One of the most honest things Jared Byas said in my interview with him was that apologetics had become, for him, a way of trying to control by understanding.
That landed with me immediately.
Not because apologetics is wrong. It has its place. But because that sentence names a temptation that is much bigger than apologetics. It names something in religion itself. We do not only seek truth because we love truth. Sometimes we seek systems because we are afraid of uncertainty. Sometimes we build arguments, categories, guardrails, and citadels not only to honor God, but to protect ourselves from mystery.
I know something about that instinct.
There is a kind of faith that wants everything settled. It wants the boxes labeled, the boundaries defined, the correct positions established, and the dangerous questions fenced off before they can do damage. It wants a system that can be defended, maintained, and handed down intact. It wants certainty not only because certainty feels strong, but because certainty feels safe.
And yet life has a way of exposing the limits of that project.
That is part of what I heard in Jared’s story. He moved through charismatic influence, Southern Baptist structure, Presbyterian intellectualism, Liberty University, seminary, apologetics, pastoring, and then into the work of making biblical scholarship accessible to ordinary people through The Bible for Normal People. Along the way, he found that the project of building an airtight conceptual structure became less and less satisfying, while the Bible itself—its complexity, humanity, tension, and lived force—became more alive.
But what struck me most was not simply his critique of certainty. It was where the conversation led after that.
Because the real question is not whether we can dismantle an old edifice. The real question is: what is the sign of the real thing?
For me, that question has been central for a long time.
Years ago, as I recount in The Hardness of the Heart, in Chapter 9, “Just Like Starting Over,” I found myself in Estonia preaching a sermon that brought me back to first principles. The subject was Jesus return - the Son of Man Coming in His Glory - in Matthew 25. The Sheep and the Goats. It captured more than a moment. It captured a crisis. There comes a point when the structures you inherited or helped maintain no longer feel self-authenticating. You cannot keep moving forward by momentum alone. You have to ask again: What is this? What are we doing? Both the Sheep and the Goats struggled to see where Christ actually was, but somehow the Sheep had made the right decision in spite of that.
For me, one of the keys was John 13:35:
“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.”
I had read that verse many times before. I had preached around it. I had heard it quoted. But at some point it stopped being a nice supporting verse and became the central test.
Not, Do you have the cleanest doctrinal system?
Not, Can you define every boundary correctly?
Not, Can you prove you are not like those other Christians?
But: Will an outside observer see love?
That changes things.
Jesus did not say, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you can defend the faith better than everyone else.” He did not say, “if you maintain institutional purity,” or “if you preserve the right tribal markers,” or even “if you interpret every difficult text flawlessly.”
He said love.
And not a private feeling. Not a slogan. Not love in the sense of merely preferring the people already inside your circle. He was talking about something visible, recognizable, embodied. Something that would be evident even to a third party who did not share the theology.
That was one of the turning keys for me in my own experience. It was not the only key, but it was a major one. I had to begin asking whether the communities I knew—including the one I had served—were really producing the sign Jesus gave. And if they were not, then whatever else they were doing right, something central was wrong.
That is one reason Jared’s emphasis resonated with me so strongly.
He framed some of this in terms of practice rather than mere concept. He talked about how, in some traditions, the real point of unity is not first that everyone gets every intellectual conclusion lined up exactly the same way, but that people learn how to show up together. How to live together. How to bear with each other. How to remain in communion even amid disagreement. That is not anti-intellectual. It is incarnational. It puts flesh on conviction.
I think he is right about that.
Because one of the great dangers in religious life is that concepts can become idols. We form them because we have to. Language itself is conceptual. Doctrine is unavoidable. Theology matters. But once our concept of truth becomes more important than the reality it was meant to serve, we are in trouble. Once our idea of God becomes more important than the love of God working itself out among actual human beings, we are in trouble. Once our defense of Christianity becomes harsh, fearful, brittle, or tribal, we may still have a structure, but we are losing the sign.
This is where Jared’s opening confession about control matters so much. The need to control by understanding does not usually present itself as arrogance. Often it presents itself as seriousness. As fidelity. As zeal. As concern for truth. And again, some of that concern is good. But if the fruit of it is a community better at drawing lines than at showing love, then the system is not serving Christ the way it thinks it is.
