This is a piece about women and the church; it is about mystical marriages with Jesus; and it is, ultimately, about a God continually being found among women.

—

I am not a church historian. I’m just a guy with an undergraduate theology degree and exactly half of a Masters in Church History (I dropped out to study the much more lucrative field of creative writing).

However, I remember this one specific lecture from my undergrad church history class. We were studying the Middle Ages, and my professor, Dr. Paul Boles (truly an all-timer), gave a lecture on the women mystics. You know, Hildegard and Catherine and Julian and Teresa. Interior Castle and stigmatas and floating down stairs.

To jog your memory, here is a Taylor Leonhardt’s Halloween costume from a few days ago:

Before that lecture, I kept my distance from the women mystics of the Middle Ages. They seemed, well, out there, kind of floating in a spirituality I didn’t recognize on Sunday mornings, when the closest we got to an ecstatic vision was holding our hand up to “Reckless Love.”

But then Dr. Boles stood in front of our class and talked about how women were systematically locked out of formal theological studies or church leadership back then. They were not seen as “legitimate” spiritual leaders, and the Roman Catholic church did not have much of a use for them.

But, he said, look at what God did! He gave them an intimacy unmatched by their male peers, an intimacy that would educate the Church despite the limitations placed on them.

Where the world swerved towards power, God spoke to those absent it.

—

Last week, wrote a beautiful piece about the hymn “In the Garden.” If you are unfamiliar with that hymn, here is one of my favorite versions by the brilliant :

These are the lyrics (taken from Kelsey’s post):

Verse 1:
I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.

Refrain:
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Verse 2:
He speaks, and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing;
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

Verse 3:
I’d stay in the garden with Him
Tho’ the night around me be falling;
But He bids me go; thro’ the voice of woe,
His voice to me is calling.

She writes that the song is “intensely personal;” it can sound Pollyanna and a bit saccharine to modern ears. But she argues that it portrays a “confident contentment” in God and a childlike wonder with God as a companion, savior, and friend. Towards the end, she writes this:

“What songs do we sing these days that reflect this kind of child-like contentment and dependence on a present and good Father? Go ahead, call ‘In the Garden’ a proto- ‘Jesus is my boyfriend song.’ Are you calling it that because you can’t imagine leaning into such a trusting, peaceful posture of worship?”

I was fascinated by this piece because “In the Garden” was my Grandma Sue’s favorite hymn. She died in 2020, but I can still hear her soprano next to me—both her full soprano standing in a pew and her quiet soprano in the days leading up to her death. When she was in her assisted living center down the street from my parents, she would attend church each week with other folks living alongside her. The liturgy was always the same: requested hymns followed by a kind and thoughtful homily.

I attended a few times with her, and each time she requested “In the Garden.” With her dementia, I think she forgot she had requested it the week prior, so each week they sang that song.

It has never felt too saccharine or too sweet because I knew my Grandma Sue and the way she lived those lyrics.

—

If we leave the Middle Ages and look at the Bible, we find God doing the exact same thing. In worlds built for male power, God continuously disrupts the narrative and elevates women:

1. “Help-mate” (the word used to describe Eve) is the same word used for God coming to aid his people (Psalm 70:5, 146:5).

2. Hagar is the first person to name God (El Roi—The God Who Sees Me).

3. Deborah is the leader of the people of Israel in the era of judges.

4. Jael killed Sisera with a tent peg and saved the people of Israel.

5. Huldah interpreted the law when it was discovered by King Josiah.

6. Esther saved the Jews by working within a patriarchal and foreign system.

7. In Psalm 131, God is described as a mother.

8. Proverbs 31 describes the ideal woman like this: “She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.”

9. Song of Songs consists of three “speakers”: The Woman, The Man, and The Single Women of Jerusalem. The Woman speaks the majority of the verses and initiates sex and intimacy.

10. The book of Ruth purposefully upends the traditional man-finds-woman-at-well by putting her (a woman, a widow, AND a foreigner) as the one to seek out Boaz AND initiate intimacy.

11. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary are all included in Christ’s genealogy.

12. The angel appears to Mary first, not Joseph.

13. Also Mary’s Magnificat.

14. The prophetess Anna, who meets Jesus at the temple.

15. Jesus subverts the Old Testament man-goes-to-well-to-find-wife narrative by meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, offering her salvation, and then having her be the one to bring her entire town to Jesus.

16. Jesus describes himself as a mother hen.

17. Mary “sitting at Jesus’ feet” parallels males sitting at the feet of a rabbi.

18. The women stayed at the cross even when the men scattered.

19. God chose women to be the first to discover the tomb empty.

20. Mark’s mother Mary had a house church (Acts 12:12).

21. Priscilla and Aquila, a married couple, had a house church and trained pastors.

22. Timothy was trained up in the faith by his mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois.1

I am not exaggerating when I say that if anyone asks me why I’m a Christian and why I believe the Bible, I will point to the women throughout scripture, especially the women who were last at the cross and first at the tomb.

If you were making up a religion within that culture and time—honestly within any culture and time—you wouldn’t have women be main characters. But God did.

—

The Middle Ages mystics and the women of the Bible weren’t the only ones separated from power. The lineage of male domination has remained intact ever since Adam and Eve ate the fruit. And it is still going strong today. So many stories immediately come to mind as examples, but the first for me is John MacArthur telling Beth Moore to “go home.”

That was back in 2019, and I actually found myself walking the grounds of his church a few years later during their annual Shepherds Conference. I was invited there to meet with a few publishers who were selling books during the conference, and I remember being surprised by two things:

1. Every man was wearing a suit.

2. The only women I saw were serving coffee or doing general hospitality duties.

I knew to expect this; MacArthur’s seminary didn’t allow women in the MDiv degree, so it makes sense they wouldn’t be at a conference for pastors. But still, I felt sad, like I needed to tell everyone there is a different way of engaging with the world.

I walked through the sea of men in suits and thought of my own church a few miles away that was pastored—faithfully and joyfully—by a woman. I learned so much from her, and I felt sad they didn’t recognize it.2

—

Scroll back up and look at the painting I chose for this piece. There were many to choose from that depict the “mystical marriage to Christ” that many of the Middle Ages women mystics describe. Andrew Greeley, in his book The Catholic Imagination, actually talks about how some artists went so far as to depict these saints in the throes of their ecstatic visions, modeling a type of eros love for divine union.

I love thinking of these saints as married to Christ; they literally lived out the parables Jesus spoke about the wedding feast, once again modeling for the broader church what faithful obedience can look like.

—

When my mom was eleven, Grandma Sue suddenly found herself single and adjusting to life in a new tax bracket, moving back to her hometown of Chandler, Oklahoma and no longer living as a stay at home mother, instead working in the shoe section at Wal-Mart. After my mom left for college seven years later, Grandma Sue lived alone for the rest of her life.

That was nearly forty years of living alone, yet I never found Grandma Sue bitter or discontent. She truly walked with God in the garden: she had the gift of tongues and would generally only do it in her morning devotions each morning around 5:30am. She’d speak in tongues and pray for my parents and me and my siblings and even Lex, before any of us knew who she would be. And then each Sunday she would attend First Baptist Church a few blocks away and volunteer in the children’s ministry.

I am confident Grandma Sue didn’t know the names of any of the women mystics from the Middle Ages, and I doubt she knew what beatific or ecstatic visions were. But I 100% believe God treated my Grandma Sue like one of those mystics. He knew that she—this single woman living a block away from the train tracks in Chandler, Oklahoma—deserved that extra intimacy with Him.

I have never met someone as married to Jesus as she was.

—

I wonder if we balk at “In the Garden” or “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs because we are so accustomed to a man’s theology of power. We want logic and action and—as Kelsey points out—battle terminology. Let’s go to war for Jesus and talk about spiritual power for Jesus.

But are we not doing exactly what they did in the Middle Ages? Are we not perpetuating a narrative that it is the seat of power that dictates spiritual experience?

My Grandma Sue died in 2020, and I wonder what she is singing in heaven. I doubt it is something about battling others; I bet it is something like “In the Garden.”

—

As I write this, I’m listening to Jon Guerra’s record Keeper of Days (my favorite album of 2020!). The opening song, “The Kingdom of God,” talks about the types of folks Jesus describes in the Beatitudes: the weak, the abused, the outcast. Here’s the chorus:

“For their hearts have a road to the kingdom of God
And their souls are the songs of the kingdom of God
And they will find a refuge, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

As I listened to the song and wrote this piece, I couldn’t help but place “women” in place of the pronouns in the chorus:

“For women’s hearts have a road to the kingdom of God
And women’s souls are the songs of the kingdom of God
And women will find a refuge, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

Women: those women in the Bible, those mystics in the Middle Ages, and my own Grandma Sue. It doesn’t seem to matter the time or the culture, God continuously elevates women as leaders in the faith, even when the world denies them that reality.

If you want to read a little more about my Grandma Sue, I’d humbly recommend this piece I wrote just after her death. She is my all-time spiritual hero.

I’m so grateful you’re here. If you are feeling crazy and have a few extra bucks lying around every month, I’d be honored if you became a paid subscriber. That extra income is legitimately SO helpful for me as I work on these pieces (and spend too much money at coffee shops doing so!).

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Back in the Spring of 2016, I got a scholarship to go to the country’s oldest Christian writers’ conference.1 I was 23, and I had an almost-finished book proposal for a memoir called Is It Well? An Anxious Love Story. It was about high school and anxiety and falling in love; it reads just like a novel, but the plot just happens to be completely true.

I went to the conference determined to become a traditionally published author. All I needed to do was wear my best polo and smile really big and look generally cute and convince the publishing literati that I was what would happen if Disney Channel and Christianity Today were to have a baby.

Before I went to the conference, I received one big tip: I needed to not say that I wrote memoir. Instead, I should say I wrote narrative nonfiction.

Memoir was out; narrative nonfiction was in.

Ooh so chic. So sexy.

—

Before I get any further, I should define memoir. I did some deep reporting and research to find a definition that felt good. (I typed “what is memoir” into Google).

Memoir is like when Shrek and Fiona kiss on the beach at the beginning of Shrek 2.

It is when poetry and narrative dance, and it’s is light on “takeaways” and “applications.” The truth it reveals, to steal from Ms. Dickinson, is told in slant. It is not autobiography, and it is not memoir plus. It is simply memoir.2

Christian memoir is my favorite genre to read and to write. Here are some of my favorites:

• Dakota by Kathleen Norris

• Lit by Mary Karr

• The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner

• My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman

• The Pastor by Eugene Peterson (arguably an autobiography??)

• Between the Light and Me by

  • This one is new, and I’m not done with it so don’t ruin it for me. But so far it is just stunning and everything I want memoir to be!

Memoir is so much more than a dry retelling of a life. When it’s done right, it is transcendent.

—

In 2019, I was 26 and going to that Christian writers’ conference again to pitch Is It Well. I decided to stop smiling so much and stop pitching like I was a future evangelical golden boy and instead just be myself and be honest with agents and acquisition editors.

God was gracious, and I met an amazing agent who saw my dreams and held them well. I was shocked when she sent over the official contract for me to sign. Suddenly, just like that, I was agented.

Over the past seven years, we have pitched Is It Well? to pretty much every major Christian publisher. To no avail. Almost all of them have been wonderfully encouraging about the writing, and almost all of them have had to “regrettably pass” because of my platform and my genre.

I told them I wrote “narrative nonfiction,” but they correctly saw through my disguise for the memoirist I was.

—

One year later, in the heart of Covid, an acquisitions editor gratefully had a really straight forward conversation with me. She told me that I needed to aim for a certain amount of subscribers in order to get publishers interested in Is It Well? So that’s what I aimed for, each week or two posting something new on here that would hopefully share the deep love of God and, as a byproduct, get a few more subscribers to make my “total subscribers” page go up and to the right.

I reached that number about a month ago, relieved to have gotten to what felt like the peak. It took me fifteen years, but I felt good to have accomplished it my way: slowly and sustainably. Then, right after hitting that milestone, another acquisitions editor (kindly) told me the number has changed since 2020.

She said it’s now triple what it was six years ago.

I don’t plan to get to that triple number anytime soon.

—

I read something the other day about how memoir has the chance to be the answer for AI. The author said in a world of AI slop and information overload, it is the memoirist who is irreplaceable and the person more and more people will be turning to.

(The writer was, of course, a memoirist, so idk how reliable of a source she is. But still, a boy can dream!)

AI can’t do what us memoirists do because it is designed to relay information and neat prose; it is not meant for narrative and poetry to dance. It doesn’t understand why a princess would fall in love with an ogre, so it is up to us—mere human memoirists—to explain that beauty.

Then today I read something my friend wrote after attending a conference on AI and the writing industry.

“We have heard further confirmation across industries that people are coming to re-value the process and the unpolished product. Because everyone now has the tools to add polish to a product, there is a growing desire for authenticity.”

This makes my heart warm because I am definitely the king of the “unpolished product.” So are all memoirists, royalty in the court of authentic life.

—

Last year I decided to shelve Is It Well? and write a new book, and I decided I’d shelve memoir as a genre along with it. I just really really really wanted to be traditionally published, and I was willing to do what it took. I’d still write what I believed, but I’d switch my genre to better serve the industry.

So I did just that: this past Spring, I wrote a book proposal for a book of thirty short chapters, each one would share a bit of my story and an application.

There was just one issue: I had no desire to write that book. I spent literal weeks with “finish book proposal” on my to-do list, but I kept putting it off. I believed in the book, and I believed it was an important book to write. But I just had no motivation to be the guy who wrote it.

Instead, I really wanted to write another memoir. This one about returning to evangelicalism in my thirties as someone who does not fit the cultural cast that evangelicalism makes. The book would be messy and interesting, jumping between timelines—past and present—placing my story in conversation with all the books coming out about evangelicalism today.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that book, but I knew it wouldn’t sell. So I kept trudging along with the book I knew would sell, the one with thirty short chapters.3

—

I work at the same place as my writing professor, so one day, as I was trying to work up the energy to finish this book proposal, he showed up at my office unannounced. He had something to talk to me about.

Him: “Are you enjoying what you’re writing?”

Me: “No.”

Him: “Then why are you writing it?”

Me: “I want a book deal.”

Him: “You need to forget about publishing for two years and just write what you want to write. Write what excites you.”

He was—and is—right. So that’s what I’ve decided to do: I decided to write what excites me. The book is tentatively titled Who Speaks for God? An Evangelical Wrestling.

It is not a memoir plus, and it is not narrative nonfiction. It is a memoir, and I am a memoirist.

—

Something interesting happened when that acquisitions editor—who is amazing and a friend!—told me the platform number is now triple what it was in 2020.

I actually breathed a sigh of relief.

In that moment, I realized I wasn’t writing on Slow Faith because I was desperate to get a book deal anymore. I was writing here because I loved it; I love showing up and getting your thoughts. I love wrestling with ideas and being messy and authentic. I love the feeling of hitting send and knowing my little words may have an impact on your life for the better.

I realized I’m a memoirist because that’s what God has made me to be, and maybe I’ll never get a traditional book deal and maybe that’s okay. I can keep showing up here and sharing my life and learning more about yours.

Praise God.

With all that said, if you want to follow along to my publishing journey / faith journey / life journey, I’d be honored!

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I’m not on socials, so word of mouth is the best way for my Substack to get around town. So sharing is a blessing to me!

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All that to say, I am beyond grateful to have you reading these words. I hope your day is a bit better because of them.

I am a covetous person. And I am an especially covetous writer.

Anytime any writer I know—any writer I love—gets an opportunity that I don’t, my heart burns. Oh, you got a book deal? You got invited to an exclusive writing group? You have a platform growing faster than mine?

My heart burns. Or, to be more precise, my heart burns a lot.

Marilynne Robinson, in Gilead, writes about covetousness this way,

“I don’t know exactly what covetous is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else’s virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.”

This past week, I experienced this. Two of my dearest writer friends got an opportunity I didn’t, and my heart burned. I genuinely want them to be happy, and I genuinely want them to have all the success in the entire world, but I also want to reject it out of covetousness, out of bitterness. Why did they get that opportunity and I didn’t?

—

At my Christian college, it was sexy to be a student leader. That opportunity began your sophomore year with the Alpha program. Alpha leaders were the people who led the freshmen and transfer orientation groups, and everybody who was anybody was a leader in that group. It was the seal of approval for your “coolness,” and you wore it like a badge around campus.

I interviewed to be an Alpha leader and felt the interview went really well. However, the more I prayed about it, the more I felt uncomfortable with it. I realized I wanted to be an Alpha leader for two reasons:

1. I wanted to disciple students a bit younger than me, to welcome them to college and encourage them in their walks with Christ.

2. I wanted to be popular.

In those times of prayer, I felt the patient and kind and gentle Spirit convict me. Did I really need the popularity? Was that something that would aid my walk with Christ, or would that contort my heart into a performance of popularity?

I decided not to do Alpha and instead became a Discipleship Group leader; it gave me my first desire without giving me the second.

—

This past week the great and came to Michigan to visit. Lex and I picked them up from their hotel and drove thirty minutes south to get dinner with at a little Mexican restaurant.

As we drove south we inevitably talked about Substack. Kenny has been on Substack now for over a year, and his platform has grown quickly. His writing is engaging and his interactions with people on here are authentic and earnest. I told him on the drive that I thought his platform would grow quickly and that a book deal would soon follow.

Then we joined for dinner. He started writing on here a few years ago and quickly gained both a platform and a book deal. (Preorder his book here!) And, just like Kenny, he is incredibly humble and kind and the real deal.

I need to be honest: I’ve spent time coveting their writing. It is tempting to “take offense” at the beauty of their success.

But there I was, sitting at a table and sharing a bowl of queso, and in that moment I encountered Kenny and Griffin’s humanness and remembered something: these are the people I want to succeed. They are loving and kind and genuinely striving their way towards Christ.

Praise God for the success that may come their way. May I not reject their happiness.

—

I’m currently discerning whether to just say “send it” and self publish Is It Well?—the memoir I spent seven years writing. Honestly, the prospect of self publishing is kind of appealing. It sounds fun to do all the business-y stuff myself. As the son of a business professor, I’m curious if I might enjoy the process.

But still—I’ve always dreamt of a traditional book deal, I’ve always imagined that being my finish line.

—

This past week I read that two other popular Christian writers on Substack were invited to be a part of an exclusive group of writers who are mentored and put in front of donors and benefactors.

