From college and campus ministry, through seminary, and into parish ministry, I became increasingly aware of the damage done by some theologies within the church: specifically, the "Believe in Jesus or to go Hell" theologies. Knowing people who turned away from the church and from God because they'd been lambasted by such theologies, I decided to address those beliefs head on and look deeply at scripture, rather than simply ignore the tricky passages.
My goal was and is to bring healing to folks who have been harmed by those older, even foundational theologies, and to help free people from those theologies - people who don't believe in "believe in Jesus or go to Hell", but also don't know how they can't believe in them without ignoring much of scripture.
May you find peace and healing in the pages of this book, and may you help bring that healing to others.
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston May 17, 2026 7 Easter, A 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 Psalm 66:7-18 John 14:15-21
So, in the Legend of Zelda video games, when you finally get to fight the big, bad, boss guy, Gannon, you get to fight him twice. You defeat him the first time, and then he immediately comes back from the dead, bigger and badder, and you get to defeat him all over again. It’s fun, some lovely extra play time, and I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus’ disciples thought was going to happen when Jesus was resurrected, that he had come back bigger and badder, and ready to destroy the Roman Empire.
When Jesus told the disciples they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit, in Acts 1:1-8, they asked if he would be destroying the Romans and establishing his kingdom over Israel. That’s exactly what they thought he was going to do prior to his death, and after his resurrection, it seems like they thought he was even more powerful and would then take care of it, but his answer was still “no”. Jesus wasn’t going to kill a bunch of people to force his way in the world.
Instead, he told his disciples to continue his mission of healing and reconciliation in the world.
Unlike for the evil bad guy in the Legend of Zelda games, the point of Jesus’ resurrection was not that he would return as an unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom for his enemies. The point of Jesus’ resurrection was to show us that not only did God share in a death like ours, but that we will then share with him in a resurrection like his.
Life continues on after death. Healing and reconciliation continue on after death. Our unity with God and one another continues on after death, and even during death.
Even in death, God is with us. We often feel God is with us when life is going well. Some of us feel God’s presence in beautiful worship. Some feel the Spirit moving in times of great joy or purpose. Some know God is with us when we experience blessing in our lives.
Jesus’ suffering on the cross, his death, and resurrection assure us that God is with us even in our suffering. Peter says as much in the reading we heard today, 1 Peter 5:6-7. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” God is with us and for us even in the dark times, so Peter tells his readers to give their anxieties and fears over to God. That’s the kinda stuff the bigger and badder resurrected Jesus is going to take on.
He already took on our sin, and that killed him, but it couldn’t keep him down. Jesus proved more powerful than our sin, so what does he ask to take on now? All the stuff that causes us to sin. Give all that stuff over to Jesus, and let him fight it out for you, and know that you are not alone.
“Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour,” Peter wrote. “Resist him, steadfast in your faith, [cast all your anxieties on Jesus], for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”
Folks in Peter’s time were going through what he called “a fiery ordeal,” and Peter told them to rejoice since they were sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Ok, truthfully, rejoicing that we are suffering seems a bit much to me, but accepting the suffering and finding joy that Jesus joins us in that, that makes sense to me. When we suffer, Jesus is with us and has suffered with us. That means too that Jesus is with us and we will join with him in healing, joy, a resurrection like his.
Now, the fiery ordeal that Peter was addressing seems to be that other folks weren’t too keen on that church being followers of Jesus. It seems like the church Peter was writing to was deeply disliked and even persecuted for their faith. ‘Remember guys,’ Peter was saying, ‘remember that folks did the same thing to Jesus when they didn’t like what he had to say, and they even killed him for it. So, Jesus is with you in your suffering.’
Notice that he didn’t tell them to take on an “us against the world” kind of stance. Cast your anxieties on God, Peter said. Give them over to God so that God can deal with your fears, rather than you living with them all alone. Don’t take on the world, thinking that unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus, is going to fight against and kill all the bad people for you. Give all your anxieties to God, realizing that suffering indeed happens.
There are Christians today who do seem to feel that unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus is going to kill all of the people they think are bad, and they talk like Jesus’ disciples did in Acts 1, when they asked Jesus if he was going to kill the Romans and establish his kingdom in Israel. “Not gonna happen, guys.” That was Jesus’ answer to his disciples back then, and that is Jesus’ answer to the ultra-nationalist Christians nowadays who think they should be able to force their faith and way of life on others.
