This week, while preparing for the Bible in Context, Genesis 2:24–25 kept coming to mind: “a man leaves his father and mother, clings to his partner, and the two become one flesh.” They are naked and unashamed. We can sentimentalize that text or use it for marriage advice, but it’s also doing something far more disruptive. It describes individuation before union. Leaving precedes becoming one. This is what Abram must do to become Abraham.

That leaving is not rebellion; it’s maturity. It’s the movement from inherited identity into embodied responsibility where a person can be a blessing. Spiritually, it’s the moment when faith stops being borrowed from parents, pastors, or camps and becomes something a person actually inhabits. In other words, you cannot become “one” while still hiding behind someone else’s certainty.

When Jesus says in John 10, “I and the Father are one,” he wasn’t collapsing himself into a religious camp or outsourcing his authority to tradition. He is speaking from an integrated self and as an invitation for you and me to become wholly as he is wholly. He was the telos of the “Be holy as I am holy.“

The shock of Jesus’ statement was not just theological, and this was the gut reaction of many; the real threat of Jesus was that it was existential. It took all the proverbial BS of his time, and he became it. Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life…and so can we be. Whether Jesus was immaculately conceived or literally God in flesh is almost irrelevant and secondary to what Jesus’ point was: become what Jesus is, and that means becoming one with the Father as Jesus was one. And that was the only Christian apologetic ever needed:

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

— John 17:20-21

Jesus knew who he was because he allowed God to fully have him. Where his authority came from was a relationship that we can all have, and he was not asking permission to say it (c.f. Matthew 7:28-29). That kind of unity with God only comes when a person is no longer fragmented, no longer performing belief for approval. This is the rebirth of John 3 and the spiritual transformation of Romans 12:1-3. And it is a process, especially for big, bulky sinners like myself.

What struck me this week is how many people want unity without letting go of what divides them. In some sense, such things help our communities feel safer. They want oneness with God without risking separation from the systems that taught them who God is supposed to be. But Genesis hints even before the protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15): there is no union without differentiation. John also shows us the fruit of that process when it is lived fully. Faith that never becomes our own will always need enemies to survive.

God has a way of bringing things up that are difficult to ignore. Last week was rough, and the first Bible event at Sacred Ally was on Sunday in downtown Missoula. From before sobriety or Drunk Pastor, I was aware I had beliefs that mainstream Christianity treated as heresy, and I couldn’t be honest about it. My salvation was questioned at my first rehab, while they seemed indoctrinated with “a KJV-only cult” (not my words, BTW). The senior pastor had a Trump cardboard cutout and propaganda like Christmas decorations throughout his church office. It felt rather hypocritical for these people to be questioning my salvation and faith. Looking back, it was so deserved because I was so not “saved” then: I wasn’t able to be honest about my sins and alcoholism.

As God has done work in my life over the last few years, I wrestled through many silent obstacles that kept me from trusting my faith authentically. Also, my kids have been on my mind this holiday season, and the gaping hole of not having them in my life yet. Loneliness was something I was struggling with for a while. And I was worried about the number of people who would now disagree with me and what they think about me. It was a kind of “Be careful what you wish for moment.” I worried about several things, like whether I would implode again or if this whole journey had been a mistake.

It felt like God “three times sent messengers to buffet” me and remind me of the answers He already provided. Three conversations last week showed why the existential dread I used to have about being called a “heretic” was real, why being prepared for it was healthy, and where I had more room for growth. Similarly, they showed how there are two kinds of gospels in American Christendom.

“A disciple is not necessarily one who does what Jesus did, but one who does what Jesus said.”

—Dallas Willard

Conversation 1: Cafe Theology

Stressed about other things, I had to get out of the house to work. I sat down at a local hangout to work on a pizza website for a client. In the booth next to me, two older gentlemen sat talking theology. One of them talked nonstop; it sounded a lot like Bible-bashing. For twenty minutes, I kept focusing while quietly asking God whether I should say something. Eventually, I was annoyed enough to stop wondering and speak.

I interrupted and said I understood some of the one man’s position. He described himself as a missionary returning from India and a “12-year implicative” theologian. The other man had not been able to get a word in, so I asked him who he was and what his beliefs were. He said, “I’m a pastor.” …of course.

I asked the pastor what the other man was trying to prove. The pastor chuckled and said, “I don’t know.” The missionary then turned to me, and we discussed theology for a bit. At some point, he blatantly questioned my salvation and authority. I answered with Scripture, logic, and my testimony about what God has done in my life. Then, I replied with something like this:

“I can give you chapter and verse, describe the fruit of the Spirit, confess my sins, and share how Jesus is the only Lord of my life, and tell you about the ways God is working in my life. Still, when I meet someone like you, it feels like your salvation depends on convincing other people they are wrong, and you are right — even if that other person is a pastor or brother in recovery. So when I share, what I share gets interesting reactions from people like you.”

At some point, the pastor touched my shoulder and said, “Paule, I like you.” He turned to the missionary and said, “This is what I meant when I said you weren’t listening to me.” We ended the conversation, and I started to pack up. The missionary told the pastor something along the lines of I was probably into “weird’ things” (he has no idea 😇). Giggling to myself as my backpack slung over my shoulder, I placed my hand on his chair, thought to myself, “I’m pretty sure people said the same thing about Jesus,” and said, “Thank you, gentlemen, and God bless.” The pastor gave me a warm departure.