My heart burned.

This past week I discovered a collective of writers who encourage one another in their craft and faith. I learned it was invite only, and it is currently full.

My heart burned.

This past week I read about a conference you can attend that gives you an opportunity to pitch your creative work to a group of people with money to give. It cost an exorbitant amount, which excludes my ability to attend.

My heart burned.

—

I realize I’m writing this from an extreme place of privilege. I represent every demographic the Christian writing world has historically loved; I have been afforded opportunities and access to tables that others have not.

Full stop.

But still, my covetous heart continues to burn.

—

A lot of my friends graduated from Alpha leadership to RA leadership in our junior year of college. I thought and prayed about applying but felt the patient and kind and gentle Spirit say no.

Instead, I baked my friends cookies and tried to create a space where they could come and relax.

Then my senior year I decided—for a hot second—to run for president. I put together a campaign video of me dancing to 2014 Katy Perry hits and was prepared to publicly announce my campaign, but then I prayed about it and felt the patient and kind and gentle Spirit once again say no.

Instead, I spent my senior year cheering for my friend who did run and get elected president.

I graduated college without ever being a big time student leader.

—

This past week I got breakfast with another friend in the publishing industry. She has known me since 2019 and has known how badly I want to be traditionally published. I told her how much I’ve been struggling with my publishing desires lately, and I tell her that I really want that book deal but am praying through the reality of self publishing.

I tell her about God asking me to write Is It Well? and telling me the audience will follow. I tell her that God did not specify the audience: it could be two people or ten people or one million. Who knows.

I just feel like I’m supposed to be faithful.

—

We all know people who are using AI to gain big platforms. Or people who are fake or elitist or holier-than-thou, succeeding by writing things about God they don’t actually display.

This isn’t about them.

This is about Kenny or Nikki or Griffin. It’s about my two dear friends who got that writing opportunity. It’s about the truly good humans who find the success they deserve.

I don’t want my heart to burn at their success.

—

Last week I saw that and the Center for Christianity and Public Life are still accepting applications for their Public Life Fellowship. It’s a nine-month fellowship for people who are driven by their faith and are deeply invested in the flourishing of the common good. It’s ecumenical and intergenerational and interoccupational (I made up that word). In short, it’s lovely.

I prayed about this too, prayed about applying, and once again I sensed the patient and kind and gentle Spirit saying no. Maybe that will change someday, but for now I’m just getting a lot of “no’s” in regard to really cool things.

But God, I just want to be a student leader!

Really cool and deserving people (maybe you?) will get accepted for this fellowship, and—just like Kenny and Griffin—they will deserve the success they achieve. I do not think this applies to everyone, but for me the Spirit has consistently been clear: a title will go to my head.

I do not think it is good for my soul, at least at this point.

—

At the end of the breakfast with my friend on Friday, I asked her if the old platform numbers are still accurate. Back in 2020, I was told I needed to get X amount of email subscribers in order for publishers to be interested in me. A few weeks ago I finally reached that number.

Unfortunately, she told me that number had tripled over the past six years. Publishers need more these days. I should have felt crushed then. My heart should have burned. But for some reason it didn’t. Honestly, it felt like relief.

I told her, “I spent years writing online in order to get a book deal, and now I feel like I write online simply because I want to.”

Maybe I will get Is It Well? traditionally published. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll someday apply for something like the Public Life Fellowship and get accepted. Maybe not.

After a week of feeling my heart burn, it felt good to be calm for once. I credit the patient and kind and gentle Spirit.

—

One of the few things I remember from the time I read Plato’s Republic as a freshman in college was that leaders should be the ones who do not want to lead. Plato calls them “philosopher kings,” and says the best people for the role are the ones who do not want it and question their ability to do it well. He believes they will be humble enough to not let the power get to their head.

I do not think I am humble enough.

Sometimes I fish for compliments. Sometimes I pose a false humility in an attempt to get people to say nice things about me. Sometimes I burn inside when the attention isn’t squarely on my shoulders.

I don’t think I’d make a good philosopher king, and I wonder if I do any good as a public writer.

—

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to share my faith to someone who was genuinely curious. He had just stepped foot into church for the first time in his life the Sunday before, and through a series of random “coincidences,” I found myself at dinner with him. That’s when he asked me:

“Why are you a Christian?”

I don’t really remember everything I said; I hope I shared the Gospel in a winsome and lovely way. But that question—and that dinner—changed my understanding of *waves hands* all of this. It made this little Substack, it made my publishing goals, it made my world of email subscribers feel so small.

I am not writing on this website—I am not sending words to your inbox—to make more of me. At least, on my best days I’m not doing that. No; I am writing these words so that you may experience the surpassing greatness of Christ—a God who wore flesh and perfectly lived a life filled with great suffering and great joy.

That’s why I write, and I don’t want the pursuit of subscribers or titles or book deals to get in the way of it.

—

That patient and kind and gentle Spirit may tell me “no” my entire life—to writing fellowships and book deals, to fame and notoriety—and that will be for my best.

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Today in church a family of five sat in front of Lex and me. Dad on the left, Mom on the right, and three boys in between them—each of the boys like stair step variations of each other: same haircut, same build, same mannerisms.

During one of the worship songs, I watched Dad hold his hands out in front of him, palms up in worship. So did Mom. Then I saw their youngest son—probably nine or ten—standing in the middle holding his hands out in front of him too, palms up, just like his parents.

I nudged Lex and pointed to him. My heart felt so full. I sensed the Spirit.

—

“There's a wideness in God's mercy
I cannot find in my own
And He keeps His fire burning
To melt this heart of stone
Keeps me aching with a yearning
Keeps me glad to have been caught
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God.”

-Rich Mullins (“The Love of God)

—

A month ago Lex and I sat in our usual spots, and I saw an older couple I recognized a few rows ahead of us. They own an apple orchard and a sandwich shop; it’s my favorite restaurant on main street.

They recently lost their son. He was a manager at the sandwich shop, and I learned of his passing when I went in for lunch one day and found flowers on every table and pictures of him throughout the restaurant. I learned his funeral was the day before; it was held at our church.

With their backs to me, I watched them throughout the service. I prayed for them and did my feeble best to hold them in their mourning. They don’t know me, but I was grateful they belonged to this church, hopeful they knew that God holds their tears in bottles.

—

“Now I've seen no band of angels
But I've heard the soldiers' songs
Love hangs over them like a banner
Love within them leads them on
To the battle on the journey
And it's never gonna stop
Ever widening their mercies
And the fury of His love”

-Rich Mullins (“The Love of God”)

—

Later in today’s church service, our pastor said he had another sermon written but felt nudged by the Spirit to be more personal, to share his story.

Growing up in rural Iowa, he first experienced the love of God as a high schooler in Fellowship of Christian Athletes. One night he heard his English teacher share the Gospel, and he decided to lean into—as Rich Mullins wrote—“the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.” Soon he started visiting a small church across town; within a year he introduced his mom and brothers to Christ, and he stood up with his mom to become members of the church on the same Sunday. The pastor stood up there with them as they shared their stories.

In the next year, his parents get divorced. When the news went public, he expected to be shamed and not welcomed in the church anymore; stuff like that can get around fast and do lots of damage in a small town. He walked into church the Sunday after the town found out and was about to turn around and leave when the same pastor who stood with him when he became a member saw him, walked up to him, and wrapped him in a hug.

My pastor—as a high schooler going through the unimaginable—wept as his pastor hugged him. As they hugged, his pastor whispered three things in his ear:

1. “You are loved by God.”

2. “You are loved by us.”

3. “You will not journey through this alone.”

Praise God for church.

—

“Oh the love of God
And oh, the love of God
The love of God!”

-Rich Mullins (“The Love of God”)

—

A few weeks ago, the church was packed and Lex and I found ourselves sitting directly behind a mom holding a baby. I am a terrible gauge at baby ages, but this one was on the cusp of learning how to smile.

I decided I would be the one to make it smile for the first time.

I spent the entire service doing everything I could to make that baby smile. I made goofy faces, I smiled really big, I did random things with my hands. Nothing. But still, I continued.

I do not remember exactly what was talked about or what songs we sang, but I remember that baby, and I remember the joy I felt looking into his God-given face.

—

“Joy and sorrow are this ocean
And in their every ebb and flow
Now the Lord a door has opened
That all Hell could never close
Here I'm tested and made worthy
Tossed about but lifted up
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God.”

-Rich Mullins (“The Love of God”)

—

I thought of my pastor’s story as I watched the family in front of me worship, the youngest—along with his parents—learning the contours of God’s wide, wide mercy. Somewhere in that sanctuary sat the couple who lost their son, still grieving I’m sure. And somewhere else was that mother and her precious un-smiling baby.

Outside of the miraculous, I don’t know how a church composed of humans can hold all that grief and joy within itself.

So I sat there and felt so filled with a love for what the church looks like when it lives up to the great grand redemptive plan of God. All this grief and all this joy, coexisting, weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice.

How is that possible?

It is not. It is a miracle.

—

—

A postscript:

Today, after sharing his story, my pastor said this: “I know many of you have experienced rejection and shame at the hands of the church, and I am so sorry for that. But that version of the church isn’t Christ’s plan.”

I want to celebrate the church without ignoring the deep pain that has been caused by the church not living up to the “reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.” I have my own pain. I’m sure you do too. But I am praying for you today, that you may find a place to revel in God’s wide mercy, a place that will hold you while you weep and celebrate with you as you rejoice.

Those churches are out there, I promise.

I’m just so grateful you are here, reading these words. I am praying that I write to simply reflect the God who has been so gracious to me. Thanks for following my journey deeper into the heart of God.

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drew

I was sitting on the hard oak of my kitchen chairs across from my new partner in ministry when I decided to give up the leadership of my church.

And it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I listened with half of my mind as Pastor Bernard argued that co-pastoring our new church would be a beautiful witness to God’s uniting and reconciling power. We were bringing his black congregation and my white congregation together—becoming one new multiracial church. Wouldn’t leading together as one be another concrete example of the unity we hoped to display?

But while he preached co-pastoring unity, the other half of my mind was preoccupied with the reality that equality of role would not lead to equity of influence.

Would it be real parity of leadership if I would actually be perceived as the “real” lead pastor by many of the people in our church? Would our influence be on par with one another in our denominational circles, where white cultural norms reigned? Would the people of Oakland—a historically black city where black people were rapidly being displaced by white people like me—see this as unity or a gentrification of the church?

Finally, I said, “This only works if you’re the lead pastor. What Oakland needs to see in the church is a white man submitting to a black man’s leadership.”

That was eight years ago now, and we’ve been pastoring Tapestry Church together that entire time. And in a country where 76% of multiracial churches are led by white ministers, I’ve had the fairly unusual privilege of being a white “number 2” in a black led, multiracial church. Here are three things I’ve learned in the process.

#1 - Leadership is not my God-given right

There was a time when I actually entertained the idea of being a co-pastor with Pastor Bernard. After all, we were bringing our two churches together. They were roughly the same size. And wouldn’t it be a great picture of reconciliation?

But years later, I’ve come to the realization that the only reason co-pastoring didn’t seem preposterous on its face is that I had been conditioned to see my whiteness as giving me a type of authority. I never would have said it (in part because I didn’t even see it!), but the truth is that I saw my whiteness as padding my resume.

I only realized this after putting the following question to myself: If I had merged church plants with another white pastor who…

• was nearly twenty years my senior

• had two decades more experience in pastoral ministry

• grew up around the corner from our planned location, and

• had relationships with pastors, community leaders, and neighbors all over Oakland

…would I have even taken seriously the idea that I should be on equal footing?

To this day, many people who meet Pastor Bernard and I together assume that we are co-pastors, and I have to explain to them that he is my lead pastor. That assumption is simply not made when you meet two pastors from one church who have the same racial background.

(Anecdotally, my friends who are women in ministry often labor under a similar set of assumptions. I can wear t-shirts into spaces where they have to wear their clerical collar to be recognized as a pastor at all.)

In a world where patriarchal and racist systems have predominated for so long, we have been socialized to see people through the lens of white male leadership. That lens is hard to shake. You can’t just take it to Lens Crafters and get it switched out for the imago Dei lens with glare protection.

It requires a routine and ongoing humbling to remember leadership is not my God-given right.

#2 - Humility is not a feeling

I have to constantly be attentive to the ways I am tempted toward a false humility. I like to call this not-so-humble counterfeit a “Philippians 2:3” humility.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, he counsels unity (“being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind…”, 2:2). And he knows that this unity is tied inextricably to humility, (“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.” 2:3).

In verse 3, Paul is talking about our motives. When you act, don’t do it from a selfish motive. Let humility drive you. What’s humility? Valuing others above myself. We tend to think of humility as a way of thinking.

But we forget that Philippians 2:3 ends with a comma not a period.

The next verse completes the picture. What does it actually look like to value someone else above yourself?

“...not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

Here’s the difference:

• Instead of giving lip service to your leader but quietly undermining their authority behind their back, you should routinely and publicly put them above you.

• Instead of simply saying you value someone’s culture, use the titles that convey honor and respect in their culture.

• Instead of making decisions unilaterally that aren’t yours to make, ask for input and permission.

I’ll be the first to say, I don’t practice this perfectly. I wasn’t born deferential and collaborative. I instinctively grab for control and authority when I see it dangling in front of me.

But the way of Jesus demands that even pastors “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

“Wow,” people sometimes say when they hear my story, “You had to give up a lot!” That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ve learned over the years that…

#3 - Sacrifice is not always a net loss

I can genuinely say, submitting to Pastor Bernard’s leadership is one of the best decisions I ever made. I am no martyr.

Sure, there was some fear at the beginning. A loss of authority can strike terror into the heart of a control freak like me. But the truth is I’ve come out way ahead. I have the joy of working under the covering of a compassionate, wise, and hard-working leader.

I get to serve a congregation that actually looks like Oakland. A thriving community from just about every hue and human experience under the sun. People come, they see the gospel concretized in our leadership structure, and they believe what we say about justice and self-giving love.

Just the other day, on yet another perfect Oakland evening, a woman told me at a birthday party, “I was weirded out by you being a pastor at first. I wondered if you were one of those Christians. But then I heard your church’s story. I’m intrigued.”

I get the treat of pastoring the church I dreamed of eleven years ago. Doing it from the second chair with my brother leading makes it that much sweeter.

Liberal Christians say nice things

Type into Google “ and Rachel Held Evans.”

What you’ll find is two opposing sides on a lot of issues. Evans was far more theologically progressive than Newbell, and Newbell was far more theologically conservative than Evans.

They critiqued each other in public (you can see those critiques in your Google search), and—in an age accustomed to take down culture—you can assume they found joy in proving the other wrong.

That assumption, however, is false.

After Evans tragically passed away in 2019, Newbell responded to a tweet from Beth Moore with the following reflections:

If theology were countries, Rachel and The Gospel Coalition wouldn’t carry the same passports. Yet she went out of her way to reach out to Trillia about a piece she wrote for them, and she encouraged her to share her critique of Rachel’s theology publicly in order to edify the body of Christ.

Like, what?!

Conservative Christians say nice things too

—an author and Anglican priest—thinks women can hold any office within the church. Tim Keller, throughout his ministry, did not.

However, after Keller’s death, Warren wrote a piece for The New York Times about her relationship with Keller. Here’s what she said:

“Six years ago, out of the blue, Keller emailed me. I had published a controversial piece and was being hammered online…. He wrote simply to encourage me, to tell me to keep my chin up and keep writing. It meant the world to me. Since then, Tim became a chief source of cheerleading and guidance in my life — a protective older brother or father figure, a life coach and a spiritual sage combined. Over the past few years, any time I was being piled-on after a controversial piece, my phone would ring and it would be Tim, just checking in. He wanted to hear how I was feeling, to encourage me, and, then, to discuss ideas and theology. Mostly, Tim wanted to talk about the hope and beauty he found in Jesus and how we might best communicate that hope in our moment.”

Tim Keller, a man famous for his soft complementarianism and co-founder of the complementarian outlet The Gospel Coalition, acted as “a protective older brother or father figure” for Warren, an ordained Anglican priest. He did not think she had the right interpretation of scripture, yet he saw her as a fellow Christian gleaning wheat in God’s kingdom.

Like, what?!

Negative peace and positive peace

In Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes about the difference between negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace is “the absence of tension” and positive peace is “the presence of justice.”

I love that difference (it’s a similar distinction to Bonhoeffer’s “cheap” and “costly” grace). Injustice and inequality can go unreckoned with when we pursue an everyone-hold-hands-and-sing-a-song type of false peace. No, we need to stand firm against injustice and protect the vulnerable.

However, in standing against the oppressor, King was adamant we do not adopt their tactics of hate. Instead, we are to pursue positive peace through love. He wrote the following words for Ebony in 1957:

“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative and redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”

As Christians, we are called to clearly and firmly stand against what we oppose with love, refusing to adopt the world’s all-too-often hateful and dehumanizing approach.

Newbell and Evans, Warren and Keller each embodied this reality; they did not back down from their beliefs but they engaged each other with love. Praise God.

Generosity (and vitriol) aren’t partisan

You know that old saying about how when someone cuts you off in traffic they are a jerk but when you cut someone off in traffic you have a good reason to do it?

I do the exact same thing theologically. It’s so easy for me to see all the nuance on my end of the theological spectrum, and it is also so easy for me to see all the evil on the other side. Those people don’t have a good or generous bone in their body; in fact, I should celebrate their demise and should “own” them online any chance I get.

But, like, what if that’s not true? What if they aren’t abusers but are just genuinely trying to align their beliefs with their actions and live faithful lives?1

Paul writing about love and deceit

In Ephesians 4, Paul is writing about unity in the body of Christ.

“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

King’s positive peace is rooted in passages like this. It’s essential to know the truth so that we aren’t “tossed to and fro,” and we need to speak boldly about that truth so that others can stand firm too. Which means standing against falsehoods.

However, the truths we speak must be said with a goal of the Body of Christ “building itself in love.” In standing against what’s false, Paul does not encourage us to also be crafty and deceitful in response. Love and deceit cannot coexist.

Baptizing take down culture

I worry we have become so acclimated to online take down culture that we have baptized it and called it Christian. Like a frog in a pot, we’ve blindly gotten used to the boiling water around us, responding to critiques with vitriolic take downs, using our words to attack rather than build up the Body.

