I’ve been thinking about Christian evangelicals again.
I know. Shocking.
They remain one of my favorite groups of people to dissect, probably because I spent so much of my life inside that world. I know the language. I know the logic. I know what it feels like when the whole thing makes perfect sense from the inside.
And now, from a little farther away, I find myself looking back at certain beliefs and thinking:
Of course this produces that.
Of course a certain understanding of God produces a certain kind of person.
Of course theology eventually becomes behavior.
We talk a lot in Christianity about fruit.
You will know them by their fruit.
But lately I’ve been wondering if we could say something even simpler.
You will know people, at least in part, by the God they believe in.
Because if you believe in a colonizing God, eventually you will become a colonizing people.
And I think that might explain more than we realize.
What do I mean by a colonizing God?
I’m not saying that believing in Jesus automatically makes someone a colonizer.
I’m talking about a particular understanding of the gospel.
One where the primary posture toward another human being is not:
Who are you?
What can I learn from you?
Where is God already present in your life?
What beauty exists in your culture, your story, your way of understanding the world?
But instead:
How do I get you to become like me?
That distinction feels enormous to me.
Because there is a version of evangelism that can turn another human being into a project almost immediately.
You meet someone and, whether you realize it or not, there is already an outcome attached to the relationship.
They need to convert.
They need to believe what you believe.
They need to adopt your understanding of God.
They need to arrive where you have already decided they are supposed to arrive.
And if they don’t?
Well, depending on the theology, maybe they go to hell.
Or maybe something less dramatic happens first.
They become the outsider.
The person we pray for but don’t entirely trust.
The person who can attend but never fully belong.
The person whose difference is tolerated as long as it is moving toward sameness.
And when I look at that, I can’t help but think:
Isn’t that the logic of colonization?
What I have is superior.
What you have is deficient.
You must become more like me.
Your belonging depends on your conversion.
The language changes.
The structure does not.
We reproduce the God we imagine
I think our theology leaks into us much more than we realize.
If God is primarily someone who demands conformity, conformity will become sacred to us.
If God organizes humanity into insiders and outsiders, we will become very comfortable doing the same.
If God requires people to abandon themselves before they can belong to Him, we will eventually build communities where self-abandonment feels holy.
If the gospel itself is fundamentally hierarchical, where we possess the truth and everyone else is waiting for us to bring it to them, then superiority can begin masquerading as obedience.
And that’s the part I keep getting stuck on.
Because we can call something love all day long.
But if the person on the receiving end constantly experiences your love as erasure, correction, control, or exclusion, at some point I think we have to become curious about the kind of love we’re practicing.
There’s that phrase people use:
There’s no hate like Christian love.
It makes Christians furious.
And I understand why.
It’s painful to hear that something you believe is love has been experienced as hatred.
But maybe instead of immediately defending ourselves, we could become curious.
Maybe the question isn’t:
How dare they call our love hate?
Maybe it’s:
What have people repeatedly experienced from us that made that sentence resonate in the first place?
That feels like a much more useful question.
I know this because I believed it too
This isn’t me standing outside Christianity pointing at all the crazy Christians.
I was deeply inside this worldview.
I participated in it.
I went on mission trips.
I evangelized.
I wanted people to know Jesus.
And so much of that desire was sincere.
There was love in it.
There was devotion in it.
There were beautiful things in it.
I’m not interested in rewriting my entire Christian life as evil simply because I understand parts of it differently now.
That would just be another binary.
But I can also look back and recognize the arrogance embedded in some of what I believed.
I entered other people’s cultures carrying the assumption that I possessed something they fundamentally lacked.
I was trained far more often to speak than to listen.
To teach rather than observe.
To bring rather than receive.
And I think that matters.
Because what would happen if we entered another person’s world believing that God might already be there?
Not just waiting for us to introduce Him.
Already there.
In their stories.
Their traditions.
Their wisdom.
Their questions.
Their language.
Their love.
Their humanity.
Would we still show up the same way?
I don’t think we would.
What if conversion isn’t the center?
This is where things probably get uncomfortable.
Because for many Christians, conversion is the gospel.
The point is salvation.
The point is getting people into the Kingdom.
The point is making disciples.
And I understand the theology behind that.
I lived inside it for years.
I’m just not convinced anymore that relationship should become merely the vehicle by which conversion happens.
Because when every relationship has a predetermined spiritual destination, are we actually encountering another person?
Or are we managing them toward an outcome?
Can I love you if I’ve already decided who you must eventually become?
Can I really listen to you if, underneath my listening, I am waiting for the opening that allows me to change you? Can I honor your humanity while believing the most sacred thing you could possibly do is abandon your worldview and adopt mine?
These are questions I don’t have perfectly packaged answers for.
And I’m okay with that.
I’m far more interested these days in becoming the kind of person who can remain inside a difficult question than the kind of person who needs to conquer it.
Then I think about Jesus
And this is where the whole thing becomes even more interesting to me.
Because Christians believe something astonishing about God.
We believe God became human.
Not that humans became God.
God became human.
He entered our condition.
Our bodies.
Our hunger.
Our grief.
Our language.
Our vulnerability.
Our mortality.
Whatever else we believe about the incarnation, there is something profoundly downward about it.
God comes closer.
God enters.
God participates.
God does not remain at a safe distance shouting instructions about how humanity can climb its way toward Him.
He becomes one of us.
And I keep thinking:
Does that sound like a colonizer?
Because colonization usually moves in the opposite direction.
Colonization says:
Become like me.
But incarnation says:
I will come be with you.
Colonization says:
Your world must accommodate mine.
Incarnation says:
I will enter yours.
Colonization establishes superiority.
Jesus, at least in the story I continue finding myself drawn toward, keeps disrupting it.
He touches people he isn’t supposed to touch.
Eats with people he isn’t supposed to eat with.
Lets himself be interrupted.
Asks questions.
Receives hospitality.
Allows people to affect Him.
That last one fascinates me.
A God willing to be encountered.
Not just obeyed.
Maybe the gospel reveals itself in our posture
I don’t know exactly where I land on every theological question anymore.
That sentence would have terrified an earlier version of me.
Now it feels honest.
But I do know I’ve become increasingly interested in what our beliefs produce in our bodies and relationships.
Do they make us more curious?
More humble?
More capable of listening?
More willing to cross a difference without immediately trying to eliminate it?
Do they make us better at seeing the image of God in someone who has absolutely no intention of becoming like us?
Or do our beliefs continually return us to superiority?
To hierarchy.
To certainty.
To the conviction that our role in every room is to bring the answer.
Maybe that is one of the ways I’m learning to evaluate theology now.
Not only:
Is this belief technically correct?
But:
What kind of human being does this belief create?
Because if my gospel continually produces people who need to conquer, dominate, correct, exclude, or convert everyone around them…
I think I’m allowed to become curious about that gospel.
And about the God it is revealing.
Maybe the question isn’t only:
Do you believe in God?
Maybe another question is:
What kind of God do you believe in?
A God who demands the world become like Him before He will enter it?
Or a God who loved the world enough to enter it Himself?
One requires assimilation.
The other looks a lot more like relationship.
And lately, I find myself much more interested in the second.
