By: JANA GREENE

“If you are spiritually deconstructing, you never knew Jesus in the first place.”

I hear this refrain over and over again. It’s the most invalidating thing you can say to someone who is rebuilding a faith life, because it requires no questions asked. A quick, pat explanation to justify one’s traditional beliefs that people who deconstruct are fallen. Deceived.

No fuss, no muss. Easy-peasy. If you are questioning the inerrancy of the Bible, you were never a “believer” in the first place. Which is both harshly judgmental – and frankly – nobody’s call to make about someone else’s person’s personal faith.

But that would be a wildly assumptive dismissal, because it’s for my love of Jesus I began questioning.

It’s because Jesus is SO real to me that I started this journey.

Either Jesus was who he said he was, or he wasn’t.

Either God is a god of warring, or of peace.

Either God is a god of unconditional love, or none at all.

Either God is a just god, or a corrupt one.

Either “it is finished,” or it is not.

And that’s far more important to me than believing a grown-ass man was swallowed by a whale and lived three days in its body “vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.”

We learn the Old Testament stories in Vacation Bible School, right out of the gate. Horror stories.

Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son, only to have God say just kidding! Just had to make sure you would snuff out the life of the child you prayed so long for, and I rewarded you with. Is God manipulative, or loving?

The nature of God is not – in my travails – sending a catastrophic flood to drown all of his creation – excepting one family he deemed righteous. For that righteous man who would later get drunk and have sex with his daughters to propagate the species (with even more beings that God knew good and damn well would also become corrupt in their humanity.)

I no longer believe it, because of the teachings of Jesus himself. The Bible contradicts itself in the most dangerous way, because it teaches that you’d better get your belief system right OR. ELSE. It’s the ultimate test of “getting it right.” And we humans are not so good at getting things right, as a general rule.

Does that sound like Jesus to you? Examine the humanity of Jesus; not just the divinity.

I am not at all anti-Bible. I am Bible-in-context of history and allegory. And the grace and justice and righteous table-turning of Jesus? I am definitely “pro” that.

“I guess you’ll find out when you die and spend eternity broiling in Hell,” they say, when you deconstruct.

To which I say, the Jesus I study and know is not about eternal conscious torment. “Turn or Burn” is loaded with law, as opposed to grace.

“You can question God about “x” but never “y.” and CERTAINLY not “z.” they tout.

Except that you can, because it’s the nature of humanity. And every good relationship requires excellent communication, why would this be any different?

I have no desire to throw “the baby out with the bathwater” – Jesus out with the organized religion. Lo, I say unto thee, in my quest of soul-searching, he came out on top.

“Love one another,” says he. And everything else he ever says orbits around that one concept.

So question, child of God. Let the Holy Spirit roam around free-range in your soul, unconstrained by thousands of years of human dogma, politics, and legalism. Ask the Spirit to show you what is true and what matters most in the ancient book. Sit with the Spirit as Jesus sat with his disciples, just chillin’ with the homies. Just BEING; not striving.

Oh, I did know Jesus “in the first place,” but not as I know him now.

Not as part of a Jekyll and Hyde spiritual pairing. Not as one whom I will have to hide behind when I get to Heaven, so as not to upset the father with my humanity. Not as one whose grace hinges on us “getting it right.”

But as One with us, whole in love; full of grace. One who sits with me in my darkest hour. One who set the example of turning the other cheek and made repeated declarations that “the greatest of these is LOVE.”

It is for freedom you have been set free, Loves.

God bless us, everyone.

By: JANA GREENE

My first exposure to religion was as a child was church, like most folks. My grandparents, who had custody of me for a while, were very religious people.

Religion is confusing because it really looks so dissimilar to what I now practice, but it was even more confusing as a kid. In the Baptist church we attended, red was the predominant color. The pews were red. The carpet was red. The embellishments on the pastor’s robe were crimson, as was the cloth over the altar. Still when I let my mind wander back, red is all I see.

Red is what I associate with church, and also sitting still in “big church,” and watching the grown-ups line up to eat the body and blood of Jesus, which was not alarming at ALL to a five year old. I was not allowed to partake. I must be too bad to participate in this ritual.

“It’s because of the blood of Christ,” I learned at Sunday School. The red signifies blood, and to a child who was afraid of her own shadow and full of anxiety, that really tripped me up.

Then I learned it is because I was so bad that I needed to bleed Jesus dry. And that he did it for me, because my heart was deceitful about all things. The Little children who worshipped may have been “red and yellow, black and white,” but it was because of the blood that we are precious in his sight. Every single person was born bad…. a sinner.

