Category: Theology and Reflections

Deconstruction Led Me to a Deeper Orthodoxy and Faith

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
A warmly lit study with a wooden desk and chair, an antique table lamp glowing on the desk, stacks of old books, and tall bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes lining the walls.

When Faith Stops Feeling Life-Giving

I once managed belief like a fragile museum piece, feeling the weight of maintaining it rather than living it. Before deconstruction, my faith felt exhausting. Not because I didn’t believe, but because the answers I had adopted stopped helping me live freely or flourish. Over time, they settled into a shallow kind of idea-ism, a way of thinking about faith that meant my spirituality, my questions, and even my own human experience had to be constantly filtered through categories that needed defending, maintaining, and keeping in order. Faith became something to manage rather than inhabit. Something to defend instead of embody.

Unresolved Theological Tension

Faith started to feel like something that needed constant attention instead of bringing rest. I carried a lot of unresolved tensions. The sharpest was the contradiction of a loving God who was also described as perpetually angry. It was difficult to reconcile the message of the cross as good news with explanations that felt wrong to me. I was told to trust Scripture, but only within rigid boundaries, which impacted how I viewed science and historical contexts. These tensions weren’t just ideas. They manifested in politics and in divided groups. Faith increasingly felt like an exercise in picking sides to stay ‘biblical.’ Underneath, I was sorting people: who was orthodox or heretical, faithful or compromised, who belonged and who didn’t. None of it felt life-giving. All of it carried weight, and over time, that weight became unbearable. Eventually, I didn’t just feel strained. I stopped altogether. I stopped engaging. I stopped trying to hold everything together, not out of rebellious spirit or a hard heart, but out of exhaustion.

Why I Stepped Away

It wasn’t some hidden sin I wanted to justify that led me to deconstruct. Rather, it was the heavy burden of traditional evangelism, a way of holding faith that was slowly hollowing me out rather than giving life. I needed distance. Not dramatically or all at once, but carefully. Slowly and surely, I removed myself from it. Stepping back didn’t feel brave. It felt disorienting. I wasn’t replacing one system with another. I was letting go of the constant explanations and seeing what was left.
At first, stepping back felt uncomfortable, but also freeing. Without my old ways of thinking, I didn’t know what to do next. My prayers changed. I stopped trying to say the right words and just sat with my feelings, embracing these moments as a form of silent prayer or centering. This contemplative posture allowed me to talk less at God and be more present. Faith didn’t come with easy answers anymore. There were no safe categories or certain words. The mystery I used to fear started to feel interesting instead of scary.

Deconstrucion Research

As I went through this, I noticed I wasn’t alone. Increasingly, I realized that deconstruction was happening everywhere. Research shows that about 42 percent of adults have questioned the faith they grew up with, and many still call themselves Christian. Barna’s research says about a third of practising Christians have seriously re-examined their inherited beliefs without leaving their faith. This shows that deconstruction isn’t simply about leaving Christianity. For many, it’s a personal reckoning inside the Church. Commentators such as Scot McKnight helped me understand this further. In Invisible Jesus, McKnight says that much of modern Christianity has replaced the real Jesus with other versions: a political Jesus, a nationalist Jesus, a moral enforcer, or a doctrinal gatekeeper. When people deconstruct, they’re often not rejecting Christ, but these distorted versions, hoping to find the real one.

Deconstruction as Reformation

Seen this way, deconstruction begins to look less like collapse and more like correction. Building on this, it almost ironically carries the marks of reform and renewal. Historically, movements that return people to the centre of faith are rarely neat or reassuring in the moment. They disrupt settled systems and force hard questions. Consider Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517, which challenged the practices of the Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation, a period of profound religious renewal born out of significant disruption. Today, deconstruction feels like that kind of moment. As Brian Zahnd has often said, the future Christian will likely be a mystic, not someone chasing spiritual novelty, but someone formed by presence rather than control, encounter rather than certainty, love in place of fear. Taken together, the data and lived experience tell the same story. Deconstruction is not about killing Christianity. For many, it is about clearing away what is brittle and broken, so that something more ancient, deeper, and more Christ-centred can emerge.