I have 100% done this.

Back in 2019, I wrote a piece about racism with a really controversial title. I wrote it in a way to win points with my team and take down the other side. I do not think I pursued positive peace but instead wrote with vindictive glee. Did anyone who disagreed with me feel edified, understood, or respected?

That’s a big NO.

All I did was furiously type words on my keyboard, give the piece an intentionally controversial title, and hit send, waiting for the masses to affirm my echo chamber and destroy my enemies. I sat back—like a smug Medieval king sucking on a leg of lamb—and declared to my adoring fans, “Don’t you think I CRUSHED our enemies?! CHEER FOR ME! LET US FEAST!”

I was wrong.

I’m not going to give examples from other Christians because I don’t think I need to (and I don’t think it would be charitable). I think we can all feel it, especially those of us who spend any amount of time on Christian corners of the internet.

Fruit of the Spirit or fruit of the flesh

Moving from Ephesians 4 to Galatians 5, Paul’s words are pertinent there too:

“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (NRSVUE)

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Generosity. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. None of these virtues describe Christian take down culture.

Christian take down culture actually aligns more with what Paul warns against a few verses earlier:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” (NRSVUE)

Impurity. Enmities. Strife. Anger. Quarrels. Dissensions. Factions. And things like these.

Christian take down culture is an oxymoron. It is not Christian. And it cannot become Christian, no matter how much lipstick you put on the pig.

From negative peace to false controversy

What’s more, I think “Christian” take down culture has merged with capitalistic platform building, leading many of us to invert King’s negative peace to intentionally create false controversy.

• We say we have to stand against sexism, so that’s why we have to write a take down of that complementarian writer over at The Gospel Coalition. An unsaid (and welcomed) byproduct is all the likes.

• We say we have to stand against a distortion of scripture, so that’s why we have to write a take down of that affirming writer over at Sojourners. An unsaid (and welcomed) byproduct is all the comments.

• We say we have to stand against Christian nationalism, so that’s why we have to write a take down of that “ignorant, backwards, Republican” writer over at Truth Social. An unsaid (and welcomed) byproduct is all the subscribers.

By drumming up false controversy, we are pretending to stand for justice or truth but doing it in a way that is devoid of love and filled with self-interest. It inflates our self-importance and leads to larger subscriber counts and flashier headlines.

(Which—if we’re honest—too often leads to podcasts and speaking engagements and book deals. It’s an easy way to “win.”)

We say we are fighting, as King encouraged us, for positive peace, for a future where “all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.” But are we really? Is our response full of love, seeking to liberate those we disagree with? Does it line up with truth?

And is anyone actually helped by these diatribes?

And then there is Jesus

Paul isn’t the only one who led with love. Jesus literally embodied what it’s like to turn the other cheek and pursue peace rather than “winning.”

Just look at his crucifixion and resurrection:

• He famously told Peter to put away his sword and healed the guard’s ear; he treated the very person leading him to death with love.

• He remained silent during his sham trial, refusing to condemn his accusers and defend his innocence—even in the face of the ultimate “take down” culture.

• He hung on the cross and prayed that God would forgive his murderers when he could have snapped his fingers and smote every last one of them.

• He forgave Peter for denying him three times, even making him breakfast and reminding him of God’s deep love and commitment, choosing upon that rock—that God-denying rock—to build his church.

• He let Thomas see and feel his wounds rather than ignoring or shunning him for his lack of belief.

It’s true, Jesus also cleared the temple of those making a profit off the poor in the name of God and had hard words for those parading their spiritual power. But when he cleared the temple and said hard words, he did not turn around like a WWE wrestler and hold one hand to his ear shouting “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” into the screaming crowd. He did not whip the crowd into a frenzy of adoration.

No, he did not do those things to grow his platform or to “take down” his enemies. Those acts didn’t get him book deals or fame; instead, they got him infamy and death.

Love may get your dreams killed

Christianity is a religion of ultimate victory, yes, but it is also a religion of earthly defeat. To imitate Christ, we must be willing to be killed by this world before we can be raised with him.

• Speaking in love may mean losing your platform.

• Not seeking false controversy may mean losing subscribers.

• Refusing to respond to your accusers may mean losing your reputation.

• Forgiving those who persecute you may mean losing the attention of those seeking a take down.

In this world you may not get the praise your faithfulness deserves. You may actually get its opposite: the death of dreams, of careers, of friendships. But—literally praise Jesus—you serve a God who sees the humble, the lowly, and the secret, a God who raises those deaths and those sacrifices—no matter how small—up to a glory you cannot begin to imagine this side of heaven.

Rachel Held Evans, Trillia Newbell, Tish Harrison Warren, and Tim Keller realized this and lived it out, extending love to Christians they disagreed with when they could have scored points with yet another “Christian” take down on an internet filled with them.

May we reject winning at all costs and follow their examples instead.

Hi all, I’m so grateful you’re here. If interested, would you subscribe to Slow Faith or share this piece with a friend? I’m trying my best to grow my platform without buying into the abuse of attention online that happens so often. I’ve found that the best growth is word of mouth.

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Above it all, I’m just grateful you’re here. God loves you.

I’m writing these words from a small-town coffee shop in small-town Iowa. I’m here on work—I recruit future pastors to seminary—just passing through. Outside the clouds have been bickering with each other, trying to decide whether to rain, where to eat for dinner. They’re different here than they are in Michigan—bigger, somehow, more dignified, more expansive.

I flew in this morning from Denver after visiting my brother for the weekend. We got coffee at a shop with a big crystal sitting in its window and a natural healing store next door. Later in the day we went to a small Anglican church. The rector’s last name is Coffee, and each visitor is gifted a bag of coffee he roasted himself.

Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety is in front of me. It’s my favorite novel of all time. I picked it up because I just felt overwhelmed, overstimulated. Like those clouds, my insides don’t know if they plan to rain. I grabbed the book because it’s comfortable; it’s my fourth time through; Larry and Sally and Sid and Charity are like old friends.

Stegner’s been gone for thirty years now.

He taught Wendell Berry at Stanford.

Berry’s been gone for half a month now.

I am overwhelmed because I’m too online. The world—especially the online Christian world—is just so convoluted.

Every person who has stepped into this coffee shop has known the owner personally.

There are two high schoolers studying at a table across from me. One of the high schoolers just said, “When I turn eighteen…” before making a statement about her future. I want to look at her and tell her, remain young forever! don’t leave town! ditch the internet, ditch adulthood, ditch it all and live the local life in front of you!

All of this—waves hands at everything—all of this is so not worth the hype.

I am online too much. I am too focused on whether people like me on here. Whether they like these words. (I recognize the irony: to write about being too online while sharing these words online. To quote Conan O’Brien quoting Popeye during his Hot Ones appearance, “I am what I am.”)

I’m reading a biography of Rich Mullins right now and am smitten with his love for God. I want that. I want to see a weed emerging from a crack in the sidewalk and see God’s creation in miniature. Right now I just see a weed. But I aspire to glory in the miniature and the mundane. Is that enough? To want to?

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

I had a piece published this morning about Wendell Berry and the local church. I love Wendell Berry—I think everyone on this site knows that. In it I said a lot of lovely things about him; his hard words and his soft words; his life and witness; how his words encouraged me to switch churches once from a disembodied one to a small one with a borrowed sanctuary and duct tape on old carpet. I also said I wish he wrote more about the importance of belonging to a local church. That this localism—belonging within a local expression of Christ’s bride—feels congruent with his philosophy.

All day I’ve been checking social media to see what people thought of it.

Bad idea.

Generally they did not like it.

I knew that would be the case. I always know that will be the case. Why else does social media exist?

“You’re just talking to hear yourself speak.”

One of the high schoolers studying just said that. She’s probably right. Why even write these words if they aren’t an attempt to get someone to reassure me or relate with me or offer a kind word?

I don’t know.

Sometimes writing online does not feel like a ministry but a self-centered act of self-deception. Sometimes I think it is.

But still, I write.

There is a lot of drama right now about who gets to define what is the correct Christianity. The president and patriarchy and millions and millions of surveys and data sets. And titles and honorariums. Letters after names. Followers and subscribers. It reminds me of the title of Lamin Sanneh’s book. Whose Religion is Christianity?

Who does Christianity belong to? Who does Evangelicalism belong to?

I know I belong to God.

I know Rich Mullins belongs to God, now more than ever.

And Wendell Berry.

And I know God loves those two high schoolers studying across from me. I know he has good plans for them, and I know he hopes they may just want to talk to him someday, even if it’s only for their team to win or for their crush to text them back.

My grandad is ninety and lives in a small town like the one I’m writing these words in. I know he loves God, and I know God loves him too. I wrote about him in that Wendell Berry piece. I hope he was honored by that.

But back to that Christianity thing. Who gets to define it? Do I get to define it for myself? Is that fair?

I don’t know.

I am liturgical. And evangelical. And egalitarian.

I am friends with charismatics and Mainliners and complementarians. And I have learned from all of them.

Whose religion is Christianity?

And must I be so overwhelmed by that answer?

The clouds have momentarily parted. The coffee shop is closing. I need to go.

I am—and you are—loved by God.

I woke up this morning to news that an AI researcher quit yesterday over ethical concerns. He said that if we don’t take the threat of AI seriously, we are headed in a bad bad bad direction.

—

I just finished reading a double feature of Wild Dark Shore and The Dog Stars.1 These are books existing inches away from a near future apocalypse. Wild Dark Shore focuses on the threat of global warming. The Dog Stars is set after a global pandemic wipes out most of the earth’s population.

Grim stuff.

—

Last night, we hosted our welcome picnic for the Western Theological Seminary community. Faculty, staff, students, and families all came to the seminary for food trucks (tacos! bbq! ice cream!), mini golf, and a bounce house.2

It was supposed to end by 7, and Lex and I told ourselves before we went that we wouldn’t stay the entire time, that we would be responsible adults with busy weeks, that we would go home early to clean and watch New Girl and be in bed by 8:30.

Reader, we did the opposite: we stayed until after 8.

—

Let’s face it: I would not be well suited for a post-apocalyptic world. Proof: I’m doing my doctoral work in creative writing.

What am I supposed to do to prove my worth? When food rationing causes us to build our own societies of hunters and gatherers, how am I going to convince some small survivalist collective to feed me and let me live? Write them a play? Write them a fun poem that rhymes “dysentery” with “Joseph and Mary”? Write marketing copy for the three artisans still living?

—

The researcher who quit posted a note on the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter explaining his rationale and the threat. It—just like Wild Dark Shore and The Dog Stars—was grim.

Curious, I read a few comments underneath the researcher’s tweet. One of the commenters said she wasn’t afraid; she said God was in control.

It’s true, God is in control, but I don’t see anything in the Bible that guarantees that all of this—waves hands at all of America—is going to end well.

Ta-Nehisi Coates concludes his book We Were Eight Years in Power on this note:

“I don't ever want to forget, even with whatever personal victories I achieve, even in the victories we achieve as a people or a nation, that the larger story of America and the world probably does not end well. Our story is a tragedy.”3

Unlike Coates—who is an atheist—I believe that a personal and loving God is in control, but I also agree with Coates’ perspective. This is—by and large—a country and world of death. Those of us living in extreme levels of comparative wealth and comfort—cloistered, as Switchfoot once sang, inside our “convenient Lexus cages”—are the ones blinded to the realities of destruction, malnourishment, war, abuse, etc, etc. that have always existed around us.4

God has given no guarantee America will make it to the New Jerusalem intact.

We are living in a land of death.

—

I sponsored a junior high church camp outside Joplin, MO the summer after my freshman year of college. I was almost twenty and felt very sophisticated with my one year of theology classes.

On the fourth night of camp, I stood in the back and watched the junior highers standing and swaying and holding their hands in the air. I looked out at a sea of fourteen-year-olds and felt—as a nineteen-year-old—so superior to them.

What did they truly know about life? Had they experienced any suffering? Had they truly understood the depths of sin or sadness?

What had they done to deserve God’s presence or attention?

—

That whole living-in-a-land-of-death thing isn’t actually an original thought. It comes from—if you’ve read my stuff long enough you can probably guess it blind folded—Eugene Peterson. He wrote in Practice Resurrection,

“The Holy Spirit formed [the Church] to be a colony of heaven in the country of death.”5

America, try as it might to listen to its better angels, is a country of death. This started way before AI, way before global warming, way before the first pandemic, way before the current president, way before war, way before systemic privilege and systemic prejudice, way before America itself. This is true for every country and every government built with human hands. All of them Towers of Babel; all of them lands of death; no one is immune; no, not one.

And that’s kind of depressing.

—

I looked out at the seminary community last night, saw the laughter and the conversations. Saw faculty sitting with students and staff meeting each others’ families. Kids in the bounce house. New students playing mini golf, making the first tentative steps towards friendship and community. My friend Kate—who helped plan the whole night—told me it was the most RSVPs we’ve ever had. Something seems to be really clicking at Western right now, and I’m just grateful to be a part of it.

As we left, I told Lex how good it felt to see the community all come together. As the Director of Admissions, I spend so much time tilling the ground and hoping for a crop. To see it come to fruition last night meant a lot to me.

So much laughter. So much life.

—

Eugene didn’t only say we lived in a country of death. No, he said we—all of us who make up the Church—are a “colony of heaven.” He continues this thought, telling us that we are participating in the “resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.”6

The Bible tells us that this world—this aching world of AI, this aching world of global warming, this aching world of pandemics—will be redeemed and made new someday. Theologians call it the eschaton. Guns will become plowshares, we will run and not grow weary, and we will eternally journey—as C.S. Lewis famously said—further up and further into God’s goodness.

Amen and amen and amen.

But until then, the Bible also says, God and Christ and the Holy Spirit are with us. In the midst of all this death, God is collecting our tears in bottles, intimate with us in our suffering. And God is asking us to be this colony of heaven, this post-apocalyptic colony of life and beauty, standing in stark contrast to the bleak fatalism of a world focused on its own entropy.

Life and life and life quietly living amidst death and death and death.

—

As I watched—smug and embittered—that sea of fourteen-year-olds holding their hands in the air, I was swiftly convicted by a song. A few months earlier, Gungor’s Ghosts Upon the Earth had been released. I bought it for $10 on iTunes, and it felt like the greatest worship album I had ever heard.7 As I stood in the back of that chapel looking out at all that presumed ignorance, one song from that album—“Church Bells”—came into my head:8

Let church bells ring
Let children sing
Even if they don’t know why let them sing
Why drown their joy
Stifle their voice
Just because you’ve lost yours’

May our jaded hearts be healed
Amen

Let old men dance
Lift up their hands
Even if they are naïve, let them dance
You’ve seen it all
You watch them fall
Wash off your face and dance

May our weary hearts be filled with hope
Amen

Those fourteen-year-olds in that chapel outside Joplin were doing the exact right thing. God was pleased with those hands in the air, and I was the one who was wrong.

Who was I to look down at them—naïve though they might be—and tell them not to dance, to tell them not to sing?

—

—

I am not an an AI ethicist; I am not a global warming scientist; I am not an epidemiologist. To be honest, it is often too much for me. I do not read the books published or the articles written by the prognosticators and experts. If I did, I think I’d be too wrapped in fear.

In this way, I am just like those fourteen-year-olds in that chapel: I am ignorant to what lies ahead, oblivious to the pain that could be around the corner, whether at the hands of AI, global warming, pandemics, or a combination of all three.

But does that mean I should lower my hands? Is God that nineteen-year-old in the back, smugly looking at me and not counting my praise because of my ignorance?

Obviously not! God wants that praise, naïve as that may be.

—

I think of that time when a woman poured the perfume on Jesus’s feet, when some of those with him rebuked her, telling her she shouldn’t be doing that. She should give it to the poor or do something better with it. It was so wasteful, so naïve. What was Jesus’s response?

“Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”9

What she did for him was worship. Ignorant and naïve, perhaps. And Jesus honored it, promising her that this beautiful act would be an example for the rest of the world, for the rest of all time.

A colony of heaven…

Do you know what happened immediately after Jesus praised this woman with her wasteful and naïve worship?

Judas left and went to the chief priests in order to betray Jesus.

…in a land of death.

This death-dealing and life-giving have existed way longer than everything threatening us now.

—

All those students last night are preparing to go into a world of death to share God’s life. They are naïve just like I am. None of us know how this whole thing will play out. We believe God is in control, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be suffering, that doesn’t mean there won’t be AI disasters, global warming catastrophes, or pandemic casualties. We are—all of us—venturing through a land of death.

BUT.

BUT.

BUT.

Each of those students is about to do what they do best: worship God by creating life. They will preach sermons and baptize parishioners and sit in hospital rooms. They will walk with counseling patients and fund non-profits and serve immigrants and the marginalized.

They will naïvely raise their hands like children and dance like old men and pour their perfume on the feet of Jesus, believing that small acts of extravagant love—of faithful living—make a difference.

—

Someday Jesus will come back and turn all this death into life. Until then, I want to innocently and boldly lift my hands and dance, doing things that model this future world redeemed. I will kiss Lex and recruit future pastors and therapists and receive communion and clap as people are baptized. I will call my mom and hug my friends and go a little too hard at game night.

Maybe it is all a waste in the obliterating gaze of the apocalypse, but I believe it is worth it.

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I am just so incredibly grateful to be able to write these pieces. They really help me work out my own faith, and I feel they are small acts of praise, little bits of perfume to pour on Jesus’s feet.

Thank you :)

Wendell Berry passed away this evening at the age of 92. I knew this day was coming, but there was another part of me that figured—like Dolly—he would simply live forever.

It was 10:15pm, and I was supposed to be brushing my teeth for bed, but instead I was reading all the obituaries and notes that have already come out about his passing. People on Substack are posting poems and others are writing—just like me—about his influence. Truly, he is a man that deserves to be honored.

However, I read the NYT obit and then all the other early ones posted, and I noticed a really important fact was missing from all of them. They mentioned his tireless conservation work and advocacy. They wrote about his fiction and poetry, about the world of Port William and its beautiful interconnectedness. And they wrote about his family (although not enough mentioned his wife Tanya and how essential she is to any complete picture of Wendell).

All of that is well and good.

But they were all missing what I think is one of the most fundamental truths about the man, a guiding principle and thread running throughout all of his life and writing:

Wendell Berry was a Christian.

