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My Instagram feed is an endless stream of preachers, bible teachers, and theologians which span the entire range of Christian thought. If they hold a liberal bend, then they tend to be deconstructionists. If they hold to a conservative bend, they are contenders. Catholics rail against the Protestants, fundamentalists pounding their pulpits insisting that literal Bible interpretations should be applied without contextualization. I listen to each one. I consider their perspectives. How do they have such different Gospels?

How do I know if I have and teach the true Gospel? Based on these reels, many would say I don’t.

A prayer that has followed me my entire life is: “Lord, you can take everything I own, everyone I’ve loved, and any hope I have in this life, but the only thing I ask, is that you reveal to me your Gospel.” I didn’t realize this would require a complete demolition of my life. Without the utter devastation in every arena of life, I couldn’t be where I am today. The gospel I proclaimed as a young minister had no power to prevent the failure of my first marriage, nor the loss of numerous jobs in ministry. My life was stripped to the point where I literally had nothing but my faith in God and that was a spiderweb over a fire.

The Gospel as the redeeming power of God, is the one I share with you. Neither the church, religion, nor tradition is the authority on this, but only the revelation of God in and through scripture…and that is only as good as our ability to interpret it. Once free from the light pollution of religious principalities and powers, the shadow of church history, and the influence of the puppet masters, who have proven to be propagandists for their particular flavor: I literally had nothing whatsoever to gain, no-one to appease, and no title or goal to apprehend. I was finally nothing. It wasn’t fun. I thought God was punishing me. Little did I know.

The Good News will be our utter devastation before it is anything else. We don’t really discover the good news until we reach the end of our self…or at least the non-existent, false version of ourself that we have concluded is ourself.

“For whoever would save his or her life will lose it, but whoever loses his or her life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

This is when the words of Jesus, Paul, and scripture began to open to me. In a virtual sense, I’ve journeyed with Paul, I’ve lost everything to possess this. If the me that existed prior to my deconstruction of life were to hear my podcasts, I’d likely find them both threatening and resonating. Resonating in how love of our true self, others and God is the golden thread woven throughout, and threatening because I still sought and needed the approval, validation and acceptance of religious institutional power, and wanted to make a name for myself like all the other pastors hoping to save the world through religion. More than likely the younger version of myself would be so much more certain and more critical…not yet having tasted what Gospel freedom actually was.

This is why the religious mind is the most lost a human can be. The religious have belief but not faith enough to die to their religious false self. Few pastors will do the work for free. They are close enough to the Holy place to know their way around. They have had enough time to emulate the others who have been there longer, who themselves emulated those before them. They know how to talk, behave, and conduct themselves in a way that they were told would make God happy, and if we listen to them, and do as they do, we’ll make God happy too. For the religious, the path to God is an assent, upward where one can look down upon those with less zeal, or love for God. The Gospel of religion, that which is prevalent in Evangelicalism today, is just this: a stairway to Heaven…an earth evacuation strategy. Some even promise more success, more healing, more wealth, more status, more, higher, addition, elevation…

The Gospel’s path to God is downward. It’s a paradoxical kingdom. Down is up. Losing is gain. Giving is receiving. Emptying is how we are filled. How did a multitude of people come to believe that our hymns, our perfunctory prayers, our generous tithe, sacrificed weekend, and a menu of grace conferring sacraments and rituals somehow help us love God more without any of it causing us to love our neighbor? Jesus commanded us to love our enemies, yet cultural Churchianity is amassing more enemies, while it hides its unloving, unregenerate heart behind a veil of martyrdom, as if the Church were a victim in this world.

In a recent reel, I watch what I would call fundamentalists take issue with claim that: “God loves the sinner but hates the sin.” and this pastor claimed this is unbiblical and heretical, claiming that “God hates the sinner in his sin.” Then he quotes a few Psalms and OT verses to prooftext is position that we ARE what we DO. Of course he uses the threat of Hell stating that “God doesn’t send the sin to hell, but the sinner.” He insists this is the only true Gospel and it sounds quite convincing. Like a feather, I’m sure it tickled his followers.

Given our study in Romans, my question would be: “Was Paul a sinner in his sin? Did God hate Paul? How could this pastor expect his own sins to be ‘not counted against him” or separated from him if we are what we do? Does he believe he lives a sinless life? How is this congregation supposed handle the realization of their next sin? Are they to assume they are apostates? Did God’s grace run out and prove Paul wrong in that when sin increased, Grace didn’t end up increasing quite enough? Are they consigned to a life of shampoo christianity of sin…wash…repeat? Is Jesus relegated to a clean up job on isle 4? Is that as good as it gets?

Now you know why there are Exvangelicals.

None of you need to listen to me. I bear no earthly power or authority and no institution has given me a title or a label that any of you should even care about. My audience ranges from 1000-80,000 people each week and by all objective measurements, I’m not an influencer…I’m not popular or famous…in our culture’s view, I’m a nobody. But if you’ve listened to this rant so far, may I offer my perspective as one who has truly made this discovery my life’s passion. I can promise everyone here: I’ve put in the work.