Deconstruction as Formation

When I stepped back, not everything disappeared. In fact, some things stayed, not because I fought to keep them, but because they were never tied to the frameworks I had let go of. Christ stayed. Not as a system to defend or a set of conclusions to maintain, but as the person I kept returning to. Even when I wasn’t sure what I believed, Jesus himself remained compelling. His way of being in the world. His closeness to those on the margins. His refusal to grasp for power. Whatever else shifted, I couldn’t shake him. Sometimes, in silent prayer, it felt like Jesus whispered, ‘I’m here with you.’ It was as if he was telling me, ‘It’s okay to ask questions, to seek understanding. I am with you in your doubts and your discoveries.’ Scripture stayed too. And in many ways, it became more profound. I never stopped loving the Bible. I’ve always been a Bible nerd. What changed wasn’t my affection for the text, but the way I read it. As I let go of the lenses I had adopted, Scripture stopped being something I approached primarily to extract answers or defend positions. It became sacramental. Life-giving. Formative.

Deconstruction and Orthodox

I came to recognise the Bible not as a puzzle to solve, but as a place to meet God. Reading it this way made me slow down. It shaped how I think and what I care about. It worked deep inside me, not just in arguments. The text didn’t always answer my questions, but it kept bringing me back to Christ and to living more like him. That didn’t weaken my faith. It made it stronger. Orthodoxy came back, but it felt different.

What I eventually realised was that orthodoxy really is about healthy boundaries. In its earliest expressions, orthodoxy existed to confront heresy and guard the heart of the Christian confession. The creeds and confessions were shaped in conflict because what was at stake was not abstract correctness, but the truth about God, Christ, and what it means to be human. That work mattered. It still does. What surprised me was discovering that those boundaries were never meant to suffocate faith. They were meant to protect life.

Reading the early Church Fathers made this clear. Figures like Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa were deeply orthodox and fiercely committed to doctrinal clarity, yet their theology was never anxious or thin. For Athanasius, orthodoxy mattered because if Christ is not truly God, then humanity is not truly healed. Doctrine was inseparable from salvation. Gregory of Nyssa, equally committed to the creedal faith, insisted that God always exceeds our concepts. Orthodoxy did not eliminate mystery. It required it. Doctrine named the centre, but it also opened the soul toward continual growth, desire, and transformation.

From there, the tradition opened rather than closed. I found this same orthodoxy expressed across several streams of the Church, in the earthy devotion of Celtic Christianity, in the depth and union spoken of by Catholic and Eastern mystics, and even in modern voices who continue to live this faith attentively and sincerely. Each tradition nurtures humility and compassion, drawing from the same well of Christ’s love and teachings. What united all of it was Christ, not as an idea to defend, but as a life to enter.

Deconstruction didn’t take me away from orthodoxy. It led me into a deeper kind of orthodoxy.

To Those Watching Other’s Deconstruct

That’s why I want to offer a word of caution to those watching others deconstruct: how we respond matters. Treating deconstruction as betrayal, danger, or moral failure does not protect faith. It reinforces the very wounds that made faith unlivable in the first place. If the goal is depth, maturity, and Christlikeness, then fear-driven responses are counter-formative. What deconstructing people need is love, not suspicion. Curiosity, not control. Space to ask honest questions without punishment. Orthodoxy was never meant to be enforced through fear. It was meant to form people into the likeness of Christ.


I didn’t lose my faith. I lost a version of it that could not carry life.
What remains now is not certainty, but commitment. Not answers I can deploy, but a way of living I am learning to inhabit. Christ abides at the centre again. Scripture is sacramental. Orthodoxy is formative. Mystery is no longer something I rush to resolve. For the first time in a long while, faith doesn’t require vigilance. It asks for faithfulness. Faith now feels like breathing, not balancing plates. It sustains me quietly, like a gentle rhythm that I can finally rest in. And that feels like something I can truly live with.

What I Enjoyed Writing This Year (And What It Did to My Faith)

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
A minimalist photograph of a vintage black typewriter with a blank sheet of paper inserted, centred against a clean white background, evoking reflection, writing, and the quiet act of putting words to page.

The soft rustle of pages turning, the faint smell of ink on paper, and the gentle glow of a lamp late at night frame this reflection. In these quiet moments, I discovered that this year’s writing is not a “best of” list, but a meditation on how it revealed the quiet, patient ways faith grows when I linger with attention and presence. It is a confession of where my attention lingered, and what that lingering did to my faith.

