As a child I was taught a vast array of different Bible stories, most of which created in my young mind this sense of awe and wonder. No story filled me with more wonder than the one when Lot’s wife turned around to look back at the village of Sodom where they had been living, saw that it was being destroyed by fire, and was somehow turned into a pillar of salt.
I can remember thinking at the time how God must have a terrible temper that something as little as someone disobeying an instruction to not look back as their home was burning would essentially be killed by God for that level of disobedience. In my young mind I figured God was being pretty harsh, to say the least. I found myself feeling sorry for Lot’s wife, and feeling afraid for what this same God might do to me one day. I mean “yikes!!!” If God did that to her, wonder what he might do to me someday.
Did I mention that I grew up in a family and in a church family that would proudly identify as being “conservative Christians?”
My last blog post happened to be about the question of whether I dare even call myself a Christian anymore, since in our western world of 2025 the very word Christian connotes conservative. In my own land of the United States, where I’ve spent my first 78 years to date here on earth, Christians have essentially captured what some in the area of political economics have labeled “the conservative movement.” These movement-conservatives have defined themselves as being committed to a free market system in which government opened up trade relationships among different nations, each with their own sovereign government or trading partner. Conservative governments would serve, essentially, as trade representatives for national industries and their products or services. These governments would in turn fund a military establishment to protect those national industries and their trading partners.
I say that Christians have captured these movement-conservatives, but I hasten to speculate that it was most likely the conservatives in America who captured our Christians. Hence, I would tell you or anyone else who wants to know today that I am a Christian. Uncaptured! Therefore, I am a liberal. (Liberal being one of the most hated words in the minds of conservative Christians in today's world.)
I got to be that way by studying the Bible and in so doing learning that the authors were mostly all Jewish then-liberal men of their time (with one Gentile then-liberal man thrown into the mix) who represented progressive movements in the midst of their own conservative communities. Although the Bible is technically a library of different writings spread across a millennium, it is better read as a generic story of God in relation to humankind. Picking apart verses, sentences, paragraphs and pages here and there is as futile when reading the Bible as it would be if reading Margaret Mitchell's “Gone With the Wind” in that same manner. That’s a good way to NOT learn about humanity or the inhumanity of slavery requiring rescue. The whole exists in a realm far beyond the sum of its parts taken out of order. Might as well have started building the Empire State Building from the middle up and down and without digging down first for an actual foundation. No wonder most Christians have lost the plot of scripture, if they ever knew it in the first place.
The biblical story is essentially about the human dance across the ballroom of human history. It is the story of what dancing looks like when both partners struggle to lead. Humans and Deity move across the floor somehow, but they do so in a 3-steps forward 2-steps back rhythm, depending on who’s in the lead. Were it only 2 forward and 2 back, the dancers would remain in one place upon the floor. But somehow the Deity manages to get an extra step in, and progress actually occurs over the course of time.
It’s perhaps misleading to suggest that the biblical story is a struggle for leadership between the divine and the human. It would be more accurate to say that the divine choreographer sends forth dance instructors aimed at teaching humans how to correctly follow the choreography. Biblical authors serve the role of these dance instructors trying to follow God’s choreography in the mirror and teach their partners the proper steps forward.
What ensues throughout the Christian scriptures is something of a comedic exercise where humans struggle to lead by stepping back to where they’ve already been out of fear they will otherwise lose control. Humans, we come to find out through the biblical story, are conservative by nature. We want to lead. We want to be in control. And we want to step back to where we’ve been before. For us it’s about being able to hold on to the past and go back where we've already been.
The central story of the Old Testament involves the Exodus out of slavery in Egypt. Its back-story begins in ancient Mesopotamia where a young liberal named Terah brings forward a small band of liberal family members from his conservative home of Ur, migrating first to Haran (where Terah died, leaving his son Abram in charge). Understandably, the conservatives might have assumed the liberals in their family were crazy. Abram, Sarai, Lot and the rest then migrate from Haran on into the land of Canaan. God choreographs. Abram teaches and leads. Three steps forward. And four generations later the dance takes them all the way to Egypt. Then, in a dramatic thriller after several generations, forward to Canaan from the south (Mesopotamia being to the north of Canaan).
Quite the dance ensues as different dance instructors relieve each other and try to keep things moving in a forward direction. Three steps forward for every two steps back.
Which leads me back right now to that story of Lot and his wife on their way out of Sodom. Remember? The lady who turned around to see where they’d been, only to turn into a pillar of salt. That’s the one where, as a small boy in my conservative household and church family, I had trouble understanding why she deserved such a fate.
