Why I Stayed a Christian When I Could Have Walked Away

I think I think about random things more often than most. I spend time wondering why more Jews aren’t seeking out, rushing to, or persuading others toward Christianity. Not out of judgment, but curiosity.

My answer usually comes down to, for the same reason I’m not running toward any other religion — I was born into this one.

I don’t know, or presume to know, the story of every Jewish person. But I often try to unravel how you can possibly hear about a story of a man who rose from the dead, and say, “Eh, nah.”

Even when His stories and “the” story do, kind of, reflect the words of my holy book… I bypass it.

I’m not condemning them, because I get it. Deconstruction is a scary thing. But, it’s also a good thing.

Deconstruction, in religion, refers to a process where individuals critically examine, re-evaluate, and sometimes reject previously held beliefs, doctrines, and practices associated with their religious upbringing.

For example, a woman grows up being taught that wearing pants is sinful for women, based on strict Biblical interpretations of modesty. As she gets older, she starts to question why that belief exists. She studies scripture herself, explores the cultural context, and realizes that modesty isn’t about pants, it’s about your heart and intentions. She decides that wearing pants isn’t sinful and continues to follow Christ, just without that particular rule.

That’s small-scale deconstruction — good and healthy.

There’s also big-scale deconstruction.

A man is raised to believe in penal substitutionary atonement (rarely those exact words are used, but you’ll get what I’m talking about) — the idea that Jesus died to take the punishment God would have given us as sinners, thus satisfying God’s wrath. As he matures, he begins to struggle with the concept: Why would a loving God require violent punishment to forgive? Why couldn’t God just forgive without blood?

He starts reading theology outside his tradition — books that challenge the necessity of wrath or substitution altogether. The more he questions, the more the cross feels like divine abuse instead of divine love. No one in his church has answers beyond, “That’s just the gospel.”

Eventually, the cross — the core of his faith—feels repulsive, not redemptive. Without a Christian framework to rebuild on, he starts to question not just doctrine but the nature of God. That leads him to step away from Christianity entirely.

Scary.

Especially scary when oftentimes our churches don’t put into place the teaching that leads to understanding the tenets of our faith in a way that makes sense for most without a theological degree.

It’s not just about Jews and Christianity. It’s about what happens when any of us start to question what we were taught — and what holds us when the answers feel insufficient.

We often praise Muslims and Jews for the way they indoctrinate children and converts, even Catholics are very serious about teaching “in the way that they should go.”

But, as we get older, it’s important to remember how much of our faith is “ours.” We can be born into something, learn the things, question the ways, understand the truths, but at the end of the day, we have to have an encounter that makes our faith real, we have to believe what we believe through something that is not inherited, but lived.

My road to Damascus event was my divorce. Not because I didn’t believe before and it led to conversion, but because it forced me to see the Light in a new way. It was an instance that should have led me to lose my faith, but it didn’t.

I was reading Mark the other day, and considered how amazing it is that I don’t have to travel to see Jesus like they had to do when he was alive. I considered who I would’ve been if I lived back then and jotted down notes for another potential blog asking us to imagine if we would’ve made those treks to see Him, if we would’ve shrugged Him off, if we would’ve been a Roman and whether we would’ve turned our head in his direction or not, or if we were a Samaritan would we have seen that He wasn’t like the rest of them, or if we were a Pharisee or a Sadducee if we would have listened attently or if we would have been on the Board of Trustees plotting to crucify Him because He was going against our grain.

Maybe I will write that, or maybe this will turn into that, but the thought ended with how grateful I am to know the end of the story. To know that He was telling the truth, and He did die for my sins, and He did rise.

But that’s not enough.

What’s becoming enough is knowing that I believe that, and when I am going through the most trying part of my life to date (and hopefully the most trying part period 🫠), I am assured that my faith is worth holding on to. That Jesus can, and has, and will offer me a path that says what I’m in right now is not the end, what I’m facing right now is not what finishes this story, what I need has already been planned.

I have been created by a God who knew all the wrong things would happen and made a way for them to be right. He even knew to place me on this Earth at this time because I’m certain He knew I wouldn’t have done well with slaying the lambs, and cutting the birds, and not eating the pork and the shrimp. I think He knew I’d look at Jesus and say that’s a bunch of hoopla. The way we’ve been doing things is the way it should be done, and what even are these parables, they aren’t even structurally sensible — how’s anyone even grasping what He’s saying? He knew that maybe once I’d walk to one of those secluded places, not one of the times He fed the people (that would keep me coming back), and when I leave say, “Chile my feet hurt, I’m not doing that again to hear some, ‘turn the other cheek’ mess.”

He knew I needed a Savior with some historical references and written accounts, and most of all, personal confirmation.

I didn’t need to walk to see Him. He knew, I needed Him to be here with me.

I said I’d never marry a pastor, and I thought I meant it. I’d heard too many stories of that gone wrong. When I did and when it went wrong for me, that could’ve been the end of my belief. I knew it, I was right, God is wrong, the end.

No.

My hurt caused me to lean closer. Not without doubt, and questions, and a lot of wrestling, but much, much more trust. Trust that “all things work together for the good of them who love God and who are called according to His purpose.” His purpose is good, and I’ve seen it unfold time and time again in my life.

I have more examples I can point to, like my son being healed, landing the most aligned job right after my Masters, having trepidations about my second son and knowing now he’s exactly the affectionate kid I needed, the way things fall into place at the right time — rather than the time I need it to. I have confidence.

Not the confidence of this is my grandma’s Jesus and I knew grandma knew Him. The confidence of this is MY Savior, I believe the story but more than that I know His works. I am His works.

Some are still waiting for a Savior. I’m grateful mine finds me where I am.