Looking back over my writing, I see a pattern I never planned. Certain themes kept circling back, like the sun lingering at the edge of morning. This single metaphor captures the persistence and gentle growth of my reflections, allowing the essence of faith’s slow, patient unfolding to shine through.

These are the pieces I enjoyed most. Not for their performance, but their honesty. In writing them, something in me grows.

Following the Winter Sun

Writing “Following the Winter Sun” slowed my pace in a way that theology rarely does. It made me honour the Southern Hemisphere, letting winter, darkness, and diminished light shape my imagination instead of borrowing someone else’s spirituality.

What I valued was resisting the pull of urgency, letting theology breathe with the seasons, and sensing God nearer to decline than to growth.

The winter sun does not conquer the darkness. It traces it faithfully.

That piece taught me faith does not always surge ahead. Sometimes it simply turns, just enough to catch whatever light is offered, without demanding more.

Faith and Mental Health: Part I (and 2)

This was among the most vulnerable things I wrote all year, and I could feel that vulnerability in every keystroke.

Here, I was unflinchingly honest, naming spiritual struggle as exhaustion, trauma, or simply a nervous system doing its best to survive.

Writing this clarified something essential for me:
God is not disappointed by wounded faith.

This piece loosened my hold on language that moralises suffering. It let me speak of faith not as pressure, but as permission—permission to heal, to name pain, to stop pretending obedience can skip over the inner world. It offered a holy act of self-compassion, bridging the gap between theology and psychological care. This is where the language of self-kindness finds its sacred place, encouraging readers to apply it to themselves and embrace their healing journey.

Why Christians Should Celebrate Halloween

I was surprised by how much joy I found in writing this one.

I reclaimed imagination from fear, pushing back against the idea that darkness is only dangerous. I reminded myself, and others, that Christianity knows resurrection and twilight both.

Writing about Halloween became a way to name something larger: the Church’s forgotten gift for sitting with death, mystery, and the in-between. We hurry toward light, rarely learning how to walk through dusk.

This piece reminded me that faith, stripped of imagination, grows anxious. Christ’s victory does not ask us to deny death, but to walk through it unafraid.

Healing Before Obedience

If any piece captured the heart of my year, it was this one.

I loved writing Healing Before Obedience because it finally named what I have seen quietly wound people for years: the belief that God wants compliance more than wholeness.

This was the piece where theology and pastoral concern fully met.

Writing it clarified my conviction: obedience without healing breeds distortion, not holiness. Jesus did not demand alignment first, but restored dignity. Transformation flows from love received, not pressure applied.

This post reframed discipleship for me, not as behaviour to be managed, but as the slow mending of a fragmented inner world in God’s presence.

Advent: Maybe Christ Is Waiting for Us

I loved writing this because it turned the usual script upside down.

Instead of us waiting anxiously for God, Advent became a season where God waits patiently for us—to notice, to arrive, to finally stop outrunning grace.

This piece wove the year together: slowness, attention, presence. God is not a void to be filled, but a presence waiting to be recognized. What if Christ has been waiting all along?

Writing it reminded me that Advent is not suspense, but hospitality.

And that Christ is not late.

What These Pieces Taught Me

Looking back, I see what I was really circling all year:

  • God is not in a hurry.
  • Healing is holy work.
  • Fear is not wisdom.
  • Imagination matters.
  • Faith matures through honesty, not performance.

I enjoyed writing these because they let me breathe, felt like careful truth-telling, and helped me resist the urge to hurry toward answers.

Writing did not tidy up my faith this year.
It made my faith gentler.

For the first time, that gentleness feels like real progress.

On the Incarnation: Athanasius, Christmas, and the Healing of the World

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

A Theological Reflection on “On the Incarnation” in Its Historical Moment

In the early fourth century, Christians went from facing persecution to receiving uncertain support from the empire. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote On the Incarnation during a time of confusion and exile. Many believers lost homes and were divided over who Christ was. For them, the question of Jesus’s identity had real and urgent consequences (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 1–2).

Athanasius lived and wrote in Alexandria, a city known for its intellectual life. Here, Greek philosophy, Jewish theology, Roman authority, and Christianity all met. The main conflict was about one question: Who is Jesus? Was he fully God or a created being? The Arian controversy was serious, as it affected Christian worship, prayer, and salvation (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:15–20).

