“Wake up CJ. The Matrix has you.”

Like Neo in the movie The Matrix, was I living in a world of deception? Neo was an unwitting prisoner in a computer-generated, virtual reality world—the Matrix. While Neo may have suspected something was wrong with his reality, he didn’t know there was another world out there, the real world, beyond the virtual world of his experience. Then Morpheus, another Matrix character, called Neo to wake up to the truth.

About twenty years ago, I first suspected I was living in a human-generated version of Christianity, where though it was put forth as true to what Jesus lived and taught, it wasn’t. I began to sense another Christianity out there, a real Christianity, beyond the Christianity of my experience. And it felt like Morpheus was calling me to wake up to the truth, a truth hidden beneath the graffiti of church history and human nature.

I struggled through those years, trying to understand what I was feeling and why. At first, I didn’t know what to do about my feelings, or how to respond to that imagined Morpheus voice. Then, realizing that “Christianity” and “Christian” are manmade terms subject to human definition and manipulation, I felt a growing desire to know how Jesus would define Christianity. What would Jesus say it means to be a Christian? So, I listened to the voice.

Eventually, a new image seeped into my mind, an image that helped solidify my resolve to search for the truth of Christianity. Picture a Bible resting on a table. The Bible—the collection of historical documents that defines Jesus’ version of Christianity—was compiled a few centuries after Jesus showed us His Christianity. Then, as the centuries ticked by, men added other books.

Where Jesus’ Christianity and what it means to be Christian is defined by God’s word as recorded in the Bible, manmade versions of Christianity are often defined and governed by those manmade rulebooks. Now, looking at that pile of books, where’s Jesus’ Christianity?

Stepping back to take in the bigger picture painted by the Bible, a new question snuck in. Why? Why are we the way we are? Why is there so much evil in the world? Why is life sometimes so difficult? Why is peace with each other, and even with God, sometimes so unattainable? And why is it so hard to believe? Without falling too deeply into philosophical notions, I guess I just wanted to know what life’s all about—the elusive meaning of life.

So much of life felt either meaningless or perilous. I wanted something solid and unchanging to hold onto, a safe place in the midst of this conspiracy-theory-dominated, truth-starved, war-rattled, chaotic world. I was craving meaning and a purpose I could believe in without fear and doubts, and I wasn’t finding that in the church I was attending.

Then it happened, a situation at church. I mean, this was a big deal. It wounded me and left me confused. That’s not true Christianity, is it? I kept asking myself. That can’t be what Jesus has in mind. The episode added to my sense of a false Christianity, a Christianity matrix that had been holding me, and those sitting in the pews next to me, captive.

I have friends who found freedom from similar situations by quitting Christianity. I wasn’t interested in going that far. Instead, I quit that church. I visited other churches around town, yet nothing felt right, and I didn’t know why. The whole experience was disorienting and depressing. I eventually decided to go it alone. However, as I later learned, I was never truly alone.

Soon after becoming a church refugee, I began spending all my spare time searching for the truth about the way of life that Jesus lived and taught, what I call Jesus’ Christianity. I suspected I’d find it somewhere under the false Christianity that held me captive. Something told me it was there, like Morpheus sending me that cryptic message, “Wake up CJ. Manmade Christianity has you.”

Entering the campus of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, my wife and I followed the herd of other tourists through Library Square when I looked up to see a large sign saying, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it,” by Jonathan Swift. Yes, it seems that in our society, falsehoods often prevail far more than truth. What matters most to some people is who said something, rather than the trustworthiness of what they said. For many people, truth is whatever they decide it to be. But remembering that Jonathan Swift quote has fueled my desire to give truth—that is, Jesus’ truth as defined in the Bible—a shoulder to lean on, especially when many people are kicking it in the shins.

As I stepped off on my own journey many years ago, there was a new question loitering in my mind. Jesus had said, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). But, free from what? I suspected there was something more than freedom from wounds and captivity to a manmade Christianity. I suspected there was something else holding me prisoner that I wasn’t aware of … like the matrix.

So, now it’s decision time. Will you stop here and remain captive to a distorted, manmade image of Christianity, a Christianity that may be blinding you to the truth? Or, will you follow me at least a little farther on this journey to uncover the truth? For Matrix fans, this is the blue pill or red pill moment. And like Morpheus said, all I’m offering you is the truth. Nothing more.

 

(Excerpt from “Beneath the Graffiti: A De-churched Christian’s Search for Christianity.”)

https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Graffiti-churched-Christians-Christianity-ebook/dp/B0DK7VD71B