Was I a sinner? I did sneak a Mr. Goodbar from my grandmother’s secret candy stash drawer. Also, I really loved music. Did I love music more than God? You must love God more than ANYTHING. And if I did love music and climbing trees and eating candy more, did that mean I didn’t love God enough? Did that blood not cover me? What about the time I told my grandfather “no” when he asked me to do something?

And again, every week, I’d traipse down the hall of the church to Sunday School, excited for the crafts and terrified of the blood.

I learned a lot of things in church through the years. Multiple denominations. I’ve attended many a covered-dish dinner, and youth group activities. But it was what I observed, not was taught, that did the damage. It has taken me years to say the words “religious trauma” in the same sentence. It sounds awfully dramatic, unless you’ve had it instilled in you from birth and it’s all you know. And unless you were born with the anxiety level of a gerbil on crack naturally, and ergo: Your faith naturally becomes FEAR BASED.

Love everyone, but don’t be “yoked” with unbelievers. Yes, even though Jesus chose to yolk-out with the undesirables of his day. Don’t bother asking about this hypocrisy, because questioning God is tantamount to signing your own passport to Hell.

And Hell is what kept us all reined in, because it gets really hot in Houston in the summertime, but HELL IS HOTTER. And it’s forever. It’s suffering forever, so get your sh*t together, chir’ren!

And you must learn the “word of God,” i.e., the Bible. Never mind that the Word is actually a person, and not a historical text translated and translated again, and written by sinners just like you. But again, don’t question it.

Learn all the Old Testament Bible stories at Vacation Bible School! Here’s a synopsis of the acts of a “loving God” that I learned in church:

God-sanctioned gruesome deaths and horrific murders in his name. Including the death of infants. I learned that sometimes God tells you to murder a person you love more than anything because he is testing your faith. Yikes.

He caused a flood to “reset” the world with good people, all the while drowning hundreds of thousands of souls who didn’t make the cut. All the animals too, except for the ones on the ark.

“Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were the rules, except buying and selling human beings as “servants” was sanctioned, and how they should be treated by their “masters” was also covered. So being either a slave or a master was completely justified.

Oh sure. They START with Jonah and the whale, because who doesn’t love marine animals? And camping out in a fish til you learn your lesson is much preferable to many of the other stories I learned. Those stories were:

Misogyny. Human sacrifice. Sexual violence. Infanticide. Genocide.

God caused a bear to maul 42 children, although admittedly, I didn’t learn this until middle school when I was already afraid to exist, so bears were whatever by then.

I kept finding out how harsh the Creator of the Universe is, yet how incredibly loving and inclusionary Jesus is. But they are the same person. So figure it out, kid.

In short, everything that Jesus was NOT, God was.

Jesus is who I called on when there was violence in my home. And there was, a lot. He was who I wanted on my team when I disappointed God. I could imagine getting to Heaven and spending the entire hereafter hiding from God behind Jesus’ robe, on account of surely he will smite me.

Even as a youngster, I fell in love with this Jesus, who caused the crimson tide in church, but also gathered the little children around him.

He had stern words for the religious of the day, which is REALLY confusing, because the religious are who I was taught to look up to. Jesus was hugs and kindness, while God was retribution and violence.

Jesus is who I conjured even when I was three, as one of my first memories illustrates. My parents were screaming at one another, and I hid in my toybox, shoving aside the toys and making myself small.

But I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew that kind and compassionate Jesus was hiding with me. I just knew that I knew, and I didn’t feel alone. I still never feel alone because I feel his spirit.

And I knew the God figure who was stuffed into a toybox with me giving me my first taste of spiritual peace, was not into mauling babies via bears or drowning his own creation.

Our religion, however, was about practicing 10 rules, being at the church every time the doors were open, excluding people who didn’t believe like we did to keep ourselves spiritually “safe,” and joining committees as adults.

So the genesis of my faith has been reconciling a belief system that never worked for me, because the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God, just in vastly different moods because of something called a covenant. God is in a much better mood in the latter, even as it is draped and ensconced in red, focused on blood and sin; and making sure you presented a Christian front to everyone “worldly,” (even as not really following the creed of Jesus at all.)

It’s easy to lose the Jesus in the rituals and rules.

That’s not my faith anymore.

Hi. My name is Jana and I am a follower of Christ. I am still in love with him and try (and often fail) to emulate his actions instead of striving endlessly to please a God who – let’s be honest – cannot be pleased.

I’ve been threatening to write about my deconstruction / reconstruction experience (including the banishment of a literal “Hell,” inclusionary salvation, and all sort of other things I thought would doom my soul when I was younger.)

So here is part one, friends.

Peace be with you.