The all too human story of turning back, our classic conservative moment where we try and lead away from the unknown progress of an unseen choreographer and a liberal dance partner who insists on stepping forward, is my own story from my youth. Only my liberal dance partner / instructor didn’t last long in that role. The Jesus I started dancing with turned out to have been elbowed off the floor by a conservative instructor who insisted on teaching me the steps without the music. By shutting off the music, this Christian dance I was being taught was all about memorizing the steps and going through the motions. Two steps forward and three steps back. Practice makes perfect. I was trained to follow Christian evangelicals in a pattern that actually made sense to me at the time. The biblical steps I learned involved passages and verses, or verses and passages when we would take those two steps forward.
As for Lot’s wife? God obviously punishes those who don’t obey in matters of sexuality. End of mystery. So much for my childhood sense of awe and wonder.
Then it became my turn to take the lead as a conservative dance partner/instructor so others could learn to obey God as I had. But because of an instructor I had who did believe in taking two steps forward before the three back, I was advised to attend a an academically accredited graduate school of theology to get a Master’s in Divinity degree before signing on with any dance studio.
And what difference did that make?
Well, for the first time out on the floor since possibly my initial conversion to Christianity, they played the music. They turned the music on so I could hear an actual beat and realize there was an actual story we were dancing to. A story that needed telling as a whole and not as a disjointed series of passages and verses. A story about human sin and divine salvation. Better yet, the Bible wasn’t just a single song but an entire repertoire of songs carrying forward the same theme, the same larger story of fear vs. love, sin vs. salvation, backward vs. forward.
Now are you ready for this?
The whole became the holy. It was so much greater than just the sum of its parts, because in the whole the actual choreographer, God and God’s Incarnate Son Jesus, called for 3 steps forward and only 2 back. Not the other way around. In fact, the biblical story was about a people who insisted on looking back (like Lot’s wife) and getting “stuck” and paralyzed by what amounted to the sin of “fearful control,” where we as humans would so fear going forward into the unknown that, to feel in control, we disobeyed God’s call to “let go” and have faith.
As for that central story in the Old Testament I mentioned earlier, the Exodus where an elderly liberal named Moses brought his Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt and led their feet forward through the waters and across the desert, here’s what happened.
Go ahead and turn on the music. Let this part of the human story of sin play out. We’re by now in the 2nd stanza in the book of Numbers, chapters 13-14. Two years after leaving Egypt, “letting go and letting God,” as it were, this collective of Hebrew tribes had stepped their way forward to within a mile or so of the Jordan River. On the other side lay the promised land. “Are we there yet?” the children may have wondered. Well, almost.
Except.
A majority of the tribesmen had heard what may well have started as a rumor. The people on the other side of that Jordan River were giants. So large that they, by contrast, appeared like mere grasshoppers themselves. They were so frightened that all they could think to do was change leaders, dump Moses and Aaron, and go back to Egypt and resume the life they’d known just two years prior as slaves. The conservatives had won the day. Moses, the liberal, was on his way out of his role as liberal dance instructor. And, to hold onto his job, he switched parties himself and led the people on a 38 year backward ho dance through an awful desert wilderness. He kept them from conserving their old slavery identities, but he never did then find himself seeing the promise land called for by the divine choreography. It was as if Moses shut off the music. The remainder of that 38 year dance involved 2 steps forward and 3 back, an eventual circle of going through the motions without the song being played.
So let’s then move forward to the central story of the New Testament.
Here is where the choreography of God makes its most dramatic impact. How so? The choreographer himself comes to the ballroom and takes on the role of dance instructor. By this time the Hebrew people had taken so many steps backward that they were scarcely on the floor. They were nearing the hallway, as it were, with 70 CE approaching in what we now recognize as the Roman calendar. (Or 70 AD as I learned it as a child.)
This actual choreographer in the flesh, named Jesus, turned on a new song the people were not used to. Forward they went. Three steps forward. "Let go" and follow. Conservatives among the people resisted. They would lead backward instead. "Hold on" and resist, 1-2-3 back, 1-2-3 back.
No wonder Jesus wept.
The choreographer himself told story after story, played song after song. With Jesus leading it was back two, forward three. The God-Man rhythm kept going until the music stopped. Someone pulled the plug. Three days later the sound returned and a new "instant classic" song was played. The music of the church, the bands of Jewish and later Gentile liberals now taking over from the choreographer himself, then meeting resistance from those conserving the past, 1-2-3 back, 1-2-3 back. Fearful control brought about by conservatives back into their old comfort zones of familiarity. Loving influence brought about by liberals progressing forward into the new Kingdom across the new Jordan. Song after song. The story of human sin and divine salvation. Of fearful control and loving influence. Of holding on and letting go. Of leading ourselves and following the Christ (choreographer incarnate). Of leaving the music off and memorizing the steps. Of turning on the music and joining the beat.
Looking back and becoming a pillar of salt. Going back to Egypt rather than trusting the unseen promised land. Crucifying the choreographer and those who would teach the unseen new kindom. 1-2-3 back X 3.
This may not be your story. But because I’ve come to believe it is THE biblical story, it has become my story.
It is WHY I AM A CHRISTIAN LIBERAL.
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