Forcing one’s faith and way of life on others may seem faithful to those who do it, but it isn’t loving, and it isn’t focused on eternal life. Those folks may think they are focused on eternal life, but really, they’re focused on avoiding punishment when they die. That’s not eternal life.
Jesus told his disciples what eternal life is, that we may know God and Jesus Christ whom God sent. That goes beyond faith, beyond belief. Knowing God goes beyond proclaiming certain doctrine as true. Knowing God comes not just through faith, but through love, as John tells us in 1 John 4:7, “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Eternal life is knowing God, and those who love, know God. So, those who love have eternal life. Do you love? Then fear not, for you have eternal life. Do you love? Then fear not. Cast all your anxieties upon God because God cares for you. Do you love? Then give to God all of the worries and fears that cause you to sin, and ask the unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus to fight those worries and anxieties for you. That is the battle Jesus wages in his resurrection, not against our physical enemies, but against our spiritual enemies. Jesus’ battle is against the fears, the hates, and the hurts that lead us to harm.
So fear not, and trust that Jesus is with us in our pain and in our suffering. Jesus shares with us in our suffering, and we share with him in his resurrection. Trusting in Jesus, then cast all your anxieties on the unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus, who loves and cares for us. Then, love others as he has loved us, for God is love. To love is to know God, and to know God is eternal life.
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston May 10, 2026 6 Easter, A Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:7-18 John 14:15-21
When he was in Athens, Paul commended the Athenians for being very religious, and then he pointed out that there weren’t many gods over the earth, but one God who made all of humanity. Even if we pray “to an unknown god,” he told them, we are all praying to one God who made all. Rather than thinking that some of us are the children of one god, while others are the children of another god, we are all child of one God throughout the earth.
The thought that there are different gods that we pray to is one of the reasons various tribes and nations fight with one another, because they all have their own gods whom they believe made them, and so they are better than those other people, made by another god who isn’t as good.
It’s harder to hate, and fight, and kill people who are children of the same God as you, harder to hate, and fight, and kill your brothers and sisters. So, Paul let the Athenians know that they were not children of a different god than the people of Israel. There was no coming conflict or fight between them. They were all brothers and sisters of one God.
I’d love to say that has been neatly cleared up in the couple thousand years since Paul spoke to the Athenians, but we all know it hasn’t been. People of different religions still fight with one another, and even though we may not actually believe that different gods made different people of different religions, we sure do act like it sometimes, don’t we?
Hell, we sometimes even act like people of different parts of Christianity were made by different gods. Some parts of the church try to take over or steal land and buildings from other parts of the church, and that’s here in the United States in the last 15 years. Some parts of the church say other parts of the church are going to Hell, because some parts of the church are so focused on how to avoid Hell when you die that they believe avoiding Hell is actually the point of the Gospel. It isn’t. That’s not salvation.
Salvation is coming to find that there actually is only one God who made all of us, that we actually are all children of the same God, brothers and sisters with one another.
Many have taken that Gospel and fearfully, pridefully turned it into something awful, “Believe in Jesus or go to Hell,” but that’s not the Gospel.
God became human to share with us in every aspect of our lives, including our sin, which Jesus joined to God on the cross, and then God joined with us in death, and then God joined with us in new life after death. Nothing can separate us from God, and God calls all of us to repent, to turn from the ways that we harm one another and harm ourselves, God calls us to repent of those ways and instead follow ways of justice, peace, and love. Turn around and walk with God, and God will walk with you. God will even seek you out and call you to turn around and take a walk with him, and that’s everybody, not just those who claim the name of Christian, for we are all God’s children. That’s the Gospel.
How could we possibly take the magnificent news that we are all God’s children and turn that into threats of eternal torture along with a “get out of torture free” card? How could we possibly take the magnificent news that God is loving, gracious, and forgiving, that God does forgive us of our sins and is constantly inviting us to turn around and walk again in ways of life, rather than in ways of death, how could we possibly take that good news and turn it into threats of eternal torture along with a “get out of torture free” card?
Well, somewhere along the line we got afraid. Paul said, “Repent for God has made a day on which all people will be judged.” Jesus talked about the day of judgment in which he would judge all people based on how we treat one another. As the church, we took sin and the day of judgment seriously, and we took the need for repentance seriously, but we got afraid about how exactly that works. Rather than simply trusting in God that God’s forgiveness works, trusting that God’s judgment is good, we began trying to define it, trying to assure ourselves that we are on the good end of God’s judgment. We gave ourselves various doctrine and dogma which defined one group as definitely forgiven an so other groups had to definitely not be forgiven because they are different than this group. So, we started having in-groups and out-groups.
