I grew up in a Christian home. Going to church, praying before meals and bedtime, reading the Bible, and singing worship songs were as regular for me as oxygen. It’s all I had ever known. It was the water I drank and the air I breathed. Being homeschooled with a religious curriculum, and not being in a public school, made it where most of my friends were also Christians since I met them in Sunday School and church choir and Christian clubs. I was soaked in Christian culture, but partly the kind of Christian culture where I’m a horrible sinner and God is pretty disappointed in me and just waiting for me to mess up and catch me in that mess, like God was some cop hiding behind the bushes to catch me speeding and give me a significant consequence. 

When I began making friends outside the bubble I lived in, I was confronted with other perspectives but I was also afraid of them not knowing Jesus and going to hell when they died. I felt massive pressure to evangelize them so they would know the truth. I would regurgitate how God hates sin and sinners and God can’t look at sinners so God sent his beloved son, Jesus, to die in your place so you can go to heaven if you just believed in him and asked him into your heart and then you wouldn’t burn in hell for all eternity. I wasn’t just afraid for their salvation, I was also always afraid for my own salvation. Like, what if I wasn’t on fire for God enough, I would get spit out of God’s mouth because God was so grossed out by me. But then how could I determine if I wasn’t being lukewarm? I would wonder what being “on fire” looked like or felt like and how does a person maintain that without eventually burning up or burning out? It was exhausting, trying to prove my worth to God or convince God that I was worth God’s time and attention, like if I did enough good works then hopefully God would be pleased with me.

It was in my Christian high school I began to see inconsistencies. My friends were the ones called into the office, had detention, smoked pot, drank, cursed, and skated. I loved them desperately. But they didn’t fit the religious mold or conform to the religious standards, so they got kicked out. And sadly, these were the lessons many of us were taught about God. If you keep “sinning” or keep making “mistakes,” you’ll get spit out. Compassion was scarce and do-overs had clear limitations. 

I had to deconstruct. I had to allow everything to get burned off and stripped away. My soul was created to seek God and the religious mold I was given gave no space to seek God. The God I knew as wrathful, judging, and angry didn’t fit with the Jesus I was craving. In my seeking, dismantling, deconstructing of long-held beliefs, I found myself reinvigorated and alive to the possibility that God was more good, more kind, more forgiving, more relational than the religious construct I was not only given, but required to pass along. 

It took me years to untangle my body and mind away from the fears of hell and separation. Even still, those neuro-pathways formed in childhood created long ruts I find myself falling back into if not mindful—penal substitutionary atonement trips me up from time to time. I preached sermons under the metaphorical “covering” of my husband, unbeknownst to him, for years—this one was a hard dismantling for me.

I heard it said by someone that when he began to set his understanding of God on fire, the Holy Spirit came in with a soft wind that blew the ashes away and what was left was his body curled up in the fetal position around Christ. How frightening this experience can be, full of raw exposure and probable wounding. Many good Christian people in my life had a hard time understanding, or even wanting to understand. Instead of openness and curiosity over such vulnerability, there was fear—for my salvation and how I was leading others astray.

But I wasn’t afraid. The more I questioned, the more confident I became. Wasn’t it Jesus who said what use is it to gain the whole world yet forfeit your soul? My soul was safely held as everything else was stripped away. I began to experience the intimacy of God, the closeness of relationship in such exposure. I began to know that perfect love casts out fear, especially the fear of being kicked out or left behind. That with God, there is no fear, only deeply abiding love and acceptance and grace. It wasn’t my good behavior that drew Jesus to me. It was just me. God just loved me, regardless of behavior.

I found a community with other voices during this time. Deconstructing on the fringe of the Emergent movement helped me know I wasn’t alone. And co-pastoring a church built on the coattails of the Emergent movement was extremely helpful. I was surrounded by disenfranchised, religiously marginalized people who couldn’t quit Jesus but needed to quit church. 

There wasn’t a straight path towards deconstruction and certainly no handbooks for me. But there was curiosity and honesty and late night robust theological conversations around wine and Cheez-Its long after Life Group ended. There was understanding and push-back, arguments and laughter and sometimes I would sit back, look at each beloved face with awe and think, “I’m pretty sure Jesus is in this place, too.” And every misguided and protective doctrinal layer the Holy Spirit stripped away, less padding and insulation, the more I could feel how close God was—as close as my very breath. 

There are still times such uninsulated exposure scares me and I shrug a layer over what’s been stripped away, convinced I need it to feel safe. But even those layers can’t actually separate me from God. Nothing can. 

Maybe deconstructing one’s beliefs seems sacrilegious, but I’ve found deconstructing my Christian faith to be a holy and sacred act I come back to over and over again. Thanks be to God.

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Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church.