That was part of my own reckoning.
In my earlier years, I lived much closer to the assumption that if we could just get the theology right, the rest would follow. But lived experience kept interrupting that assumption. Divorce, division, schism, family fracture, church fracture, the long human wake of being right in theory and wrong in practice—these things force the question. At least they forced it for me.
And that is one reason I now view things through the lens of Oneness and Unity as a prime directive.
I do not mean by that some cheap ecumenism where differences no longer matter. Nor do I mean a sentimental refusal to judge anything. I mean that if God is one, and if humanity is created in His image, and if Christ gave love as the visible sign of discipleship, then unity is not a side project. It is not a decorative ideal we mention when convenient. It is near the center of the whole thing.
Unity does not mean sameness.
Unity does not mean no boundaries.
Unity does not mean no truth claims.
But it does mean that truth must serve communion rather than merely tribal distinction. It does mean that our systems should make the Church more coherent, not more fractured. More attractive, not more repellent. More central to human healing, not more peripheral to it.
That is where I think Jared’s work is important.
He is not simply trying to unsettle people for the thrill of unsettling them. He is trying to open space for honest engagement with scripture, tradition, and faith, especially for people whose inherited answers no longer hold. That work can look threatening to those who think the safety of the Church lies in freezing every question. But I do not think that is where the future lies.
At the same time, and this is important, there is a danger on the other side too.
Deconstruction is not a home.
Jared himself put this well when he warned that many people are now defining their faith by what they no longer believe. That may be understandable for a season. Sometimes pruning is necessary. Sometimes disentangling is necessary. Sometimes the old structure really has become so warped that parts of it need to come down.
But if all we do is tear down, we have not yet done the work.
The goal is not to make the Church less central. It is to make it more coherent, more attractive, and more genuinely Christian. The goal is not to leave people in fragments. It is to help them rebuild around what is living, what is true, what bears the sign Christ actually gave.
That is why I do not hear this kind of work, at its best, as an attack on the Church. I hear it as an effort—still messy, still incomplete, still human—to clear away what obscures the Church’s true witness.
And that witness, if Jesus is to be believed, is not certainty alone.
It is love.
Not abstract love.
Not tribal love.
Not self-congratulatory love.
But the kind of love that can be seen.
That is the test I came back to in Estonia. It is the test I still come back to now. And it is one of the reasons my conversation with Jared Byas mattered to me as much as it did. He helped articulate, from his own path, why so many people are no longer satisfied with systems that can explain everything and heal very little.
If we are going to build, rebuild, or repair anything worth handing on, it will not be enough to ask whether the edifice is defensible.
We will also have to ask whether it is lovable.
Whether it produces love.
Whether, standing outside it, a stranger could recognize the Master by the life of His people.
Sneak Peek: What’s Coming Next on Created in the Image of God
Because these conversations are never isolated, but part of a larger search for truth, healing, and the recovery of our shared humanity, I want to close with a quick look at what’s coming next.
On Sunday, September 13 at 7:00 a.m. US Central time, I’ll be joined by Mark and Jill Savage—authors, speakers, and marriage coaches. They’ll share how a crisis that nearly ended their marriage became a journey toward healing, forgiveness, and restoration. From rebuilding trust after brokenness to the hard-won lessons that can help couples build stronger, healthier relationships, it promises to be a deeply human conversation.
Then on Tuesday, September 15 at 8:00 p.m. Central time, I’ll be speaking with Candace Lynn Tomayko—author of high fantasy and nonfiction on spirituality and emotional healing. We’ll explore the intersection of storytelling, spirituality, and inner transformation through worlds shaped by conflict, mysticism, power, and awakening. From otherworldly battles and questions of justice to the deeper realities that shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us, it should be a rich and imaginative discussion.
If this conversation with Jared Byas stirred something in you—about faith, love, interpretation, unity, or the difference between defending the Church and helping it become more fully itself—I think these next two conversations will carry that search forward in meaningful ways.
I hope you’ll join me.
