After three years of blogging on the Green Owl, I had it. I had no idea who reads these gut-wrenching posts. I am clueless about its reach except for the occasional flattery words from friends. I decided it was time to face the music. Last May, I downloaded a counter. At the time of writing, the site has collected more than 58,000 views across all posts. My husband who is ever so supportive claimed they were the work of robots. Yeah, I indeed have seen my fair share of spam. A spammer who intended to drop her own link asked if she could subscribe and how my writing had impacted her. Yeah, sure. Off to trash, the comment went.

After a few more months, I discovered a widget that could show the most-viewed posts. To my surprise, the post that had the most views was published last Easter, six weeks before the site started counting. “Losing My Religion,” a manifesto of a deranged seminary student, tops the chart.

You may say the title screams clickbait, but I really named it after R.E.M’s 1991 hit.

Life after “Life of Jesus”

My first seminary course put a dizzying spin on my decades of devotion to the Christian faith. I started to have doubts. A classmate in my discussion group read the blog mentioned above and told me he couldn’t tell I was going through a spiritual crisis. That’s when I confessed. “I know how to act and sound and pray like a Christian. I could do it as a reflex if not an instinct.” Practice does make perfect, doesn’t it? There is no wonder ministers can fall from grace, and 70% of pastors don’t read the Bible every day. For a few weeks, I wrestled. But I could not just take a break from God or church because my life revolved around a Christian community. It is not until I thoughtfully considered the claim of Jesus Christ, I began to piece together the puzzle. As I glued together the broken glass of a fragile faith, I saw a clearer image of God looking back at me.

I was then caught up in a different kind of despair during the pandemic year, taking Old and New Testament Survey in the seminary. GCTS is an ecclesiastical bootcamp designed to scare off anyone that wants the M.Div. without sweating blood. It is also a place to be grounded – I don’t mean just theologically. I am often humbled by my classmates’ brilliantly-written posts. Some of them are young, and some live overseas. Some are moms like me, and some are missionaries. Though it thrills me to know I may be in the company of future theologians like Timothy Keller, I am puzzled about one thing:

Much of what I have learned in the seminary this far did not make it beyond the walls, even the virtual walls, of the classroom. I have been a Christian for more than thirty-five years, and twenty-five of which I was an active leader. Yet, I still came across numerous biblical interpretations and theological ideas for the first time! Have the seminarians given up on the spiritually and intellectually obtuse? Not having the 4th-grade vocabularies to engage the culture, Bible scholars wine and dine in their ivory tower, sipping and dipping in their lofty thoughts and discourse. The rest of us are left with second-rate books filled with the mumble-jumble of the self-help pitches quoted and misquoted from the Bible and third-rate books written by quasi-Christians babbling about why we cannot take the Bible literally.

I have sat in the pews, well, mostly metal chairs, since I was a teen in churches of different denominations. Except for the occasional lapse in attendance due to oversleeping, I was consistent in showing up, a quality I attributed to my mother. I have seen churches behind closed doors, and I have kept up with the latest trends. With more than 25 years of active service in Christian communities, I humbly submit to you this report.

FIVE THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU WHEN YOU SIT IN THE PEWS

1 – History of the Jews

Before the reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes was released in 2011, everyone scrambled to find Tim Burton’s 2001 Planet of the Apes. I remember walking up and down the aisle of the last Blockbuster standing looking for the DVD and did not find it. Unlike other movie franchises such as Indiana Jones, it would be difficult to understand the new series without knowing the plots and characters from an earlier adaptation of the original 1963 novel. 

Therefore, I don’t know why we were gently discouraged from reading the Bible from the first page. We tell new believers to skip ahead and read the Book of John first. I don’t ever want to dispute that approach. John is probably the best book to start for any new Christians. However, if anyone wants to protect the newbies from the punishing pages of Leviticus, then please teach them the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whose name was too sacred to be uttered.

I had taken a deep dive into the first few books of the Old Testament. Very carefully I read, verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, along with a Bible commentary, about the Garden of Eden, the Towel of Babel, the epic Flood of Noah, the account of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the rise and fall of Joseph and Moses, along with all the civil, ritual and procedural laws. I remember thinking to myself, “I like this God.” I like how he is intensely loving yet unapologetically just. He makes you love him and fear him, but you will not hate him. He is an example of a great parent! If I were born three thousand years earlier, and that instead of kowtowing to King Wen of the Zhou dynasty (周文王), I landed in tumultuous West Asia, I would be what they called a pagan, an enemy of Israel. But I’d raise my hand to be known as a Ruth and even a Rahab, who were not Hebrews yet they were admirers of Yahweh. I would be so sickened by the cultic practice of child sacrifice and body tattooing to want an alternative.

However, even now, the Jews are not “evangelistic.” No rabbis have ever knocked on my door and invited me to a synagogue. Why did they keep their God to themselves?

2 – Connection Between the Old and the New Testament

Even when we forgo the Old Testament, we still skip the first page of Matthew: the first book of the New Testament. Bamboozled by Jesus’ genealogies, we rush to read the story about his miracle birth. But what is just as miraculous is how the genealogy tells an even more unbelievable story.

What? You can trace me all the way back to Adam, the animal-naming, fruit-eating, half-naked Adam?!

Not having a complete understanding of the connection between the Old and the New Testament, we might have taken on a very different religion from the Christian faith in the first century.

