So in my last journal entry, I made some isolated statements about Jesus that were intended to create tension; to not be simple at all; to warrant further explanation; to, in a sense, be incomplete or even misleading unless further explored. Well, prior to making those statements at the youth retreat, I furnished the following comments about them to the pastor and the parents so that when the students were totally confounded, they could go to the pastor or their parents and discuss in further detail what I really meant.

Here are those remarks.

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These statements are meant to generate tension. Jesus was very good at generating tension. It was not Jesus’ style at all to make things nice and tidy and manageable and crisply understood. Rather, He communicated in ways that provoked one to unfamiliar thought about God, about following Him, about our own lives, and our understanding of all these things. The end result – however mystical and unmappable – being greater intimacy with Him and greater overflow of love for the world which God “so loved.”

I wrote these statements with an eye to truth, a desire for unfamiliar insight, and a firm intention to create conversations - perhaps among myself and the students, but especially among the students and The Living God, Joel & other leaders, and their own parents and peers – all of it centered upon Scripture. I wanted to make statements that needed follow-up. So if you read these statements and find a will within yourself to dispute them, let me freely challenge you to check your humility (as I have tried to do), and then take that energy and discuss it with others and with God, intent upon looking to Scripture for insight. Let the conversations be beautiful. Welcome the tension. Allow the Spirit to move and teach, attract and repel.

Beneath each statement you will find my thoughts, and perhaps a bit about why I find each statement to embody tremendously significant realities woven throughout the Bible.






In the Bible, Jesus never emphasizes that you need to read the Bible.

Taken literally, this is a true statement – one worth pondering – particularly operating under the assumption that He was able to give guidance through the Bible for all future generations. But it is important to stress that had Jesus, during His lifetime on earth, told people to “Make sure you read your Bible,” it would have been utter nonsense. People didn’t have Bibles available. What, then, could we look at to determine that Jesus might say something like that to us now? What in His life betrays His own extremely high view of Scripture? True: Jesus did not emphasize that we need to read the Bible. Also true: Jesus thought Scripture was very important, and because we are followers of Him, we inherit this priority from Him.

My motive for this statement: My own assessment is that to evince Jesus’ priorities through the Bible – and especially The Gospels – is in part to observe that how many “Christians” try to cultivate a deeper relationship with God is in many important ways very different than what Jesus exemplified for us. I want this statement to help shake my listeners into sensing this.



According to the Bible, if you think reading the Bible, praying, and going to church should be your major Christian priorities, you and Jesus are way out of alignment.

Following Jesus is way, way bigger than those three things. But if we’re talking real estate, these three things take up the bulk of the real estate in the popular conception of what it means to “be a Christian.” This strikes me as a problem – particularly considering that these things are to be subservient to our love for God and others. Our real estate is to be love for God and others. Those three things are to be roads and driveways, at best.

Let me state it differently, because it’s the focus of my role this weekend. Jesus’ main concern for our lives as followers of Him was bound up in our love for God and others. This is the ultimate, foremost facet of His example for us. Yet the American church – from my perspective – is preoccupied with Christian measurables (such as “How much are you reading?” , “How much are you praying?” , and “Have you been going to church?” and neglectful of intentionally fostering a preoccupation with love expressed to God, love received from God, and love expressed to others on behalf of God. This, to me, is a gross misalignment with Jesus’ intentions for the lives and minds and priorities of His followers (indeed, His body).

Though there are many passages in the Bible that point to this, one beautiful passage on which to mediate begins in Matthew 5:23. Also consider any of the other passages which communicate God’s desire for His people to not be preoccupied with the actions of the law but instead with heart-level, grace-consumed love expressed to God and to others through service.



According to the Bible, Jesus believes it's possible for the Scriptures to be an idol.

I take this from John 5:39 in particular. Zoom out from isolated passages in the Bible and I think you can find pervasive support for this.



According to the Bible, Jesus thinks Scripture is really important.

Matt 5:17, Mark 2:2, John 1:1-14, etc


According to the Bible, every follower of Jesus is a priest.

Ex 19:6 and 1 Pet 2:5 especially.



According to the Bible, religious hypocrites infuriated Jesus. And Jesus really infuriated religious hypocrites.

This is an overt theme of The Gospels; any story involving the Pharisees illustrates this.


Based on the stories in the Bible, Jesus seems really, especially compassionate towards precisely those people who you and I do not want to associate with.

My original statement was this: “Based on the stories in the Bible, Jesus seems really, especially compassionate towards those who society pushes to the margins.” That is a major theme developed about God in the Old Testament, and then incarnated and flagrantly visible in Jesus. I tweaked the language to emphasize that to follow Jesus is to follow Him into territories that we don’t automatically venture. It is to be pushed in ways that we may not welcome without assistance from the His Spirit. I want these students to smell how revolutionary and free Jesus was. Maybe this faintly points to that.



Jesus LOVES homosexuals. He also LOVES liars, prostitutes, murderers, etc.

I realize this may spring a lot of different conversations. Good. I ask you: why is this not emphatically communicated by the body of Christ, right smack in the middle of a tension that also claims that homosexuality is sinful? If need be, go ahead and stop yourself from thinking that I’m saying anything other than precisely what I wrote. My comments on the next statement apply to this as well.



Jesus probably looked more like Osama Bin Laden than the portraits with which we are familiar.

Jesus was middle eastern - not “white.” The value of this statement is in its capacity to generate a sense of our propensity to fit Jesus to our lives and lifestyles and our frightening ability to misunderstand who He was/is on even very basic levels. God’s image is in Osama Bin Laden, and Jesus thought Osama was so valuable and precious as to die for Him and offer to bare the punishment for his sin. How beautiful if the body of Christ could communicate that to him? And all others?



