Corey - Unafraid Moving Beyond Fear

On January 3, 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posted one of its trademark execution videos online. ISIS fighters executed Muath al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot who had been captured after his fighter jet crashed during a United Statesled airstrike over Syria; and they did it the way the Catholic Church and John Calvin once had: by burning him alive. In defiance of both the Quranic prohibition of taking innocent life and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, these soldiers placed al-Kasasbeh inside a metal cage, doused him with flammable liquid, set him on fire, and filmed his grisly death.

The outrage across the globe was swift and just. The Jordanian government called the execution by fire vile and promised to harshly retaliate, while the president of the United States called the execution depraved. Christians, of course, were among those to decry the burning of al-Kasasbeh, and rightly so. However, as I listened to the righteous indignation of my Christian brothers and sisters, I quickly became aware of a glaring blind spot that many didnt seem to even notice: our mental image of God was shockingly similar to the ISIS terrorists who burned al-Kasasbeh alive.

You see, that Jordanian pilot was a Muslim; and according to the flavor of Christian theology that many of us grew up with, as a Muslim he was not saved and thus was destined for hell after his deatha place where, you guessed it, he would be burned alive forever and ever in eternal conscious torment. As I watched my fellow Christians express outrage and disgust over his burning in this life, I kept thinking to myself, You guysyou realize that you believe God is going to do this to the vast majority of people who have ever lived, dont you?

Think about that for a minute: if the theology of salvation and hell that so many of us grew up with is true, the moment that Muslim pilot succumbed to the flames and died, he immediately went to a place where the flames and torture started all over again. According to the traditional hellfire theology, al-Kasasbeh went from twenty-two minutes of burning alive to an e-freaking-ternity of burning alivewith no hope of even death to stop the torment. Essentially, to affirm the hellfire theology of my youth, a person would say that what God did to al-Kasasbeh after death is far worse and less unmerciful than what ISIS did to him. If the traditional theology of hell is correct, God is like an ISIS terroristbut like one on steroids.

If it is depraved and disgusting when ISIS does it, why is it good and just when God does it?

Are we really okay with a vision of God that makes him look like an ISIS terrorist who burns his enemies alive?

Isnt this image of God just making us afraid of him?

And if it is, is this the right image?

One of the good things that I hope will come about through the existence of ISIS is people realizing that if their theology makes God look like a terrorist setting fire to his enemies and watching them smolder with glee, then their theology is hopelessly screwed up and needs to be completely discarded. And that includes you. There is no love in terror, and there is no terror in love. These things are mutually exclusive and cannot coexist together. Either love wins, or fear wins.

God is not like an ISIS terrorist; God is love.

God is not to be feared, but far too many of us havent been told that yet.

Im someone who didnt receive that message until a little later in life, and all the years I spent fearing God finally caught up with me one day.

The Midlife Crisis

They say that going through a midlife crisis isnt so uncommon, but I dont suppose that makes it any easier to go through oneespecially when that midlife crisis is rooted in a crisis of faith on top of all the other things about life we reconsider when we hit middle age.

When it hit me, I felt like I had been run over by a truck. I mean, it really sucked.

It was like I woke up one day and realized I was supposed to have arrived somewhere by now but instead had this acute realization that I hadnt arrived anywhere at all. And if I had arrived, then wowarriving felt a lot different from what I had imagined or hoped for.

I felt lost. I had turned forty years old and was still waiting to become a homeowner; I was driving a car with 230,000 miles on it that I was sure would shit the bed any day (update: it did while I was writing the later chapters of this book); I was trying to cope and deal with the grief of adopting four children but only getting to raise one of them; my marriage was crumbling before my eyes; and on top of all that, I felt like my faith was dying. Or maybe it was deadI wasnt always sure.

My faith crisis was the last straw that sent me into a long spiral that I didnt know I would ever pull out of. All the other things were potentially survivable, but the faith part is what I thought would kill mebecause my faith had always been something that sustained me through the painful seasons of life. I had lost my church, my pastorate, and all my friends over a few crazy Jesus-y ideas (hating guns and loving gays will do it every time). It was almost unbearable for me to even consider a loss of faith as a possibility on top of all these changes to my Christian community, my personal losses, and potential losses. Yet, I could only deny reality for so long: I wasnt sure what I believed anymore, or even if I believed anymore.

God had never felt farther away from me, and I had never felt so afraid.

To complicate things, even though I had found myself in this dark place where I was unsure about everything other than the fact that my faith didnt work for me anymore, I outwardly appeared both successful and a little bit lucky. I had started a blog about my spiritual transition out of fundamentalist Christianity that became quite popular almost overnight; I had begun getting book deal offers without even seeking them out; I had found myself traveling and speaking around the world, getting invites to talk shows and national radio programs; and I quickly had become seen as a Christian influencer, with millions of people reading my work each year. So traversing a spiritual midlife crisis seemed even more complicated, because I felt like scores of people were watching my journey and expecting me to be a person who provided them with answers to the hard questions. I was supposed to be the one helping those with a crisis of faith; I was not supposed to be the one who needed the help.

What would they think if they knew what I am going through? I wondered.

Being a public figure within Christianity had a suffocating effect on my personal process, as I felt like my faith and life were under a microscope. I had become known for helping people deconstruct their faith, inviting them to follow along with me. My hope all along had been to lead people to somewhere better, to some thing better, than what so many of us grew up with. But where I was landing? I wasnt in a better place at all, and I didnt want to be responsible for bringing other people there with me.

What if all the work I had done was actually leading peopleand leading myselfto a total collapse of faith? Total confusion? What if the critics were right and I was leading people in the wrong direction? My intent had never been for people to lose their faith; in fact, I wanted to be someone who helped people find faith after they thought they had lost it. I wanted to help them reclaim it, revive it, and thrive within it.

But thats not where I found myself; I was far, far away from the place I had desired to be. It was as if I had woken up one morning and become the very person I had always longed to help. But in that dark space, I couldnt even help myself.