Untangling, Not Abandoning
Some beliefs need a funeral, not a defense
A lot of what we call “biblical” is actually just tradition wearing a Bible verse like a costume. And when the two get confused, you end up with Christians who can quote Jesus and still completely miss Him.
That’s not a scripture problem. That’s a tradition problem.
We Mistook Inherited for Inspired
Somewhere along the way, a lot of us stopped asking “what does scripture actually say” and started asking “what have I always been told it says.”
Those aren’t the same question. They just feel the same when you’ve never separated them.
Tradition isn’t automatically bad. Some of it holds real wisdom. But tradition was never supposed to outrank scripture, it was supposed to serve it. When that order flips, you get people defending a position with total confidence and zero ability to tell you where in the Bible it actually comes from.
That’s how you end up with Christians using the name of Jesus while living nothing like Him. Not because they’re hypocrites on purpose, but because somewhere they swapped out “what Jesus said” for “what I was taught Jesus meant,” and nobody ever made them check the difference.
My friend Tony has a word for this: untangling
Not deconstruction. Untangling.
Deconstruction has become a loaded word, and honestly, sometimes for good reason. For some people it’s meant walking away from Jesus entirely. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Untangling is different. It’s not tearing the whole thing down. It’s going back through what you were taught and asking, “is this actually what scripture says, or is this just what I inherited?” It’s pulling apart the knot of tradition, culture, and personal interpretation until what’s left is just Jesus.
Even Peter Had to Untangle Something
If anyone had earned the right to be certain, it was Peter.
He walked with Jesus. He preached at Pentecost. He had seen the resurrected Christ with his own eyes. And he had spent his entire life believing certain foods were unclean, not as a preference, but as conviction. That belief was scripture to him. It was identity.
Then in Acts 10, God gives him a vision: a sheet full of animals he’d been taught his whole life to avoid, and a voice telling him to kill and eat. Peter’s response is almost funny. He argues with God. Three times (Seems to be a trend with Peter:) .
God had to repeat Himself three times before Peter would even consider that something he’d never questioned might need to be untangled.
And it wasn’t really about food. While Peter was still puzzling over the vision, men showed up at his door, Cornelius, a Gentile, someone Peter would have been taught his whole life to keep his distance from. The food was never the point. God was untangling something much bigger: who belonged at the table.
Peter wasn’t a hypocrite. He was sincere and convinced, and still wrong about something he’d never thought to examine. It took a vision, a repeated word from God, and a knock at the door before he could see it.
That’s what untangling looks like. Not always a crisis. Sometimes just God patiently knocking on a door you didn’t know needed opening.
Untangling Is Just Dying to Yourself Again
Here’s the part I didn’t see at first: untangling isn’t really an intellectual exercise. It’s a self denial exercise.
It feels like research. It feels like asking good questions. But underneath it, you’re being asked to let go of a version of yourself that was attached to being right.
Jesus said if you want to follow Him, you deny yourself (Luke 9:23). Most of us picture that as giving up a habit or a comfort. We rarely picture it as giving up a belief we built part of our identity on.
But that’s exactly where pride hides.
Some people aren’t actually protecting scripture when they refuse to untangle anything. They’re protecting their own credibility.
James says God opposes the proud (James 4:6). Not corrects. Opposes. That should tell you something about how seriously God takes it when we’d rather defend ourselves than follow Him.
Pride doesn’t always look like arrogance. Sometimes it looks like certainty that refuses to be questioned. Peter had that kind of certainty, sincere and well earned, and God still had to dismantle it.
I’m Writing This From Inside It
I’m a pastor. I’m supposed to have this figured out, right?.
I don’t.
I’m in a season right now where the Holy Spirit is stretching things I assumed were settled. Not the gospel or Jesus. Just the parts I inherited and never actually held up to scripture myself.
It’s humbling. Some days it’s uncomfortable. But I’d rather be stretched by the Spirit than comfortable in something that was never His to begin with.
I think that’s the posture this requires: not me leading the untangling, but following His lead through it. Letting Him set the pace instead of rushing to resolve every tension just so I can feel settled again.
How do you know if it’s healthy
This is the test that matters.
Is this pulling you closer to Jesus, or further from Him?
Is this making you more honest, or more cynical?
Is this leading you to scripture, or away from it?
Is this producing humility, or just permission?
Are you willing to be wrong, or just willing to be heard?
Untangling that draws you nearer to Jesus is growth. Deconstruction that ends with you bitter, isolated, and done with Him is something else entirely.
The Challenge
Peter needed a vision, a repeated word, and a knock at the door before he’d let go of something he’d never questioned.
What’s God been repeating to you that you keep arguing with?