Those parts of the church don’t believe quite right, so they may not really be saved because they’re not really following Jesus. Well, no actually it’s these parts of the church that aren’t really gonna be saved because they aren’t believing quite right.
Well, once those fights started, we ended up again each following a bit of a tribal god, rather than the God of all creation. Sure, each group believes in the God of all creation, but each group believes in a tribal way. That group doesn’t believe in the same God we do, even though we all believe in the same God. I doubt many Christian groups would actually say that other Christians believe in a different God, and yet in our fighting amongst different groups in the Church, we’ve reverted to tribalism.
I fall into that very trap, repeatedly. I talk and think about some parts of the church like they are not quite a part of the church. Some parts of the church and their beliefs in Jesus are so different than mine that I hardly recognize the Jesus they’re talking about; it certainly seems like a different God, but even so, however differently we believe about Jesus, however differently we believe about God, we are still all children of the one God of creation.
Even those who call God by a different name, who worship a different named God, those who worship multiple gods, those who don’t worship God at all, what we here Paul reminding us is that there is one God over all of us and so we are all brothers and sisters, children of that one God. There’s something very beautiful about the inscription Paul noted on the Athenian shrine, “To an unknown god.” Yes, we know God because God has become known to us. God has been revealed to us as the human person of Jesus; God has been revealed to us through Torah; God has been revealed to us through the law and the prophets, and yet there is still a pretty huge amount of unknown to God.
When we can admit there are aspects of God that are unknown, then we can more easily see others as also being children of that one known and yet unknown God. When we can trust in God, with the unknown parts of God, rather than trust in our small, fearfully comforting, exact definitions of God, then we can remember what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, “we are the Body of Christ and individually members of it.”
Not just those who believe similarly. We are all the Body of Christ and individually members of it, and we don’t get to say some parts of the church aren’t really parts of the church. That goes for the rest of humanity too, even those who are not part of the Church. We are members of one another, so when we spend our time and efforts condemning those who are different than we are, we truly are condemning ourselves.
There is a day when all people will be judged, and they will be judged for how they treated one another. We will be judged for how we treat one another. How exactly will that judgment work? We don’t know. How exactly will God’s forgiveness through Jesus work? We don’t know.
We’re not meant to know. We’re meant to trust. We’re meant to find that the ways of Jesus really do bring about greater justice, peace, and love in our lives, and so we’re meant to repent of ways we turn away from justice, peace, and love, and follow Jesus in ways that lead to justice, peace, and love. With repentance, cast all of your anger, hurt, and hatred on God, and let God heal you.
For those you hate, give that hate to God. Pray that God will inflict all sorts of vengeance on them, like we hear in Psalm 137. After that, maybe the next day, pray that God will bless them, as we hear Jesus teaching in Matthew 5. In this way, we’re giving the truth of our pain and hurt over to God; we’re giving our righteous anger over to God. Then, we’re also recognizing the common humanity of all people. We’re repenting of the ways we harm others, and we’re seeking to follow in God’s ways. We don’t know where that will lead, and we’re not meant to. We’re meant to trust in God who is known and who is at the same time, unknown.
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston May 3, 2026 5 Easter Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 23 John 10:1-10
When Homer Simpson became a missionary in the 11th season of The Simpsons, he went to some far away people on some small far away island, and he knew almost nothing about Jesus, or Jebus, as Homer called him. Back in Springfield, Homer had spent years faithfully sleeping through almost all of Reverend Lovejoy’s sermons, so when it came time for Homer to teach the people of this island about Jesus, he instead taught them what he knew, the joys of beer and gambling. They made a casino, and the people quickly fell to ruin as all they did was get drunk and fight.
So, Homer decided he needed to do real missionary work and actually teach the people about Jebus. He told them something or other about Jesus, had them build a church, and when they finished, they were so proud of the church building they had made. Two of the people looked up at their beautiful building, and one asked the other, “How many times must we go to church to avoid Hell?” “Every Sunday for the rest of our lives.” “Hahaha – no, seriously.”
They thought they were following Jesus, but they pretty quickly found a stumbling block. They had a really bad missionary. Sorry Homer, but he was a really bad missionary, and he left them with even worse theology. You gotta go to church every Sunday to avoid Hell. That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows you gotta go to church at least two times a week to avoid Hell.
