Tell Me Everything: Why the Story of Jesus is Not a Religion

By Jason C. Helveston

Many people assume Christianity is a religion. It’s easy to understand why. But what if that’s not true? Or at the very least, what if there’s a better way for our imagination to conceive and follow the way of Jesus? What if Christianity is a story? You see, when Christianity is belittled into a system of power or a framework of rules and regulations, much of Jesus and his kingdom is missed. In “Tell Me Everything,” Jason C. Helveston follows the exposition, rise, climax, fall, hinge, and resolution of Christianity to give readers a more accurate, inspiring, and honest vision of the Christian faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304481672

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From TRUTH AND BEAUTY PUBLISHING

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Tell Me Everything: Why the Story of Jesus is not a Religion

Learning to Lament: A Guide through the Book of Lamentations

Acting Human: We’re All Pretending

On the Seventh Day: Abiding in the Gift of Rest

Tell Me Everything

Tell Me Everything

Why the Story of Jesus is not a Religion

truthandbeautypublishing.com

CHICAGO, IL

TRUTH AND BEAUTY PUBLISHING

An imprint of Church in the Square.

Chicago, IL

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Copyright © 2023 by Truth and Beauty Publishing

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Thank you for buying this book. We exist to share gospel resources that help the local church enjoy the truth and beauty of Jesus. A portion of all proceeds help support communities and biblical training in Chicago and Kajiado County, Kenya.

Find out more at: truthandbeautypublishing.com

Written by: Jason C. Helveston

Author picture by: Glori Helveston

Designed by: Joel Helveston

Editing by: Ginny Supranowitz

Publication oversight: Lola Adebimpe

ISBN 978-1-312-4272-1 (hc) 978-1-312-42685-6 (pb) 978-1-304-48167-2 (ebook)

Print: Lulu.com

Printed in the United States of America

3rd printing

Special thanks to Elk Lake Publishing Inc. for the first and second printings of Tell Me Everything.

This is for Laura.

Everyday you live the joy and beauty of this narrative.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1 How to Start a Rumor

2 The Beginning is Not the Beginning

3 The Cadence of Creation

4 Pausing Paradise

5 Breaking the Broken Record

6 Death Does Not Wait for Us to Die

7 Promises are Made to be Kept

8 All I Know is God Knows

9 The Problem is Not the Solution

10 Forever Starts Today

11 Life Gives Life

12 Heaven is Coming to Earth

13 The End is Not the End

14 Always Start at the Beginning

Acknowledgements

Preface

Through the fabric of my life, Jesus has told me his story. Everything you are about to read came about just that way. The way I see it, I could have been born to any young couple. Instead, I was born to a pair of Ole Miss alumni—a Baptist pastor and a nurse from Laurel, Mississippi. When I was six, I could have died in a river outside a Holiday Inn when my dad failed to put the truck in park (no judgments), but I did not. I could have married anyone, but I married a woman from Stevensville, Michigan, whose visible charm is only eclipsed by her inward sophistication. And, I guess I could have had any kids. But instead, I get to hear Glori, Jedidiah, and Micah call me Daddy. You see, in the relationships, events, and moments and in the gaps between the details of my life, Jesus has whispered to me about himself. I have discovered his intention, care, and purposes not only through spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible, prayer, and going to church, but I have also learned some of the most significant lessons about him simply by paying attention. Jesus has told me his story, through my story. And this book is my romantic assumption he is doing the very same thing for you.

Stories are powerful. Yet, they are all the same. To be sure, there are several distinct basic plots (the great storytelling aficionado, Christopher Booker, suggests there are seven) and perhaps a handful of foundational storylines. Nevertheless, every story is pretty much saying and doing the same thing. There are characters and tension; heroes and villains; twists and turns; and surprises and disappointments. All of these are really just life as we all know it. Every story is a story of life. And so, unsurprising a shift has taken place in common conversation. Previously when meeting someone for the first time we might ask, What do you do? or How do you do? or Who are your parents? or Where are you from? Today we ask a much different question. Increasingly we are asking each other, So . . . what’s your story? We cannot help ourselves. Deep down within the guts of our humanity, we crave stories. We assume narrative to be the truest way of getting to know someone. Stories speak to us about life, and we speak about life in stories. And so we ask not for information, but for a story.

