The God You Were Handed Isn't Jesus | Undoctrinated | Chad Belew

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Anybody, maybe,

if you're Gen Z, you probably don't remember this, but those of us that have a little more mature

in our lives, I don't know, I grew up

as a child

with a very

real fear that was baked into me

by things that I saw that were

presented to children. Anyone else grow up with this

fear that we were gonna die by quicksand?

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Like, for real, like,

quicksand, like, this dude, this was such

a fear.

Like, quicksand, for some reason, was the thing that was gonna kill us.

Like, you had to avoid it. It was...

Yeah, speaking.

I think, like, all of these, like, kids shows

had quicksand as, like, this was it. You better watch out.

And what are you doing? You're getting a quicksand. You gotta calm down.

'Cause otherwise you start fighting, you're gonna sink.

Raise your hand. I don't want to be traumatic here.

Raise your hand if you know anyone that has died by quicksand.

[laughter]

Okay, one. Really? Huh?

Super Mario. That's... I should have been more specific.

[laughter]

I...

No, no one that has died of quicksand?

Yeah, I think so.

Nobody. Not a person. Apparently, I did do some research.

Apparently, it's a thing. Quicksand is just sand and water.

Had a really cool name. But, yeah, there's been a few people

that have died in sand and water, but not

in the ways that we all thought was gonna happen.

I don't know. Have you ever, like, carried an idea?

Or carried fear of something for years?

And so, one day someone told you, like, "Hey, that's not a real thing."

That's not even... that's not real.

Quicksand. You're gonna be okay.

There's a lot of other things that you might die from, but quicksand is probably not it.

Sharks. Yeah, sharks.

I guess a real one.

I don't know. I don't remember when I learned it, but I was stunned.

Like, something I believed with such certainty just kind of

unraveled. I'm like, "Oh, that's not true."

Have you ever believed something like your whole heart?

I wanted to find out later it wasn't true. Like, maybe

it was about a person. Maybe it was about yourself.

Maybe it was about God.

So, the series is about

that unraveling. The

freedom that can follow when we let go of what never

belonged in the first place. So, I called the series

"undoctronated." In order to kind of

give you an idea of what that is, let me give you a definition. It is the

to undo the process of indoctrination.

Undoctronation is to undo the process

of indoctrination. Or urban dictionary says it this way.

The process of unlearning propaganda or false teachings,

especially those learned in religious or political institutions.

Now, that's the one. Urban dictionary with

the win.

The series is about this process.

To get to undoctronated, though, we need to talk

about what indoctrination is first. Because we got to be indoctrinated

to indoctrinate, right? And indoctrination

is the process of teaching a person or group

to accept a set of

beliefs uncritically. Which is a keyword.

Uncritically. To

not be able to question. And indoctrinate

someone means to teach them to fully accept a specific

set of beliefs, ideas, or principles, often without encouraging critical

thinking or considering alternative viewpoints.

It involves instilling these beliefs

so thoroughly that they become deeply ingrained, often

to the point where the individual accepts them without question.

How is this dangerous?

Especially when it comes to faith. Because faith

at its best is a living,

breathing journey. It's relational.

It grows. In indoctrination demands

you stop asking questions and just accept what you've been told.

And that creates a system where the goal isn't freedom,

the goal is control.

So indoctrination is used to consolidate and protect power.

It says don't think for yourself, just trust us.

The person in charge creates

some form of authority in order

to tell you what you are to believe. And when you challenge

their authority, what happens?

It's a scary place to be in a

spiritual setting.

And I know it sounds maybe kind of harsh.

Maybe it's mainly been my rare experience,

not yours, but asking critical questions has absolutely gotten me into trouble

throughout my faith journey. Still, to this day,

gets me in a lot of trouble. I'm not invited to rooms with other pastors most of the time

because I got questions.

And when this happens, we have a set of beliefs

that we've been told we must believe without question.

And then we experience life.

Psychologically, this creates cognitive dissonance

where what we've been told about God

doesn't align with what we experience. And over time

this disconnect that leads to shame, spiritual anxiety,

outright rejection of faith.

Not because people hate God, but because

the version of God they were handed was toxic.

Like let's look at some of the attributes

many of us were told about God. Always watching you.

Like Santa Claus.

Easily angered.

