Leaving (and Finding) Jesus

When the God you knew isn’t the God you need

By Jason Clark

“I am leaving Jesus,” she said threateningly—as if she were contemplating self-harm.

I was talking on the phone to a brilliant, highly driven and accomplished friend. These were nearly the first words she spoke at the beginning of a two-hour conversation in which she railed at God for her traumatic circumstances, deep sorrows, devastating experiences and vast disappointments.

She was in incredible emotional pain—a drowning, terrified woman thrashing about for something solid to grab hold of, to save her; something good, something she could trust, something better than the cruel, indifferent and punishing God toward whom she felt such anger and fear—the God she assumed had caused her pain.

My friend had been a Christian for 20 years but was devastated by disappointment and loss. She was ready to “leave Jesus.”

I listened.

I have been in many such conversations over the years. In these moments, I’ve learned it’s not my role to fix things. Rather, much like the Emmaus road Stranger, I’m there to walk beside the hurting, confused and angry person with compassion, hope and love.

“Holy Spirit, guide my heart and thoughts with Your affection,” I prayed quietly, and I listened.

In my 40-plus years of walking with Jesus, I’ve learned plenty of life-changing principles I could’ve passed along—good and wise words. But when someone is drowning in existential crisis, I’ve learned that wise words won’t save them. Only love, faithfully revealed, can meet that kind of desperation.

I’ve also learned that love is the long game; love always wins. Love saves, heals, transforms, restores and reconciles. Love is like the farmer’s seed; if you sow it faithfully, it will transform the soil.

After nearly an hour and 20 minutes, she came full circle. Like a lawyer, defending her systematic theological certainties, she laid out the damning evidence that supported her case. She began her closing arguments by repeating her opening thesis.

Still flailing but exhausted, she stated again, “I am leaving Jesus.”

There was a desperate pause, a last hope that I could somehow talk her out of it, that I could direct her to some road she hadn’t already traveled, give her something to do she hadn’t already done, present some thought she hadn’t already exhausted, some principle she hadn’t already worked to its hopeless conclusion, some law she hadn’t already applied to its dead end.

“I am leaving Jesus.” The statement hung in the air like sadness; the threat was real.

And in that vulnerable, sacred moment, I responded. “I think you should.”

“What!” fear tinged her voice.

“The Jesus you have described to me for the last hour or so?” I replied calmly, “I think you should leave Him.”

“What are you saying?” she asked, almost angrily.

I replied, “The Jesus who is obsessed with your behavior and counts your sins against you? The cruel and punishing Jesus who turns His back on you in your moment of need, the Jesus you have described to me for more than an hour? He’s killing you. I think you should leave Him.”

She was quiet for a moment, then she asked again, but this time I sensed a sincere openness and perceived that we’d entered a pivotal moment—not just for the conversation but also for her future.

“What are you saying to me?” She asked sincerely.

“I’m saying the cruel and punishing Jesus you have been describing to me for more than an hour? I left Him long ago, and I think you should too; I think you should repent.”

That shifted our conversation. For the next half an hour, we talked about what some folks refer to these days as deconstruction, rethinking or reimagining. These are all good words, but Jesus would have likely used the word metanoia.

“Repent,” He’d say, “For Greater Love is at hand ... Indeed, the reconciling love of God is burning within you!”

Repent. The Greek is metanoia, a transformative change of heart. The most common translation is “to turn” or “return.” It’s about changing how we think until we are aligned with how greater love thinks—it’s both a deconstruction and reconstruction all in one.

Unfortunately, most of us church kids were fearfully raised under the abusive, punishing hypocrisy of a good and loving God with a cruel and punishing streak. So, when we hear, “Repent,” we automatically hear, “Do better, try harder, for God’s sake! Because the wages of sin are death ... and the hounds of hell are hungry!”

My friend was no different. She had spent a lifetime interpreting “repent” to mean, “Stop being a worthless sinner, try harder!” She had spent 20 years striving down the road reflected in the rich young ruler’s question, “What am I still lacking?”

