An invitation to my crisis of faith

A journey into radical Christianity - how should we then live?

“Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?”

¹I’ve been a Christian for nine years now. I spent the first half of them slowly—painfully slowly with poor discipline and constant setbacks—learning how to develop a friendship with God and a routine of spending time with Him and His Word. I eventually succeeded, not really through my own efforts as much as through God’s grace in helping me fall in love with His Word.

From that point, I thought I had it all figured out. I could be devoted to God entirely, live in the land I love and use my professional life to care for God’s creation through a career as a forester while staying active in the church. And sure, I had to make some changes along the way as newfound convictions arose, like giving up TV when I’m alone and deciding I could no longer say the U.S. pledge of allegiance, but it’s natural to change as we grow and learn, right?

And I suppose that’s true. But maybe Jesus is asking us to participate in something bigger, something transformational:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. (John 12:24-26)²

Jesus asks a lot of His disciples.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:12-14)

His most well-known disciple, Paul, said,

The last enemy to be destroyed is death…by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! (1 Cor 15:26-31)

And Peter, another righteously zealous follower,

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. (1 Pet 4:1-2)

Jesus asks us to die for Him, which is only fair. And his early followers took it for granted that following Jesus means sharing in His suffering.

we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom 8:16-17)

Compassion by Forest Swords

As I study the Bible, I find myself being called higher to an increasingly radical perspective that may accurately be called anarchist or pacifist or primitivist or restorationist, one that sheds my addiction to the world I claim I already left behind to live as a free child of God in this new kingdom most people can’t see. I’m compelled to cut off the beguiling Couch and omnipresent Screen,³ and distance myself from the “rulers,” “authorities,” “the cosmic powers over this present darkness,” and “the spiritual forces of evil”,⁴ from their hubris and their fate.⁵

Nebuchadnezzar by William Blake

Do I die every day? Do I suffer for righteousness? Do I truly have no other gods before Him?

It took me a long time to admit it to myself, but the answer to all these questions is “no.”

It’s not that I wasn’t a Christian before. I cling to the reality of my salvation; it’s my lifeline, my only hope.⁶ I did commit my life to God and participated in His death.⁷ But on a practical level, I don’t live up to Matt 25:31-40 or 2 Cor 5:11-21. I want to change that, but I’m not sure how.

That’s part of why I’ve been writing on this platform. Filled with disconcerting ideas and anxious inaction, I decided to start trying to put my thoughts into words in the hope that I would find out where I’m getting it wrong. I feel like Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote a few years before his conversion to Christianity,⁸

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working through all the systems of philosophy and of being able, if required, to review them all and show up the inconsistencies within each system; what good would it do me to be able to develop a theory of the state and combine all the details into a single whole, and so construct a world in which I did not live, but only held up to the view of others; what good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and my life; what good would it do me if truth stood before me cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of understanding and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. That is what my soul longs after…And so the first thing to be decided was the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven.⁹

A few months later, he followed this confession with a hilarious and equally relatable comment:

The same thing happens to Christianity, or to becoming Christian, as to all radical cures, one puts it off as long as possible.¹⁰

I’m done putting it off. I want to be able to say “I die every day!” alongside Paul as I follow Jesus.

Along the journey of discovery, I want to understand how I got here—how we got here. Who stands before me in history that faced these same questions and sought to answer them without hypocrisy? What can I learn from secular critiques of the world? What is the future God is leading believers to?

I am a man of the twenty-first century, its inevitable product. How can I also be a man of the first, a man who takes the sermon on the mount seriously?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:10)

Does such a life resemble that of Alyosha the Pot? Roger Williams? Dorothy Day? David Lipscomb? Barton Stone? Petr Chelčický? Paul? Peter? What does that life look like in today’s Machine world?

These are some of the questions I plan to explore here; I invite you to join me as I sojourn through the blended worlds of philosophy, theology, history, historiography, and Christianity. Maybe the good life isn’t about changing the world, but about living in a changed one. With God, all things are possible—even learning to live as a truly radical follower of Jesus.

Words come to mind of another Christian who, not many years ago, found himself reflecting on the seemingly impossible task of being an “unbowed, undaunted, extremist, and eccentric” disciple of a radical restored faith: “I am seeking that illusive, pristine image of Christianity as it came from the mind of God. You say it is not there; it is an illusion. I have decided to seek it anyway. We live in a world of illusions. You say I will not find it because I carry on my back the baggage of my own past, of the culture in which I live, of the language with which I think. Self-consciously and with as much self-awareness as possible, I have decided to try…To be a restorer has always meant to be an explorer in search of Zion, bound to grope in our own human and cultural maze, never finishing our task, but ever learning through struggle and commitment to the truth. But I have never been alone; God has provided others of like mind to be my fellow travelers. It [will be] a rigorous journey, but I know existentially no other way. The search has served me well, and should you come to look for me, you will find me a bit further down the same road.”¹¹

Sisyphus by Titian (1548-49)

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”¹²

1. Ezek 33:10, KJV.

2. Biblical quotations will be in ESV unless otherwise noted.

3. I don’t necessarily mean literal couches and screens, although I certainly mean less of them. Laziness and self-indulgent entertainment are my target.

4. Eph 6:12.

5. cf. Isa 10, 13.

6. cf. 1 Pet 1:13.

7. Rom 6:1-11, 8:1-11.

8. I suppose I also feel like Paul in Rom 7.

9. Søren Kierkegaard. 1835. Journals. In: A Kierkegaard Anthology, edited by Robert Bretall. Pg 6-7. Princeton University Press, 1973.

10. Ibid.

11. David Edwin Harrell, Jr. 1988. Epilogue. In: The American Quest for the Primitive Church, edited by Richard T. Hughes. Pg 244-245. University of Illinois Press.

12. Albert Camus. 1942. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien. Vintage Books, 1955.