John the Baptist, Joshua Harris, and Our Experience of Suffering and Doubt
By Hace Cargo, December 8, 2021.
This Advent I have spent time preparing a sermon series focused on John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah. In so many ways, John is a singular figure in redemptive history – from the angelic pronouncement of his birth and prophetic role onward, no one else plays a role quite like John the Baptist. But as I have studied the gospel accounts that describe his life after his unusual birth and early ministry, I have been somewhat surprised at just how relatable his experience is, perhaps especially for those of us who are pastors.
Like every rightly-intentioned pastor, John does not look to make a name for himself, but always seeks to point his followers to Jesus. After Jesus has been baptized, John recedes from the picture because his preparatory role is complete and, functionally, because he is imprisoned by Herod. (Luke 3:20) Sometime later, still in the early stages of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Matthew and Luke both record that during his imprisonment John sent messengers to Jesus to inquire, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:20)
Seemingly every commentator agrees that John’s own suffering has caused his faith to waver at this juncture. John’s experience at this point does not seem aligned with the message he himself once preached about the Savior who was to come. Perhaps even beyond the disorientation of his own suffering John was beginning to wonder if he had led others astray. Here he had been set apart from birth for this unique purpose, what if he had misled the people?
The Current Crisis of Doubt and Deconstruction
As I pondered this chapter of John’s life and ministry I could not help but think back to one particular episode of the recent podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, entitled I Kissed Christianity Goodbye. The episode focuses on Joshua Harris, once a poster boy for the broader evangelical movement (and especially the Young, Restless, Reformed camp of the early 2000s) and now a poster boy for the exvangelical movement as well. In an interview with Mike Cosper, Harris communicates with unusual clarity about his own process of deconstruction, from initially leaving the pastorate to ultimately leaving the faith altogether. One of the things that comes out mostly clearly in Harris’ explanation of his journey is the central role of suffering in the process of his deconstruction. His own suffering has been part of the equation, but more than that, his awareness of the suffering he has caused others seems to have been the turning point.
He specifically laments that while he once thought he was “loading people up with grace” he now believes he was actually “loading them down with man-made rules.” In recent years, social media has amplified the voices of those who say they were hurt by his infamous book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Worse, the church Harris later pastored badly mishandled a child abuse scandal. When he left the pastorate in 2015 that church was in the midst of a split and he was under significant scrutiny.
Towards the end of the interview, Cosper presses Harris in a very gracious and pastoral way to consider that the pain he laments inflicting upon others could in fact be a possibility for genuine repentance, to rely upon the grace he once preached, instead of deconstruction. But for Harris it clearly does not compute.
And here I believe Harris may actually be a helpful guide for understanding many others who are somewhere along the path of deconstruction, perhaps especially those making intentional choices to depart from their upbringing in Reformed churches and related institutions.
As a 34-year old pastor who happened to grow up in the PCA, I have wrestled with the reality that if God gives me the grace to do this for many years, one of the defining traits of my experience of pastoral ministry may be watching many of my friends leave the church and often, eventually (inevitably?), their faith as well. These “deconstructors” that have become the focus of so many blog posts, social media debates, and even actual conversations among concerned pastors are my former Christian school classmates, the friends I made at Christian summer camps, and the students I discipled in campus ministry a decade ago. Because of our years of friendship and shared experience, it has not been difficult for me to desire to listen well and hear clearly what exactly they are rejecting in the church and in their previously held Christian faith.
For many of them, like Harris, it is the dissonance between their experience of suffering and the worldview in which they were raised that shakes their faith so deeply. For some this suffering has been very personal. For others it is becoming aware of the suffering the church has caused others. Either way, it is incompatible not necessarily with the stated doctrine that they were taught so much as with the experience of Christianity in which they were raised.
Hearing this story over and over has led me to wonder, quite honestly, if what has drawn many to Reformed theology, and the culture and authority structures that often surround it, is, at least in part, an illusion of control. That is, that it makes sense of the world, not by a faith that has any place for mystery, but by a false sense of assurance that we can be certain we have all the answers and everything must go our way. As one pastor remarked to me, it’s ironic that a theological system that emphasizes the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man could so often lead to such delusional grasping for clarity and control. Inconsistent though it may be, that is how many have experienced the church.
Looking back at how Harris’ own ministry intersects with many others in the process of deconstruction, perhaps it was the allure of this false sense of control that led so many to embrace Harris’ former philosophy on courtship and marriage in an attempt to eliminate all the potential pitfalls that come with teenage dating. To use that one example, it is easy enough now to question whether the underlying motivation for those who championed this distinctively evangelical view on dating was really the honor of Christ in romantic relationships, or whether those who adopted it functionally believed it guaranteed certain desirable outcomes, or whether it gave us a feeling of superiority for the sacrifice involved, or something else.
What I have witnessed, watching my peers navigate dating and the early years of marriage, is that of course even those who “did it right” (by whoever’s extra-biblical standards) still experienced plenty of heartache along the way, still found marriage to be quite difficult, and were often felt feeling misled in the end. In many cases it has made later experiences of singleness, or infertility, or a spouse with an addiction to pornography, that much more difficult. And for many that is where doubt has given way to deconstruction.
Assurance, Not Condemnation, In the Face of Doubt
What has concerned me is that when this suffering so often leads to doubt the church culture that at least partially created it responds not with compassion but with condemnation. And I cannot help but wonder if the cause is, again, our need for the illusion of clarity and control. Whether in our response to individuals or to groups who are suffering, questioning, openly doubting, or even disassociating from us, our frequent initial impulse to question faithfulness seems to stand in contrast to Jesus’ response to John.
Jesus sends John’s messengers back not with a word of condemnation, nor with any false assurances about the purpose of his suffering, but with an encouragement to “tell John what [they had] seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news preached to them.” (Luke 7:22) In other words, “the kingdom is coming, even if you can’t see it from where you’re sitting in Herod’s dungeon.”
When John’s disciples depart, Jesus ensures that the crowds also do not condemn John for his doubts, affirming that “among those born of women none is greater than.” (John 7:28) Again, this protection stands in stark contrast to the tone we most often see in response to leaders (or followers) who have faltered in any way.
To be clear, none of this is to say that our role as pastors is to affirm doubts and lead fellow disciples further down the path of deconstruction. As Jesus concludes his exhortation to John, we also must be clear that Jesus says to all: “blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (7:23) But just as it was for John, that exhortation cannot come with false assurances about our impending comfort, peace, or exaltation.
The clarity and control we so crave may only become more elusive. And we will be left with the choice to either fight to the bitter end to maintain that illusion, whatever the collateral damage may be, or to wait in the darkness like John, assured by our savior that resurrection and redemption are coming. As Harris and many others have sadly shown us, the casualties of that fight can be horrific – not only our ministries, but our families, even our commitment to Christ and his church. In John and Baptist and many other faithful saints through the centuries we find models of an alternative - a cruciform life that stakes everything not on current certainty, comfort, or control, but on the assurance of a kingdom that is to come.
Hace Cargo is the Assistant Pastor of Ponce Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, GA.