“All I do is repent!” she yelled in frustrated agony.

And I knew her pain and frustration. I, too, have slaved under the punishing belief that repenting was about counting sins and trying harder.

When Paul writes, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), he’s not talking about trying harder. The rest of the passage reads, “… but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The focus of the verse is not on the problem. It’s on the fact the solution has already been given to us. “For God so loved that He gave ...” And this eternal life is a gift; it can’t be earned and has nothing to do with deserving—freely we have received it.

Eternal life—the abundant, ever-present, measureless, transforming, reconciling love of God, burns within us here and now!

I am a passionate student of repenting, my whole life a study of discovering Christ within me. You see, every good and beautiful transformation in my life has occurred because I’ve aligned with kindness (whereas I once believed God punishing) because I’ve aligned with reconciliation (whereas once I participated in separation and retribution).

I’ve discovered that repenting is about mirroring a love that is patient, kind and keeps no record of wrong—a Love who saves, heals, transforms, restores and reconciles.

The 17th-century poet-painter William Blake put it this way: “We become what we behold.” The apostle Paul similarly wrote, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

To repent is to behold reconciling love when we look in the mirror.

Likewise, the extent to which we view God as a punisher is the extent to which the reflection in the mirror is distorted—and therefore, the extent to which we strive down that cruel, try-harder, sin-counting, delusional road of lack.

“What if God is love, and love isn’t cruel and doesn’t punish?” I asked my “leaving Jesus” friend. “What if, at the cross, Jesus didn’t count our sins against us? Instead, He forgave and reconciled. I mean, that’s how Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5:19.”

I made these suggestions, and a few more, to my deconstructing friend.

“When we have a thought about God that isn’t as good as the truth Jesus reveals, we can change the way we think about God—that’s what it means to repent.”

I continued, “If God is love, and we are made in His image, then that Greek word for sin, harmatia, which means “to miss the mark,” is not about trying harder. Missing the mark simply reveals our delusional state—how we perceive the nature of God poorly and thus forget who we truly are.

“I am not suggesting you try harder; I am inviting you to leave your cruel and punishing ‘try harder’ beliefs about God and yourself. I’m inviting you to leave your transactional certainties and awaken to relational trust. I’m inviting you to engage in a friendship with the truth that sets you free.”

Then, I reminded her it was the kindness of God that led her to repent in the first place, the goodness of reconciling love that first encouraged her to rethink, reimagine and deconstruct.

It was not fear of separation and punishment but the kindness of God that transformed her.

For the rest of the conversation with my deconstructing friend, and in every conversation since, we’ve rediscovered the foundation of her faith. Greater love is her reconciling certainty, the truth that sets her free. It is the rock upon which she can construct her faith, and we talk about this life-transforming, joy-inducing, world-changing truth.

We revel in our growing confidence that absolutely nothing—not life, death, powers or principalities, present, future, not time itself, not our understanding, beliefs, systems or actions—nothing separates us from the reconciling love of God.

And she recognized this as truth when she heard it. Why? Because God is love, and we are His beloved; because God is a Father, and we are His kids; because God is a friend, and we are His besties; because you recognize truth as you are being set free.

My friend knows what love is. Her heart burns with the revelation, and so does yours. There’s a burning hunger within us to grow sure in kindness, to know and become reconciled in love. You can deny and reject it, but your rejection doesn’t change the nature of love. He will never leave you; surely goodness and kindness will walk beside you all the days of your life ... and forever after.

Jason Clark is a relational theologian—a storyteller who writes to reveal the transforming kindness of the love of God. He has authored several books, including Leaving and Finding Jesus (from which this article is adapted) and God Is (Not) in Control. He is the lead communicator at A Family Story and host of Rethinking God with Tacos Podcast. He and his wife, Karen, live in North Carolina with their four children, Madeleine, Joseph, Ethan and Eva.