3 – The Truth about the “Prosperity Gospel”

I was ill-prepared for the 21st-century spirituality where the Christian faith is morphed into a cottage industry of motivational speeches found on YouTube and podcasts. Laying aside exegesis and hermeneutics – I know I just lost some of you; most other seminarians are not capable of talking like a 4th grader – the creative minds of our time saw what the well-meaning seekers really craved. They crave to be loved, to be whole, to feel safe, and to be told they are awesome and good. The uplifting & inspiring talks put a song in the heart of a songless Christian. I will be the first to admit that Joel Osteen met me in a ditch when I was discouraged, flustered, and wanting to quit.

More recently, there has been much criticism about the fallacy of the Prosperity Gospel. Yet, no one you listen to on YouTube would brand themselves as Prosperity Preachers. It leaves the Christians paranoid and unsure about what is an acceptable prayer. They wonder if they had fallen for the lie of a health and wealth Gospel. Yet, no honest Christians believe that God will give them a truckload of cash, an attractive spouse, and a new car if they behave and obey. (The U.S. government, some dating apps, and a bank loan can easily make these things happen.) When we sign up for faith, honest Christians do think about matters they have no control over, such as the loss of employment, sickness, and death. We sign up because, deep down, we know we are weak and we need help.

When a preacher invokes the name of Jesus to give us faith to believe God is able to deliver us from and through our troubles, we don’t question and debate the merit of his word. We don’t call him a false teacher. In fact, we appreciate it. Even the psalmist cited the Exodus experience back to God when he whined for a bailout. As long as we are taught the doctrine of sin and redemption, we as children of God may ask our Father for our inheritance and to come through for us! On the other hand, if Jesus-is-a-Genie-in-a-Bottle is the only message you preach after asking for money, then you should rebrand your church and join Disney.

4 – One-Verse Christianity

The practice of memorizing Bible verses, not Bible passages, or the entire chapter, has inadvertently created a one-verse Christian culture. My whole Christian journey can be summarized in the following verses, actually, they are more like slogans and cliches, disjointed, disconnected, and unrelated to each other.

• You just need faith.
• All things are possible for those who believe.
• The Bible has all the answers.
• God can change anyone.
• God won’t give you more than you can handle.
• Everything happens for a reason.

What transpires is a misguided spirituality that good life and success are from God and that trouble and failures are a form of judgment or demonic attack. When we ask people to take responsibilities and shape up, we risk being called humanistic…for taking the matter into our own hands.

You just cannot win.

In my current seminary course, there was a discussion about Bible passages that are often taken out of context. A scan of the posts quickly revealed the most common verses in this category. The first place goes to Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me.” The second place [drumroll] goes to Jeremiah 11:29, “For I know the plan I have for you, the plan to prosper you and not to harm you, a plan to give you hope and a future.” (I did not copy and paste from Bible Gateway. I know these verses by heart, but I cannot tell you the verse that comes before and after it.)

Why would anyone take one sentence out of the Bible and develop an entire theology around it? In Scrabble, is there a word that is worth more points than others? I would not want anyone to take a sentence or two from one of my blog posts and say, this is who Wendy is, and this is what she is all about. God does not have a 150-character bio like the ones on Twitter or Instagram. God’s bio is three million-character long, and people have to read the entire Bible to venture a guess to find out who He really is. No one should claim one verse and stick it on God’s profile page.

5 – The Little Voice Isn’t Always from God

Whenever a pastor is tired of writing another sermon, he might decide to turn the worship service into a testimonial service. It is slightly more tolerable than a prayer service because we don’t want to do any work when we go to church. Prayers are the last thing on our minds if we are the ones that have to say them.

I like testimonial services. I especially like the story of “The Little Voice Told Me…” We all want to believe that we have this little voice that just speaks whenever we are in trouble. If boy Samuel could hear God three times at night, why can’t we? Then we beat ourselves up when we don’t hear a thing. Did you realize that all the little-voice testimonies come from mostly women? My husband never talked about his little voices! Why is that? Does God prefer women by talking to them more?

Nothing is wrong with the little voices. We need them, and I’ve heard plenty of them myself, and I always vouch they are as real as what boy Samuel heard that night at Eli’s house. But somehow, we fall into an easy and light Christianity that sorely depends on these little voices. Arduous studies of the Scripture within all of its literary, cultural, and historical contexts are thrown out the window.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

You might wonder now if you need to go to a seminary. After taking three courses as a bi-vocational (whose life is so overloaded that eating sometimes becomes an afterthought), I would say, don’t do it – unless you have no other responsibilities, unless you are in it full-time, or have some free money that you have to burn. Actually, even so, don’t do it unless you love reading dry and dreary non-fictions, researching, and writing in proper English without using any emojis.

As for me, sometimes I feel I am too practical-minded to be a seminary student. However, that is what I want to do. I have the vocabulary range of a 4th grader, and my goal is to use the simplest words to express the biggest ideas. I believe God does not intend faith to be complex. The knowledge we have acquired about this God has been transmitted over time through manuscripts, translations, and commentaries. In order to preserve this religion, we need trustworthy men and women to carefully study it, pass it down as is, not add to it, or take anything away. Then we will have a faith that is close to the original and that we can steer clear of heresies. No one wants to spend a whole life barking up the wrong tree.