Eyes To See

A Lenten Journey: Day Zero — Part 1

Preface

Honesty and integrity are really important to me—which means language is really important to me. I really do try leave room for nuance and not frame things through the lens of always or never—hence my usage of the word “often” in the subtitle. But language is a two way street so I’d like to pause to lay some ground rules for our time together.

First, this series is not a critique of evangelicals. For one, that term is far too broad. I have friends who proudly identify as evangelical who have a deep faith and demonstrate a deep love of neighbor and enemy. On the other hand, I know evangelicals who hold to a very small version of the good news that is in fact no good news at all…at least for those in the margins of modern society.

My aim isn’t to knock people. I genuinely believe most people are doing the best they can with what they have—theology included. Which leads me to state what I am critiquing in this series and that is the systematic theology often taught in evangelical spaces that reduces the greatest story ever told into three distinct acts—The Cradle, The Cross, and The Clouds—that leaves the radical life that Jesus lived, and a bulk of the Teachings and The Prophets on the editing room floor.

The Cradle, The Cross, and The Clouds

Jesus, who was born of a virgin, was without sin. But you and I, we inherited a sinful nature that has separated us from God. But Jesus in an act of mercy died on the cross so that we could be reconciled with God. And the Good News is God raised him from the dead and he is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, and whosoever believes in him will have all of their sins forgiven and not perish, but have everlasting life.

This is true-ish, but it’s certainly not the whole truth.

The Birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ centers at best seven days out of the twelve thousand and forty five days Jesus walked this earth. Now to be fair, we really only have about three years of Jesus’s life to work with, but even so, seven days in the span of three years is only 0.64% of that span of time. This begs the question, by filtering the entire life of Jesus, as well as the entire work of the Bible through such a small portion of his time on earth, what might we have missed?

I’m not suggesting this view is wrong—not yet at least. What I am saying is this view is largely incomplete.

Cutting Room Floor

This narrow view of the gospel does five things that actually work against the gospel narrative.

By focusing mainly on the birth, death, and resurrection we:

• Unintentionally make Jesus’s life irrelevant—only the things that prove his divinity matter.

• Make his teachings optional—heaven is gained by belief, following his ways become a side-quest.

• Make the Kingdom of God a future based idea—no practical use for the here and now.

• Make justice work secondary—any social action is at best “works” and sometimes considered unrelated to God at all.

• Make empires tolerable—political powers don’t matter because this earth is not our home.

The gospel many of us were handed skips the life of Jesus and misses everything Jesus actually did and said about this upside-down way of being that was breaking in now.

Walking on Sunshine

This incomplete gospel doesn’t just change our theology—it changes our church culture—a culture that pulls everything towards the future where the victory in Jesus is complete. When things are tough we can remember the promises of God and delight in his faithfulness. We say things like God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. Not to make light, but this theology gives off The Lego Movie vibes where “Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you’re part of the team!”

Again, it’s not wrong but it is woefully incomplete. There’s little room for sitting with darkness—and let’s be honest, it’s there. There’s no room for failure, grief, complicity, or death. Which means there is no structure, permission, or pathway for people to actually heal from the hardships of life. We sing of the Goodness of God while white-knuckling through grief, and we perform spiritual positivity while our unprocessed trauma festers below the surface.

And then we act surprised when everything falls apart. When in fact, everything is not awesome.

What’s Next?

So what do we do with this incomplete faith that forms us into people who are, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said, 'so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good'?" To start we enter into the wilderness. And there’s an ancient practice that helps us enter into a space between the comfortable gospel we've known and the dangerous one Jesus actually preached.

It’s called Lent and it begins on Wednesday, February 18th. It lasts 40 days—not counting Sundays, and I’ll be writing reflections throughout that time, just probably not every day. In the meantime, invite others if you want. But honestly? This journey is as much about you getting free as it is about anyone else. Our aim isn't to change your mind. Our aim is to introduce you to the Jesus we’ve been taught to ignore—and see if maybe that changes everything about everything.

What if this ancient faith—the whole faith, not just the heaven-when-you-die version—has exactly what we need for this hurting world and the neighbors we're called to love?