ICYMI: If you didn't get earlier hopeletters, find them here.

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It’s been a heavy ten days since my last letter. It feels like earth turned the volume on the evil meter up to eleven again, and my soul feels like it has disintegrated down to that sad little puddle, unable to reconstitute itself into a livable, movable entity.

David used to cry out to God,

Bro. Why? You're asking why? Are you the only one who doesn’t know the things that have happened in these days?

I just want to find the surface.
Make it stop.
Find the calm.
Peace, be still, again.

And as your Jesus-loving-friend, I feel like I should help you find the surface too. But if Richard Rohr has taught me anything, it’s that people who love Jesus can benefit greatly from learning to breathe under water. Instead of escaping the breakers and the waves, maybe there is something necessarily good about crying out in the dark, about finding Jesus in the depths, too.

I mean, that’s the whole thing, right?

Jesus, Emmanuel.
God with us.

Jesus arrives with us as a baby in an occupied Israel where a power-crazed leader orders the murder of every male infant and toddler. Baby Jesus survives because of his family’s ability to flee and find refuge in Egypt of all places.

If the only thing that mattered was that God gave his only begotten Son as a sacrificial lamb to be killed, transactionally taking away the sin of the world (a gross oversimplification and reductionist view of the heart of God and the role and person of Jesus), this could have been accomplished by staying put and letting Herod’s evil plan to save the world run its course.

But Jesus came to be with us.

Sometimes subverting evil.
Sometimes reflecting it back on itself.
Sometimes allowing it.
Sometimes staring it down and calling it out.
Sometimes casting it out.
Sometimes redeeming it.
Sometimes absorbing it.

Always here with us, though.

Even when the evil is in us.

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I was well into my twenties before I started to ask questions about the Jewish world that Jesus was born into. As I finally read many of the scriptures the preachers typically skip, I wanted to understand the ways of Jesus–the teaching, the heart, the presence, the words–and it felt important to know what it was like back then.

It’s surprising how many of us love Jesus and read scripture but don’t understand the giant shift from the old testament kingdom of Israel to the systems and structures that are incredibly prevalent and normal within the new testament stories.

What I noticed for the first time is that origin of rabbis, pharisees, sadducees, and synagogues are never explained within the canon of the Bible that was provided for me when I arrived on earth in the late 1900s.

Which is odd because all of the Jesus stories have these things in them. I wanted to understand the context of all these Jewish things that Jesus talks about and all these people he interacts with, but there isn’t a clear origin story of the systems that Jesus seems to be confronting and sometimes tearing down within the text.

In the old testament, there was an exile.
There was a return to the promised land.
There was a silence.
God stopped speaking through prophets.
For 400 years.

And then Jesus.

And apparently an entire 2.0 version of the Jewish religious system had popped up too. Where did it come from? Why are there no synagogues, rabbis, etc. in the old testament and then everyone just acts like they are normal?

Well, do your own research, but I’ll summarize it here for you in case you don’t know the story.

The nation of Israel had a really hard time passing on the faith from one generation to the next. As you read through their story in the old testament, they say they’re going to do all kinds of things to hold up their side of the covenant, but they don’t.

They stray.
Quickly.
Slowly.
Creatively.
Drastically.
Minimally.
All the ways.

And then, over and over, a generation grows up who neither know God nor worship him. And then they find a document or a prophet tells them whats up or an enemy takes them into exile or whatever and they return to God. And they swear up and down that they won’t stray again.

But they do. And the cycle keeps spinning.

After they return from exile from the Babylonians, however, they try something new. This is not recorded within our 66 books of the Bible, but they create a system. They decide that they need a way to make sure that the next generation and the one after that and the one after that and the one after that will know God and worship God and not go through the exile and difficulties they had to go through. Weekly synagogue gatherings. Scripture memorization. Rabbis and their disciples. Extra rules to make sure no one even gets close to breaking the real rules.

And to some extent, it works. It breaks the cycle. On the surface. Even centuries after their return from exile, they look like a people who know and love God. So if you grew up in the system, you learned the system and how the system helps you stay on God’s good side.

But then Jesus shows up and this, for me, has been the most freeing realization:

In order to be right with God, people had a relationship with the system, and the people in charge of the system thrived off of that relationship (more on this in a future hopeletter).

Jesus, instead, allows us to have a direct relationship with God because God is with us, making the system unnecessary, stripping those in charge of the system of their power, and in their graspy, final attempts to maintain that power, they violate the heart of God by nailing him to the cross.