Athanasius said that if Christ is not fully God, then humanity stays trapped in decay (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 7). A created being cannot restore creation; only the Creator can heal what is broken (Psalm 36:9; Hebrews 2:14–15). Only God saves; Jesus saves; therefore, Jesus is God. This fundamental principle forms the basis of Athanasius’s argument and guides the whole book. Athanasius is not just focused on philosophical detail; he wants to show that the world is being restored.

Athanasius retells the Christmas story as a struggle involving the whole universe, underscoring its importance for his message. He moves beyond simple sweetness or just historical views, placing the empire’s power alongside the quiet strength of Christ’s simple birth. Where others see only a child in a manger, Athanasius sees a revolution: the incarnation as God’s bold action in the world of power.

Jesus was born during a time of empire, census, displacement, and fear (Luke 2:1–7). Caesar Augustus claimed to bring peace, but did so through taxes and military force. Joseph and Mary travelled because of an imperial order. Jesus was born not in a palace, but in a borrowed place, far from power. For Athanasius, this is important. While the empire tries to keep order, creation is falling apart (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 4).

Athanasius says that humanity’s problem is not only moral failure, but also corruption. God made people from nothing and keeps them alive through relationship. When people turn away from God, they move toward nothingness (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 4–5; Genesis 1:26–27; Romans 1:21). Sin breaks things apart. Death serves as more than a punishment; it is what happens when we separate from the source of life (Romans 6:23).

Athanasius sees Christmas as the turning point, the moment when God enters humanity’s broken world.

The incarnation shows that God does not abandon creation. The Word does not rule from far away or just send messages from heaven. The Word becomes flesh (John 1:14). For Athanasius, being truly human is essential. Salvation cannot happen from a distance. Healing requires closeness. What is not assumed cannot be restored (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8–9).

Athanasius focuses on Christ’s body for a reason. The manger leads to the cross, not simply a feeling, but as a core belief. The body placed in the straw is the same body placed in the tomb (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 20; Luke 23:46). God chooses to be fully vulnerable from the beginning. Hunger, tiredness, suffering, and death are not too low for God (Hebrews 2:17).

The Controversy

The Arian controversy questioned whether Christ was truly God. It said the Son was separate and lower than the Father. Arians said that if the Son was born, there was a time when he did not exist. This made him a created being, not the Creator. The idea made God seem easier to understand by making the Son less than fully God. These arguments became popular because they seemed logical and because explaining the Trinity is hard. However, Athanasius challenges this by asking: How can something created save all of creation? He argues that if death holds humanity, only the Author of life can break that hold (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 7; Acts 2:24). Therefore, when the immortal Word enters death, death meets what it cannot control. Athanasius says the resurrection is not an afterthought, but the public result of what the incarnation began (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 25; 1 Corinthians 15:54–57).

Athanasius shows that incarnation and salvation go together. What we believe about Christ is linked to what we believe about humanity. To say Christ is truly human also says something about all people (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54; Romans 8:29). Jesus is not an exception; he reveals what it means to be human. Salvation brings humanity back to what it should be.

This vision deeply affects how we live our faith. If God has entered human life, then every part of our physical existence matters spiritually (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8; Genesis 1:31). Eating, working, loving, suffering, and rejoicing are all ways we can meet God (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Holiness is not about leaving the world; it’s about living in it. Practically, this means engaging in kindness and service, seeing God’s face in each person. It also means practising daily gratitude and being mindful of God’s presence, whether in quiet reflection or in busy work. By fostering loving, compassionate relationships, we reflect Athanasius’s incarnational theology, connecting deeply with others and God through our everyday actions.

In the fourth century, there was political turmoil, theological conflict, and fear. Athanasius makes a bold claim: reality’s centre is now in human flesh (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 16; Ephesians 1:10). The world’s stability depends not on empire or philosophy, but on a child born under occupation (Luke 2:7). This is a profound challenge to powers that demand ultimate loyalty, both then and now. The focus shifts from secular dominance to divine presence in unexpected places.

For Athanasius, that is what Christmas is all about.

