Come Along: Catching Up on the Journey to Faith Reborn
Have you ever found yourself quietly wondering:“Did we somehow get Christianity wrong?”If you’ve ever felt like the faith you inherited doesn’t line up with what you read in the gospels—or that it’s missing the hope and wholeness you long for—you’re not alone. You’re right where our journey begins.
Why We’re Asking Questions
Over the centuries, the original message of Jesus got tangled up with outside philosophies, legal ideas, and cultural baggage. What started as good news for the whole world often got narrowed down to rules, rituals, and fear. For a lot of people today, this has left faith feeling confusing, disconnected, or even oppressive.
But here’s the surprising thing:When you start to question, you’re not betraying the faith—you’re taking the first step back to its roots. The story of Christianity is big enough to handle your doubts, your questions, and your hope for something more.
What We’ve Discovered So Far
As we’ve traced the story backwards, we’ve uncovered three major ways the message of Jesus got distorted:
1. When Roman Philosophy Hijacked the Story
It’s wild to think about, but a lot of the “weirdness” in Christianity didn’t start with Jesus or his first followers. Early Christians lived in a world soaked in Greek philosophy—especially thinkers like Plutarch, who taught that your soul is good and your body is something lesser, maybe even something to escape (Who Was Plutarch?). Over time, these ideas seeped into Christian thinking. Instead of focusing on God’s promise to renew and restore everything—body, creation, relationships—faith started to sound more like an escape plan for your soul, as if the real goal was to leave earth behind and get to heaven.
When Augustine—brilliant philosopher and later, bishop—mixed Greek ideas with his reading of Jesus, the story shifted even more (Augustine: When a Trained Philosopher Became a Theologian). Christianity started to move away from healing a broken world to focusing on the fate of the soul, splitting life into “spiritual” and “worldly.” If you’ve ever wondered why faith can feel disconnected from the messy, beautiful world around you, this is where the split began.
2. When Faith Became a Courtroom Drama
Imagine going to a doctor for healing, but the office has turned into a courtroom. Instead of care, you get a list of charges and sentences. That’s what happened to Christianity. The earliest message was about restoration—God making things right. But when Tertullian, a Roman lawyer, brought the language of law, guilt, and punishment into theology, sin became less about what’s broken and more about what’s illegal (Meet Tertullian). God became a judge. Over the centuries, this legal logic took over. By the Middle Ages, thinkers like Anselm pictured God like a feudal lord: sin was dishonor, and someone had to pay up (Anselm of Canterbury).
The cross became a transaction to settle the score, not a rescue mission to heal and restore. If you’ve ever felt like faith is about walking on eggshells—afraid of mistakes or punishment—it’s because the story shifted from family and healing to a cosmic legal drama.
3. When Hope Got Hijacked by Fear and Escape
The first followers of Jesus carried a hope that God would defeat death and make all things new. Resurrection was physical, real, and world-changing. The message wasn’t “hold on until you die,” but “God is starting something new right here, right now.” As Greek philosophy and legal thinking took hold, the plot shifted. Translations hardened ideas: “repentance” became a ritual, “Gehenna” became “hell” (Jerome: When the Bible Got Lost in Translation). People were taught to worry more about afterlife destinations than about the restoration of creation.
Augustine’s influence shifted the focus further—sin, guilt, and inherited depravity began to dominate the story (Augustine: When a Trained Philosopher Became a Theologian). Christianity began to sound less like hope and more like a warning: “Fear for your soul.” If you’ve ever felt that faith is about surviving this life to escape to the next, or if it’s fueled by anxiety instead of hope, you’re seeing the effect of this centuries-long drift.
Where the Journey Leads Next
This is just the beginning. In the next chapters, we’ll:
Expose more hidden assumptions that still shape what we believe today
Revisit the voices—ancient and modern—calling us back to the original story
Wrestle honestly with tough questions about Scripture, church, and hope
Imagine what a faith centered on healing and new creation could look like for us and our world
If you’re hungry for a faith that feels alive, grounded, and world-changing, you’re in the right place.
You’re invited. Let’s keep journeying together.