God loves sinners…even the religious kind. “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” We are God’s design as image bearers, and it’s not until after we have consummated our sins and after we are cursed that we bear His likeness, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:22) When a culture sees the gospel as the soap that cleanses the sin of our naughtiness, they are given only a tiny sliver of the story, and our Christology becomes a shivering Chihuahua contained in a carryon as an emotional support animal. Christ is an attachment. A fire insurance policy. A transaction sold to us by the moneychangers in the Temple.

The Evangelical Gospel cannot divorce itself from its over-identification with the narrative of Hell. This is because it is the Gospel of Hell…from Hell. Only those who know nothing of Hell will insist on sending everyone else there. As Thomas Merton says; “Hell is a place where no one has anything in common with anyone else except the fact that they all hate one another and cannot get away form one another and from themselves.” There are 20 times more churches than Starbucks and In the midst of every congregation is a majority of people who love the scripture and who claim to study it. Yet on the subject of Hell, am I to believe that no one has been able read how “hades” gives up the dead who are in it, and then death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire so that neither exists anymore? (Revelation 20:13-14) .

The Bible doesn’t fit the contrived narrative, so people can’t see it…until its pointed out.

This means Hell is emptied of its people, and it is not eternal before we are judged. How can we be judged and sent to hell if it doesn’t exist? I hope this helps you. The Lake of Fire is not a bigger Hell…it’s God, the All Consuming Fire. Everything comes from God and will go back to God and it will either be consumed and cease to exist, or it will complete its transformation by this fire. Oh…and it turns out the sin is separated from the sinner and the sin is consumed, leaving only the true person in God. Revelations 21:8 “to meros auton” (that part of them, that portion of them) is thrown into the lake of fire. In the end, God consumes all the sin into Himself, so that His love will expand in us into eternity, finally free of sin and death.

I’m labeled the heretic even though I know my bible better than most pastors and teachers. But I don’t care. I seek to please God and not man with how I teach it. I don’t run it by a board, or see if the presbytery approves it, or if John Calvin is rolling over in his grave. While there is world who looks up the talking heads as the voices for God, I look to the scripture and try and get everything out of its way. Will the real Gospel please stand up?

1. Love Sick Gospel: This version claims that Jesus is desperately in love with us, but we continue to “swipe left”. Therefore God updated his profile picture with Jesus and now he’s begging us to pick him. If we don’t then God sends us to Hell.
2. Judicial Gospel: This version claims everyone has broken the religious law and stands under the wrath of God and will be destroyed and punished in Hell, except for the few that God loved enough to sacrificed his son Jesus for. Everyone else burns in Hell.
3. Life Coach Gospel: This version claims God loves us and has an amazing plan for our life, and if we will just put God first, then He’ll bless us and help us find our purpose. And if we don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus we will go to Hell.
4. Prosperous Gospel: This version claims that God doesn’t want us to struggle or lack or be sick and that Jesus gave us authority in this world so we could be wealthy, successful, healthy, and Jesus become our genie in the bottle. If e don’t have enough faith, our life will be a living hell and then we will go there.
5. Shampoo Gospel: This version says that everything was perfect until we sinned and go kicked out of the garden. So God sent Jesus as a back up plan to get as many as possible back into right relationship with him. Because we sinned, our Holy God can’t have anything to do with us, so Jesus became the ultimate degreaser and those who pick his team will be cleaned as long as they don’t get dirty again. If we die dirty…we go to Hell.

The Gospel cannot be a threat of Hell.Any message that appeals to our survival instinct is not the gospel. The Gospel to me is more like us falling into the sun (Son). If all that I know of myself is my appetite, or the indexes given to me by this world and it’s institutional powers, then falling into the sun is the end of me because I do not know my true name, I cannot perceive a “me” on the other side of the all consuming fire. But if I know that I am the beloved image and child of God, despite my sins, and that a truer version of me exists on the other side of that fire, then I joyfully plunge into the flames that will consume every bit of slag which is, as The Who sang, an “eminence front“.

That All consuming fire is the Gospel’s power… it is God’s power. When it’s taught in bible, people are healed, delivered, and transformed. Its the power to deconstruct every artificial thing we cling to, its the subversion of every power in this world to name us as something other than the Beloved of God, it’s the power to know…to truly know that we know that we know, that not a single molecule of the entire cosmos has been overlooked, that God has got us… that every photon of existence exists because God first exists, and it all comes back from where it came, only transformed and perfected in love through the joy and tragedy of life. This is the story of Christ, but it’s being retold in each of us. Every particle of the cosmos tells this story…the story religion still hates… the one about you…and me…and everyone else…may God bless His Gospel. And may God grace us with ears to hear it.

Today, decades later, God has blessed me more than I could ever imagine. The Gospel which began as deconstruction has long since moved to re-construction. Everything that was destroyed has been made new, better, richer, more joyful… life is truly satisfying. I been given a tremendous gift of seeing spiritual frameworks and I give it all way to anyone without charging. We all buy with our lives. If you want to know the Gospel, get close to your biggest source of pain. Get honest about how you are dealing with it. You’ll likely find an unopened gift muddled in the midst of it all. Start there. Pray freely. Ask a lot of questions…seek and you will find…knock, and the door will be opened.