Christmas means that God joins his life to the world (Matthew 1:23). Heaven does not wait for people to reach up; it comes down. Instead, heaven comes down and lifts us from within (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54; John 3:13). The manger is the main path, not a side road.

Athanasius believes that because the Word enters our story, history now moves toward life rather than emptiness (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 56; Revelation 21:5).

Even though it is deep theologically, On the Incarnation is easy to read. Athanasius writes in a clear, urgent, and caring way. This theology is not only for experts; it speaks to a Church trying to remember God during times of confusion and fear. That alone makes it worth reading.

But even more, this book gently changes how we see things. It moves past sentimental Christmas ideas and offers something stronger and more hopeful. God does not control humanity from a distance. Instead, God enters our weakness and heals it from the inside. That vision stays with you long after you finish reading.

For those seeking a Christmas book that is honest, challenging, and full of life, On the Incarnation stands out. It does not offer easy comfort. Instead, it presents a vision of a world upheld by the Word made flesh.

Healing Before Obedience: The True Path of Discipleship

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
Illustration of a therapy session at sunset, showing a gentle bearded therapist in a robe listening attentively to a person holding a cracked clay vessel glowing with soft light, symbolising healing and restoration.

There is a kind of spiritual exhaustion that settles into people who genuinely want to follow Jesus but can’t seem to make themselves “better”. They are not defiant. They are not lazy. They are not looking for loopholes. They are simply tired of carrying an inner world that feels frayed, reactive, anxious, or numb. Unfortunately, what they often receive from the Church is more “weight”.

Try harder. Pray more. Read your Bible. Stop doing that. Start doing this. Be disciplined. Be holy.

Those words can be true, as far as they go. But they can also be cruel when they are spoken to someone who is not yet safe in their own skin. We keep asking wounded people to behave like healed ones. We keep demanding fruit from branches that are still snapped at the core.

The tragedy is that we call this “discipleship”. However, Jesus rarely starts where we do. Instead, He begins with restoration. He begins with presence. He begins with the gentle work of putting a human being back together.

And only then, sometimes quietly, sometimes with clarity, other times with mystery that requires faith, He invites them into a new way of living.

Healing comes before obedience.

Not as a modern self-help slogan. Not as an excuse to ignore holiness. But as a thoroughly Christian ordering of grace, truth, and transformation.

The Order of the Gospel

When the Church reverses the order, people either become hypocrites or casualties.

Some learn to perform. They polish the outside. They memorise the right phrases, adopt the right posture, and keep the right habits. But the inner world remains untouched. Desire stays bent. Shame remains in control and untouched. Anxiety continues humming under the surface. They become “good” in public but brittle in private. Their faith becomes performative image management.

Others collapse. They try to obey, fail, repent, try again, fail again. Eventually, they decide they are broken beyond repair, that God must be disappointed, and that everyone else must be doing Christianity better than them. They’re exhausted. They adopt impostor syndrome. The spiritual life becomes a treadmill powered by fear. Neither of these outcomes resembles the peace of Christ.

The gospel is not God issuing demands from a distance. It isn’t behaviour management. The gospel is God drawing near. It is God’s life moving toward our death. God’s wholeness moving toward our fracture. God’s love entering the places where we have learned to survive and transforming us from the inside out.

The Christian story begins with the incarnation: God in flesh. God in weakness. God in the ordinary and the wounded. Before Jesus teaches a single sermon, he is already saying something with His presence: you do not have to climb your way up to me. I have come down into you. We tend to treat obedience and rules as the entry point into transformation (though we’d never admit it). However, Jesus treats God dwelling among us as the entry point into the Kingdom.

Jesus Heals First

If you read the Gospels with even a little attention, a pattern emerges. Jesus does not primarily meet people with a checklist. He meets them with a kind of attention that feels like warm sunlight on a winter morning.

He touches lepers. That alone is a theological act. The body that society calls untouchable becomes, in Jesus’ hands, a place of divine contact and healing. Before the man has a new life, he has a new experience of belonging. Before he changes, he is met. He restores a bent-over woman and calls her “daughter”, publicly naming her dignity. He does not begin with a lecture about her habits. He begins by working on the inside and then the outside. Christ sits at the table with sinners, not as a tactic, but as a declaration: my holiness is not contaminated by your mess, and my love is not withheld until you are clean. I am here.