Walking away, I noticed the tension in my body and a bit of anger, and so later meditated on the encounter. I wasn’t sure if I had set it up, but I was grateful it occurred; it marked an area of growth and clear topics that might come up in future conversations.

“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.”

—Richard Rohr

Conversation 2: Bible In Context Class

A few days later, I felt nervous about the Bible In Context event for similar reasons: worried it wouldn’t work and worried about what people would think of me. All week, I was realizing it was time to let go of attachments to certain people and groups from my past. As a man, that meant not just moving on from previous church camps and relationships that are no longer present in my life, but being comfortable in my own responsibility, recovery, and journey. It sometimes felt lonely last week, and it was helping me get past some old things that were weighing me down.

At first, I worried no one would show for the Bible event. About seven people came; three more than I’d prayed for. We attempted an overview of Genesis. A woman began asking some typical and targeted questions that I was concerned about. As we tried to work through Genesis, her questions sharpened, and by the end, she shifted to Christ and the Holy Spirit, specifically about confessing with our mouth our sins and that Jesus is lord.

I answered from my experience, from confessing my sins and bending the knee to Jesus as my Lord and Savior on Easter of 2024, and how God led me to do Bible study, and that I used to be like her and minister with people like her. I understood where she was coming from, and it’s not as different as she thinks, and it relates to the ego. It does change everything.

She told the group she believed something different and would be praying for us “to come to know the real Jesus,” which struck me as ironic. I tried to answer calmly, “I’ll be praying for the same for you.” Aside from her, people expressed gratitude and said that there is a growing group of people looking for something like this. A majority said they’d be back for the next one.

By that night, I was raw and exhausted from the week, but the event was honest and real, and there were four people there who got enough of it…So, I was trying to be grateful.

“The gospel is not about how people get to heaven, but about how God’s sovereign rule comes on earth.”

—N.T. Wright

Conversation 3: Checkout Judgment

That night, I ran into a young man at the grocery store, and we recognized each other from visiting his church. His church is down the road from me and definitely of the Calvinist bent. He asked if my book had been published yet. We talked about the church, salvation, and eldership outside the store for maybe 10-15 minutes. In the middle of the conversation, he abruptly decided that what I’d shared reflected a defect of my character, that I was lost and confused. Funny to me now, but it bothered me that he judged me without doing the Berean work of checking Scripture or the human work of understanding another. And it bothered me that it bothered me.

After listening to his points, I said that pivoting and throwing my life under the bus now looks demonic and satanic to me. He immediately objected and said he wouldn’t talk to anyone who called him satanic, so I said, “Okay, well…’get behind me, Satan‘,” and walked away. I was praying all that time and asking why this was happening. But, walking away, I didn’t feel the usual shame and insecurity. I knew and didn’t need him to understand, not anymore. Still, I worried I’d handed him something to be bitter about, and those small slights used to accumulate and help turn me into the monster I once was. I also should have handled it differently.

Let’s Be Bereans

“Most Christians have never been taught how to be a person before they are taught how to be right.”

—Richard Rohr

The Bereans are often held up as heroes of faith because they “searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). What gets missed is how dangerous that posture actually was. They were people who already believed they had a firm grasp on God, salvation, and Scriptures. Then, someone showed up telling them something different.

They could have reacted defensively and with allegations. They could have protected their certainty, guarded their theological territory, and dismissed Paul as a threat. They could have equated disagreement with danger, or comfort with character. That is often how religious people do when conformity to a set of postulates is confused with faith. Or the Christian faith is reduced to event attendance and group participation. Churches could benefit from teaching the difference between faith and belief.

The Bereans chose humble honesty over flat-out rejection and labeling. They didn’t abandon Scripture; they leaned into it harder. They did so without assuming they already possessed the full meaning of redemption or that their theology was perfect, as if man-made creeds and codes could replace the Spirit behind Scriptures. That is an important, exegetical lesson from that passage modern Christianity likes to ignore in favor of the spirit of the Pharisees, and another “implication” theologians may or may not gloss over in favor of other people’s sins.

Searching the Scriptures is not an act of dominance; it is an act of vulnerability and surrender. We have to let the Scripture see us as much as we think we understand it. Scripture itself teaches that God is not owned, managed, or controlled by any person or people. Today, Christian Nationalism is more sinful and heretical than the sins they preach against, while the whole blessed world could use metanoia, and not just the people with fingers pointed at them.

What I keep sensing is not people defending Jesus, but people defending their psychological safety and entitlement to bible-bash and pretend they are better than others. When someone challenges their framework and assumptions, they respond as if salvation itself is at risk. That should tell them where their “faith” actually is. This is ego and not of the Kingdom or the Spirit. The Bereans show us a faith that is confident enough to listen, stable enough to test, and grounded enough to change when Truth demands it.

If salvation depends on convincing others that your kingdom and tribe are right, if your faith’s proof is winning arguments and narrowing the gate to an ever-smaller doctrinal checklist, then that faith is not Jesus. If the kingdom you preach does not empower you to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit outside the white walls of a church building, if your faith is measured by conforming to a group’s patterns and oddly specific doctrinal postures, if you mark your faith by how often you can make people feel like a sinner (and pat yourself on your back because you have a ticket to the afterlife), then what you’re not trusting the Jesus of the Gospels.

Until next post, which might be the next part of John, or finally finishing one on “the myth of intelligence,” which, interestingly, this week also needed to happen for me to be ready for.

“We are not saved by the correct ideas, but by living in the reality those ideas point to.”

— Dallas Willard