Do you ever feel the responsibility for someone else's eternity?

Like your family's faith, your friends' belief. Even strangers on the street were somehow yours to carry?

Do you ever feel the quiet guilt that you're not doing enough, that you should be braver, bolder, a better witness for Christ?

And what about your own belief?

Do you ever wonder if you believe the right things if your questions or doubts somehow disqualify you?

And then there are the rules.

The shoulds spoken and unspoken, shifting with every generation, leaving you worn out, weighed down, exhausted.

What if God never asked us to manage all that?

But if the good news was never about control and burden, but about freedom, freedom to love people without an agenda.

Freedom to carry our curiosity, without fear, freedom to rest in grace.

If you've ever felt those things or ask those questions, keep listening.

I'm your host, Jeremy Johnson, and you're listening to Sledgy Grace.

Being an evangelical for me was exhausting.

I recently took a sleep study test.

Why, you ask?

Well, for one, I was exhausted.

I would sleep for seven, 8 hours each night, and I would wake up feeling really tired. Within an hour of waking. I felt like I could take a nap again. I would yawn all day, doze off watching TVs or movies, and struggle through a single page of a book before falling asleep.

My body was telling me something was off. But I just figured this is what aging and getting older felt like. You just got tired that this was normal.

But finally, I decided to take a sleep study test. Guess what I learned?

I learned that I was having, on average, 45 sleep apnea episodes for every 60 minutes I was in bed. That's crazy! 45 in 60 minutes.

All right, we'll jump back into my sleep apnea story near the end of this episode, but for now, just know, all night long, my body was being starved of oxygen, and all day long, I felt exhausted.

In the same way, being an evangelical for me was exhausting.

First, there was the soul management.

I felt like I carried part of the burden of other people's souls, those of my unsaved family, my friends who weren't believers, strangers on the street, other people in other nations.

They all felt like my responsibility to share the gospel with.

What did they believe about Jesus, about God, about themselves and their sin nature, and what would happen to them after they died?

Did they know the 4 spiritual laws? Have they read evidence that demands a verdict?

Were they aware that if they died without believing that Jesus was their personal lord and savior, they would be sent to hell by that same Jesus?

Soul management for me was exhausting.

Then there was belief management.

Their belief and my belief.

As I hinted at before, what my friends, family, strangers, even people in faraway lands believed was paramount.

Like a mosquito in a tent, the burden of changing people's beliefs so they could be saved was always there.

Now, to be honest, I seldom acted on that nagging burden. But that neglect of acting only brought shame and guilt.

I should be doing more.

I should be braver.

I should be a better witness.

If [insert name here] died today, how could I live with myself, knowing I could have done more? And because I didn't, they are now in hell.

So this change what people believe goal was present in every debate in lots of conversations. Sometimes it was even the foundation of friendships and interactions with non-Christians. (But I was careful not to get too close to them).

It was like I had a hidden motive in what I did and said. After all, people needed to hear the gospel and see Jesus in me so they could believe and be saved.

The management of other people's beliefs for me was exhausting.

Now, add to that the management of my own belief.

Because I was saved by what I believed, I always had to make sure I believed correctly. And most of the time, that meant believing what others taught me to believe.

Like an overpacked soup case. I had to stuff down my thoughts that didn't align with culturally accepted theology. I couldn't voice the questions that align within my soul, but didn't line up with orthodoxy.

And as a pastor, my income and my family's provision depended on my theology, my correct theology. Now, there was wiggle room for sure, but straight too far, and I could be out on the streets looking for work. The most stressful part, I never knew where the line of too far was. So Better Play is safe till the party line and not ask those questions.

I also had to watch what influences I'd let into my life, movies, music, friends, books, podcasts, the wrong ones could taint my pure belief and send me sliding down a slippery slope.

I always had to be vigilant about anything that might ruin my belief.

Now hear me: I believe what we fixate on shapes us. But when salvation itself is tied to belief, It becomes too burdensome—It becomes toxic.

The management of my belief-based salvation for me was exhausting.

Lastly, there was the law and behavior management. Yeah, I said law, though technically we were freed from the law by Jesus. We were still bound by powerful Christian culture rules that we should obey. Laws.

Want a list?

Drinking, smoking, drugs, premarital sex, swearing, not going to church, not reading your Bible, not praying, not witnessing, not tithing, and giving 10% of your income to the church, having close non-Christian friends, masturbation, stealing, lying, secular music.

I can go on, and I'm sure you can add more from your cultural list of things not to do.

Curiously, what's not on the list? Overeating divorce, unchecked capitalism, ignoring the needy, obsession with violence.

My point is this: The list was fickle and subjective and always oppressive.

