When the Gospel isn’t Good News

Sunday, October 25, 2020.

I stumbled into a blog post written in February 2020 by Emily Hedrick where she remembers some episodes of her early childhood. She writes:

It was such a strange suggestion: I did bad things and therefore I couldn’t go to heaven unless I believed God’s son died for me. I knew about Jesus. I’d been in Sunday school since I was a toddler. I liked Jesus. I didn’t realize I had to use him to get to heaven. I just wanted him to be my friend. But I knew I did bad things sometimes as I was trying to figure out how the world worked.

But the underlying message, There’s something wrong with you. Do what I say and it will be okay, and my response to it, I have questions, but this seems like the most risk-free option, provided the foundation for trauma later on.

The graceful forgiveness of God cannot stick with a story that starts by informing us of our wretchedness. Shame and hell will win every time.

Yet another case of exvangelical.