Losing the plot

As a follower of Jesus, I rejoice this Easter Sunday morning that our Lord is in fact alive. Not just in a spiritual sense, but as an awesome component of reality in our broken and wayward world.

My sweet wife monitors Facebook, and this morning she shared the below post with me.  I do not know the author, but he posts under the title Andy Films and Hikes. I thank the Lord for this dear brother, for his amazing Easter message.

I am not Roman Catholic but urge everyone to listen to the wise words of Pope Leo, the first pope from the United States of America.

Here is Andy’s post:

Easter, the Cross, and How Evangelicalism Lost the Plot

I no longer call myself a Christian.

That is not something I say lightly. I was an evangelical pastor for more than 15 years. I graduated from a conservative Bible college. I served as a children’s pastor, youth pastor, music pastor, and associate pastor in both Southern Baptist and non denominational churches. I was licensed in that world. I preached it, defended it, and built my life inside it.

And yet, after walking away, deconstructing my faith, and no longer identifying as a Christian, I still find myself with a deep appreciation for parts of the Christian story. Especially at Easter.

Because whatever else can be said about the story of Jesus, the cross was never about domination.

It was never about power for power’s sake. It was never about empire. It was never about forcing your religion into government, wrapping cruelty in patriotism, or treating political power like proof of divine favor. It was never about health, wealth, prosperity, or building a nation that looked more “Christian” on the surface while abandoning the actual ethics of Jesus underneath.

The story at the center of Easter is about a man born under imperial rule, raised among an occupied people, who stood with the poor, the marginalized, the sick, the outsider, and the despised. He challenged both the empire of his day and the religious elite who had grown comfortable alongside it. He was seen as dangerous because he disrupted systems of power and called people to something deeper than religious performance.

He ate with the wrong people. He touched the unclean. He welcomed the sinner. He spoke of loving enemies, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, and caring for the least of these.

And for that, he was publicly humiliated and executed by the state, with the blessing of religious leaders who saw him as a threat.

That is the story.

Which is why I cannot help but look at modern evangelicalism and think: you have completely lost the plot.

Especially now, as so much of evangelicalism has merged itself with Christian nationalism, the contradiction is glaring. The same movement that claims to worship a crucified and risen Christ now so often bows to wealth, dominance, nationalism, exclusion, and fear. It talks about “biblical values” while mocking the poor, demonizing immigrants, dismissing the sick, and treating people without power as if their suffering is a personal failure.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, they say.

The poor are lazy, they say.

Immigrants are criminals, they say.

If you needed healthcare, you should have had a better job, they say.

And somehow this gets wrapped in the language of Jesus.

But the Jesus of the Gospels does not sound like that. He does not look like that. He does not bless that.

The irony is almost unbearable. The Christ who was crushed by a marriage of empire and religious power is now invoked to defend empire and religious power. The one who overturned tables would be accused of being divisive in many of today’s churches. The one who stood with the marginalized would be called dangerous, liberal, soft, or unbiblical. The one who said “whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me” would be told he was too political.

I do not consider myself a Christian anymore. But I can still recognize when the central message of Easter is being twisted beyond recognition.

Easter is not about civil religion. It is not about dominion. It is not about America as a shining city on a hill. It is not about winning the culture war.

It is about a man who confronted oppression, loved the outcast, challenged corrupt religion, and was killed for it.

And if the people claiming his name cannot see the difference between that story and what they are building now, then yes, they have lost the plot.