I Love Jesus. And I Have Questions.

This is a picture of my Bible. I received it from my first-ever church when I was in high school, shortly after I became a Christian and gave my life to Jesus. As you can see, it’s been read just a wee little bit.

I show you this picture from the outset because I want you to know I am just like you. And when I say you, I mean two kinds of people: (1) those who have dedicated their lives to Christ, who treasure their walk with the Lord above all, who cherish the Bible as the Word of God, who passionately love Jesus and do everything for the glory of God, and…

(2) those who used to be just like the folks in Category 1, but who have experienced/are experiencing a severely disorienting shift in faith. Those who also have a Bible just like this — marked up on page after page after page, with sermon notes and prayers and things to remember in the tattered margins, and who sometimes look at said Bible now and don’t quite understand how the person who wrote all those scribbles could be so different from the person reading them today. What happened?

I want everyone in Category 1 to know that I love Jesus. I can’t type those words without crying, because it hurts so much to wonder if others mistrust my faith, doubt my sincerity, or might invalidate all my years of genuinely attempting to follow a radical carpenter wherever he might lead me.

I need you to know that nothing — not changing my mind about abortion, or becoming a fiery defender of women in ministry, or expanding my understanding of sexuality and gender, or interrogating my interpretation of Scripture in order to know it better, or existing in a state of constant bewilderment that professing Christians support Donald Trump, or asking big questions about Hell and atonement that would make make church ladies gasp, or being unable to reconcile horrible tragedies with “correct” theology, or even being an terribly unconventional pastor’s wife — nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Please. I just need you to know that, dear Category 1 people who may not quite know what to do with me. I get it, I really do. Five-years-ago Halley would not have known what to do with me. Ten-years-ago Halley would have been completely horrified.

If you have a Reformed Christian background like me, you know that one of the doctrines is “perseverance of the saints” and everything that implies. But for everyone else: translated from seminary-speak to Christianese, it means “once saved, always saved.” And translated from Christianese to English, it means if you become a Christian, you will always be a Christian. In other words, there is no such thing as post-Christian. You cannot lose your salvation.

But what’s unspoken but pervasive in Reformed churches is that when people stray from the sanctioned beliefs and behaviors of our tradition, the story that gets whispered behind their backs is well, they were probably never truly saved to begin with.

This is a prayer/love letter that I wrote to Jesus in college, now falling apart after being tucked into Psalms for the past fifteen years. (Yes, it totally sounds sexual. I was deep into the “Jesus is my Boyfriend” trend, mmkay?)

Make no mistake. I was saved to begin with.

I know it ruins the tidy narrative. But there are a lot of us narrative-ruining people out here, and we desperately want to be seen and still loved.

My dear Category 2 people: you are not the only freak out here.

You are not the only one asking hard questions.

You are not the only one fighting back tears from the pew or stress-breathing through the sermon.

You are not the only one who thinks politics should be informed by faith instead of faith informed by politics (thanks, Nish Weiseth for that one).

You are not the only one who is confused and heartbroken and frustrated that Christians often act more like Pharisees than disciples.

You are not the only one who has been hurt by the Church.

You are not the only one who is disenchanted or turned off or traumatized by the Bible (or other people weaponizing it against you).

You are not the only one who wonders if your belonging will be threatened if you reveal that you are not the same as you once were.

And just know —

“Your grief and doubts and cynicism and anger do not make you a liability to Jesus.” — Sarah Bessey

You are not a liability. You are not a freak. You are normal. You are beloved.

Honest to goodness, if you are reading this and feeling alone and like you can’t talk to anyone about this stuff, you can talk to me. Comment, email me, whatever — get in touch. I will share my resources and do what I can to help you feel less crazy.

To my readers, the Category 1 Christians and the Category 2 Christians, and those of every faith and no faith and post-Christians (sorry, Reformed folks) and narrative-ruiners and those who defy categorization —

It’s my theory that those who are the most sincere in their faith are also the most likely to faith-shift. It is the sincere believer that asks questions, that truly wants to know God, that earnestly approaches Scripture, that is deeply broken by injustice in the world and church, and is most likely to be undone by trauma and disappointment because WE TOOK IT AT FACE VALUE that God was good and Jesus meant it when he said to love your neighbor. And therefore, if we do shift in our faith, if our beliefs do evolve, because we were earnestly seeking the whole time, it’s really painful to be accused of “falling away” or “having never really been saved.”

“For many of us, we are not evolving because we are contrarian, but because Jesus is changing us.” — Jen Hatmaker

Jesus has changed me so much. Thanks be to God.