It started off as a good thing:
​Make sure the next generation knows God and loves God.

Somewhere along the way, the relationship shifts from us-with-the-Creator to us-with-the-things-created-for-“Making-sure.”

Sometimes the shift is due to the hubris and selfishness of the leaders. Sometimes its clinging to what worked for them rather than exploring what will work for the next generation. Sometimes it’s inadvertent and the subsequent culture just passes on what it learned from the system before it, and we end up in a place that looks very different than the kingdom of heaven with Jesus as king.

Centuries later, we make systems to try to help the next generation know and love God. But they don't have a relationship with God. They have a relationship with Church. We ask them to join our Church. We sell merch. We build instagramable brands of community. We're upset when they leave our Church.

Jesus is still breaking our cycles, stepping in as the way, the truth and the life.

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Peter Rollins, an Irish author and philosopher, tells stories akin to modern day parables. They help us see and question whether what we are doing is actually an important part of living into the kingdom of heaven with Jesus as king, or something we just inherited and maybe should have given more thought to.

To illustrate how ridiculous some of the things are that we do, in one of these parables he shared on a podcast, he posits an absurd practice that we would never do.

But would we? Do we?

It makes you wonder if there are things we inherited from the well meaning people who preceded us but aren’t actually important to Jesus and the kingdom of heaven. Here are the parables from this clip:

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Which makes me wonder, for me, what parts of Church are just systemic nonsense?

What things are a part of my normal that Jesus would laugh at the absurdity?

So I sat with the HS, my helper and guide who knows me and my story, inside and out, and without judgement, looked back at my life and wondered at lots of things.

Maybe they're absurd.
Maybe I just don't know their origin.

Is this a ghost of a good thing?

At some point these things felt like a big deal to me or people around me. Maybe it was needed. Maybe it was helpful. Maybe it helped someone know God and love God. But it’s not mine. And holding onto it feels a little absurd.

Maybe on the other side of letting it go, I’ll realize the value and resurrect it.

But for now, I can let it be absurd and let it go.

• Tithe is 10% of my gross income and is for my local Church.
• We stand with Israel, no matter what.
• Church on Sunday is the most important thing of the week.
• Churches shouldn’t be taxed.
• Quiet times are how you know Jesus.
• Telling people about sin and hell is the beginning of telling people the good news.
• Christians are pro life.
• Drinking alcohol is bad.
• Voting for Christian leaders is the best way to vote.
• This sermon series is going to be life changing.
• Sexual identity determines identity in Christ.
• Church shopping is a thing.
• Seeker sensitive is a thing.
• Effective ministry is excellent and efficient.
• We’re the ones who really get it.
• The ends of the earth is somewhere else.
• We can organize the kingdom of heaven.
• We are the forceful men who are advancing the kingdom.
• We are in the last days.

These are some of mine. You don’t have to agree with them or find the absurdity in them, and I’m not even hoping to convince you to abandon them for some other true thing I’m proposing. And hopefully you won’t abandon exploring another way with me just because I’m working through some stuff and sharing about the reality of what it looks like to explore.

My encouragement for you is instead to use these as examples, then sit with the HS who knows you and your story, inside and out, and without judgement, look back at your life and wonder at all the things. If you do this, and I hope you do, please hit reply and send me some of yours, if you’re comfortable.

I believed these things because someone told them to me either directly or indirectly. Over the years there have been situations where it doesn’t always add up though.

Every statement above has at least one, but most likely many situations where I’ve experienced cracks in the statement and the light of heaven is shining through, contrary to the position of the statement.

And what I've found was that ignoring the reality of the cracks in these situations doesn’t bring me closer to God. Holding tighter to them doesn’t help me know, love and follow Jesus. In fact, it feels like Jesus is peeking through the crack, wondering if I’ll follow him through.

When I’ve held onto the statement rather than allowing myself to explore another way, I end up feeling like an usher handing out a cell-phone to an elderly lady who doesn’t have one.

It just doesn’t make sense.

So I’ve started to allow myself to let it go and see if Jesus is doing something not of this world that doesn’t fit into the boxes that were provided.

Still.
Even today.
Here.
Now.

Jesus is still breaking cycles that started off as a good thing.

But now they’re just ghosts.

I’m not willing to lose my life for some dead thing.

But I’m still willing to go all out if it’s real, if it’s alive.

It just might mean going another way.

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Much love.

–Kurt