According to the Bible, Jesus seems altogether fine with people choosing not to follow him.

I could not find a satisfactory way to phrase this – a simple and striking way to phrase this succinctly while capturing the more nuanced reality. The reality is that when people choose not to follow Him, you don’t find Jesus saying “Wait, wait, I didn’t mean to come across so harsh and demanding. I’m sorry, let’s talk about this more.” But He DOES mourn for His people, and He is the shepherd who pursues the lost. This is a tension that Jesus balances perfectly, and it is a tension in His character that I am an imbecile at emulating.

But I can say this. It is my belief that in a group of 10, Jesus would rather 2 people REALLY get it and 8 people walk out than 8 people sorta get it and 2 people walk out. For that reason, I want to – with desperate reliance on the Spirit’s guidance and insistence on my own radical humility – give permission to those who do not really want to totally follow Him to not follow Him. Indeed, I believe Jesus would do the same. I suspect there will be some such students in the room.

I ask you: would it be better for someone to live fully in sin while others plea to God on that person’s behalf and live life alongside that person – incarnating Christ for that person, or should we prefer that person to live a stagnant and comfortable life within religious America, hopeful that eventually something will ‘click?’ Is it better to be a person with divided loyalties – with one foot in God’s door – or to be a person living fully “in the world” amongst loved ones who passionately love Christ?



According to the Bible, it is possible to act exactly as God tells you to act and Him be really upset about it.

Again, I point to passages in the Old Testament which indicate God’s anger at those who carry out the actions of the law – precisely delineated by God’s messengers – but who do so with false hearts.



Following Jesus does not mean "being an Episcopalian" any more than following Jesus means "being an engineer."

It is a choice you are free to make. Do not confuse “following Jesus” with “being an Episcopalian.” I believe denominations are to the overwhelming detriment of God’s Kingdom on earth, and this statement is meant to move one toward thinking outside the self-drawn lines of denominational division.



"Episcopalian" is not a word or concept found in the Bible. Nor is Baptist, Protestant, Catholic, Methodist, nor any denomination, nor the word "denomination" or "confirmation."

I greatly desire among the body of Christ that we would have a potent sensitivity to those things which “Christian religion” confer as being essential to following Jesus, which are in fact extraneous to the life He designed for us, and in many cases can contribute to suppression of God’s Kingdom via religious oppression – much like the systems that the Pharisees created.



The Bible gives one single account of Jesus praying for His future followers. His prayer: unity.

This is very profound to me. Perhaps the Spirit might communicate a similar profundity to the students by me making this statement. And I especially want to heap this into the same pile as the previous two statements.



According to the Bible, "church" is not a building. It is not a place you "go to."

I perceive that ignorance among students about what the Bible says is the “church” is striking and widespread. I won’t write paragraphs. I’ll simply note that a starting place is to exposit the meaning of “church” found in the Bible. It is a singular meaning – one I believe to be incompatible with what the word “church” means in our language of cultural Christianity.



According to the Bible, "the church" is so priceless and beautiful that we should be willing to die for it.

The previous statement in no way diminishes the value of church, though it may at first appear to do so. This is because it is often the case that to erect a new value and understanding, one must first be demolished. This statement is to clarify that the very last thing I want to do is demolish the importance of the church – Christ’s own body incarnated through His followers. What I seek to demolish is something working in opposition to what I believe to be Christ’s intention for The Church – namely physical boundaries like walls and hurtful conceptual delineations like denominations.



According to the Bible, Heaven is not a place you "go to" when you die.

To understand God’s plan for the restoration of the Earth is something I believe can have an absolutely profound effect one’s own understanding for what it means to be a follower of Jesus, partnered in God’s purposes for Earth – for His “will to be done on Earth as in Heaven.” I placed “go to” in quotes because it gets at the essence of the popular conception that when we meet Christ in person, He’s going to teleport us to some other realm totally unlike Earth. Scripture indicates something immensely different than this. To explore these differences – to come to a clearer understanding of God’s intentions for us and this place – is to have some very, very beautiful conversations.


According to the Bible, Jesus' message was not that He was going to "die on the cross so that you could ‘go to’ Heaven."

The tendency to make Jesus’ life about a post-death salvation for us is deeply troublesome to me and profoundly errant. I believe that the salvation Jesus came to offer was holistic to an extent that even eludes those who are already deeply troubled by the myopic gospel being spread by so many Christians. Stated more plainly, Jesus’ message was that the Kingdom of God is available – a concept altogether different from the popular conception of Heaven (or the popular conception of Jesus’ message, for that matter).



Based on the stories in the Bible, Jesus never told anyone that they were going to hell.

Jesus was crisply clear about the fact that Hell is a reality that must be made known. But you never find Jesus informing a person that the person will go to Hell. He simply makes known its reality. I believe that to tell a person that they are going to Hell is infuriating to God and profoundly misrepresentative of God Himself and of His desire for us to act as Christ – sacrificially and lovingly on God’s behalf, without condemnation.


It is possible to believe you are a “a Christian” and not be a follower of Jesus.

To say you are a Christian can mean many things. To say you follow Jesus is to say something very specific. I believe God would agree that the fact that this discrepancy exists is utterly tragic and heartbreaking to Him. I’ll leave it to you to explore that more fully, and hopefully the students will be pulled into exploring this more fully.


Finally, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: To be a Christian is to be utterly preoccupied with love: to God, from God, and to others on behalf of God.