The law and behavior management for me was exhausting.

Okay, back to my sleep apnea.

So immediately after my diagnosis, they offered me a CPAP machine, and I accepted. Not your grandpa's bulky oxygen mass with an IV stand, but small, un-intrusive life-saving CPAP machine.

It allowed me to breathe oxygen all night long.

Here's the thing, my 1st night using it, I actually only got about 5 hours of sleep, but I woke up energized as if I'd slept 12 hours, day after day using this.

I felt more alive, rested, ready to tackle the day. To be more present, to think clearer, to even read 2 pages in a book before falling asleep.

Now, I hook this up every night, and I don't want to live without it. Frankly, I wasn't really living before it.

For the 1st time, I'm not exhausted.

You know what else is not exhausting? Grace.

A generous grace, a gracious grace, an all-encompassing grace, a scandalous grace, grace that gives freely, grace that embraces all, grace that pushes past the management of souls, beliefs, behavior, and laws.

A grace that refuses to be fickle or subjective. A...well...slutty grace.

I begin experiencing this amazing grace about 2 decades ago. As I've learned to walk in it, embrace it, let it shape me, my beliefs, my actions, my love.

I found freedom from the exhaustion.

My spirit feels lighter, freer, like I can breathe.

Other people's souls, no longer my responsibility. I am free to simply love them, to be friends with no ulterior motive. I can release back to God what was always God's, God's kids and their souls. It's not, and never was my burden to carry.

I am free from the goal of changing other people's beliefs. I can relax and let them believe what they currently believe. And I know that what they believe affects them in every way, but changing them or what they believe is no longer a goal of mine. It might be a nice side effect of my love and kindness for them.

Because when you believe that ultimately one day all people will see the oneness of God and everything, be transformed by that love and welcomed into God's presence, that their belief does not trigger God's love of forgiveness.

I can relax, accept people, my brothers and sisters, laugh, cry, and live with them for who they are.

Not for who I or what I believe God wants them to be.

I am free from my personal belief-chains, always being on the lookout for things that will stain my pure belief, in fear that I will not be accepted into heaven or plummet down some slippery slope, freed to follow my belief and conviction.

Free to ask any and all questions.

Freed from the thought that God loves me because of my mind, or what I believe.

Freed from being driven by what I've been told to believe, but to find the freedom of believing what I know, what I know to be true for my experience, for my thinking, and in my moral gut.

My curiosity about everything has expanded because I am no longer in fear of learning or other beliefs, freed from the need to convince people of what I believe or to agree with everyone.

It frees me up to be curious, and just have conversations without having another goal or secret agenda in mind.

And if we agree, great. If we don't, cool. Let's sit down and learn about each other.

My focus can genuinely be on accepting, caring for and loving other humans, with no other hidden agenda of conversion or whatever.

I am way more aware of and impervious to the common scare and shame tactics of religion and some toxic forms of Christianity.

And the icing on the cake—which I am now free to eat and enjoy—is that I am freed from an afterlife focus to a here and now focus.

Let me say it this way: I can focus on and live in the here and now because my focus is no longer on the afterlife.

Afterlife thoughts do seep into my soul and they influence me, but it's not a yellow lab focused on a ball sitting in front of its owner who refuses to throw it kind of thing.

I am free to focus on the kingdom of God is here, is now, not the kingdom of God is sometime out there.

Your eternal soul is no longer my focus. It's God's responsibility.

Our brotherhood is.

Your depression is.

Your kid losing Saturday soccer game is.

Your engagement is.

And this drink that we're sharing together is.

Everyday life met with grace and kindness can be my sole focus, not the afterlife.

Unlike the N-O-T-W, bumper stickers you see on cars, (and if you didn't grow up evangelical, NOTW means that they are not of this world) I am not of this world. You are of this world.

We are all of this world, but we're also a lot more because God is also in this world.

God envelops every atom and molecule and proton.

God is on every road. Will crawl into every basement, is at every AA meeting.

By God and through God, are all things, whether things in heaven or here on earth.

And I am free to follow my curiosity, as it leads me to explore this world in its everyday moments, to see God and grace.

Being an evangelical for me was exhausting.

Being led by grace for me is freeing.

For years, religious spirituality left me tired, managing souls, guarding beliefs, trying to measure up to endless lists, but grace, grace's breath.

Grace is what lets us rest, what lets us live.

So wherever you find yourself today, exhausted, searching, or just curious, may you discover the oxygen of God's love and grace?

May you feel lighter.

May you breathe deeper.

May you walk freer, because grace is not exhausting.

Remember, walk in grace.

And if you can share that grace.

Thank you for listening to the Slutty Grace podcast.

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