Alright y’all, welcome back to my crazy little brain.

Yesterday, my dad sent me a podcast about the Four Stages of Faith. It’s worth a listen. If you don’t have time, check out this great summary chart. The Four Stages of Faith are simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony. Author Brian McLaren obviously knows there are a lot of us doing this deconstruction/detangle thing. And it’s bewildering. His framework helps me see that I am normal, this is a process, and lots of people are on the same path. That mitigates some confusion and guilt so I find it really helpful. In a nutshell, simplicity is the faith of my childhood: everything is black and white, right or wrong, us versus them; faith is understood in warrior terms and spiritual leaders are the source of truth. Complexity is the faith of my college years, starting to look beyond the safe confines of my childhood church, exploring more contemporary ways to develop my faith (Campus Crusade, popular mega churches, and the like) but still living inside a fairly rigid set of rules, and viewing spiritual leaders more as coaches. Now I am in perplexity: things are complicated; I am seeking a more nuanced, authentic faith that recognizes that life is far too complex to be distilled into a neat set of rules and beliefs. Doubt is honorable, and questioning the things I have been taught makes me stronger and brings clarity and should be praised not punished. (Of note, perplexity seems to be another word for the deconstruction and detangle process and I quite like it even more than the others, just saying.) I am seeking harmony: the final stage where the angst subsides and where I truly understand my place as one being in this highly connected and interdependent world, where mistakes are opportunities for growth and learning, not moral failures; where God is a loving presence, not a bitter deity and he is known through his creation and through each of us, not only through words on a page of a book written thousands of years ago by human hands.

So with that as a framework, let’s talk about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. If you don’t have time to read Matthew 5-7, here’s the Sparknotes: Jesus sits down on the side of a mountain and starts talking to a crowd: Blessed are those who are spiritually humble, mourn over their sins, are gentle, hunger for right standing with God, are merciful, pure in heart with moral courage, are peacemakers, and those who are ridiculed for doing what is right. He tells us to be salt and light, both a beacon and a preserver, to the world. He came to speak against the abuses and excesses of the Old Testament Law and instead to fulfill the Law. He instructs us to temper our anger and to approach one another in love. He gets to the heart of fulfilling relationships that are committed and run deeper than physical desire. He clarifies that swearing an oath is not better than just living a life of honesty and that revenge doesn’t bring the peace that we think it will. He goes so far as to tell us to love our enemies! He challenges us to quietly give to those in need and to pray simple yet authentic prayers in the quietness of our own spaces. He calls out the hypocrisy of announcing a fast and the fallacy of putting our trust in money and possessions. He helps assuage our anxieties and teaches about the dangers of judging one another. He reassures us that if we seek him, he will come to us. He encourages us to take the challenge of the hard path; it will be worth it. He describes the wolf in sheep’s clothing: the leaders who proclaim to have the truth, to be bearers of justice, but only leave damage in their wake, not the sweet fruit of truth and love. And finally, he summarizes that if we listen to all of what he has said, and take it to heart, we will have a strong foundation to weather the storms. The storms like COVID, political unrest, racial injustice, discrimination of those who live differently than we do, an ailing planet, and systems of patriarchy that harm us all.

The whole Sermon on the Mount means something entirely different to me today. It’s not a list of rules. It’s a call to love, peace, justice, patience, humility, generosity, respect, and truth. Jesus is describing harmony. He doesn’t want us stuck in simplicity. While simplicity is easy because it’s black and white, it’s objective and it stunts our growth. Doubt is required to grow. Jesus calls us to the hard work of perplexity where the world is ugly and gray, where we have to love even those who harm us, because they are his children, too. Perplexity is where we wrestle with love; where we decide that love is better than judgment. Harmony is aspirational, but I truly believe that Jesus is calling us to that loving and peaceful place with the words he spoke while sitting on the side of a mountain, chatting with a few hundred (thousand?) of his closest friends.

Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.