—

I don’t say that in the way some people do, trying to twist someone’s life after they pass to fit a Christian narrative. Like if you just tilt your head and squint your eyes you’ll see something Christian in them.

I also don’t think I’m saying that as a cranky Christian upset when mainstream outlets don’t mention the faith. I really think Mr. Berry’s Christianity is essential to understanding his work.

He was a Christian, and it was his Christianity that supports his entire operation; it was the foundation his conservation work and advocacy was built on. No obituary—and no full understanding of his corpus—is complete without this essential fact.

To be fair, the New York Times obit does mention his faith, but it only comes in a direct quote from Wendell himself at the very end:

“If you subtracted the Gospels and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence from my work, there wouldn’t be very much left.”

The Gospels—Christianity—cannot be something tagged on at the end when it comes to Berry’s life. You do not need to be a Christian to appreciate his conservation work or his philosophy, but you must center his faith if you are going to do the man justice.

—

Back in December, I wrote an introduction to Berry’s work, and I included this way-too-short explanation of my background with him and his writing:

“I’ve been reading Berry’s work for a decade now and have been enamored with him from the very first night I opened one of his books (it was Fidelity). I got my Masters in Theology and Literature, and as a part of that study, I focused on Wendell Berry’s fiction, specifically the way he imitates Jesus’ use of parables in his short stories.”

That’s true. I wrote one of the biggest essays of my life on his use of parabolic writing in his fiction, focusing on Jayber Crow, his short story “Watch With Me,” and the parable of the lost sheep. Here is a brief snippet from the opening of my essay:

“One parable that appears often in [Berry’s] writings—both essays and fiction—is the Parable of the Lost Sheep found in Matthew 18:12-14 and Luke 15:3-7. He uses this parable to bolster a definition of love that refuses to leave even one person in the community behind. In modern America, with vast amounts of people focused on efficiency, Capitalism, and success, this is a revolutionary idea.”

His entire thesis for belonging and love, in other words, is rooted in the Gospel.

—

Many consider Jayber Crow to be his magnum opus, and Berry—through Jayber’s narration—includes this at the end:

“This is a book about heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.”1

The entire book—the narrative arc—is one of love and belonging, and it ends with Jayber’s revelation of heaven, giving the entire text the glow of a parable, as if Christ himself says at the end, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.”

—

Further, Berry makes it clear in his essay “The Burden of the Gospels” where his love of creation comes from:

“The foreground of the Gospels is occupied by human beings and the issues of their connection to one another and to God. But there is a background, and the background more often than not is the world in the best sense of the word, the world as made, approved, loved, sustained, and finally to be redeemed by God. Much of the action and talk of the Gospels takes place outdoors: on mountainsides, lake shores, river banks, in fields and pastures, places populated not only by humans but by animals and plants, both domestic and wild. And these non-human creatures, sheep and lilies and birds, are always represented as worthy of, or flourishing within, the love and the care of God.”2

Those passions—the world and the people in it—are passions shared by Christ, and I do not think it is a stretch to say it is Christ’s passions for those things that undergirds Berry’s philosophy and writing.

That famous Bible verse begins with “For God so loved the world….”

Berry just happened to take that literally.

—

I could go on and on, and I’m sure I’m going to write a much more emotional tribute to Berry and the life he lived eventually. But first I needed to add that missing piece to his online obituaries. Now I need to go to bed.

—

As Berry’s obituary populates the internet, don’t forget that he lived a congruent life, one suffused with Christianity.

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Also, if you want a deeper dive on where to start with Berry, feel free to read my earlier intro to his work!

I’ve been thinking about this for months now, but this past weekend everything finally clicked as I wrote this piece. It’s a sensitive topic, so I wanted to approach this with lots of narrative and lots of nuance; therefore, this is easily the longest Substack piece I’ve ever written. At almost 7,000 words, it’s a doozy. But I do believe every word is necessary to fully capture the wrestling and tension I feel.

Also, I wish this could go without saying, but I find it important to note that all of these words came from my brain, not from any form of AI software. Not for research, not for writing, and not for editing.

Part one

It was Saturday, January 21st, 2017, the day after President Trump’s first inauguration. I was living just north of Boston and took the T with a few friends into the city to attend the women’s march. Boston Commons was packed, and the crowd around us—filled with those pink hats—was buzzing.

As we walked, we bumped into a woman giving out little pins. She handed me one of a cartoon female reproductive system with a pro-choice mantra layered on top.

I can’t remember exactly what I did after she handed it to me. I don’t know if I politely declined or took it and put it in my pocket until I could respectfully throw it away out of eyesight. I’m not sure. But I remember my friends and I—co-ed friends attending an evangelical seminary—reflecting together about not needing to agree with everything to be feminists; that feminism wasn’t a monolith; that pro-choice didn’t need to be assumed.

After the march and after riding the T forty-minutes north again, I posted a tweet about the peaceful demonstration and the solidarity of marching against injustice. Someone from back home in Oklahoma quickly commented, “How could you march? Don’t you know they support abortion?”

—

During the 2016 election, adults back home in Oklahoma I adored—adults who taught me the Psalms and the hand motions to VBS songs and acted as second and third and fourth parents to me—vocally supported Donald Trump. The local Christian bookstore that we all shopped at began selling books about how he was fulfilling hundreds of Old Testament prophesies; the books stood proudly in front of the register like tabloids at the grocery store; when I saw them, I pondered hiding them somewhere in the store, somewhere no one would find them. I couldn’t imagine anyone buying a book like that, but I didn’t need to imagine—I could immediately picture those adults from my childhood, the ones who loved me so well, the ones who love me still. And I knew I loved them too, despite the knowledge that they believed in the Christianity Trump promoted—or, to be more precise, the Christianity that promoted Trump.

Somehow we were both still evangelicals. I couldn’t figure out how they could justify that marriage—Trump and evangelicalism—even though I could logically see all the historical signs pointing towards its inevitability.

—

I tried to think of the perfect way to describe the evangelicalism I grew up with, and the first thing that came to mind was a story.

I grew up in a small, Christian and Missionary Alliance church. On a good Sunday we’d have ninety people inside our white, clapboard church. We often had a special offertory in the middle of service, and every time it was Mrs. Brewer’s turn, she always sang “Give Me Jesus.”

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

"In the morning, when I rise,
In the morning, when I rise,
In the morning, when I rise,
Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world
But give me Jesus."

By the time she came to the verse that goes, “And when I come to die…” she wouldn’t be able to sing through her tears. One by one, the congregation—every time she sang the offertory—stood up and began singing for her, finishing the song as one voice, there in that small church. Most of the congregation, including me, cried, every time.

I don’t mean to be rosy and idealistic, but in my memory that was what it felt like to be evangelical growing up. I remember walking through parking lots and seeing fish decals on lots of cars; I remember thinking about the families who drove those cars; I remember thinking they must be just like me and my family, they must go to a white clapboard church behind a peeled yellow paint store just like we did.

So when I learned these people I loved so much—people who cried as they finished the lyrics to “Give Me Jesus”—somehow supported Donald Trump, I went into a tailspin.

—

The day before I marched in Boston, I sat at my evangelical seminary watching the livestream of Donald Trump’s inauguration. I remember exactly where I was, and I remember someone down the hall commenting about how beautiful presidential inaugurations are.

I could come up with a lot of words for what I was seeing, but beautiful was not one of them. In hindsight, that pomp and circumstance inaugurated a phase in my life I lovingly refer to now as my angsty Christian phase.

It began as a low-grade fever that slowly built over the prior five years, from 2012-2017, reaching its high as I watched Trump get sworn in. Over those five years, I watched the walls of my simple, “Give Me Jesus” evangelical world crumble in a reverse Jericho, a false Promised Land. The bricks fell alongside Black bodies, collapsing on quiet neighborhood streets, on greasy gas station parking lots, and on their own bedroom floors, murdered at the hands of authorities I was taught to inherently trust, authorities that did not surveil my neighborhood or randomly stop-and-frisk my dad or put my friends away in a “war on drugs.”

I hoped evangelicals back home would also care about this injustice and see the systemic change needed within policing, but instead I heard a lot about “law and order” and reasons why it was the Black man or woman’s fault for getting shot, for getting murdered. Many of the folks back home acquitted the murderers before the courts did.

Donald Trump rode down that golden escalator at the tail end of those specific state-sanctioned murders.1 He had already spent years promoting racist and sexist ideologies, but on June 16, 2015, as he announced his presidential campaign, he opened the door to an intensification of all the racist and sexist dog whistles that had come before.

People—including beloved adults in Oklahoma—began saying the quiet part out loud.2

He animated this section of white evangelicalism with promises of vengeance and victimhood. They—these people who loved me, these people I loved back—said they were voting for the “lesser of two evils” or for a more conservative Court or for the right to life. I could partially understand that, even if I disagreed, but I couldn’t understand why they also endorsed or laughed at or wrote off the things he said.

The things he said about women.

The things he said about the disabled.

The things he said about Mexicans.

And, four years later, when the Court was sufficiently packed and Roe was overturned, I couldn’t understand why the praise continued. It seemed they—this cross section of aggrieved white America—felt avenged for apparent sins committed against them by liberals or the woke agenda or the queer community or “Mexican rapists” or—perhaps worse—progressive Christians and Mainliners. I listened as they blamed Covid surges on “all those illegals” and listened as they pontificated—without ever studying the subject—on Critical Race Theory, claiming it was ruining the school system.

One man from my church back home—a longtime, committed member—told me it was harder to be a white man walking down the street in America today than a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Whenever I was back home visiting my folks, I’d worship in a pew not far from that man, wondering how we could ever call ourselves members of the same faith.

One of us didn’t belong, and I hoped it was him but I wasn’t sure.

So, in January 2017, as I watched Trump’s inauguration at my evangelical seminary, I saw it as the cherry on top and the straw that broke the camel’s back—whatever world weary phrase you want to use—to all of what had come before and all that would come after.

He brought a sledgehammer to the final ramparts of my evangelical innocence.

—

As a kid, as I walked through parking lots and saw all the fish decals, I’d tell myself that if I ever got in trouble, if some scary man tried to take me when my parents weren’t looking, I’d just find someone with a fish decal on their car, and they would save me. I was comforted by them, believing they were just like me and my family, that I could inherently trust them just like I inherently trusted the police.

In 2016, Trump slapped a “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” sticker next to those fish.

He taught me I could no longer trust their version of reality; he taught me we were not the same.

Part two

It’s here that I should probably tell you I’m still an evangelical. There is no punchline of deconversion at the end of this essay.

And I should probably define what I mean by evangelical too.

In short, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows.

Trained historians and theologians much smarter than me have spent years debating what exactly unites evangelicalism. The debates go over my head, so this isn’t the place to find anything systematic or academic. No, this essay is something lived, something with years of sweat equity put into it, something I am still coming to terms with.

So, for lack of a silver bullet, I adhere to something called the Bebbington Quadrilateral. This is the belief in four main tenets of evangelicalism:

1. Biblicism—aka reading the Bible as foundational for life

2. Crucicentrism—aka believing in Christ’s atoning work on the cross

3. Conversionism—aka accepting the way of Christ and being transformed by it

4. Activism—aka putting your faith into action

I have quibbles and qualms, but I’m happy to subscribe to these overarching values.

This is my evangelicalism.3

—

I moved nineteen hours away from Oklahoma in 2011 to attend an evangelical and egalitarian college outside Los Angeles. As I watched Black men and women murdered and folks back home calling for “law and order,” I was learning about a completely different type of evangelicalism than the one with the fish decal and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN sticker. I was meeting people who embraced Christian feminism and justice while also worshipping at evangelical churches each Sunday, and I saw the big tent getting bigger: evangelicalism was much broader than the one I knew.4

I was learning all of this as I was beginning to write online. At first, I wrote about college and girls and theology and anxiety, but soon I began writing about race and justice and Christian feminism. My pastor from back home—the man who shaped my pastoral imagination and blessed me on my way to college with Wayne Grudem’s systematic theology book—took notice. Sometimes in person and sometimes through Facebook replies or Twitter DMs, he made it clear he disagreed, even telling me systemic racism didn’t exist, that Oprah and Morgan Freeman were proof.

It became more and more difficult to go to my old church whenever I was home; it was hard to know I was sitting under the teaching of someone who felt so far removed from the faith I practiced. Just like that man a few pews over who believed it was hard to be a White man in today’s America, I couldn’t understand how we were at the same church.

—

After moving north of Boston for seminary and after Trump’s inauguration, I dove into books by Black authors writing about Black justice and Black flourishing, writers like James Cone, Bryan Stevenson, Michelle Alexander, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.5 They showed me another way of living in America and—especially James Cone and Bryan Stevenson—another way of being Christian. They offered me a way forward in my faith.

The entire time, however, I continued attending a predominantly white evangelical church down the road and—despite the angst and confusion I felt with evangelicalism broadly—loved my experience there. The pastor made me feel free to ask questions and free to care about justice; he even started sharing more of his own story with me; he was learning and grappling with racial justice alongside me, patiently and faithfully showing me there was room in evangelicalism for these passions, reminding me of what I discovered in college—a roomier orthodoxy, a more charitable humility.

Meanwhile, I was becoming bolder in the words I wrote online. My pastor from back home—the one who did not believe in systemic racism—took notice. After one specific tweet, he sent me a DM stating his disagreement. I replied, telling him about the evangelical church I was attending and my determination to remain in the same big tent.

It was then that he gave me an ultimatum: justice or Jesus, I couldn’t choose both.

He said if I kept walking down a rode paved by justice, I’d stop attending that evangelical church one day. It seemed the evangelical tent was big—big enough to hold Donald Trump—but not big enough to contain the justice I was growing passionate about.

—

Almost a decade removed from that confusion and that ultimatum, I have a better understanding of the reactionary evangelicalism I saw in my community. I’m better at differentiating myself from it, and I even have a homemade term for it: evangelical fundamentalism.

I defined evangelicalism above, so I figure I should also define fundamentalism. Here is the official online definition:

I like that last part: “the term now broadly describes rigid, uncompromising devotion to core doctrines across various religious and political systems.”

All this rigidity, in my experience, is coupled with vitriol and the need to monopolize Truth.

—

Since that ultimatum, I’ve remained evangelical, I’ve remained passionate about justice, and I’ve continued to write.

And as I lived and wrote about evangelicalism and justice, I met others who were also evangelical and justice oriented, others who worshipped in an evangelical church on Sunday and attended the women’s march on Saturday, others who were unafraid to write about Christ on the cross and Black men and women lynched in America. I interned one summer at a multi-ethnic evangelical church in their Center for Racial Reconciliation; I had the opportunity to go on a Civil Rights tour across the American South with them, riding in a coach alongside men and women of all ages and ethnicities, struggling together towards what MLK called the beloved community. I discovered an evangelical faith that transcended the white one I grew up in.6

I had another pastor who was a woman of color, a woman full of the Spirit of God and compassion for her neighbors. She spoke about a Bible filled with radical acts of justice flowing from a God of justice. She preached with a desire that others would enter the joy of a Christian view of justice, a joy that comes from a Trinitarian God deeply committed to loving the least of these and deeply intimate—fully intimate—with unjust suffering under the boot of unchecked power.

Just like Christ’s Beatitudes in Matthew and Luke, I learned Jesus loved my soul as well as my body, blessing the spiritually meek and the physically oppressed. I did not need to be divided; the outworking of my evangelicalism could be a passion for justice.

Rather than abandon the term and walk out of the big tent, I decided to—stubbornly, obstinately—remain, attempting to model another, kinder, way to be evangelical.

—

One of my favorite sections of the Bible is Jeremiah 29. In it, God is speaking to the Israelites through the prophet Jeremiah, speaking to a people stuck in captivity within a Babylonian empire, unsure how to move forward. These are God’s instructions:

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

-Jeremiah 29:5-7 (NRSVUE)

Surrounded by fish decals, I didn’t grow up recognizing America as an empire, but somewhere in my journey with justice, I began to recognize it for the Babylon it is. And I began to see how other—many of them evangelical—Christians who did not look like me had spent literal centuries living as sojourners in a foreign land, unwanted and systemically abused by the American empire, but building houses, planting gardens, and working for the welfare of their neighbors anyways, even their Christian nationalist, Trump-supporting neighbors.

But America has one very fundamental difference from Babylon, however: the powerful of Babylon were not Christians. The powerful of America, however, claim Christianity, many claiming evangelicalism specifically. They have not lived as sojourners or captives in a foreign land. Instead they have baptized the Empire’s throne room, calling the entire enterprise holy and banishing anyone who either disagrees, looks different, or has a different vision for what evangelicalism should look like in America.

This is evangelical fundamentalism.

—

Over the past ten years, I’ve watched as this evangelical fundamentalism has moved further and further away from the evangelicalism I claim. And, as it moved, it became more and more vitriolic and abusive online. It has looked like a gleeful celebration of Donald Trump and his promised retribution. It is an often overtly racist, sexist, and nationalistic parade of smug entitlement to America and the Bible, a sense that it has perfect orthodoxy and has been blessed because of it. Rather than addressing critique in good faith, it mocks progressive Christians instead, calling them heretical and labeling them agents of hell.

And, each day, as this evangelical fundamentalism moves further from the evangelicalism I claim, there is more pressure for me to leave and walk away. They clearly don’t want me, so why should I stay?

For a long time I wasn’t sure.

Yet I’ve seen too much goodness within evangelicalism to walk away and give the fundamentalists that term. I refuse to prove my old pastor right: I am able to be evangelical and care about justice and call myself egalitarian, and I have no plans of giving that up now, no matter how smugly fundamentalist evangelicals online try to gerrymander me out of the big tent.

—

Learning from the evangelical folks cast out by the American Empire—the ones building homes and planting gardens and working for the welfare of a city they do not belong to—makes me believe this whole evangelical enterprise doesn’t need to be burned down and destroyed.

It needs serious reckoning and serious repentance, but it does not need destruction.

Part three

As I distanced myself from the perversion I saw within evangelical fundamentalism, I discovered books that made me feel sane. They outlined the ways evangelicalism became progressively tied to conservative politics; they pulled on the thread running through evangelical history that has always been wrong and twisted. With so much chaos going on around me, I gladly read these books, grateful they could give me words to what was going on both within evangelical fundamentalism and within my own soul.

And yet—as I wrote above—I still existed in the broader evangelical space, believing I could be a feminist without wearing a pro-choice pin.