No, the bad theology was that the point of Jesus is avoiding Hell. That’s all Homer had really gotten from Reverend Lovejoy. Sure, he talked about other things too, but the basic crux of it was, believe in Jesus or go to Hell. That’s what Homer knew, so that’s what he taught. Little wonder then that as a missionary, he first led the people to a casino and beer. When your religion is threat of eternal torture and then a get out of torture free card, you have a religion that’s based on traumatizing people with threats of torture and then giving them the only option they’ve got.
Well, as we know, drinking to numb anxiety and emotion is a fairly common trauma response. As it turns out, Homer wasn’t a bad missionary just because he had slept through Reverend Lovejoy’s sermons. The parts of Reverend Lovejoy’s teachings that had gotten through were a stumbling block to Homer being able to find anything good and healing about following Jesus. That bad theology had then turned Homer into a stumbling block for the people he was being a missionary to. Thinking that the point of believing in Jesus is to avoid eternal torture, that’s a stumbling block. That’s trauma wrapped up as religion.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s wildly different than saying, ‘If you don’t believe in me, you’re going to be tortured forever.’ Jesus did talk about judgment and punishment for the ways that we are horrible to one another. He talked about God bringing justice. Thank God for that. What Jesus didn’t do was give the very clear formula that so many preachers offer of “believe in Jesus, or go to Hell.”
In Matthew 25, Jesus told of people being welcomed into God’s kingdom not because of anything they believed, but because they took care of one another when they were in need. People took care of one another, which is the way of Jesus, and so Jesus welcomed them into God’s kingdom. They came to the Father through Jesus by following in the way of Jesus, without even knowing Jesus.
That was at the end of the ages, and Jesus also talked about the kingdom of God and living that kingdom of God here on earth in this life. Jesus talked about how loving and caring for one another is how we live in God’s kingdom. Loving and caring for one another is how we enter into God’s kingdom.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus said. You want to walk in the ways of loving and caring for one another, you want to walk into God’s kingdom? Then follow me, Jesus was saying.
“Like newborn infants,” Peter wrote, “long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Grow into salvation. Not get out of torture free when you die. Grow into salvation.
What is salvation? Walking in the ways of Jesus. Bit by bit. Slowly learning to trust. Grow into a life that is trusting and following the teachings and ways of Jesus. For one thing we trust and follow Jesus’ teachings and ways by meditating on them day and night, as Psalm 1 teaches us. That’s a little thing, just a daily practice of prayer and scripture.
How about another practice, another little one from 1 Peter. “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.” Rather than drink away your anxieties or drug away your anxieties, rather than take all your anxieties out on everyone around you, give them over to God.
Spiritual milk, slowly learning to trust in God and as we do, growing into salvation, into a life lived in love and joy.
How about Jesus’ teaching about not seeking revenge against your enemy? Rather than get revenge, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” Jesus taught to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Everyone may not be ready for that one yet. You first have to have tasted that the Lord is good to trust that one.
A spiritual baby starts trusting Jesus slowly, bit by bit. Then as we grow, we learn to trust Jesus more and more, because we keep tasting that the Lord is good. We keep learning to trust, finding that we have greater peace when we do. Even when bad things happen, and Jesus promised bad things will still happen to us, we find those bad things easier to handle with a heart full of love and forgiveness than a heart full of anger and hate.
Finding peace amidst the storms of life, that is salvation. Trusting in the goodness of God, even amidst the horrors of humanity, that is salvation. Seeing those who harm others as also being broken, and harmed, and in need of healing, that is salvation.
Trusting in Jesus is salvation because by trusting in him, we get to walk in his ways, and we find our heats healed as a result. Unlike the trauma and fear preached by the Reverend Lovejoys of the world, trusting in Jesus gives us healing in this life and greater compassion for others. Even if all you’ve got is just a little bit of trust right now, that’s enough. Keep drinking the spiritual milk of that trust, bit by bit, slowing growing into salvation, growing into following Jesus as the way, and the truth, and the life. Keep drinking the spiritual milk of trusting in Jesus, slowing being led to a salvation that is so much greater than avoiding eternal torture once we die. Keep drinking the spiritual milk of trusting in Jesus, slowing being led to a salvation that is peace and love in this life, and peace and love that continues on after this life and into eternity.
