Drifting from Evangelicalism, Clinging to Jesus

How leaving a subculture helped me love my neighbors more

On Sunday night I was sitting at a crowded JFK airport gate, waiting for a flight to Atlanta.

My flight had already been delayed by about an hour. Then the announcement came: another long delay. Groans all around. A few people got loud and started venting their frustration at the airline staff working the desk.

It was obvious the staff were rattled. The delay was because the inbound crew was stuck in bad weather. The gate agents had exactly zero control over that. They were just the messengers.

I watched a few more complaints land on them like little grenades. Then I did something I probably wouldn’t have done five years ago: I got up, walked over, and told them I appreciated their hard work. I told them I knew it was hard to be yelled at for something that wasn’t their fault. Then I wished them a happy holidays.

They both smiled. Their shoulders dropped just a bit. The tension at the desk eased.

In the past, I might have stayed in my lane, maybe quietly agreed with the complainers, and certainly wouldn’t have gone out of my way to encourage two strangers at an airline desk. It was a small moment. Nobody’s life was changed. But walking back to my seat, I realized how different that instinct is from the one I used to have.

And that shift has happened at the same time that I’ve grown more distant from a lot of evangelical Christian ideals, and more anchored in the actual gospel of Jesus — especially the Beatitudes.

That’s the heart of this piece: the further I drift from the culture of evangelicalism I inherited, the closer I seem to get to the Jesus I first met there.

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The faith I inherited — and the one I’m keeping

I grew up in an evangelical world with its own rhythm and assumptions.

There were real gifts in that world: people who loved me, introduced me to Scripture, taught me to pray, and showed up when life fell apart. I’m genuinely grateful for those things. I don’t want to flatten my whole church experience into a caricature.

But along with the gifts came a bundle of “extras” that quietly wrapped themselves around the gospel:

• A deep suspicion of “the world,” especially non-Christians

• A constant sense of us vs. them

• An expectation that “faithfulness” meant cultural dominance or political victory

• A belief that certainty was more faithful than curiosity

For a long time, I didn’t see those as extras. I saw them as Christianity.

Then life, relationships, and a lot of uncomfortable questions started tugging at the threads.

I met people who didn’t fit our categories but clearly bore the image of God.
I saw how often “protecting the truth” was an excuse for protecting power.
I noticed that the more some Christians talked about “boldness,” the less room there seemed to be for listening, lament, or love.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, I started to let go of parts of the faith I inherited. But the surprising thing was this: I wasn’t drifting away from Jesus. I was drifting away from a subculture that had tried to sit in his chair.

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The Beatitudes as a quiet rebellion

If you want to know what’s been holding me all this time, it’s not a party platform or a denominational brand.

It’s that strange list of blessings at the beginning of Jesus’ most famous sermon:

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.

You don’t have to be a theologian to see how different that sounds from a lot of what passes for “evangelical ideals” in American life.

• Poor in spirit doesn’t sound like swagger or certainty.

• Meek doesn’t sound like “owning the libs” or winning the news cycle.

• Peacemakers don’t go looking for a new culture war every week.

That airport moment was tiny, but it’s the sort of thing the Beatitudes keep pushing me toward: mercy instead of suspicion, blessing instead of venting, peacemaking instead of piling on.

As I’ve loosened my grip on the habits and instincts of the evangelical world I grew up in, I’ve found myself clinging harder to the Beatitudes.

And here’s what’s surprised me most: the more I’ve let the Beatitudes shape me, the more my love has grown — especially for people who don’t believe what I believe.

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Letting go of fear made room for love

I used to hear a lot of talk about “loving the lost.” It often came with a quiet disclaimer:

Love them, but don’t get too close.
Love them, but remember they’re dangerous.
Love them — but mostly as a project.

Looking back, a lot of my “love” was really anxiety in religious clothing.

As some of those evangelical ideals have fallen away, so has a lot of that fear:

• When I stopped assuming non-Christians were my enemies, I could see them as neighbors.

• When I stopped needing every conversation to end in a neat spiritual bow, I could actually listen.