This is how we are wired.

We are built to hear and tell stories.

God knows that . . . because God shaped us for stories.

However, we rarely consider God as a storyteller. Particularly within organized religious communities, we assume viewing God as a storyteller would require too much of us. The very idea stretches us well beyond the spirituality many of us have constructed as a place for the Almighty to dwell. We are set in our traditional expectations and religious routines. As religious people—those who at a basic level consider the tune of life to be that good people get good things, and bad people get bad things—we fail to acknowledge God as a God of stories because that kind of God shatters our paradigm. Such a truth would break our comfortable routine of believing and thinking. After all, if good people get good things, and bad people get bad things, that is a nauseatingly boring story—really not a story at all. There is no tension. There is no need for a hero. A God who tells stories is not religiously manageable. Such a God refuses to be truncated to our principled action steps, which we use to glorify self on stages of spiritual elitism.

Whether we believe in God or not, we all assume he does not fit within the story-form fabric of life. At first blush, a secular consideration of a divine storyteller seems trendy and perhaps a bit Eastern (which, of course, is really trendy). However, this idea is ultimately rejected because that type of deity is too dangerous. Progressive principles require morality to be haphazard and relative. Therefore, to consider a master storyteller weaving together a narrative of his own volition collides with expectations that the universe is a mysterious mess of divine uncertainty. You see, a storytelling God forces us to deal with him, the story he is telling, and the point of his story.

I grew up religious. This much is painfully obvious to anyone I meet. My family is from a small town in southern Mississippi. My mom and dad were married at First Baptist Church in Laurel by Dr. Robert Marsh. By the time I was seven years old, my dad had been a youth pastor, associate pastor, missionary, and a senior pastor. Faith was always part of my story. You might say, I did not stand a chance. Suffocating from the effects of a cable-TV-less childhood, my siblings and I were even relegated to Christian cartoons. We learned our first memory verses from a talking (and, of course, singing) song book. Most of our friends had the same experience. So when I decided to follow Jesus as a kid, not a single human being was surprised.

However, this lack of incredulity assumes a particular approach to Christianity. Faith is presumed a calculable exercise and an attainable goal. Even the idea of deciding to follow Jesus fails to take into account the fact that I did not choose to be in my family nor did I choose most of my experiences. Therefore, the lessons I have learned about Jesus have not come about through my own volition. And so, I have come to embrace my life simply as a story of Jesus telling me his story—and inviting me in.

He often repeats himself. The revelation of God’s narrative was not a singular event. In various moments and ways, Jesus graciously reiterates lessons I fail to fully comprehend or fully surrender myself to. That is what Tell Me Everything is all about.

This is the story about Jesus telling me his story, through the story of my life.

The words that follow are not meant to simply get you to do something differently. My hope is that in reading you will see everything differently. More precisely as you consider the reality of Jesus and believe, you will become different. After all, we cannot live differently until we are different. In fact, that is exactly what this is all about.

This is my story about how Jesus changed me and opened my eyes. As you scroll through the lines of his lessons for me about him and his story, my sincerest hope is that you will consider your own story and perhaps hear him telling you everything too.

Jason Helveston

October 2, 2015

Harold Washington Library Chicago, IL

Introduction

Christianity Is Not a Religion

Many people assume Christianity is a religion. I understand why. The Judeo- Christian tradition has a moral code explicitly woven through the pages of the sacred text. Christians have a structured worldview and system of belief. Christianity is always categorized along with all other faiths as a religion. Every course on world religions includes Christianity. Moreover, few believers hesitate to check the Christian box as religious preference in a survey or census. No less a personage than the Apostle James communicates in his letter to beleaguered first-century Christians true religion is caring for the orphans and widows. Without question, faith in Jesus Christ incorporates many of the defining elements of what we have come to know as religion. And so at initial consideration, the foundational nature of Christianity as a religion already seems to enjoy universal consensus.

But . . . Christianity is not a religion.

