The Post-Evangelical Christian

Leaving My Spiritual Home, Growing Up, & Changing

Some things don’t end up being what they were first fashioned for. The bookshelves in my room growing up were actually made of the wooden crates that had originally carried all of my parents’ possessions across the Pacific Ocean.

In a similar way, my experiences growing up didn’t end up leading to the expected result. My upbringing had everything needed to create a full-time, all star Evangelical. However, for some reason my relationship with American Christianity ended up being anything but clear-cut.

I get a bit hesitant about talking about my childhood with most people. I certainly have the script memorized that will allow me to thwart any questioning minds that would like to do a comparative analysis of our growing up experience. Most people enjoy thinking of my childhood as an exotic experience of climbing palm trees and jumping off of waterfalls. While those aspects certainly existed in a way for me, they weren’t defining items—just part of my norm. So most of the time it is easier to just go with the missionary kid stereotypes for any cursory discussion about where I grew up.

The idyllic tropical paradise isn’t the only expectation people have about me when I tell them that my parents were missionaries. There is also an expectation that, like any family trade, I would have been groomed in the “family business.” People generally ask me if I am planning on going back to the Philippines one day, or if I am planning on being a missionary myself to another country. And in a lot of ways it makes sense.

When I was old enough to attend kindergarten I began my time at the school my parents worked at—Faith Academy. Faith came into existence over fifty years ago to provide quality education for the children of missionaries while their parents were focusing on doing missions in remote areas in south-east asia. During that time I took a Bible class every semester, regularly attended chapel services, went to church on Sunday, did ministry projects like putting together food packs, and was diligent in personal Bible study to boot.

The faith of my parents became the centering reality of my life from a very early age. I didn’t grudgingly do the Christian stuff. I wanted that to be a part of my life as much as it was a part of my parents’. Yet no matter how much I tried, I felt like I was missing something.

This angst didn’t really ever go away. As I grew older, and continued my studies into high school, I knew I would follow in my Dad’s footsteps to study at Moody Bible Institute. There I would be able to get the biblical education that would ready me to use my talents for the kingdom of God.

Up to this point, being a Christian meant knowing what God did, and didn’t like, so that you could make sure to do the things He likes more, and the things He doesn’t less. This transactional relationship with God was more about keeping the peace—assuring that my sins wouldn’t upset the balance in the universe, rather than enjoying a relationship with the creator of the universe.

And so, with intentions to figure out my heart problem at Bible college, I headed off from the Philippines to Chicago to begin my undergrad. Four years later, I graduated with a degree in communications. I quickly found myself gainfully employed at a Christian ministry, ready to fight the good fight, and stand for truth and most of all for God’s word. Everything that I had done up until that point should have prepared me for this moment of stepping into full time ministry, but within my heart I was less certain about things than I had ever been.

All throughout my formative years I encountered more questions than answers, and realized that so much of what I believed about Christianity was built on a faith that was more symbolic than real. God was always a real person, but my way of experiencing Him was confined to rituals that invited me to think abstractly about grace, sanctification, justification, heaven, hell, death, and life. I knew how to be disciplined enough to know the Bible backwards and forwards, but felt totally empty being armed with that knowledge.

The religion that I was raised up in taught me so much about how to be strong in the faith that I was given. To not be afraid in the face of challenges or critiques of my way of thinking. Ultimately, I didn’t expect that those challenges would come from people who didn’t think I passed the sniff test of being faithful enough to Scripture.

I discovered that there were elements of American Evangelicalism that was unwilling to be challenged, that viewed questions as dangers, and self-critique as giving into the liberal agenda. I found that the faith tradition that I was educated and prepared for was willing to call out one side of the political spectrum for being valueless, but would be chillingly quiet when it was in their political interest to gain more power.

The center of my faith changed when I realized that the whole point of Christianity shouldn’t be about knowing the facts, but rather about the messy continuing incarnation of Christ in this world in me and other believers.

It used to be that being an Evangelical was synonymous with being a Christian for me. It meant that I believed that the Bible was true, that we needed God, and that we should tell people about it. But more and more lately I am having a hard time eating that meat while spitting out the bones of hypocrisy within our ranks.

I’m not totally sure how to answer what being a Christian means. It might be helpful to ask me what day of the week it is first. But I do know that for me, it means not using the label of Evangelical for a little while longer.

Everything about my upbringing was getting me ready to serve God with my gifts and abilities, and I am thankful for the constant support, guidance, and encouragement to get me this far. Though many of my mentors may have hoped for the next generation of Evangelicals, I hope that I do an alright job being a part of the next generation of Christians.