Even when Jesus confronts behaviour, he often does so after re-establishing safety. Consider Peter. Peter fails loudly. He denies Jesus, not once, but repeatedly, and then collapses into shame. After the resurrection, Jesus does not begin with punishment. He begins with breakfast. A fire. Fish. Ordinary warmth. Then, and only then, he asks Peter the most restorative question imaginable: do you love me? Not “why did you do it?” Not “how could you?” But: do you still want me? Is the relationship still alive?

It is psychologically sophisticated and spiritually profound.

Jesus is not ignoring sin. He is going beneath it.

Because sin is rarely (if ever) just about behaviour. It is often the surface, or the fruit of something deeper: fear, pain, disintegration, misdirected desire, unmet longing, a nervous system stuck in survival. Behaviour is the fruit, brokenness, and the things that enslave us are the root.

Jesus treats the person, not just the symptom.

Why Obedience Fails Without Healing

We have to be honest about how humans work. God made us embodied. That means spiritual formation is not only about ideas or willpower. It involves the mind, the body, memory, attachment, desire, and the patterns our nervous system has learned for staying alive.

Trauma does not only happen when something terrible happens. Trauma also happens when something good should have happened and did not: safety, protection, nurture, comfort, stable love. The wounds of absence can shape a person as much as the wounds of violence.

When the inner world is formed under threat, the body learns to survive. It develops strategies: people-pleasing, controlling, numbing, avoiding, performing, disappearing, and exploding. These behaviours are never acted out in a vacuum. They are learned responses to pain, suffering, and brokenness.

If you tell a person like that to “just obey”, you might get compliance, but you will not get transformation. Compliance is fear dressed in religious clothes. It looks like holiness from a distance. Up close, it is often anxiety and depression.

In these cases, obedience does not heal. It intensifies the fracture.

This is where shame becomes especially dangerous. Shame is not simply “I did wrong”. Shame is “I am wrong”. It collapses the whole self into failure. It makes the soul hide. It makes vulnerability feel like a threat. It teaches people to lie, even to themselves, because telling the truth would feel like committing suicide. You can’t build a mature Christian life on shame. You can build a controlled community with it. You can build a performance culture. You can build a church that looks clean (but is dead inside). But you can’t build the kind of people Jesus makes: honest, free, humble, resilient, tender, brave.

Obedience without healing is not sanctification. It is behaviour management. It is pruning leaves while the roots rot.

Sin as fracture, not merely rule-breaking

This is one of the places where theology and psychology can actually hold hands, if we let them.

Sin is real. Scripture does not downplay it. But sin, in the biblical imagination, is not only the breaking of rules. It is disunion. It is misalignment. It is a turning inward that fractures our capacity for love. It is a distortion of desire. It is a bondage to the powers that dehumanise humanity and cause fear, shame, death, violence, and idolatry. When sin is understood only as legal guilt, the solution becomes a legal transaction. When sin is also understood as wound and bondage, the solution becomes healing and liberation. This is why the gospels feel like a rescue story, not a courtroom drama.

Jesus does not merely announce forgiveness. He casts out what oppresses. He heals what is broken. He restores people back into community. He re-humanises them. He makes them whole. Forgiveness is a doorway back into right relationship with God, the world and even yourself.

And it is in relationships where true healing happens.

If God’s goal is union, then God’s work will look like reconciliation, restoration, and integration. God does not just want “better behaviour”. God wants you back. God wants your heart unknotted. God wants your body to breathe again. God wants your desires to become truthful. God wants your life to be free enough to love.

This is not therapeutic Christianity. This is Christianity as it always was when it was at its best – salvation as becoming truly human.

What Obedience Looks Like After Healing

This is where some people get nervous. They hear “healing comes first” and assume it means “obedience does not matter”. It matters. But it matters as fruit, not as an entry fee.

There is a kind of obedience that is fundamentally self-protective. It obeys to avoid punishment, to maintain image, to manage anxiety, and to stay in control. It is often rigid. It struggles to be honest. It is terrified of ambiguity. It becomes harsh toward others because it is harsh toward itself. It’s bitter, judgmental, scared and closed off.