From a young age, Jesus has been real to me. In fact, remembering a time in my life when I did not consider myself a Christian is difficult. But now, after following Jesus for nearly three decades, I have come to realize Christianity does not belong inside the box I originally assumed a perfect fit for the God of the Bible—the paradigm known as religion. Regardless of its common adoption as a religion, there is a uniqueness about the way of Jesus, which fails to fully fit within the frame of religious faith. What is commonly shared between religions is a contextualized set of morals—principles of right and wrong behavior. In other words, every way has a unique way. Acceptance within these respective spiritual communities and institutions is achieved when respective morals are confessed and adopted. Laced within each of these systems of belief is a concept of divinity—a god or gods or a goddess or goddesses or a force or forces or a divine consciousness of some kind—which is either pleased or pacified by our affirmations, adoptions, and practices. And so many approach the God of the Bible and Jesus in particular the very same way.

Therefore, when would-be believers hear the ethics of Jesus’ kingdom, we seek to affirm those things. When we consider the values of his heart, we seek to make them our own. When we watch the habits of his life, we attempt to mimic him. However, in doing so, we have missed Jesus himself. We have missed everything. In other words, when we approach Jesus expecting to simply follow his example and teachings in order to live a happy and peaceful life, achieving God’s love and avoiding his wrath along the way, we will be disappointed. Despite theological compulsion, beliefs, or persuasions, if the way of Jesus and the Christian Scriptures are considered with a religious posture then the fundamental beauty and meaning of this spiritual heritage will be completely avoided. In fact, I think one of the primary reasons the Son of God entered human history was to make his uniqueness clear.

In light of all of this, my hunch is that Christianity is not a religion at all. In fact, Christianity is much more like jazz. Now I admit, I know very little about jazz. In all seriousness, I know more about rainbows than I do about jazz. (And to say I know more about rainbows is not saying much. The sum of my airborne-color-arch education consists of a handful of personal sightings, one Bible story—the one with a really big boat and tons of animals—and the back of a certain cereal box.) In actuality, I only know two things about jazz. Donald Miller’s memoir, Blue Like Jazz taught me my first lesson—jazz does not resolve. My second lesson hit a bit closer to home. A friend told me years ago that jazz is not music.

My friend would know. He was one of those ethereal-thinking, wine-sipping, vinyl-record-playing, PhD-holding jazz connoisseurs. Naturally, I trusted him. Come to find out, he belongs to an elect class of true believers. In the minds of this group, no musical genre can contain the profound complexities of Coltrane, Gillespie, Fitzgerald, or Davis. Jazz is not music. Rather jazz is a history, a depth, and an element of artistic expression set apart from suffocating musical categories. John Coltrane said jazz was no less than the combined expression of his faith, his knowledge, and his very being. That does not sound like music at all. Jazz seems more like an experience or even a special realm with its own language, heroes, and philosophy— all of which are utterly distinct from musical genre.

When I discovered this second lesson about jazz, I wanted in. Jazz seemed like a secret society of artistic elitism, sort of like The Dead Poets Society or a fight club. Only instead of cultivating an exaggerated appreciation for really old literature or punching your friends in the face, I guess you would just understand why jazz is not music. All I knew was I wanted to be in the club. I wanted to be one of those guys who came home after a long day’s work, put on a smoking jacket, turned on my record player, and gently swayed to So What while sipping Merlot and reading the Economist. (People do that, right?)

I wanted to speak the language.

I wanted the image.

I wanted to get it.

I wanted to understand jazz and know why jazz was not music.

So I bought Miles Davis’ Greatest Hits.

I played that album all the time.

I played it in my car.

I played it in my office.

I played it in my headphones wherever I went.

Now, I did not have a smoking jacket (or anything to smoke for that matter), but I closed my eyes and envisioned what that would be like. Nothing would have pleased me more than for my friends to think I was one of those guys who snapped a lot and called people cats. You know, a jazz guy. And so with these calcified expectations, I played my solitary jazz album in the background when my friends came over. I waited for them to notice. But they never did. My friends never got it. And to be honest, I never experienced what Coltrane was talking about either. Jazz sounded a lot like music. Jazz even felt like music. Davis played in my headphones just like Jay-Z, Paisley, and Bublé (and no, Michael Bublé does not count as jazz). I was really disappointed. I felt like that kid