holds

I once knew a young camp counselor who was on fire for Jesus - the kind of worshiper who made you think of David. When his examination led him to questions he couldn't resolve, his tradition told him it was all or nothing. So he rejected all of it, and now he spends his time online throwing barbs at the faith. He'd been taught for so long that everything had to stay glued together that, when one piece failed, he tossed the whole thing. He didn't have to. There were other options.

Here's the better way. If Jesus is the foundation - who he is, what he said, what he did, what he asks of us - then even when someone has a dark night of the soul and certain bonus beliefs come tumbling down, the foundation is still there. You can rebuild, block by block. The goodness of God is still there. The person and teachings of Jesus are still there. Loving God and loving people, grace and mercy - still there. Maybe verbal plenary inspiration and strict literalism are no longer load-bearing for them. But there's another word that still can be: infallibility.

Infallible simply means will not fail - trustworthy. It doesn't claim the Bible is error-free on every minor matter of history or science. It means that in everything pertaining to Christian faith and practice, Scripture can and should be trusted, and that it will accomplish exactly what God intends. The Bible contains history, but it isn't a history textbook; it contains science, but it isn't a science textbook. What matters most is the story it tells: sinful people, separated from God, in need of a Savior - and that Savior coming to earth as Jesus Christ.

It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. - Isaiah 55:11

Does the Bible contain God's word? Yes. It also contains people's words about God - shaped, at times, by their culture and politics. Part of rightly handling the word of truth is discerning which is which. But all of Scripture has value, and God's purposes get accomplished regardless. By the way: the more I've studied, the more I've come to love the Apostle Paul. On a first read he can sound harsh toward women; dig into the culture he was working in and you find a man who, like Jesus, was actually liberating women in a system that disregarded them. That's deconstruction leading to reconstruction.

The church I'm dreaming of

Picture a packed room where two people from completely different backgrounds sit side by side. One says, "I believe Noah's flood covered the whole earth." The other says, "I think it was a regional flood - their whole known world." They nod. Then: "You believe Jesus is the Son of God who died for our sins?" "Yes." "Rose on the third day, offers eternal and abundant life?" "Yes." "Ready to love God and love people?" "Yes." Did we just become best friends? Yes.

Knowledge makes us feel important, but it is love that strengthens the church. - 1 Corinthians 8:1

Paul also said he became all things to all people - like a Jew to the Jews, like a Gentile to the Gentiles - finding common ground with everyone so that by all possible means he might save some. I can't actually be all things to all people; no one can. But I can try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to share the good news. That's what I want for Seacoast.

A sincere request

So if you've been staying away, thinking about leaving, or have already left, here's my plea: come back. Let's find the common ground that is in Christ, set down our need to be right, and get back to the business of loving God and loving people. If you want to fault me for something in this series, fault me for being passionate about people coming to and staying in Christ, and for not always being the clearest communicator on genuinely hard topics.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God. - Romans 8:28

If parts of this series stirred up anger, doubt, or fear in you, I'm sorry - but here's a possible good that could come of it. Many people in this room, and watching online, and others we haven't met yet, have been carrying exactly those emotions about their faith for years. Maybe remembering how you felt these past weeks will help you empathize with the brave ones who are honest enough to share their struggles.

What does the series mean for the direction of our church? Hopefully more people coming to faith in Christ. I don't plan to roll theology grenades under your chairs every week. Give me one more week - it'll be shorter and, I think, far less controversial - and after that you can expect more of the Jesus-centered teaching you've always gotten here. Honestly, that's my favorite stuff anyway.

Ending with Jesus

We were separated from God by our sin and couldn't pay the price ourselves. But God loved us so much that he sent his one and only Son. Fully God and fully man, Jesus never sinned, which made him the only one who could pay that price. On the cross he took the sins of the world - past, present, and future - upon himself. Three days later he rose from the grave, showing his power over death, and he offers eternal life in the place he's preparing for us, and abundant life with real meaning here.

If you'd like to invite Jesus to be the Lord of your life and you've never accepted his gifts, you can pray a prayer like this:

Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner. I know I've done wrong things. Please forgive me of my sins. Right now I ask you to be the Lord of my life. Help me to turn from my sins and follow you. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, for rising again on the third day and taking those sins away, for saving me, and for preparing a place for me. In Jesus' name, amen.

If you prayed that prayer, there's nothing better in this world or the next, and I'd love to encourage you as you begin. Come see me after a service, give me a fist bump, or email me at josh@seacoastredondo.com.

One more week to go - hang in there; it's a short one. May we hold fast to Jesus, and may we hold on to unity in Christ, no matter what beliefs we hold. God bless you, and God bless Seacoast Church.