Can't stand sin. Which is to say

it's kind of offended by your humanity.

Requires suffering to be satisfied.

Only loves you if you repent the right way.

Will punish eternally

for not believing in him.

But loves you and is actually love.

Now a critical person might

have some questions about a relationship with a person that is described

as this, right? If you were describing someone you're in a relationship

with and you told me this is how they treat you, I would be like

you're dating a narcissist. You should probably look into that.

I almost called this sermon

God is a narcissist and then I was told I shouldn't say that.

Now I don't believe God is a narcissist.

But I think a lot of us have been given a view of God that is narcissistic.

He's been given tendencies that we attach to God

that don't sound like Jesus.

They sound like a narcissist.

Here's the thing.

You cannot have a loving, secure relationship with a narcissistic figure.

I don't think. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm looking at my resident psychologist back in there.

Because in that relationship it's always about appeasement,

walking on eggshells, fear.

And if that's your image of God, then you can't help

but read scripture and live your life through that lens.

And I know that most of us were given

this picture of God because this view of God and the attributes of God

that most of us have been given almost all stem from the same theological

church history where power and control became the focus

and in order to keep that fear, shame, and the need to indoctrinate with the weapons.

But I really think there's a better way to

understand who God is.

And I think we've talked about this so much but I think it's by looking at the person

that was the full representation of God in human form. Jesus.

Like we're going to look at a story today and I've

probably taught on this story a few times. I don't know if I

try to look at my notes. I don't think I've taught on it real recently but you've

probably all heard this story. I'm going to look at it and we're going to talk about

this story that most of us have been given the story

through the first lens the way that you've heard it. And then we'll talk about maybe a different

way to look at it. It's in John 4. It's actually

the longest one-on-one conversation

that we see from Jesus. Longest one recorded

in scripture. Ironically, it's not

with a religious leader. It's not even with a man.

It's with a woman.

It's not with a Jew. It's with a Samaritan.

And it's this beautiful story

and man, we've gotten so wrong in a lot of ways. Let me read it.

John 4.4 says, "Now he had to go through Samaria."

Jesus, he had to go. "At that time Jews did not go through Samaria."

They went around it. You've probably heard this, but they didn't go through there.

Samaritans were not their friends. They were not

nice to each other. "So he came to the town of Samaria called Sakar

near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey,

sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan

woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?"

Since his disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

Am I reading the same one? Okay, cool.

The Samaritan woman said to him,

"You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask

me for a drink?"

Prentissi says, "For Jews do not associate with Samaritans." Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God,

and who it is that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you the living water."

"Sir," the woman said, "You have nothing to draw with,

and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well

and drank from it himself? As did also his sons

and his livestock?" Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water

will be thirsty again, but ever drinks the water

I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become

in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water

so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back.

I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her,

"You're right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you've had five husbands,

and the man you now have is not your husband.

What you have just said is quite true."

"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a

prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim

that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

"Woman," Jesus replied, "Believe me. A time is coming when you will worship the

Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans

worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know.

For salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming

and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the

spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks."

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the

spirit and in truth. The woman said, "I know that

Messiah called Christ is coming. When he comes he

will explain everything to us." Then Jesus declared, "I

the one speaking to you, I am he."

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking

with a woman, but no one asked, "What do you want and why are you talking

with her?" Then leaving her water jar, the woman went back

to the town and said to the people, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever

did. Could this be the Messiah?" They came out of the town

and made their way toward him. He jumped down to verse 39. It says, "Many of the

Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.

He told me everything I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to

him, they urged him to stay with them and he stayed for two days. And because of his

words, many more became believers. They said to the woman, "We no longer

believe just because of what you said. Now we have heard for ourselves and we know

that this man really is the savior of the world."

I don't have time to go through all of this.

Have you heard this story taught before?

Have you heard this story taught before?

If you grew up in any form of evangelicalism or fundamentalism circles,

like you probably heard this woman painted as immoral, as lustful,

as sleeping around.

She had five husbands and now the guy that she's living with isn't her husband.

It's just some guy she's shacking up with.

Sorry, shacking up with that.

And Jesus in this reading, this waiter that we look at this

interaction between him and this woman is confronting

her sin, right? He's calling her out. He's exposing

her.

Pastors have preached this story as a warning, a morality tale.

