Over the last few years, I have been in a perpetual identity crisis. In ministry, it seems that there is always this unspoken alliance to some sort of denomination or theology. My problem is that I  am dissatisfied with and disagree with every viewpoint- including my own.

I was listening to a radio broadcast earlier today where a Christian thinker/speaker said simply "deconstruction happens". Why yes, yes it does. Especially in the Church and especially regarding the life of Christ. But should it?

Has anyone else noticed that sects of Christian thought tend to focus on specific aspects of Jesus' life? Instead of following Christ in His entirety, we like to boil Jesus down to specific principles or moments in his life.

• Inception- I'm not implying that Jesus was part of the multimillion dollar film, but simply stating that some people dwell on the role of the divine truth- the logos nature of Christ and His place in Creation. The goal is the find God in creation, to find the divine in everything, and to recognize the interconnectedness of everyone. Fantastic, but if put all your focus here you end up with a relativistic faith where the truth was never revealed or you end up dwelling on a broken world where God is simply an abstract that created the world and then left it destroy itself. If you solely focus on Jesus as images of God in the Hebrew scripture, you are left waiting for a Messiah who has yet to arrive.

• Incarnation- Others focus solely on the incarnation and incarnational ministry. They emphasis that Jesus came and lived as a man. During his life on earth, he healed the sick, fed the hungry, spent time with the lowest members of society, and so on and so forth. To follow Christ is to replicate his material life; if we live a life of social justice, we are replicating his life on earth. True. Yet, if we dwell here, we neglect to see that Jesus came to redeem much more than just the material. If we only focus on this, there is no need for atonement and there is no hope of eternal salvation.

• Crucifixion-   Some people spend their entire Christian lives praying to  a bloody Christ, dying on the cross. Yes, we need to recognize His sacrifice for us. Yes, we need to remember that the sinless Jesus gave himself as an offering of atonement for our sins so that we can be reconciled to God. However, if we only focus on the blood dripping from His wounds, we neglect to celebrate the fact that He is Risen. He is no longer dead, He no longer rests on the Cross, and the hope of the Gospel is knowing that Christ is alive and working amongst us. 

• Resurrection-  Similarly, there are evangelicals who celebrate daily the Risen Christ, but forget to acknowledge that Jesus ascended into Heaven and bestowed His Holy Spirit on the Church to spread the good news. These Christians spend their lives singing praise, but never invite anyone else to do the same or perhaps they have never seen the gifts/fruits of the Spirit working through their lives.

• Ascension/Empowering of the Church- On the other hand,  some churches focus solely on the fact that Jesus ascended and that the Holy Spirit filled believers with power so that the Church could share the Gospel and advance the Kingdom through signs and wonders. All of which is true, but an over emphasis on spiritual gifts can sometimes lead overlooking the other aspects of the Gospel like the incarnational ministry of social justice, or the fact that Christ's atoning act on the cross was enough, or the fact that God is diverse and expressed through many ways- not just charismatic gifts. 

• Return. - The last group I want to mention is those who are obsessed with the End of Times. Yes, Jesus is coming again and He will return and restore the Earth. BUT, it is important to remember that we are called to help bring Heaven to Earth now. The reconciliation and the restoration of the Gospel is for the present time as well.  We will never truly understand the End of Times, so we must do our best to live our lives in a way that glorifies God in the here and now.