—

I did all this reading between 2020 and 2025, after coming out of my angsty Christian phase and growing more comfortable with my justice oriented evangelicalism. And the people I was reading, I thought, were writing either from within the fold as well or as prophets to its flourishing. I did not think they were trying to burn the entire thing down, just calling it to the same reckoning and repentance I was writing and living towards too.

But, at some point something changed. I didn’t notice it until earlier this year, when I looked around and realized many of these writers were no longer standing next to me in this big tent, or—at the very least—were no longer working towards evangelicalism’s true and proper flourishing in a world of justice and truth.

Instead, it seemed they had pitched a new tent and formed a new coalition on the other side of the fence, with a sign reading “anti-evangelicalism” posted out front. What began as a critique and clarion call about evangelical fundamentalism became a fully formed cottage industry on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum.

Virtue signaling became the norm—progressive dog whistles for the in-crowd were everywhere—and there surfaced litmus tests for this new, anti-evangelical orthodoxy. Ultimately, it felt like nuance had left the room and had been replaced by absolutes, the largest being about evangelicals on the other side. Suddenly it felt like all evangelicals were racist, sexist, nationalistic, bigoted, and devoted to Donald Trump and the American Empire.

Evangelicalism became defined by its worst fundamentalists.

—

Over the past six years, the crowd I found in the late 2010s—evangelicals passionate about justice and yearning for repentance—has thinned out significantly. Some left the tent in pain, and others left in order for their faith to survive, finding greener pastures in Mainline spaces not complicit with the morass of evangelical fundamentalism.

I celebrate finding a space that feels safer for them, and many of them have written beautifully and eloquently about those journeys. We may have theological differences, but I enjoy being in community with them, exchanging ideas in good faith and respect.

However, many have journeyed—bringing their networks and influence—into this new anti-evangelical tent. I’ve witnessed the same smugness and self-congratulatory attitude I saw from the fundamentalist evangelicals in 2016 and have noticed it becoming embedded in this new tent’s essays and notes and books, lacking nuance or love or compassion towards their neighbors.

They lob bad faith critiques and criticism towards the evangelical tent from the outside, all the while cloistered safely in their new tent—their new echo chamber—proud to be on the “right side of history.” In standing for justice, they seem to be living into the same tactics used by those they despise.

I’ve begun labeling this new coalition fundamentalists as well—anti-evangelical fundamentalists—a mirror to their counterparts on the other side.

—

And much of these writers’ and influencers’ work is tied to a capitalistic system that encourages a near-constant self-promotion.

I once read an essay by an anti-evangelical writer who—within the first half of their essay—encouraged people to buy their book, to become paid subscribers, and to purchase a new course they were offering. This all came before the essay itself was cut off with this message:

They promote themselves and their cadre of likeminded friends in a small, continuous feedback loop of support, building bigger platforms and diversifying their revenue streams by claiming God’s truth and calling their enemies evil.7

So when does justice work become capitalistic self-promotion? When is it no longer fighting for the marginalized but for more currency in a new anti-evangelical economy?

I don’t know.

—

I need to be explicit here: I still align with much of what these anti-evangelical fundamentalists are writing about. I agree with them: American evangelical fundamentalism is running roughshod over Christianity and replacing it with an ethnocentric theocracy that leads to authoritarianism and oppression of anyone “other,” including justice oriented Christians and Christians of color who have historically stood in the same big tent.

My critique is not the theology but the pomp and circumstance that comes with it. The answer to one fundamentalism is not to create another one.

—

For a while, I proudly wrote about my membership in this group and partook in its virtue signaling, happy to be on the “right side” and patting myself on the back for it. Each time I wrote a hit piece on “those evangelicals,” I got a surge in new subscribers. It was all a head rush, fueled by adrenaline and a desire to be popular and seen as right.

Conviction became conceitedness. Speaking truth became performative.

I’m sorry about that.

I think back to that tweet about the women’s march, the one that got the quick response from someone back home. Was that doing anything for women, or was that just a virtue signal, a signal to my followers that I was sufficiently progressive, how much I wasn’t “one of those Christians?”

I don’t think my motivations were purely one thing or the other, but I don’t think I hit the target; over and over again I flashed my anti-evangelical bonafides while suppressing my evangelicalism, trying to so hard to fit under this new tent.

Whatever would get me accepted. Whatever would get the right people to like me.8

—

I’m no longer pre-ordering the books coming after evangelicalism. I’m also beginning to unsubscribe from folks I originally enthusiastically supported, not because I disagree with their message but because I disagree with their delivery. (It’s that classic, “It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it.”)

In an internet culture that encourages the extreme, I watched as evangelical fundamentalists gleefully embraced it with the rise of Donald Trump. Over the past six years, I think the anti-evangelical fundamentalists have embraced the same extremes.

I believe this because I did it too.

I’m trying to return to nuance and hoping to write with it too, and unfortunately fundamentalism always crowds nuance out of the frame.

Part four

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.”

-Jeremiah 29:8-9 (NRSVUE)

After building homes and planting gardens and seeking the welfare of the city, the Lord warns his people about prophets claiming his voice. Do not be deceived, God says. Do not pay attention; within captivity and in an Empire opposed to you, stay locked on the true God, the one who encourages his people to seek the welfare of their neighbors.

Today, there is a world of fundamentalists prophesying in God’s name. All you have to do is open your browser to hear their shouting.

I do not think they are speaking for God.

—

I went back home to rural Oklahoma for the July 4th weekend. Because July 4th was on a Saturday this year, I was able to attend the church my mom and dad grew up in the next day, the one my grandparents and uncle and aunt and cousins all go to. That Sunday, my grandparents were the greeters, my cousin was playing piano for worship, her husband was playing the drums, my uncle was playing the acoustic guitar, my aunt was leading the nursery, my other cousin (the head pastor) preached, and his wife led children’s church. It was literally a family ordeal.

Partway through the service, I sat listening as my cousin gave the weekly announcements. None of the announcements had to do with me, but I was filled with a weird warmth—something about them just felt good deep down in my soul. I sat there imagining the old ladies at their prayer time and the young kids at VBS and the high schoolers at youth group. And seven days later they’d do all of this again.

Ministry.

—

Here’s another passage, this one from my favorite book of the Bible:

“In the temple [Jesus] found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”

-John 2:14-16 (NRSVUE)

Fundamentalists on both sides claim this story as justification for their harsh words.

It’s true: Jesus did clear the temple and stand for God’s truth in the midst of people gaining power and money in God’s name. There are times when we need to clear our own temples and use words that rid our churches of their American idolatries: racism, sexism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.

But nowhere in this narrative does it say that Jesus was gleeful while doing this. His disciples were not cheering him on, and he was not “scoring points” or making money off of this cleansing.

Again, even if you are standing for truth and for justice doesn’t mean you are doing it on behalf of Christ.

—

A few weeks after that Sunday at my extended family’s rural church, I attended another church in the heart of Indianapolis. This church is famous for its community development and justice work, remaining steadfast in the same spot since 1895, even as the neighborhood around it changed time and again.

At one point, the Spanish service joined the English service to pray for two people who were about to go down to Mexico. Someone translated for both audiences, and we prayed in both Spanish and English. It was beautiful.

I started thinking about these fundamentalisms and thinking of my cousin pastoring that church in Chandler, Oklahoma and about this church serving a specific and contextual community in Indianapolis and I began to wonder if real ministry—if real Christian presence—is too busy serving to fight in this war of fundamentalisms.

Is real ministry ever smug or self-congratulatory; is it ever content to lob bombs at the tent on the other side of the fence?

I do not think so.

—

I think back to my old pastor’s warning: He said I could either choose evangelicalism or justice, but I couldn’t choose both.

I actually think both the evangelical fundamentalist camp and the anti-evangelical fundamentalist camp agree with my old pastor here. Because they are so diametrically opposed, they cannot imagine a world where I can be both evangelical and justice oriented.

They each give me the same ultimatum: I have to choose one extreme or the other because there is no overlap.

But I refuse, and I will continue to reject their paradigm, choosing both evangelicalism and justice:

1. I reject the evangelical fundamentalism, the one with fish decals and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN stickers. Christian nationalism, the promotion of systemic sexism and racism, and the enthusiastic fealty to a president who daily abuses the name of Christ is a heresy and distortion of Christianity. Full stop. I want no part of that.

2. I also reject anti-evangelical fundamentalism—the side I thought I was a part of for so long—because they are playing the same notes in a new key. In calling out injustice, they have become drunk on the cultural prominence they have achieved, smiling as they speak to their own echo chamber, patting each other on the back as they do so. This also, I believe, fundamentally distorts the Gospel of Christ. I want no part of that either.

I reject the mud slinging, the gleeful condemnation, the self-congratulatory diatribes, and the capitalistic motivations on both sides and am looking for something nuanced, something too busy serving to be a fundamentalist of either stripe.

Ten years after my pastor made that prediction, I am still both evangelical and justice oriented, and I am choosing to hold both not as opposites but as partners.

Part five

Throughout this piece, I’ve written about Jeremiah and how the Lord spoke through him to the exiled Israelites in Babylon. He told them to build homes, to plant gardens, and to seek the welfare of the city, to be a people who create beauty in places devoid of it and serve their neighbors, even the ones diametrically opposed to their way of life.

Over six hundred years later, Paul exhorted a community of Christians living as exiles in the Roman Empire to do the same. He lists all kinds of actions that define the Empire surrounding them: everything from sexual immorality to “enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, [and] envy” (Gal. 5:20-21a, NRSVUE). He says those who do these will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Instead, he encourages these Christians within the empire to create beauty—to build homes, to plant gardens, and to seek the welfare of the city—through becoming more like the Spirit. And the Spirit is known by its fruit:

“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

-Galatians 5:22-24 (NRSVUE)

The Bible says the fruit of the Spirit can serve as a litmus test to determine true Christianity within any empire the people of God live in—whether Babylonian, Roman, or American. Do people living in this empire produce beauty and serve their neighbors, do they display the fruit of the Spirit?

All the other absolutist litmus tests in this world are untrue; they are offered by false prophets speaking for all kinds of differing fundamentalisms, and they are ideologically rigged tests, products of the empire’s enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy.

They are not the true test, not the fruit of the Spirit.

—

Paul finishes that section about the Fruit of the Spirit with one final rejoinder:

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.”

-Galatians 5:25-26 (NRSVUE)

I believe conceitedness today—in a polarized country with social media platforms that reward the extreme—shows itself in how proud we are to be anti-____. Anti-woke, anti-liberal, anti-conservative, anti-evangelical. It seems all the fundamentalisms boast of what they are against, proud to be holding tight to a self-created narrative and boasting in a self-created orthodoxy.

But creating beauty, working for the welfare of one’s neighbors, and living the fruit of the Spirit is not defined by what it is against but what it is for. And if love is the fullest expression of this beauty and welfare and fruit, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, then true Christianity looks like love:

True Christianity “is patient and kind. It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends.” (13:4-8a, NRSVUE)

Love—true Christianity—creates beauty and serves, even when oppressed by empires and cottage industries of enmity; it is too busy to be a fundamentalist.

—

After the Lord tells the Israelites to create beauty in captivity and to be wary of false prophets, he reminds them of what the future holds:

“I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

-Jeremiah 29:10b-14 (NRSVUE)

I want to end here—with words that come after building and planting and seeking, words that come after false prophets and internet extremes—because I want to remember that we can find the Lord, even in the midst of an empire masquerading as Christian, even in the midst of fundamentalists of all stripes shouting “LISTEN TO ME; THUS SAYS THE LORD,” even in the midst of folks praying over the bombs they lob.

I know I have not done this perfectly. I worry I haven’t done it perfectly in this essay.

But I deeply love the evangelical world I have always claimed, and I am determined to faithfully remain a remnant of an evangelicalism that does not find its identity in power or in the ballot box but in the goodness of a God who cares for the vulnerable and the marginalized, a God who collects their tears in bottles and seats them at his right hand, a God who raises up the lowly and enters heaven alongside criminals on crosses.

In a world aching for something real and good and true, I want to offer it something better than just another fundamentalism.

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3

For a more thorough discussion and comparison with liberal Protestantism, please refer to :

Politics of the Cross

The Real Difference between Evangelicals and Liberal Protestants

Evangelicals and liberal Protestants badly misunderstand each other…

Read more

8 months ago · 484 likes · 201 comments · Daniel K. Williams

I have thoughts that I need to unpack from his article (I read it after I wrote my first draft of this piece). By and large, I found myself nodding along to his definition of evangelical, especially the parts that said social justice—seen through a biblical lens—is a concern for many evangelicals. That’s a big yes from me!

Ever since I was eight or nine I’ve been tired.

My party trick is falling asleep within ten minutes at almost any point of the day. Dare me to fall asleep and I will meet that dare with gusto.

As a kid, as a teenager, and as an adult I’ve done overnight sleep studies at hospitals and visited specialists and filled out questionnaires, but no one ever has an answer. The closest they’ve gotten is diagnosing me with something called idiopathic hypersomnia—meaning chronic exhaustion without a known cause or cure—which, if we’re honest, is the clinical equivalent of a shoulder shrug.

For literal years I have told myself I need to just get more energy, that I am too tired, too helpless, too limited. I need to be as productive as everyone around me. I tell myself to buck up and get things done, to pull myself up by the bootstraps, to bite the bullet and stand back up—cliché stuff like that.

My tiredness is simply a daily reminder I’m not good enough.

Then he led out his people like sheep
    and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

-Psalm 78:52 (NRSVUE)

Psalm 78 is seventy-two verses all about God’s faithfulness to the Israelites. Verses 52-55 describe the Israelites as sheep following God out of captivity, through the desert, and into safety and freedom.

At their best, they follow God’s good power and plans, doing what sheep do best: obeying. However, at their worst, they are wayward and recalcitrant, refusing to listen to the Shepherd and instead trying to ascend above their design, to transcend their capacity, to become something they are not.

Sheep are offered peace and domesticity by God the Shepherd but continually attempt to evolve past their need for God.

He led them in safety so that they were not afraid,
    but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

-Psalm 78:53 (NRSVUE)

As humans, we are told all the time we need to transcend our humanness, that we have to be more than we are.

As humans with careers, we are always supposed to be working towards something new, commoditizing not just our work but also our hobbies and interests with blogs or Etsy shops or social media platforms. Being an amateur isn’t allowed in a world of side gigs and side side gigs and jobs that could be cut overnight. We must do more, become more.

As humans with bodies, we are inundated with images of what “health” looks like. Photoshopped abs and GLP-1 commercials and online articles shouting “HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST” or “DO THIS TRICK TO GET SEXY OVERNIGHT.” Being healthy within the context of our own skin is not enough. We must do more, become more.

As humans with relationships, we are told we need to network harder and strive for more. There’s always another thing we could be doing to better serve our spouse, or, if we’re single, another thing to become more satisfied or more desirable. We never have enough friends and can never find the best Friday night plans. We must do more, become more.

It’s not enough to be a human. Somehow we must transcend.

And he brought them to his holy hill,
    to the mountain that his right hand had won.

-Psalm 78:54 (NRSVUE)

As Christians, we are too often not offered a reprieve but an intensification. Again, we are told we need to transcend our humanness, that we have to be more than we are.

We must pray longer, memorize more scripture, learn more theology. We don’t get the spiritual breakthroughs we want because we don’t have enough faith or energy or persistence. If we are really following God we will keep going and doing and working and evangelizing and serving even when we are drop-dead tired.

There’s always someone else who has baptized more people or served more bowls of soup or took more pictures with kids in South America. There is always another church ministry to join or another theology degree to enroll in or another little cross or fish or anchor tattoo to get.

It’s not enough to be a human. Somehow we must transcend, even in Christianity.

He drove out nations before them;
    he apportioned them for a possession
    and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

-Psalm 78:55 (NRSVUE)

John chapter nine. Jesus and his disciples are walking along a road and come across a blind man.

“[Jesus’s] disciples asked, ‘Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?’ Jesus said, ‘You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.’” (The Message)

The disciples understood this man’s blindness to be the result of sin—he was unable to live the same type of productive life they could, and it must be because he or his parents did something wrong.

Few people will tell us our limitedness is because of our sin. But isn’t that what is often implied? That somehow we are too lazy or stupid or sinful to overcome our limitedness? That if only we keep working, keep producing, trust God more, pray more, rely on scripture more, we wouldn’t be limited anymore?

If we’re not able to do all that then, well, the problem must be us.

But Jesus stands in the way.

“It was not that this man sinned.”

Your limitedness is not a sin. My limitedness is not a sin. Our limitedness is not a sin.

Jesus rebukes the lies and the manipulations: yes, sin exists and yes, it stands in the way of our true flourishing. But, Jesus is quick to point out, being a limited human being—in whatever way that appears—is not a sin.

We do not need to be more than we were created to be: limited humans loved by God.

“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary.”

-John 10:14 (the Message)

You know what I find really crazy? Jesus’s disciples ask him in John 9 who sinned to make the man blind and Jesus tells them no one sinned but God’s glory was going to be revealed and then, you know what Jesus says immediately after, in John 10?

He says he is the Good Shepherd.

(It’s all in there—in the Bible—I promise! You can read it for yourself!)

Isn’t that crazy?!

Jesus tells his disciples that he is the Good Shepherd and the sheep know his voice. He talks about crooks and robbers and sheep rustlers who are “up to no good.” But he says that—even in this broken and loud and shouting world, even in this stealing and killing and destroying world—the sheep will still hear and know his voice. Jesus’s voice.

And, above and beyond all of this, Jesus tells his disciples that he puts the sheep before himself, even sacrificing himself if necessary.

Here it is—the same verse from above:

“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary.”

-John 10:14 (The Message)

I’m telling you, Jesus is the real deal, and he is not needing us to be something we are not. He loves you and he loves me—in all of our limitedness.

The voices telling us we are not enough for God are liars—they are not the Good Shepherd. They may sound convincing, telling us we must somehow transcend our creatureliness in order to come to God, but they are just sheep rustlers and thieves, up to no good, just trying to steal and kill and destroy.

Those voices can go to hell where they belong.

Dear friend, replace those voices with the words of Jesus:

“A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.”

-John 10:10 (The Message)

In fact, replace each “they” with “you.” I don’t think God will mind you changing the word:

“A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so you can have real and eternal life, more and better life than you ever dreamed of.”

