Who Is Jesus Anyway?
A few thoughts on faith, the wall, and a Jesus closer than I expected.
2 min read
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit down with Chad Beck for his podcast, The Real Jesus Experience. We talked about a lot of things, but mostly about the realities of walking with Jesus over a long period of time and how that often comes with a run-in with the wall.
If you're not familiar with what that is, I wasn't either. It's that stage in the faith journey where the version of God you've been carrying starts to come apart, and you either keep pretending it's fine or you actually let it. I let it.
I hit that wall a few years back and I've been somewhere in the middle of it ever since. I wrote about what got me there here, so if you're curious about that part of the story, give it a read.
What I didn't expect on the other side was how quiet my faith would feel. The volume got turned down on all the certainty I used to carry around. I used to think faith was about having a good answer for everything. Now I think it's mostly about being okay when you don't.
There's a comfort in that I'm still getting used to.
Toward the end of our conversation, I told Chad something I've been sitting with for a while. That I think I'm still figuring out who the real Jesus actually is, which is partly why getting invited onto a podcast called The Real Jesus Experience felt a little divine.
To be clear, the Jesus I grew up hearing about wasn't wrong exactly, but He was a heck of a lot smaller than the one I keep bumping into now. He seems less tidy these days, and a whole lot more interested in showing me how close He actually is to my humanity.
Maybe that's the whole point of the journey. Maybe the wall isn't something you get past so much as something that quietly rearranges what you thought you were looking for. I don't know. I'm still in it. Which is sort of what I told Chad, and sort of what the show is about.
Chad is the real deal and he asked the kind of questions that made me actually think instead of just perform an answer. If any of this resonates, give the episode a listen.