Yet there is another kind of obedience. It is both softer and stronger. It obeys because it trusts. It obeys because it has been loved. It obeys because desire has been sufficiently healed to want the good without being forced into it. This kind of obedience is not held onto; it is surrendered.

It is not performative. It is quiet. It is not obsessed with being seen as “right”. It is more concerned with being real. It is what love looks like when the soul is no longer defending itself.

This is why Jesus speaks so often about trees and fruit. Fruit grows when the conditions are right. It is not manufactured through pressure. You can tie fruit to branches with a string, but everyone can tell it is fake. Real fruit comes from life moving through the tree.

Union produces obedience the way sunlight produces growth. Not instantly. Not perfectly. But organically.

A Pastoral Reorientation

If healing comes before obedience, then a lot of our church instincts need to be re-examined. It means we should stop treating people as problems to be fixed and start seeing them as souls to be loved. It means we should be slower to correct and quicker to listen. It means we should create communities where confession is not a public execution but a doorway into mercy and change. It means we should stop confusing “high standards” with spiritual maturity. Many people can keep standards. Fewer people can become humble. Fewer still can become gentle. The Pharisees obeyed plenty of rules. Jesus still called them blind.

It also means we need to distinguish between conviction and condemnation.

Conviction is usually specific. It has clarity. It leads toward life. It can be painful, but it does not crush the self. Condemnation is vague. It is global. It tells you that you are the problem, that you are unworthy, that you will never change. One draws you into God. The other drives you away.

If your spirituality leaves you terrified, brittle, performative, and exhausted, there is a good chance you are obeying without healing. Or you are trying to heal yourself through obedience. And it will not work. It cannot work. That is not how grace works.

Grace is not God lowering the standard. Grace is God raising the dead to it. That includes the dead places in us. The numb places. The angry places. The frightened places. The places we learned to hide. Jesus does not stand at the door of those places shouting instructions; He enters them. Jesus sits there with the patience of God. He touches what is untouchable, and He speaks to what has been silenced.

He stays.

And from that staying – slowly, obedience begins to make sense again. Not as a threat. Not as a way to earn belonging. But as a response to love.

A Contemplative Closing

There is a gentleness in God that we often mistake for permissiveness. It is not permissiveness. It is wisdom. God knows that fear cannot heal fear. God knows that shame cannot heal shame. God knows that woundedness cannot be commanded into wholeness. So God comes near. He heals. He restores, and He puts the pieces back together.

And then, like a path appearing under your feet, a new way of living opens. Not because you finally became strong enough. But because you were met by a person strong enough to hold you and see you while you learned how to walk again.

If you are tired, if you feel stuck, if obedience feels like grinding your teeth in the dark, consider this: maybe the invitation in front of you is not “try harder”. Maybe it is “come closer”. Maybe the next faithful step is not another vow of effort, but a quiet act of consent.

“Lord, heal what is beneath my habits.

Lord, meet me where I am fractured.

Lord, restore the parts of me that have been surviving.

And let obedience be fruit, in season, from a life finally learning how to breathe.”

Amen

Recovering the Lost Books: Why Protestants Need the Deuterocanon Again

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Why don’t we (Protestants) read the apocrypha? The first Christians read Scripture with wider eyes. Their Bibles included books like Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees. These books shaped their imagination, their theology, and their understanding of God.

Modern scholarship confirms this (N T Wright, Larry Hurtado, Lee McDonald). Jesus and the apostles inherited a Greek Jewish Bible that included these writings. In other words, the world of the New Testament is Deuterocanonical.

A Lost Inheritance

During the Reformation, these books were not removed because they were unspiritual or unorthodox. They were moved aside for practical and historical reasons, not theological ones (see Alister McGrath, Bruce Metzger). The Reformers wanted to emphasise Hebrew manuscripts and guard against medieval excess, but in doing so they quietly set aside a treasured part of the early Christian imagination.

The result was a thinner canon. Not heresy-free, but texture-free. A loss of the voices that shaped the spiritual air that Jesus and the early Church breathed.

What These Books Give Us

The Deuterocanon does not contradict Scripture. It enriches it. And the New Testament writers show they knew these books intimately.

1. A wider imagination of divine mercy

The Deuterocanon constantly describes God as patient, restorative, and willing to heal what is broken. Wisdom 11 – 12 speaks of God whose judgment is measured by compassion. Sirach 2 and 17 emphasise mercy that endures and seeks the sinner. Baruch 4 – 5 offers hope of restoration for the scattered.