-John 10:10 (The Message)

I promise you that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit—this beautiful, mysterious three-in-one Shepherd—is speaking those words over you right now, longing to lead you like a sheep to safety, resting in the crook of the Good Shepherd’s staff, limited and unafraid, living a better life than you ever dreamed of (Psalm 78:53, John 10:10).

Bask in the unending love of a Good Shepherd who loves you in all your limited beauty.

Whoever you are and wherever you live, I’m grateful you found my little Substack. May you know God’s peace.

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I’m sitting on the second floor of a coffee shop in South Pasadena, California. Across from me sits Lex; she’s reading a book I recommended to her; there is no greater feeling in life than someone enjoying a book you recommend to them. Second might be true love’s kiss.

—

I’m about to talk about the Bible, but I’m not going to quote any verses. Partly because this coffee shop does not have internet. Partly because I want what I write to feel worn in and lived. And partly because I’m lazy. But it’s all in there; you are welcome to check.

So I want to talk about my favorite thing in the Bible: God bringing order to chaos.

Words are poor compensations for the feelings of order that God can bring. But they are the only thing I have at the moment; I cannot communicate with hand motions and hugs and claps on the back via the internet. At least, not yet. So I will try words.

Here is my first word: formless. That’s what the Bible says was in existence when God created everything. Just formless, a void at the end of the world. Chaos reigned over the deep.

A whole bunch of other cultures and peoples had creation stories, too. All of these stories—all of them—portray a world made out of chaos. The gods got in a fight or had sex and the world came forth from that. Their chaos beget more chaos.

But the Bible says the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

Why waters? Well, water symbolized chaos for an ancient world. Back then folks couldn’t see under water, so they imagined monsters and danger and chaos spilling and swirling around down there. It was dangerous and scary!

So keep that in mind: whenever you hear about water in the Bible, it’s often referring to chaos. And whenever you hear someone splitting the waters, that signifies bringing order to the chaos, displaying—to use a highly Christian world—sovereignty over that chaos.

At the very beginning, the Spirit of God was active and moving, and the Bible says that creation happened through God separating the waters. This is a neon sign flashing the truth that God is a God of order, not a God of chaos. No fighting or sex or anything like that. Just a God who is better than chaos and bigger than all the gods from all the other creation narratives.

The Bible tells this truth, over and over again: God is—here’s that Christian word again—sovereign, able to bring order to a chaotic world.

—

Also, Lex isn’t much of a reader, so I don’t know how much time I have to write this. Hang in there! So much to share and so little time to share it!

—

So a few chapters later when the world is flooded, what is that? A world drowning in chaos and the sin of its own creation. But God still saves humanity in that little spark of Noah and his family. He uses Noah—even, in some way, partners with him—to retain the goodness of creation in a world gone mad.

Even when chaos floods the world, goodness and order still exist, small and feeble but breathing and surviving.

—

I originally heard about this concept from a professor, I think, in my sophomore year of college. I would look him up but, like I said, Lex is like a broken kitchen timer when she reads. I know there’s a countdown, but I have no clue how long it will be.

—

Here’s another example: When Moses and the Israelites stand at the Red Sea, staring out at a dead end, what are they seeing? Chaos. And when God splits the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites, what is God doing? Bringing order. And when the Red Sea crashes in on the stalking Egyptians, what is happening? They are succumbing to their own chaos.

God partnered with Moses to save his people, to remind the world who is in control and who is sovereign.

—

Lex just laughed at something in the book! She is a fan of it!

—

Fast forward.

There is some research that suggests the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary parallels the Spirit at the beginning of the world, hovering over what would become order and beauty. And Mary giving birth—the most natural and most wonderful of all natural wonders—is, again, the splitting of water by order, the bringing to life new creation in the form of a little, baby Jesus.

Noah was the person God partnered with for the ark; Moses was the person God partnered with for the Red Sea; how beautiful that Mary was chosen to partner in this great creation!

Each of them, by the way, could have said no and run away. Moses even kind of tried. But they agreed to partner with God by abandoning common sense and trusting in a God they believed was bigger than the chaos in front of them.

—

There are so many more words I could write about God forming the world and Mary forming Jesus, but, alas, Lex just flipped a few pages ahead to see when the chapter ends, so I really don’t think I have much time now.

—

Next: baptism. Think about the physical realities of baptism. What happens? The pastor gently puts her or his hand on your back and lowers you under the water. What happens under there? It’s only for an instant, but that instant—when it’s stretched out—is chaotic. It is being under the chaos, subsumed by and drowning in chaos. We generally only think about the coming up again of baptism; we rarely think about the under-the-water moment. But that’s what it is: chaos is momentarily winning.

But then what? You come back above the water. How do you come up?

Say it with me: By splitting the waters!

Once again, God is proving God’s sovereignty and power and beauty. The chaos is split and order brings forth new creation.

But get this: the best part is that this time God is not partnering with Noah or Moses or Mary. God is partnering with YOU. Yes, YOU. The same you that spent an hour last week gossiping and spilling all kinds of tea instead of praying and the same you that got cut off on the way to church and cussed under your breath instead of saying the Jesus prayer and the same you that lingered on the figure of that man or woman across the street instead of recognizing the imago Dei living and breathing inside them.

The chaos you rolled around in—drink or sex or consumption—is nothing but food for pigs, and God—that great good Father—is placing the finest robe and gold ring on our finger, draping you in the jewels of freedom and joy.

The idea that God is partnering with you is wild to me. Even in the midst of all your sinful ideations and chaotic churning, God is bringing about new creation and order.

—

Also, as a side note, you know the biblical story of Jesus being baptized? It is one of the most clear examples of all three members of the Trinity in relationship: God proclaiming his pleasure over Jesus, Jesus standing in the waters, and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. Beautiful!

Lex is looking serious and contemplative. I think I have a little bit longer.

—

Let’s fast forward one more time. At the end of Revelation, John has a vision of the new heaven and new earth. In it, he sees Jesus coming down on the clouds and then says this seemingly random thing: in the vision, the sea was no more.

What? So random, right?

But now you know what to do with water imagery. Chaos! Yes, if water means chaos, then John writing there was no more sea means there was no more chaos. At the end of all things, when God’s beautiful kingdom rolls out onto and into this earth, there will be no more chaos. No more tears, no more being stood up in half-empty bars, no more drunk driving deaths. No more child abuse or child trafficking or child malnourishment. No more need for gossip or cursing or objectification. Just union and order and unending unending unending peace.

And you know what foreshadows all of that? Baptism. God splitting the waters and bringing about God’s new creation: you. Here’s an all-time quote from a theologian I love:

“However far a person advances upon the Way, all that he [or she] discovers is nothing else than the revelation…of baptismal grace.”1

Everything is baptism, and—until what theologians call the eschaton, when we will be Christ’s bride and Christ will be our forever sovereign Savior—we get to live with this foretaste and partner with God in bringing order out of chaos.

—

Alexis just grabbed her phone, so I better wrap this up.

—

God is bringing order into your life, even now, even in the midst of chaos.

Isn’t that something? Praise God.

Announcement time!

I am just so grateful you’re here. I don’t take it lightly that you would spend part of your day reading these words. I hope to write with beauty and grace, pointing you in whatever little way I can to God’s goodness and kindness. Just like in the middle of the church service, I’m going to give a few announcements now.

Announcement #1!

Calling all writers! I’ve always dreamt of being a writing coach, and I think I’ve found my niche writing on Substack. If you ever want to talk about writing or how to grow a sustainable platform or discovering your voice, I’d be honored to come alongside you.

I’m currently doing a pay-what-you-want approach for one session of coaching while I build up my portfolio, so please feel free to fill out my Google form if you’re interested!

Coaching Interest Form

Announcement #2!

A few quick things:

1. If you have the funds, I’d be very grateful if you upgraded to a paid subscription. I don’t put anything behind a paywall, so you’re not getting anything extra (how’s that for a sales pitch (ha)?!). But it would mean a lot to me and my little house-down-payment-fund.

2. I’d also be grateful if you shared my writing with a friend! To get a book deal these days is important to have a platform, and I’m pretty determined to build one that isn’t dependent on me writing controversially or learning dances for TikTok.

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I woke up on Saturday morning to a quiet house. Lex and I were visiting her parents for Father’s Day, and they graciously put up with my early morning writing sessions. I crept through the house way-too-early and tried my best to not wake anyone up.

I had to stall twenty minutes, waiting for a coffee shop near their house to open. So I sat in their comfy leather armchair and thought about how perfect the conditions were to do devotions and pray and sit with the Lord as the day woke up.

The only problem is that I didn’t.

Instead I pulled out my computer and started scrolling. (I’m not proud of this, but I believe in honesty.) As I scrolled, I came across an article recommended by —a pastor who’s interests I inherently respect—about someone named Sister Wendy. This is her:

I was unfamiliar with her, but I sat transfixed reading about this fascinating woman.1

According to the article, Sister Wendy became an unlikely television star in the nineties because of her ability to talk, unscripted, about art. She was flown around the world to film documentaries and was known the world over for her skills. However, in between her travels she lived in a mobile home alongside Carmelite nuns.2

She spent the majority of her days in silence, filled with prayer.

, the author, writes about a specific exchange Sister Wendy had with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Gross asked,

“What about the disparity between your cloistered spiritual life and the 30,000 miles of travel to 12 countries that were required of you to shoot the PBS series? […] Do you—have you seen this as a sacrifice? Or have you welcomed the opportunity to actually be in the world? See the world?”

And Sister Wendy answered,

“Oh, no, no. It’s a sacrifice. I would be delighted if I could, say, hand over the task to somebody else. No, I would never have wanted to do this and I sometimes look at the Lord with a rather quizzical air. You know, I was so lucky. I had all that wonderful solitude and silence. And then, he asks me to give up parts of it. Well, if you—if I really want to love and serve him, then I must try and do this with as big a smile as I can manage, but it would never have been my choice. […] But I think that’s a sacrifice that I’m called upon to make because any gift any of us have is never just for us. It’s for sharing.”

Isn’t that such a quirky and countercultural thing to say? Instead of chaffing at the solitude and hiddenness, she was chaffing at being successful and famous!

What?! That’s crazy!

What made her crave that mobile home and that solitude over jet-setting and fame and probably opportunities for great wealth?

I left asking, “How do I get some of that?”

—

Sister Wendy isn’t the only backwards, quirky character I’ve encountered; I seem to collect them like Beanie Babies, each of them a role model for a different way of navigating success. Here’s a very short list of the first ones to pop in my head.

1. Mister Rogers. I read his biography a few years ago, and, at one point, teared up in the gym listening to it. He always placed the children he was making TV for in the center. He refused to advertise to them and took dramatic steps to protect their innocence and not manipulate their attention for more cash and fame.3

2. Wendell Berry. He famously moved from New York City at the start of his writing career to return to his plot of land in Kentucky. People told him he was doing a disservice to his career by moving away from the coast, but he did it anyway because he believed in both place and the limitedness of being human. For him, fame didn’t scale at the pace of life.4

3. And finally there’s my current obsession: Rich Mullins. I’m reading a few books on him right now and can’t get enough. After he became famous and started making money, he tasked a friend to oversee his finances and only give him the average working man’s wage, which at the time was $24,000 a year.5 He didn’t want to know how much he was making, and he even went back to college as a famous musician so that he could get credentialed to serve among the Navajo.

Sister Wendy and Mister Rogers and Wendell Berry and Rich Mullins.

Such quirky characters! I can’t stop thinking of them.

—

We live in an age where everything must be commodified and our lives must be fully optimized. In my little world of writing, I’ve been encouraged to be on every platform. Substack and Instagram and Facebook and WUPHF.com and the site formerly known as Twitter and TikTok and MySpace and AOL Chat. Plus I’m supposed to obsessively maintain both my image and my own URL.

The fact my hairline is quickly receding could be a PR nightmare.

It’s all so exhausting. No wonder people have no time to actually develop the fruit of the Spirit—that stuff doesn’t sell in a clickbait culture.

—

Sister Wendy and Mister Rogers and Wendell Berry and Rich Mullins are extreme examples. They feel so rare in this world. If you rounded up all the famous people in the entire world, they would be just a drop in the ocean, four small salmon swimming against a raging river of fame.

—

Throughout elementary school, I begged my parents to be in the PTA (Parent Teachers Association). They refused. Every. Single. Time.

I’d whine and do my best to convince them. All the other parents are doing it. And why don’t you do anything? And, finally, a high-pitched PLEEEEEEASE.

Nothing worked.

They always told me they didn’t do the PTA because they wanted to be present at home. They wanted to focus on two things: God and family. So that meant my mom leading the children’s ministry at church and my dad being home for dinner every night. It meant they came to my soccer games on Saturdays and taught me what it looked like to take a Sabbath.

They intentionally limited their lives so that we could be human in an inhuman world.

—

I don’t think it’s just about fame. It’s not just writers or other online people who fall into the trap of performance.

It exists in every sector and every society, the temptation to be all things for all people, not to be selfless but to prove we are perfect or needed or fun or any number of other lovely attributes we want.

It is hoarding wealth. It’s chasing the career or the best education. It’s working eighty hour weeks and living on 5-hour energies. It’s being the perfect friend or the most connected or the fastest runner.

There is such a thin line between pursuing excellence and being addicted to the performance of perfection.

We live in an age of unlimited living; the only problem is that we can’t keep up.

—

Living limited doesn’t have to be extreme like Sister Wendy’s mobile home or Rich Mullin’s living-man’s-wage.

I got lunch with my psychology teacher my sophomore year of college. He just seemed like a really cool guy; he was married and had a toddler, which was pretty much everything I ever dreamed of.

During that lunch, he told me about his friends who had more successful careers and degrees from better schools. He said they had achieved more than he had, but many of them were miserable. Divorced and burnt out, strung out on the success they sought so much.

He told me he decided to limit himself, to not go to the best grad school, to not put in eighty hour weeks to get ahead. Instead, he had a job he enjoyed and a life he loved without the perfect CV.

He was not the paragon of perfection but quietly content. He told me he even managed to get nine hours of sleep each night.

Crazy!

—

As I’ve been reading about Rich Mullins and these people who pursued limited lives, the biblical story of Gideon has been locked in my brain. Gideon calls himself the runt of the litter, but God chooses him to lead the Israelites against the enemy Midianites. They were bigger and badder than the Israelites, but God says he would make Gideon prosper.

So Gideon goes about and gets himself an army. God, however, tells Gideon to reduce it. Not once but twice. Most of the original soldiers are sent home.

This makes no sense. In the face of a battle, God was sending willing-and-able men home! Why?

God said to Gideon, “You have too large an army with you. I can’t turn Midian over to them like this—they’ll take all the credit, saying, ‘I did it all myself,’ and forget about me.” (Judges 7:2, The Message)

God wanted Gideon to go into battle with an army way-too-small because he didn’t want there to be confusion about who had done the winning. It would be God or it would be no one.

I’ve thought about my own life in relation to this story—both my life online and the one tangibly in front of me. I want so badly to do it all myself and show the world how successful I can be, both through the commodification of my talents and the optimization of my life.

I want to have the perfect job and be on every social media platform and convince every single one of you to pay me to write words that are sent to your inbox. I want to win the battle and hold my hands up in victory, proving to you once and for all that I am the captain of my fate.

But the truth is that I’m not. I am weak and needy, a limited human loved by God. And, if I ever get that book deal or find any sense of success in this life, God is going to be the one to do it. He will do it through my smallness and limitedness. He will do it through my humble obedience.

I am called to shrink my army—to be intentionally smaller—because I cannot claim victory for myself and I am not unlimited.

—

So, practically, what does this look like for me?

Well, it looks like not being on every social media platform, and it looks like not rolling around in clickbait headlines. It looks like not owning a smart phone and not checking my Substack numbers or email every ten minutes. It looks like limiting my writing time so I can be a present husband and family member and friend. And it looks like a lot of prayer for faithfulness to smallness in a world that would really like me to be BIG.

Here’s the truth: I am not good at doing this. In fact, I’m lousy. But God is faithful, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

—

I wrote all two-thousand of these words just to tell you this: you can rest your shoulders, you don’t need to be perfect.

Be a human and give God the glory when success happens :)

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I’ll start by admitting that I historically get uncomfortable when people bring up the word evangelism.

—

I memorized the song “Jesus Freak” by DC Talk as a kid. I think it must have been middle school, and I especially loved TobyMac’s two raps. I rapped over him, trying to copy his cadence and tone:

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"I saw a man with a tat on his big fat belly
It wiggled around like marmalade jelly
It took me a while to catch what it said
'Cause I had to match the rhythm of his belly with my head
'Jesus Saves' is what it raved
In a typical tattoo green
He stood on a box in the middle of the city
And he claimed he had a dream"

And next, of course, came that chorus:

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"What will people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus freak?
What will people do when they find that it's true?
I don't really care if they label me a Jesus freak
There ain't no disguisin' the truth"

All I wanted to be in life was a Jesus freak.

—

There is a man who wears cargo shorts and stands on the street corner down the block from me. On Friday or Saturday nights, he climbs up on a bench holding a Bible and shouts at passersby. I’ve only ever heard snippets, but the shouting—like busted car speakers—distorts everything.

“BLESSED ARE THE MEEK!” sounds like a threat when he shouts it.

—

I thought of “Jesus Freak” again the other day when I heard a new cover of it had been released by a Christian singer named Josiah Queen. TobyMac even reprised his rapping.

I listened to it just now, and—honestly—it kind of slaps.

—

After memorizing “Jesus Freak,” I went out searching for others to save. In junior high—when MySpace was all the rage—I wore a t-shirt that said, “Jesus died for MySpace in heaven.” In high school, I told people that God loved them. In college, I prayed over strangers in Starbucks. I did things that were way outside my comfort zone because I felt the Spirit nudging me to do them.

And I did all of it because I knew how much God loved me. I did all of it because I wanted everyone—strangers, friends, family—to know that God loved them too; I wanted them to be Jesus freaks just like me.

—

There are these people who stand on the same street corner as that shouting man. They’re just kids—they can’t be older than seventeen—and they each hold a large sign with a different picture of a mutilated fetus. I look the other way every time; my stomach turns. I wonder if this is the reaction they want. I wonder if they think what they are doing will change minds.

I’m not sure.

—

Over the years, I stopped wearing shirts about Jesus. I stopped telling strangers how much God loved them. I stopped praying over people in Starbucks. Evangelism slowly became a dirty word for me, something I was no longer comfortable doing. “Live and let live” and “Whatever floats your boat” and “Don’t yuk my yum” dominated the culture I assimilated to.

