For the last 20 years, I have been a disruptor – a corrective. Whether in education, the Church, or society, it has been my role to make people think. To make people experience the joy of possibility. To induce moments of clarity through reason and sometimes even provocation.
However, there was a fatal flaw in my reasoning. It was based upon the premise that the individual desired honesty. That they were willing to be honest with themselves and with God. This has always been my personal goal, and I believed that everyone else desired the same realism. The reality is far more sobering. Many do not hunger for truth; they hunger for comfort. They want ease, predictability, and the reassurance that they are no different from the people around them. They imitate — but they imitate the wrong models and chase the wrong ways of living.
I did not set out to become a disrupter. I set out to minister to God’s people. I set out to be a witness to unbelievers that living the life of Christ was the only way people could truly lean into their humanity. I hoped to teach, to shape how theology could be practiced, and to help the Church rediscover its calling to be a force for good in the world. I dreamed of pouring these convictions into new generations. No doubt I was dripping with the idealism that often accompanies young pastors after seminary.
For too long, I supposed that if I just worked harder — taught better, preached clearer, reasoned more precisely — Evangelicalism would awaken to its own calling. But the truth is simpler and more painful: some do not want to awaken. Comfort has become their creed, familiarity their doctrine. And so I must release the burden I was never meant to carry. I must trust that God, who has never depended on human systems to accomplish divine purposes, can contend with a sleeping Church far better than I ever could.
Evangelicalism often positions itself as the exclusive custodian of the Gospel, fostering a belief among its adherents that they are the sole protectors of divine truth. This conviction has led to the emergence of highly regarded scholars dedicated to constructing robust defenses of Christianity, aiming to present arguments so compelling that they convince even secular academics to reconsider their positions. Such scholarly work is subsequently conveyed to pastors, who propagate these views within their congregations, reinforcing the notion that they are engaged in a spiritual contest against external ideologies. Consequently, this mindset cultivates a perspective that perceives those outside the faith as adversaries rather than individuals in need of the transformative message of Christ. However, in the end, the only ones who pay are the lost and hopeless.
However, they do not protect the Gospel; they have made it into an ideology. Only when it escapes the confines of movements that mistake its ideology for faithfulness will it continue to thrive again. We can only overcome fear with transformation.
Reiterating the Problem One Last Time
Ultimately, it would be best to simply read past articles or my book, The Kingdom of Man, in order to appreciate the vastness of the problem. I will provide just a brief outline here, but for more in-depth arguments and sourcing, please see those other works.
Evangelicalism has slipped into a kind of religious idealism. In this framework, God becomes less a living presence and more an abstract idea — a concept held in the mind rather than a reality encountered in the world. For many evangelicals, God is approached not as the incarnate and disruptive Christ but as an idealized projection through which they interpret their lives. This is one reason the Bible becomes not just authoritative but even idolized: it is the safest, most controllable point of contact they have with the divine. It is easier to cling to a text than to surrender to a living God who speaks, challenges, and confronts.
One of the consequences of this idealism is a false sense of moral insulation. If God exists primarily as an idea, then His judgment remains theoretical as well. Many assume they are shielded from consequences simply because they affirm the right doctrines or belong to the right community. The result is a kind of spiritual complacency that permits harm without remorse.
This also helps explain why so many conservative evangelical leaders have been able to dehumanize others for so long. When God is viewed abstractly, people become abstractions too — categories, threats, symbols of cultural decline. Christian identity becomes less about following Christ and more about belonging to a protected club, a cultural tribe that defines itself by who is kept out. In such a system, exclusion feels righteous, and compassion feels optional.
This same idealism helps explain why conservative evangelicals could passionately support an amoral president. When God is seen as just an idea and faith focuses more on defending concepts than living a certain way, morality takes a backseat to symbolism. The president didn’t have to reflect Christ’s character; he just needed to protect the evangelical ideal, including their cultural power, their sense of identity, and their imagined moral superiority. In an idealized worldview, an amoral leader can be viewed as a “chosen instrument,” not for his virtues but because he supports the ideological story. In this way, idealism justifies moral compromise. The leader’s actions matter less as long as he promotes the tribe’s key ideals.
Concluding Thoughts
Unfortunately, many read my anti-Trump remarks as typical propaganda from the “far-left”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact remains that I never wrote about politics until Donald Trump, and it is not because I have some political agenda. It’s because the support he receives from conservative evangelicals demonstrates a deeper problem with a large segment of Christians in America. And it’s not just Trump, it’s the general dehumanization of people who are different from them. All of it is connected and stems from the same basic problem. And, as long as evangelical leaders continue to insulate their people nothing will change.
But at some point, the individual believer must choose whether they are moving toward God or merely orbiting around their pastor, their friends, and their church culture. True faith requires a willingness to step out of the warm circle of affirmation and into places where obedience feels costly. It means embracing discomfort, even isolation, because following Christ often places a person at odds with the very community that taught them about him. If we had been told from the beginning that discipleship demands this kind of courage — that it often makes outsiders, not insiders — many of us might have hesitated to call ourselves Christians at all. The truth is, the way of Christ is not designed for comfort. It is shaped by sacrifice, struggle, and the kind of suffering that forms the soul.
The debt has become too great, and the burden is not mine to carry anymore. The amount of investment I have made in this endeavor has taken away from people who are actually interested in the truth. I have come to realize that there is nothing I can do to help those unwilling to help themselves. I naively believed that my fellow evangelical brothers and sisters took truth seriously. The Gospel has always thrived at the margins, breathed freely outside the walls we built around it. If the institution chooses slumber, then perhaps my calling now is to seek out those who still hunger — the seekers, the wounded, the disillusioned, the quietly faithful. I feel God pulling me toward a different kind of ministry, one not defined by sanctuaries or committees, but by honest conversations, courageous truth-telling, and a renewed commitment to forming people rather than preserving systems. Maybe this is what resurrection looks like in my own life: not abandoning the Church, but refusing to let its fear dictate the boundaries of what God can do.
Stay tuned!
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