My husband and I are currently watching the second season of Fallout. Have you seen it? The premise is intriguing; an American post-apocalyptic drama is set two hundred years after the Great War of 2077, in which society has collapsed following a nuclear holocaust. Lucy Maclean, a main character, has grown up in Vault 33, an underground fallout shelter, and we’re taken on her journey out of the vaults and through the nuclear wasteland that America has become as she searches for her father. Her father, Hank Maclean, was the former overseer of Vault 33. He was a good father to her, and she had idolized him. She was a good person, with good morals, always trying to do the right thing as she had been taught growing up. Then, after her father is kidnapped from the vaults, she begins her journey to find him and, along the way, discovers his secrets surrounding Vault 33. “Lucy’s quest to find and stop her father, Hank MacLean, who is busy carrying out horrific mind-control experiments in a laboratory in New Vegas, drives her journey…”

“Growing up in Vault 33, Lucy lived a relatively happy, carefree and privileged lifestyle. However, she contributed to the maintenance and wellbeing of her Vault and community whenever she could…Private time with her family was spent watching movies or gardening with her father, or engaging in family book club discussions with her father…Lucy was raised with little to no knowledge about the outside world except for what she had seen in books (like War and Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front) and films or been taught by her father.” (fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Lucy_MacLean)

As I’ve watched this series, I’ve been struck by how much it mirrors my own experience, specifically in church culture. The dynamics between Hank and Lucy are apparent as viewers of the show, but Hank has had another agenda, more information (unbeknownst to Lucy), and a position of authority over her and all of Vault 33. She’s been living and operating under an ideology and conviction given to her by her father, which he himself does not operate under, ascribe to, or believe applies to him. This, of course, is devastating and disorienting for her as she seeks to navigate this new world while still maintaining her integrity and a strongly held sense of morality and ethics.

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I ran into an old church friend a couple of months ago. I was glad to see her, and she was eager to have a conversation about church, which surprised me, since I had reached out to her several times over the last couple of years with limited reciprocation. At the beginning of our conversation, she said a curious thing that I hadn’t heard in a while, and that was the term: theological differences. She said, regarding Pastor 1, that she knew we had “theological differences” with him. In that moment, I didn’t give any push-back because I was reminded of the letter Elder 1 had sent to the Presbytery regarding my husband and me withdrawing our membership (not the same one he had sent to us, mind you). In it, he said we were withdrawing our membership because of “theological differences.” Wrong. Wrong.

Using crafty phrasing under the guise of “spiritual” language is manipulative when your intent is to shut down a concern or argument, instead of dealing with the issue. Then spreading that narrative to those under your “spiritual authority” so others think and do the same is a form of control. It’s an effective strategy, but not a Christlike one.

I felt like she was regurgitating a talking point I’d heard a couple of times over the last few years from others associated with this church. I knew the term had come from them. It was an easy way to shut down the conversation without much pushback, since people leave churches all the time over theological differences. But that’s not what this was. That wasn’t the reason we left.

How can a basic tenet of a whole belief system, the Gospel and who Jesus is, being the foundation of Christianity, be considered a theological difference? I would love to know. This was not an issue of cessationism vs. continuationism, credo or paedo-baptism, or any other secondary issue that creates division and separates denominations; this is the most important, first-tier issue that all people who claim to be Christians must believe, or you’re not a Christian. You must believe the Gospel and in the Jesus of the Bible to be a Christian.

That’s what I believe. I believe in the Gospel, and I believe in the true Jesus, not only written about in the Bible, but that I know personally to be my savior. I know him. He knows me. He saved me. And for so many years, I thought this church culture, its milieu, was how the Bible transcribed a way to live. I’ve only found out in these last few years that much of the culture, the morality, the ethics in these spaces has nothing to do with the Gospel, who Jesus is, or the Bible. But it’s a way to maintain order and authority over people.

There are (at least) three different things at play here. First, those who want to live this way based on morality, not based on a belief and faith in Jesus, but in an ideology that obtains an ideal: for life, for society, for behavior, for control. Second, those who have to live this way under a moral law because that’s all they’ve known and how they’ve been raised, and they don’t have the ability (or agency) to live a different way outside of the system. Third, those who believe the Gospel, maintained through a relationship with Jesus, in which your life is lived out of that relationship, and your desire in all you do is to honor God.

These three belief systems are in conflict. You can live out each of these belief systems without the others coming into play. But in the American church (and culture), we have conflated these three things, and it’s really hard to separate them. Especially if you don’t realize this is what’s been going on your whole life. Three different belief systems under the moniker of “church.”

I actually lived out the ideology prescribed by the American church culture because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do and how we were supposed to live as true Christians. Others believed this too, trying to live it out. Some lived it out because that’s how they were taught to live. Others, like me, did so because we love Jesus and wanted to honor him with our lives.

Both groups, trying to live moral lives, have been disillusioned, as we’ve seen many in the church culture, especially those in positions of “spiritual authority,” not live it out or live it out in a way that was only performative, a means to an end. They don’t live by the morality they put on others. And they certainly do not hold the Gospel and Jesus in the love and esteem that is found in true Christians. Instead, they get a pass from themselves and from others because they’re good at playing the part, and they want to keep their positions.

(The bible makes a distinction between 2 groups of people in the Church, calling them wheat and tares. Those who are saved and those who are not. I use 3 groups because there are those who are in church because they have to be, but are not motivated by holding power or “spiritual authority” over others, and have also been hurt by the church system.)

Pastor 1 was not preaching the Gospel of the Bible, nor the Jesus of the Bible either. He would use the word “gospel” but without the message of Jesus. He would use the name of Jesus, but in vain, propping up his own ideologies. Neither Pastor 1 nor any of the Elders at church 1 could show me a sermon in which the Gospel had been preached by Pastor 1, without (in that same message) undermining it. I asked them. I gave them chances to show me. They didn’t because they couldn’t. It wasn’t there. And they didn’t care because that wasn’t their priority. They used their positions of authority to keep others operating under a particular ideology and conviction, but did not apply that same belief system to themselves.

I now believe that the term “theological differences” was used against us, the way someone uses the term “conspiracy theorist,” to devalue, delegitimize, and deflate whatever concerns or arguments are had. Theological differences were a ruse they used to keep people where they wanted them and to keep themselves in the positions that they had worked so hard for. Like Lucy, when we see how people wielding power use it against others or for themselves, we become disoriented, not knowing what’s true and what’s false. It takes a long time to dismantle old belief systems, hold to truth, and regain a sense of stability.

The fallout is real.

I cannot do anything about the devastation and disillusionment I’ve experienced in the American church or the disappointment in the people who were supposed to defend and protect the sheep, along with the basic tenets of the faith, but instead chose to make it about themselves. But I can tell the truth about what’s happened and expose it to warn others. The Gospel and who Jesus is is a hill to die on. And I have. And I will. You can do that too.

“When people tell the truth about harm in religious spaces, our job is not to manage the fallout or to protect the institution. Our job is to stand in the light of truth with them…Because naming harm is not attacking the Church, silence is what has been wounding it.” Pastor Joe Smith (@therealjoe.smith)