Well-meaning or not, evangelism began to feel like it no longer fit the tempo of my Christianity. It felt like a colonialism of belief, forcing people minding their own business to engage and digest my own faith and spirituality.

I wouldn’t say this, but I thought I had matured past it.

—

So that’s why the other day, when my algorithm shared with me one of Josiah Queen’s videos, I winced. One of his songs is playing over a video of his wife Trinity, who took on the challenge of telling someone about Jesus every day for a year. Short, one-second clips of her preaching to crowds and standing on stages and praying over strangers flashed by, and all I could think of was the man with the Bible and the kids with disturbing pictures, forcing their views on people uninterested.

—

Years ago, a pastor I greatly respect and trust told a story about his grandfather.

He said his grandfather was a pastor, and one day his grandfather felt like he was supposed to visit one of his parishioners. So he drove out to this parishioner’s house and knocked on the door. After a short bit, the parishioner came to the door and said hello, eventually inviting him in to talk.

After a while, the parishioner confessed that he was within an hour of ending his life when the pastor knocked on his door.

—

As I’ve wrestled with this piece and wrestled with the word “evangelism,” I’ve wondered when I stopped being comfortable with it. When did I stop wearing Christian shirts or telling strangers about God’s love or praying for people in Starbucks?

I think it happened when I realized there are men who will yell on street corners and kids who will hold disturbing pictures, and they will do all of it under the umbrella of evangelism, under the umbrella of sharing the Gospel.

I just don’t want to be anything like that.

—

Last summer I heard another story from another pastor that I greatly respect and trust. He said he woke up in the middle of the night and felt an urgent need to text one of his parishioners. It felt weird, but he did it anyway. He texted her how much God loved her and how much she was appreciated in the church.

The next day she called him and told him she was about to end her life when she received that text. It kept her breathing, believing in a peace that surpasses understanding and a life that is full.

—

I don’t think it’s fair to place Josiah and Trinity Queen in the same category as the man yelling or the kids with the signs. They do not seem to be shoving any ideologies onto other people; instead, they seem to be on fire for a God who loves every person they interact with.

I think I wince because I feel convicted. Somewhere along the way, I began to believe I didn’t need to tell people about Jesus, that all I needed to do was be nice to my grocer and my barista, that my actions would somehow communicate my faith.

I didn’t want to bother anyone with the Gospel.

—

Much to my surprise, this past week I told a stranger about Jesus’s love. I don’t want to share more because this is a real human with a real story that is not mine, but it was a moment that stopped me and shocked me, reminding me of what it felt like to be a Jesus freak all those years ago.

I’m sorry for being vague, but you have to trust me that God was in this thing, actively moving.

Despite myself, I was evangelizing.

—

Yet another preacher I greatly respect and trust shared these verses in church this morning:

“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.”

-1 Peter 3:15b-16a (NRSVUE)

I sat there thinking about this newsletter and my interaction with that stranger and realized evangelism is simply that: sharing the hope that is in me. I am not off the hook simply because people do not do it with gentleness or respect. I cannot let the man on the street corner or those kids holding signs monopolize evangelism.

I will never mature past or outgrow evangelism.

—

I believe Jesus when he said he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And I believe Jesus when he said he came to give life, and life to the full. I have felt the presence of the Spirit in my lowest lows, I have experienced the goodness of God in my highest highs, and I know he is with me now in the middle, even as I type these words.

And I want others to know about this love because I believe it is the only source of ultimate comfort. To come to Christ is to come home to beauty. And to come to Christ is to go out into the world and tell others about it.

—

I also believe, as Paul writes, that we are each a part of the body of Christ. Not all of us are like Josiah and Trinity Queen. It might not be a person every day. And it might not be strangers. But I do not think any of us are freed from the task of evangelizing a world that needs the love of Christ.

—

At my core, I have always been a Jesus freak. I think I just haven’t always been mature enough to see it.

—

—

A post-script

Okay, this part wasn’t in the original newsletter because I totally forgot to include it until kindly commented about it below! Most evangelism—in my experience—is not talking with strangers but building long-term friendships with people. In my two examples from those two pastors, both of those conversations happened in the context of a relationship. They knew their parishioners and were able to—through the Holy Spirit—be present with them in their crises.

I’ve been involved with Young Life for a really long time, and they talk about “earning the right to be heard” all the time. You often can’t just jump out of the gate talking about Jesus but need to earn the right through your actions and consistency before sharing the Gospel.

Make friends! And be open to what the Spirit nudges you towards!

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My online writing life is fourteen years old; it’s about to get its learner’s permit. It is fighting for a later curfew, getting braces, worried about the way it looks before leaving the house for school.

Don’t tell it, but it’s really only been surrounded by failure. Nothing much has happened in its lifetime—at least, nothing especially noteworthy. Very little to clip out and affix to the fridge. Little trophies and publications dot its dresser, but they pale in comparison to the trophies and awards of others its age.

But still, there is something admirable about this little enterprise. I want to pat it on its back for getting up each morning and continuing to grow, to grasp, to work out what it thinks in real time, in front of real people.

I still believe in it, no matter the size of its trophies.

—

Lex and I honeymooned in England. I intentionally didn’t pack as much in my suitcase because I knew I’d be returning with more books than could possibly fit in a carry-on. I was right.

On the second day, Lex and I took a tour of the Cotswolds. We sat in the tour van as green fields and stone hedges passed by outside and sheep stood in fields baa-ing in British accents.

We stopped in one village for about an hour. Lex and I held hands and spoke sweet nothings and walked up and down the main street until we found a bookstore. Inside, on the center table, sat Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien. I picked it up and immediately bought it because the back said it was about the artist’s life. And—lo and behold—I consider myself a (struggling, somewhat failed) artist.

—

Some of you already know this story (I wrote about it in my first ever Slow Faith post back in 2020), but I started my writing venture with great enthusiasm to become the next big name in Christian publishing. I created a website with my name in the URL and took quirky headshots barefoot on the side of a road in the California foothills. I wrote clickbait headlines and courted controversy because isn’t that what every good Christian writer does? Oh, and I wrote about sex. Well—to be more precise—I wrote a lot about abstaining from sex.

But I was struggling. My platform was growing but I felt hollow and empty, anxious and paranoid about my online presence. It began to feel like, instead of using my platform to promote God, I was using God to promote my platform.

So I shut it all down. I deleted my website and started writing a simple newsletter that didn’t have my name in the URL or my face on every page. I wrote Wendell Berry a letter thanking him for his model of sustainable writing, and I got cozier with a quieter—more hidden—life online. And my brain felt like it could breathe again; my priorities felt more aligned.

—

At the end of our tour, we sat in the bus sleepy and content—filled with so much frothed milk and pastries—and rode back to Bath. On the drive, I opened up Leaf by Niggle and aimed to finish it in one sitting. (At forty-three short pages, this was the exact type of manageable and doable goal I enjoy.)

~Spoiler alert~

The story is about an unsuccessful artist named Niggle who spends a lifetime painting leaves in a giant forest tapestry. Life happens, and his attention is diverted from his art by any number of “life” things. Doctor appointments and a needy neighbor and trips into town to buy groceries. But still, he slowly plugs away at his art.

Eventually, he dies. His life’s work—this beautiful tapestry of a tree with such delicate, intimate leaves—is used as a canvas to cover his neighbor’s roof and is destroyed. One leaf is found in the rubble and framed and put up in a museum, but even that is eventually lost and forgotten.

Niggle—his art, his passion, his memory—is lost forever.

—

My days are filled with things I’d rather not be doing, things that distract me from my art, that distract me from painting my leaves and working on this grand tapestry that is my writing. I have to make money to pay rent, first of all. I have to go to the grocery store and take my car into the shop and run that one errand I’ve been putting off for a month. I have to renew my license or make lunch or even just take a shower. So many things to do in order to be a functioning human being—things that take me away from my art, my precious, precious art.

And sometimes I worry none of this will last. I was away from my newsletter for a few weeks to get married, and I watched as the notifications and the likes and the comments dwindled to nothing. Like a fire, attention must be stoked, and if I quit stoking, the attention will also end. What then? Have I even painted one leaf that will remain after my time?

Most likely? No.

Am I—and my writing—destined for oblivion?

—

Niggle wakes up after death to discover his great tapestry—the one lost and mangled and torn on earth—has come to life in his new after-world, his heaven. He walks around the tree and sees the forest and the mountains in the background and he sees each leaf—each precious, precious leaf—and is overjoyed. What he worked so falteringly at in life has become realer than he could imagine in this land-after-time. He takes it in and gets to work, adding more color and paint and beauty to an already beautiful canvas.

He does not care about what came before, about what was destroyed, about what was forgotten.

—

The first page of Leaf by Niggle says this: “Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do.”

If a book was written of me, it could begin the exact same way: “Drew was a writer. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do.”

As I rode in that tour van, back from the Cotswolds, I wondered at my writing, at my life. I am surrounded by things I have to do that aren’t writing, things that demand my attention. To ignore them would be to ignore the life in front of me; it would be to ignore the beauty of living; it would be to ignore my wife—this precious, precious human. All in the name of art. All in the name of fame.

No, I am perhaps destined to be an unsuccessful writer, but I believe God can transform these little words into something realer and sturdier than I could ever imagine. Perhaps, like Niggle, I will someday die to find these words transfigured into things of beauty, into words on pages that I will get to add to for the rest of eternity, even while the original words, here on earth, here on this internet, are forgotten forever and ever amen.

May it be so.

A postscript

After posting my piece a few weeks ago about platform and the internet, I began to realize that Substack is beginning to feel similar to how Twitter felt for me when I was really struggling back in the 2010s. So much noise, and I am constantly comparing myself and feeling the need to be on here all the time.

So, just as an update, I am praying about what the Lord wants me to do with this. I know I am called to write, and I am continuing to develop a pretty exciting book proposal. I’m just not sure how to quiet the onslaught of comparison and noise that Substack facilitates.

I think I will pray about it, and I plan to keep you informed :)

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Friends, I’ve been following the president (and his administration’s) “critiques” of Pope Leo as well as Pope Leo’s measured and thoughtful engagement (or un-engagement) with them. It has been, frankly, beautiful to see a Christian leader practicing a form of power from above, rooted in humility and justice, rather than in a power from below, rooted in fear-mongering and manipulation. I have also been reading about the government’s disingenuous and incorrect use of the term Just War Theory in justifying the war in Iran.

As a part of this reading, I’ve been following ’s important and informative writing about Roman Catholicism and just war theory here on Substack. Rather than me write about a Christian tradition I admire but do not belong to, I thought it would be helpful to hear from Sarah herself and was delighted when she agreed to guest post here on Slow Faith.

Here is her official bio: is a Catholic writer and mother of three living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. She has a masters degree in theology and over a decade of experience working for Catholic and Christian organizations, with an emphasis on the intellectual formation of lay and ordained leaders. In her free time she enjoys exercise, reading, and has recently picked up knitting.

Without further ado, here is Sarah :)

I have read many, many articles over the past two months—and especially in the past two weeks—arguing in one way or another either that the United States’ current escalation in Iran qualifies as a “just war,” or doesn’t. Perhaps you’ve seen them too.

The conversation about “just war” is not idiosyncratic to our time; the terms of this debate have been set over the course of centuries as part of the Christian tradition. Augustine, widely considered to be the father of modern Just War Theory, argued that under certain conditions—having a just cause, under the rule of proper authority, etc.—it was permissible to engage in warfare. Building on Augustine, and later St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church has laid down its official formulation of the just war doctrine as follows (this excerpt is taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the written summary of Catholic teaching):

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

• there must be serious prospects of success;

• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

Both Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Vice President J.D. Vance have, in recent days, invoked just war theory in direct response to the strong and continuous calls for peace by Pope Leo XIV, including his insistence that “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them” during his Palm Sunday homily. Vance remarked several days later,

“When the pope says that God is never on the side of people who wield the sword, there is more than a 1,000-year tradition of just war theory ... We can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just ... I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Vance’s implication: in his unequivocal condemnation of war, the pope is overreaching. Let us statesmen handle such things, Your Holiness, he suggests, and you, meanwhile: mind your business.

Within a few days of Vance’s comments, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) addressed the issue (though obliquely) with two statements: one came in the form of a press release from the Chairman on Doctrine, clarifying that no, in fact, the pope is not simply opining, but rather teaching on an important matter of Christian doctrine; the second was an Instagram post, quoting the passage from the Catechism cited above, plus the addition of the following sentence: The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

There’s an awkward contradiction in this two-pronged response from the U.S. bishops: on the one hand, they say, the pope does have the authority to judge matters of war—in doing so, he is exercising his office as the head of the Catholic Church; on the other hand, just war doctrine as written seems to suggest that our heads of state, “those who have the responsibility for the common good,” are really the best people to make such decisions. So which is it?

What I think we’ve just witnessed from the USCCB is an example of a real lack of moral clarity when it comes to what exactly the just war doctrine is for. And in case this seems like Catholic insider baseball, rest assured this is matters for all Christians, the whole Body of Christ.

The first issue is whether we consider the just war doctrine to be merely pragmatic, or whether it has a prophetic dimension. If it is pragmatic, a matter of calculated decision-making, then statesmen would be right to tell the pope to stay out of it. However, our heads of state are often not acting in good faith; they are frequently compromised either by bribery, captured by special interests, or controlled by ego. But even when they are not acting viciously, it is always possible that they are simply not competent to make moral judgments—that they lack the formation to do so.

Still, lots of Catholics read the Catechism and think: “See? What do I know? I’m not in the Situation room”—when in reality it is not just statesmen but all the baptized who have responsibility for the common good. Though we all play different roles within the polis, it cannot be the case that the only people truly charged with safeguarding the good of the people are our elected officials. This is to abdicate the mission that is ours by virtue of our baptism.

The second is this: just war theory is nearly always leveraged to argue in favor of war, and very infrequently cited to condemn it. Even in its formulation, it lends itself to legalistic box-checking so that disturbed consciences can rest easy as they blow up schools full of little girls. It allows statesmen and patriots alike to turn a blind eye to the horrors of war because the moral calculus has already been made ahead of time.

But notice how even in the Catechism, the Church wisely adds,

“The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”

By adding this one sentence, the Church has effectively pulled the emergency brake: this was all well and good when you had grown men shooting each other with muskets in an open field, but modern warfare is a different animal, and the ability to incinerate an entire downtown area with all its inhabitants is a godlike destruction unimaginable to the likes of Augustine and Aquinas. Things have changed. We can murder on a mass scale, assassinate at arm’s length, and threaten to destroy an entire civilization in one fell swoop.

In light of the reality of modern warfare, Christians should not be asking themselves, Have I met the criteria to start blowing people up yet? This is to bastardize the Christian tradition, bending it to wicked ends. Jesus Christ issued God’s final answer to our violence when he allowed it to consume him on the Cross. It is finished; another way is open to those who are called friends of the Lord.

This is why the Catholic Church has also written in its social doctrine,

It is hardly possible to imagine that in an atomic era, war could be used as an instrument of justice. War is a “scourge” and is never an appropriate way to resolve problems that arise between nations, “it has never been and it will never be”, because it creates new and still more complicated conflicts. When it erupts, war becomes an “unnecessary massacre”, an “adventure without return” that compromises humanity’s present and threatens its future. “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war”. The damage caused by an armed conflict is not only material but also moral. In the end, war is “the failure of all true humanism”, “it is always a defeat for humanity”: “never again some peoples against others, never again! ... no more war, no more war!”

In my opinion, war is always evil and Christians are obligated to work to avoid it at all costs. The just war doctrine is relativized, almost into total obsolescence, by the social consciousness that has arisen in modernity, and the terrifyingly high stakes of modern war.

We know about downtown Hiroshima, an empty and scorched wasteland where a vibrant city used to be. We know about how Agent Orange devastated both the environment and the population in Vietnam, leading to hundreds of thousands of babies born with birth defects and millions more suffering from illness and injury from exposure to this poison. We know now that a half-million innocent civilians were killed in the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East—nearly half of all fatalities. We know about PTSD, that combat veterans make up 1 in 5 of all suicides each year in the United States.

We know, as Pope Francis put it, that war is always a defeat for humanity. It is “the failure of all true humanism.” It is wrong. And it is not inevitable.

Christians need to stop bickering over whether the Iran war is a “just war” or not, and they need to stop citing the Catechism, saying that it “settled matters of theology.” To ask whether the people in Iran are bad enough to make it okay for us to drop bombs on them is to pull off our mask to reveal who the true villain is. It is time for the People of God to reject the paradigm that assumes any war is “just” while the threat of nuclear annihilation looms, reclaim the prophetic office that belongs to their baptism, and declare the radical, extraordinary, world-changing news that in Christ, enemies can not only lay down their weapons but become brothers, that in the Kingdom of God,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

They shall beat their swords into plowshares 
     and their spears into pruning hooks; 
nation shall not lift up sword against nation; 
     neither shall they learn war any more.

-Isaiah 2:4 (NRSVUE)

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This past weekend I went to a fancy Christian writing conference. It was like Substack and the Christian book section of your local book store come to life. A lot of acquisition editors were there, and I had a book to pitch. This was my Super Bowl.

I felt both excited and ready—excited to make some friends and ready to have those friends sign me to a six-figure book deal. (I kid—I’d accept a fuzzy, opened mint off the ground if it came with a book deal.)

—

In the exhibition room at the conference there were a bunch of different publishers with tables displaying their books. At one point, I approached a table and began talking to the person working, asking him questions about his job with the publisher. Part way through the conversation—mid-sentence—he suddenly looked past me and started calling someone’s name.

He was calling the name of a famous Christian writer walking behind me.

The publishing guy then turned fully away from me and started chatting this famous author up, gushing about how much he loved his stuff and how honored he was be associated with him. His tone was completely different than the one he used with me.

I eventually walked away annoyed and angry. I hate being overlooked.

—

“My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality. For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here in a good place, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit by my footstool,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

-James 2:1-4 (NRSVUE)

I guess I was the poor person in dirty clothes in that situation, sitting by that publisher’s footstool.

—

I just started a book by Jamin Goggin and . It’s called The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that has Abandoned It.

That title says a lot, and I’m reading it at a time when I’m thinking a lot about power, fame, and Christianity.