God knows what you're doing.

And there's this beautiful thing that we do where it's like, look who God can even use,

this sinful, sinful woman.

But here's the problem.

That view says more about how we view God than what's actually in this story.

It sees Jesus as the

divine interrogator.

He turns this interaction into a setup. He's like, go get your husband.

Oh wait, I know you don't have one.

Right? Like that's how we read it.

Hey, go get your husband. Oh sir, I don't have one. Yeah, I know you don't.

You've had five. And that's not even one you're just

living with a guy. And we turn this into like Jesus

is like, gotcha. But you don't want to

do that anymore, right? You don't accept this eternal life so that you don't have to send no more.

It assumes that God is out to

shame her, to correct her. This is the story we've been told.

But what if that's not what's happening here at all?

Because that takes no

context of where they live and what is happening and what

time of eternity they are in.

We have to reframe this story

through the lens of Jesus and the Jesus that we know that when we

pull away the things that we've been taught that don't match the character of Jesus

we have to look at who is Jesus and what is he doing here?

For some context in that culture,

the Samaritan culture, first century, women

could not divorce easily.

In fact, they could be put to death if they were caught cheating.

Women in first century,

Samaria were property.

They were not allowed to just run out on their husband and find a new husband.

If she'd had five husbands, it wasn't because she was just

running around the town.

Likely, they had

abandoned her, died,

or she was being passed around like property.

The man she was with may not have been her husband

by law because she wasn't allowed to remarry. Because her last

husband maybe didn't release her from the marriage. He just left her.

And she's not allowed to marry. And in that time she could not,

she didn't make her own money. Women, when they were married off

the dad would typically take the woman,

make a deal with another family to marry her off, typically between

the ages of 12 to 15.

And they would usually marry an older man,

much older, that would take care of her. Because the dad could no longer provide for her

so now the husband had to. So oftentimes, women in that

time frame buried husbands.

If you look at scripture, if the husband had a brother,

what was he supposed to do? Hey, now she's yours.

You've got to take care of her because she can't make her own money.

She can't provide for herself, it's up to you now. So brother, you have to marry her now.

So this woman who we've been told

was just so sinful

was a woman that was hurting.

The biblical scholar Karen Reader, she wrote a book,

I think it's the story of the Samaritan woman. Something pretty simple like that.

She points out that much of how we've been taught to see this woman at the well

says more about our theological bias than it does about the text itself.

In a story she explains this, the story of the Samaritan woman

has often been interpreted as a tale of sexual sin and divine forgiveness.

But this interpretation reflects contemporary concerns more than

ancient ones. In Jesus' day divorce was typically initiated by

men, not women, and it was often the result of circumstances outside of a woman's

control like infertility, political dynamics, or abuse.

So to paint her as immoral is to ignore the painful

systems at play.

Reader helps us reframe this woman's story to understand the context

behind it. Not as one of shame, but as one of survival.

She wasn't a symbol of personal failure. She was a picture

of social exclusion.

And Jesus doesn't shame her. He sees her.

He dignifies her. He reveals more of himself to her

than he does to anyone else. Even his disciples.

There are things that he tells her that he has not told his disciples yet.

And you know what gets even more powerful about this story when you pull away

where like the one story, one way we've been told

about this? In the Eastern Orthodox Church,

this woman is known

not for her shame but for her witness.

They call her a saint Fotini. She's a saint.

Her name means the enlightened one.

She's celebrated as an apostle, a preacher, a bold evangelist.

She's the first one to carry the message of Jesus, the Messiah,

in Scripture.

Tradition says she went on to proclaim the gospel across North Africa.

And even stood up to Emperor Nero who

tradition says that she was martyred by because of her faith.

So let it sink in. This is the same woman

Christian theology has often portrayed as immoral and unworthy.

The Orthodox Church calls equal to the apostles.

Maybe that's because their theology of God is different.

They never leaned into the hyperlegal guilt-soaked framework of evangelicalism.

Their God was an punitive scorekeeper. Their God was a healing presence.

A God whose justice looked like restoration, not retribution.

And when you believe in that kind of God, you start seeing people differently too.

This isn't a scandalous woman. This is a woman

who's been wounded by the system.