This is the same tone we hear in the New Testament. Paul’s language of God’s patience in Romans 2 resonates with Wisdom 12. James 1 echoes Sirach 2 almost line for line. Jesus’ teaching on generous mercy mirrors the moral vision of Sirach and Wisdom (see Ben Witherington, Richard Bauckham). Readers who know the Deuterocanon recognise these currents immediately. Those who do not simply sense beauty.

2. A deeper sense of spiritual formation

Sirach in particular reads like the spiritual director of ancient Israel. Its wisdom shaped the early Church fathers (see Athanasius, Augustine, Basil).

Its themes echo throughout the New Testament:
Jesus’ teaching on humility in Luke 14 echoes Sirach 3. The Lord’s Prayer resembles Tobit 13 and Sirach 28.
James’ emphasis on speech discipline mirrors Sirach 19 and 28, and
modern scholars note that James may be the most Deuterocanonical letter in the New Testament (see Richard Bauckham, Luke Timothy Johnson).

3. A vision of suffering that prepares the soul

Four Maccabees shaped the early Christian understanding of martyrdom (see Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus).

Its themes appear in:
Hebrews 11 where the Maccabean martyrs are referenced directly.
Hebrews 2 where the suffering of Christ mirrors the noble endurance central to Maccabean theology and
Revelation’s language of faithful witness through death. Wisdom 3 describes the righteous shining like sparks among stubble. Jesus uses the same imagery in Matthew 13. This is not a coincidence. It is continuity.

4. A sacramental view of creation

The Deuterocanon carries a world where God speaks through the ordinary. Tobit reveals divine guidance in family life. Judith portrays courage as sacrament.

Wisdom 7 paints a breathtaking vision of divine presence infused in creation, a passage that influenced early Christian theology of the Logos (see Justin Martyr, Irenaeus). When John opens his Gospel with the Logos who enlightens everyone, he is standing on the shoulders of Wisdom literature, especially Wisdom of Solomon.

5. A bridge between the Old and the New

The Deuterocanon does not stand apart from the biblical story. It is the bridge between the Testaments. Some examples where the New Testament expressly draws on these books:

Direct Echoes

Hebrews 1 draws heavily from Wisdom 7, describing Christ as the radiance of divine glory.
Romans 1 mirrors Wisdom 13 to 14 in its analysis of idolatry.
Ephesians 6 echoes Wisdom 5 in speaking of divine armour. Matthew 27’s mocking of Jesus recalls Wisdom 2 and its portrait of the righteous sufferer.

Thematic Echoes

Jesus’ parables of divine patience mirror Wisdom 12. Paul’s theology of immortality aligns closely with Wisdom 3.
James’ ethical teaching parallels Sirach everywhere. Revelation’s vision of the righteous shining comes from Wisdom 3. Scholars widely note that New Testament authors quote or allude to the Deuterocanon more often than to many books in the Protestant Old Testament (see Craig Evans, David deSilva).
Without these texts, the New Testament stands true, but strangely suspended. With them, it stands grounded and alive.

Why Protestants Need This Today

Reading the Deuterocanon does not mean abandoning Protestant convictions. It means recovering the breadth of the early Christian mind.

These books deepen:
our vision of divine mercy our understanding of justice as restoration
our sense of the spiritual life as a long obedience
our view of creation as a place where God moves
our ability to understand the New Testament’s theology. When Christians rediscover these books, their faith grows more ancient and more alive. Their picture of God widens. Their hope deepens. Their spirituality becomes more rooted in the world that formed Jesus and the apostles. Not because these books overwrite Scripture, but because they illuminate it. They give back to the Bible its original texture.

A Closing Thought

I am not arguing for a new canon. I am inviting us to remember the older one. The one that shaped the earliest believers. The one Jesus’ world knew. The one the apostles assumed. The one the Church prayed with for centuries.

The Deuterocanon reminds us that God’s story has always been wider than our traditions. That divine mercy is deeper than we imagine. That judgment aims at healing. And that the hope of God stretches further than we often dare to believe.

Sometimes recovering lost books is less about changing doctrine and more about expanding the heart.