• When I stopped equating “sound doctrine” with a narrow political lane, I could see how God might be at work far beyond my tribe.

I haven’t abandoned the Gospel. If anything, I’m more convinced than ever that Jesus is who he says he is. But I trust him enough now that I don’t feel the need to police every boundary or control every outcome.

Love has more room to breathe when you’re not constantly on patrol.

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What I’m rejecting — and what I’m not

Some people look at this journey and assume the conclusions for me:

“Oh, so you’re just going soft on truth.”
“So you don’t care about holiness anymore.”
“So you’ve deconstructed your way out of Christianity.”

That’s not what’s happening.

I am rejecting some things:

• I’m rejecting the idea that faithfulness means cultural dominance.

• I’m rejecting a version of Christianity that needs enemies in order to feel strong.

• I’m rejecting a posture that treats non-Christians as problems to fix instead of people to love.

But I’m not rejecting Jesus. I’m not rejecting the cross, or the resurrection, or the basic scandal of grace.

If anything, I’m finally trusting that when Jesus pronounced blessing over the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers, he meant it. Not as a metaphor. As the actual shape of a faithful life.

And if that’s true, then it makes sense that letting go of certain evangelical ideals would actually free me to love people more.

Because those ideals — fear, defensiveness, constant outrage — were never the Gospel in the first place. They were just the air my subculture breathed.

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From “right” to kind

One of the hardest shifts for me has been letting go of the need to always be right — or at least, to always prove I’m right.

There’s a certain evangelical impulse that treats every moment like a debate stage:
the classroom, the Facebook thread, the family dinner table, the church lobby, and yes, even the airport gate.

In that world, the win is to score the point, deliver the zinger, protect the brand.

But I’m finding that the older I get, the less interested I am in winning arguments and the more interested I am in who is left standing after the argument is over.

Do the people around me feel seen?
Did I move the temperature up or down in the room?
Did I leave people more burdened, or a little more hopeful?

Five years ago at that gate, I might have rolled my eyes at the complainers and stayed in my seat. I might have comforted myself with the idea that at least I wasn’t yelling at anyone.

Now, the question that nags at me is simpler:

Is there a way for me to bring a little grace into this moment?

I’m starting to believe that kind of question is closer to the heart of Jesus than my old obsession with always having the right take.

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What if we measured our faith by love?

Here’s the sobering question I keep returning to:

As my theology “matures,” am I becoming more loving toward people who don’t share it?

If the answer is no, then I have to wonder whether my faith is growing at all, or whether I’ve just become more skilled at defending my camp.

I’m not saying doctrine doesn’t matter. I’m not saying every path is the same. I still believe Jesus makes a unique, disruptive claim on all of us.

But if holding that belief tightly makes me harsh, suspicious, and closed off toward my neighbors, then I’ve wandered somewhere the Beatitudes never led me.

I want a faith that makes me more tender, not more terrified.
More hospitable, not more hardened.
More ready to sit down at the table with people who disagree with me and call them friends.

If that means drifting further from some of the evangelical ideals I inherited, so be it.

If the trade-off is losing a little certainty but gaining a lot more love, I’m starting to think that looks less like compromise and more like discipleship.

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A gentle invitation

If you’ve felt something similar — a quiet loosening around the edges of your evangelical upbringing, a growing unease with the culture wars, and yet a stubborn, almost surprising attachment to Jesus — you’re not alone.

You’re not faithless because you’re questioning the subculture.
You’re not a traitor because you’re learning to love your non-Christian friends without an agenda.
You’re not “falling away” if the Beatitudes are pulling you closer to the margins, to the hurting, to the people your old world taught you to fear.

Maybe this is what spiritual growth sometimes looks like: not walking away from the Gospel, but stripping away everything we confused with it.

So here’s the question I’m asking myself, and I’ll offer it to you:

When I look at how I treat people who don’t believe what I believe, would they recognize anything of the Beatitudes in me?

If the answer is “not yet,” maybe that’s where the real repentance — and the real freedom — begins.