She's a Samaritan. Already seen as an outsider

by Jewish society. And here she is, coming to the well

in the heat of the day, likely to avoid judgment of her own people. We were told

it's because she was real sinful. She was just trying to hide.

She didn't want the women to see her. She probably did have shame.

It probably was hurting, but it wasn't because of things she was doing. It was because of a system

that had told her that she was not worthy. Husbands who had left

her.

Now we see the humanity in this.

We see what Jesus is actually doing.

How does Jesus treat her? He speaks with her. He sees her.

He invites her into conversation. Him just saying, hey, can I get a drink of water?

Culturally unacceptable.

But Jesus is like, no, no, no. She needs to know that I see her.

I know she is. She is worthy.

Knowing kind of this idea

of how people carry themselves in this type

of mindset, I'm sure she wasn't even looking at him.

She couldn't. Once she's a woman,

and two, he's a Jew, and three, she's carrying a lot.

He reveals that he knows her pain,

and he doesn't shame her for it. He never even tells

her to repent. He's not like, yeah, you need to fix that.

He just offers living water.

It's not a confrontation at all. It's a healing moment.

And in doing so, Jesus

unravels everything she believed about her place in the world,

her worth, her access to God.

This is indoctrination.

Not more rules, not a guilt trip.

Because indoctrination is what happens when love steps in

and says that thing you were told about yourself, about God,

it was never true.

Think about the question

she asked.

They're talking about husbands. He gives her this

story about living water. She's like, hey, so I got a question.

We worship here at this mountain, and the Jews say that you have to worship

here, which one is it? And Jesus is like,

it's not about a place.

Because God is a spirit. And wherever you are is where you're going to worship.

They're having a theological conversation.

Jesus isn't trying to fix her behavior.

He's trying to fix her mindset about who she thinks she is

because life and society and culture has told her she's

not worthy. And Jesus says, no, you get to be the first

one to carry this message.

It's just idea of

it's not an idea of throwing away faith.

It's an idea of trying to reclaim it.

We're not here to see or we're here to see God clearly

through the lens of Jesus. Because if God is like Jesus

and we believe God is, then God is not

a narcissist. Because Jesus wasn't. He didn't carry

himself in any way that was

demanding.

I got

questions.

Like, did Jesus ever walk into room and was like,

why are you guys singing?

Worship song should be sang right now. I just walked in.

Sing a little louder. No.

Nobody sang when he walked in the room. I think reading

Jesus character in the way that he acted had he walked in a room and people

started singing and he'd be like, whoa, calm down. What is happening right now?

He was humble.

He honored those around him. He was loving. He was caring.

He wasn't demanding.

We're here to see God

clearly through the lens of Jesus. God is not

demanding perfection. God is not waiting to punish.

God is love and love in action.

You see it in the person of Jesus.

And when you begin there, everything shifts. You treat people

differently. You begin to trust again.

You step out of fear and into freedom.

It's not about behavior modification. It's about becoming more

human. More connected. More alive.

So as we begin to unravel

all the layers of inherited belief,

I was reminded of something that this trapez

monk mystic Thomas Merton once said.

He said the beginning of love is the will to let those we love be

perfectly themselves. The resolution not to

twist them to fit our own image. If in loving

them we do not love what they are but only their potential

lightness to ourselves then we do not love them.

We only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

All of this.

We talk about every week. It comes down to

as John said, we are first loved

and then we love. And if the way

that we see God is one that is just

waiting to get us then we can operate

in the way that we're not really interested in you until you fit

the world.

So the invitation is what if the story

of your life, the version you've been told, the one wrapped in shame or fear

isn't the real story. What if like the woman

at the well you've been waiting for someone

to see you not as a project but as a person.

Not as a problem to fix but as a soul to love.

I think what we see in Jesus is that

Jesus sees you just like he saw her.

And the invitation still stands to come

to drink, to be free, to be loved.

Because when you experience this love you will see others as Jesus has seen them

and you will love like Jesus has loved.

And I think this is how this love is supposed to play out in the human experience

that we're in. This human experience that we call faith.

We are loved.

And because we are loved we go love well.

So we view God as a loving God. We experience that love

and we go share that love. That's why every week

we come back to the same thing.

Arsenal go love well. That's literally who we're made to be.

Experience that God and then go share that love.

Love you guys. We'll see you next week.