I just finished a pretty big writing project on the role of wealth and fame in the pastorate, feeling as though the American church is swooning under the bright lights of tabloid power and celebrity status.

Here’s what I keep thinking about: when does someone stop using their platform to serve God and begin using God to serve their platform?

—

I’m writing this while listening to Watchhouse radio on Spotify. Joe Pug’s “Crescent Bridge” just came on, and the first line is,

“I’ve been waiting all night for you to look my way.”

Amen, brother, welcome to the Christian publishing industry.

It sucks to be overlooked.

—

I highlighted the acquisition editors I was going to find and talk to at the conference. I wanted them to know I was determined to get this thing done, to be a “traditionally published” Christian author.

So that’s what I did. I pitched and I pitched and I pitched that first morning, trying my absolute best to prove why I was worthy of a book deal.

—

I made sure to say hello to the published authors at the conference so they would know that I was cool and they would remember me and they would someday endorse my book.

—

I smiled and talked to people who did not have any published books, but my eyes weren’t scanning crowds looking for them.

—

I saw people talking with acquisitions editors and heard stories of folks being asked out to lunch or dinner with entire pub boards, and I was jealous. How did they get those meetings and I didn’t? What did I need to do to get there?

—

I updated my website to make it more attractive to one of those acquisition editors.

—

In The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb, the authors quote from a different spot in the book of James:

“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:13-18 ESV)1

So, to take inventory, here is what is connected to good wisdom: good conduct, meekness, purity, peaceableness, gentleness, openness to reason, fullness of mercy and good fruits, impartiality, and sincerity.

And here is what is connected to false wisdom: bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.

Now, let’s take inventory of my experience that first morning at the writers’ conference:

• I didn’t conduct myself well while trying to jostle my way up the publishing ladder.

• I was not meek.

• I did not have pure intentions.

• I was not peaceable in my heart when my friends got meetings I didn’t.

• I was not gentle.

• I was not open to reason. Instead, I wanted people to see my reasoning and agree with me.

• My mercy was towards the famous and the published; very scarce good fruits abounded.

• I was very partial towards my opinions and my vision of the future.

• I was not sincere in my search for higher status.

However, I was full of false wisdom:

• I was incredibly jealous of my friends with meetings and lunches and dinners and invitations to exclusive parties.

• I was filled up with selfish ambition, determined to make people know my name.

Yes, I walked away from that table overlooked and unappreciated by that publisher who showed favoritism to the famous author, but it’s not like I’m innocent in all of this.

I am far, far, far from innocent.

—

Jamin Goggin, in The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb, describes the beginning of his ministry career:

“In my early years of ministry I was convinced that my quest for power was merely a fervent commitment to the important work of the kingdom. My grandiose fantasy of success was excused as an embrace of God’s big plan for my life. I had big dreams because I had ‘bold faith.’ My emphasis on building a strong résumé and winning the approval of others was about making the most of my talents and abilities for God’s glory.”2

I walked into the writing conference thinking I was grounded and attuned and regulated and securely attached and whatever other healthy psychological term you want to use. I thought I was writing for the kingdom, and I knew I was pursuing “God’s big plan for my life.”

But I wasn’t. I was just ready to serve my own ego, to have God serve my platform.

—

Somedays I am unconvinced the “narrow way” is congruent with the Christian publishing industry, what with the need for subscribers and platform and notoriety. At the very least, I don’t think I’ve found the right balance—tempted as I am to take the dragon’s broad path towards fame and notoriety, covered in bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.

—

Friends, I look back at the beginning of last weekend and don’t like that version of myself; I want very badly to re-do it, to conduct myself better, to be meek, to be pure, to be peaceable, to be gentle, to be open to reason, to be full of mercy and good fruits, to be impartial, and to be sincere.

I was not any of those; I played the charade of a Christian while harboring bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.

I am a sham sometimes.

—

But then something happened. Partway through that first morning—after pitching to so many people and trying so hard to be seen—I felt God convict me. I stopped pitching for a moment and sat down at my computer and wrote this prayer:

“Lord, I am surrounded by the temptation to self-promote and puff up my chest. Would you ground me in your love and in the beauty of humility?”

A big kind of peace washed over me in that moment.

I can’t say I did everything perfectly from there. I still, at times, tried to find those acquisition editors and published authors. I still, at times, felt jealous of my friends. But I felt God nudging me continually back towards “the way of the lamb,” this narrow way with its meekness and purity.

And a peace washed over me each time I turned back to this quieter, more gentle way.

Praise God.

—

I do not know what to do with all this—publishing dreams and platform building and whatnot. I still feel as though God is calling me to write for people who want to read.

But how do I do that well?

How do you do that well?

How do we follow the way of the lamb—not the way of the dragon—in an industry and country that can feel so dragon-like in its power and performance and prestige?

I do not know, but I am hoping to pray a lot about this.

—

I also want to ask for forgiveness. I am sorry if you have ever felt overlooked by me. Part of that is being a limited human—it is difficult to respond to comments and emails with a day job and a family and a tactile life in front of me. But sometimes it is easy to perform for people in power or with platforms while making others—without power or platform—wait for my attention. I’m sorry. That’s not Christian.

I want to get better at this, and I’m grateful for your grace in the process.

PS One thing I learned this past weekend is that there are SO MANY amazing people in the Christian publishing industry. Just because I don’t know how to do this well doesn’t mean there aren’t amazing people trying to elevate truly beautiful Christian writing to audiences who need it. Check out ’s Substack and book Celebrities for Jesus or ’s thoughts on generative marketing or ’s thoughts on agenting in today’s tricky environment. Amazing humans, all of them.

PSS If you want to look into alternative ways of writing, I’d highly encourage you to check out ’s recent series on the publishing industry and platform!

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I no longer trust a man cajoling me with the Bible, promising me all the answers I will ever need, if only I will just listen to him.

—

Once, living off-campus with ten guys during college, I listened to a sermon while I got ready for the day. Afterwards, I walked outside to join the guys in the yard. One of them asked me, “Were you having an argument with someone in there?”

“No,” I replied.

“Oh,” he shrugged, “I heard a lot of shouting.”

—

My distrust of those cajoling men stems from sermons like the one I heard while getting ready, sermons by bombastic pastors standing on large stages in perfectly-lit sanctuaries. Loud, confident, brash. And always authoritative about biblical interpretation. The men on those stages know what the Bible is trying to say and how to say it. They know the answers, and their job is to impart those answers to me, as confidently as possible.

“THE BIBLE IS CLEAR!”

—

My faith feels like a castle. Tall, impenetrable walls, towers and turrets and spiral staircases leading to dungeons, a moat filled with crocodiles, and hundreds and hundreds of booby traps.

God sits quietly and patiently in the middle of this castle. Surrounding him are all the booby traps and crocodiles, and there is only one way to get to him. I stand outside, and the mission of my life is to find the perfect way to him. In my hands is the Bible—and I’ve been told that somewhere inside it is the secret map that will take me to God.

However, surrounding me is a crowd of people all shouting at me a thousand different sure-fire routes and interpretations. Alt-right and far left and cessationists and dispensationlists. All shouting and believing theirs is the only way; all others are just paths to hell.

After listening to the crowd yelling and doing my best to scan the Bible for the map, I imagine taking tentative steps toward God, sitting in the middle. Three steps forward and two steps sideways. Jump over the booby traps and make slow progress toward the middle. The entire time, the crowd is watching me with bated breath, waiting for me to fail.

It all feels like a performance; perfect orthodoxy, perfect words, perfect theology.

I take one wrong step and fall into a trap. No one from the crowd of shouting people comes to help me up; all they do is laugh at me. I wonder if they take more joy in my failure than they take in my success.

They cast me out and throw me away, deciding I am not right to be in communion with them.

And the whole time I am attempting to get up and get to the middle to be with God, God does nothing. He just sits there passively. He is not harsh, necessarily, but he is not inclined to get up and help me. The shouting crowd tells me that I am not worthy to be near God’s presence, and God is not doing anything to dissuade me from that idea.

My faith—this castle—feels like an impossible puzzle to solve.

—

My favorite story in the Bible is the story of Jesus and the woman at the well—found in John chapter four.

Perhaps you’ve heard it before. A Samaritan woman goes to the well at the hottest part of the day. She is an outcast from the Jewish people because she is Samaritan, and she is an outcast from her own people because she goes to the well when no one else would be there.

But Jesus is there, and he has a conversation with her, even though she is a Samaritan, even though she is an outcast. He reveals to her that he is the coming Messiah, and it is through her testimony that the entire town believes. The outcast has become the messenger.1

Jesus has a conversation with each of us at the hottest part of the day; he does not yell like the shouting voices outside the castle. He does not use Scripture like a cudgel, beating the sin out of us or waiting to talk to us until we are perfect again. No, he speaks to us, calmly, lovingly.

—

“But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

-Luke 15:20

This is the story of the prodigal son, and this is my favorite verse within that story. As soon as the father saw the son returning—“while he was still far off”—he ran to him.

God is not sitting passively on the inside of the castle. He is running to me, running to you. God is near, and he is not brash and bombastic but quiet and faithful. He is not asking me to perform or coerce or persuade but to receive. In a world of shouting pastors, he speaks with me invitationally, quietly, faithfully, running to me the moment I turn to him.

—

In the first chapter of Ephesians—verses three through fourteen—Paul dedicates the first seven verbs to God. All of them are applied to him.2

The only verb applied to us is implied: receive. God does all the action and performing and we do all the receiving. These are God’s verbs:

God blesses.

God chooses.

God destines.

God bestows.

God lavishes.

God makes known.

God gathers.

And we receive.

Receive, receive, receive.3

I am not—you are not—performing in front of a crowd of shouting pastors. No. We are receiving the love of God, freely and generously.

—

One final verse:

“But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you.”

-1 Thessalonians 4:10b-11

Maybe you will be called to stand on big stages. That is possible. And maybe you are called to be prophetic, to flip tables for justice, to shout. Maybe.

But I’m saying we should start by receiving God’s voice and God’s love.

That is the foundation of the Christian life.

And I pray you can find a pastor who does not shout or cajole but treats you the way God treats you: with unfathomable love and patience, running towards you, even in your sin, even in your shame.

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The Washington Post ran a story last week about the increase in male Gen Z worshippers at Catholic churches, specifically highlighting New York City influencers attending Mass. The article described one attendee this way:

“[He] makes his living as a content creator. He has 125,000 followers on Instagram, 48,000 on TikTok and frequently appears shirtless and flexing, wearing shorts that could be mistaken for boxers. ‘Those are gym shorts!’ he protested with a laugh when asked about them.”

Ironically, I attended a Catholic Mass for Easter while visiting my in-laws in northern Indiana. And, frankly, what I witnessed was far, far removed from the New York City Mass described in that article: Everywhere I looked, there was a non-hot person, and I counted myself among them. Case in point: this past Friday I shaved my head because that seemed like the best solution for my receding hairline.

Are we—non-hot people—bad examples for Christ?

—

Our modern apologetic for the faith seems to be how successful it will make us—financially, physically, or spiritually. It will optimize our lives by making us ten different types of hot; it will make people want to be with us and near us, to touch the hem of our $500 jeans just to get a taste of the life we have.

All this reminds me of the “Jesus Glow” TikTok trend from last year, where people posted photos of themselves before conversion and after conversion, looking markedly better. ( wrote a great piece on it for .)

To some, Christianity is hot because it’s followers are hot. So, as a Christian, am I expected to become hot? Is that what makes the faith attractive?

—

No, obviously.

—

It seems so obvious when it’s written out like this. Of course you don’t have to be hot to be a Christian! Of course all those people in both the New York City cathedral and the northern Indiana cathedral are loved by God, including me and my receding hairline! Of course of course of course!

But it’s so easy to believe that other version, the version of the faith that is baptized in an American optimization hotness mindset. I know it’s so easy because I fall into this trap, like, every day.

Christianity should be attractive not because of how hot (aka successful) it makes me, not because how hot (aka successful) it makes us.

—

Christianity, in the Bible, was attractive not to the successful but to the suffering. Look at the blessings Jesus gives in Luke 6!

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.”

Or the time when Jesus praises the widow who gave her last two coins! Or when he heals the blind man or the leper or the woman bleeding! Or when he talks to the Samaritan woman at the well! Or when he refuses to stone the woman caught in adultery! Or when he invited the children to him! Or when he healed the demon-possessed! Or! Or! Or!

We serve a God who comes close to the lowly, who dines with the ugly, who loves the outcast and the far-away and the destitute.

—

This is my first non-hot truth: Christianity is incredibly attractive to the poor, to the hungry, and to those who weep because it tells them they are loved and known.

Christianity tells the woman mourning a miscarriage that she is loved and known. It tells the kid ashamed of his sexuality he is loved and known. It tells the high schooler with scars on her wrists that she is loved and known. It tells the alcoholic burned out from the twelve-step program that he is loved and known. It tells the child who is suddenly without parents that he is loved and known. It tells the widow in the back row that she is loved and known. It tells the undocumented immigrant hiding inside that she is loved and known. It tells the twelve-year-old cancer patient that he is loved and known. It tells the parents of that twelve-year-old cancer patient that they are loved and known.

It tells and it tells and it tells and it tells. And it will keep on telling us we are loved and known as long as there are humans, as long as this aching world continues to spin.

—

This is my second non-hot truth: I believe Christianity will make you attractive in the same way it is attractive—not by making you hot or making you successful but by making you live in a way that tells a poor and hungry and weeping world that it is loved and known.

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I was walking in town yesterday during the No Kings rally and happened to be walking past my county’s GOP office. A marcher came from the opposite way. He held a sign, and as he passed the front door—with its Republican flyers and Charlie Kirk commemoration sign—he flipped it off.

He then continued walking by me, both of us going our separate ways.

—

People I highly, highly respect have gone on record to say they either won’t read, haven’t read, or read and didn’t like Theo of Golden. —truly one of my favorite writers in the world— wrote a few weeks ago that it was the book she hated the most in the world right now. She wrote of the ways it is flat and reductionistic, and she couldn’t figure out why some of her literary friends enjoyed it so much, writing,

“What frustrates me about the book’s success, though, is that so many people I know who love dimension, character growth, and objectively really good books and writing, also seem to love this book.”1

She finished her article by suggesting a few books people could read instead of Theo. They include Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. These are all books at the top of my favorite-novels-of-all-time list, each of them resplendent and lovely and aching and good.

But I love Theo of Golden.

Lore, in that newsletter, asked herself why she didn’t like Theo. After reading it, I’m asking myself something similar: why did I like it so much? Am I crazy for enjoying it the way I did?

—

About a year ago now, the president came on TV to announce another bombing in another country. Looking back, it foreshadowed everything that was about to come, both domestic and abroad. As the cameras focused in on him and the rostrum, I turned the TV off.

Lex was in the other room. I went and kissed her instead of watching.

—

I understand and respect Lore’s—and others’—arguments about Theo of Golden. If we approach it with a literary, realistic fiction lens, it will not hold up to Gilead or Jayber Crow or The Correspondent.

But I want to gently push back because I don’t think we’re supposed read Theo as literary, realistic fiction. I think we are supposed to read it as a parable.

Klyne Snodgrass, in his magisterial commentary—Stories with Intent—on the parables of Jesus, describes parables as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them. They create an imaginary world that reflects reality.”2 He writes that, rather than expository, descriptive writing, parables find “a way in a back window and confronts what one thinks is reality.”3 In other words, a good parable sneaks up on you with its truth.

He defines a parable as more than a story, saying they “seek to make a rhetorical point.” He says we must ask when we read one of Jesus’s parables,

“How did Jesus seek to change attitudes and behaviors with this parable?”

Read through this light, I think Theo of Golden sings.4

—

I read an article before church today about ICE and Minneapolis. It came out in February, but it was long and I was lazy. I hadn’t gotten around to reading it until this morning when I was putting off other writing. It was about the churches and neighbors who defied ICE and protected those living in fear.

One lady—named (with a pseudonym for fear of governmental retribution) Maggie—runs a food packing operation that gets food to folks afraid to leave their homes. She told the reporter,

“Our focus is the food….I don’t want to think about the government piece of everything. Our job is getting food to people. We don’t ask where they’re from. We don’t ask why they’re here. We don’t ask about their papers or status. We give them food. That’s it.”5

That stuck with me. One lady doing what she can, one meal at a time.

—

Okay, let’s get even nerdier about biblical parables.

Klyne Snodgrass, in that same introduction to parables, provides eleven characteristics of a Jesus parable. In an effort to both prove and belabor my point, let’s compare each of these with Theo of Golden:

1. “Jesus parables are first of all brief, even terse.”6 Okay, this one isn’t Theo.

2. “Parables are marked by simplicity and symmetry.”7 Snodgrass writes more: “The descriptions of the characters and actions in parables often make use of balanced structures, contrasts, repetitions, and parallels so that patterns of symmetry are obvious.”8 For Theo, in other words, this could look like simpler, one-note characters rather than complex, morally mixed people.

3. “Jesus’ parables focus mostly on humans.”9 Check.

4. “The parables are fictional descriptions taken from everyday life, but they do not necessarily portray everyday events.”10 The worlds of Theo and Golden are definitely fictional descriptions taken from everyday life. At first glance, the book is simply describing a realistic southern town filled with realistic southern people. However, upon further reading, the characters take on an almost larger-than-life quality to them. These are humans, but they speak in ways that feel somehow different, as if they represent more than just one particular human’s voice.

5. “Parables are engaging.”11 Check. Interestingly, Snodgrass includes this tasty description here: “Often [parables] require the hearer/reader to pass judgment on the events of the story and then require him or her to make a similar judgment about religious matters.”12 This feels like it could belong on the back cover of Theo of Golden. First, a reader passes judgment on what’s happening in the book, then they have to make a similar judgment about Christianity at the end.

6. “Parables often contain elements of reversal.”13 I don’t want to divulge too much about the plot or characters in Theo, but the book is filled with the reversal of fortune for numerous characters. The lowly are brought high and the high are brought low.

7. “The crucial matter of parables is usually at the end.”14 Theo does this when it becomes explicitly Christian at the end (if you know you know), once it has already engaged its audience with its plot and characters.

8. “Parables are told into a context.”15 Theo of Golden is written into an American context of polemics and polarization, asking whether love can exist between neighbors in such a context.

9. “Jesus’ parables are theocentric.”16 Levi writes Theo as a Christ-figure (I mean, his name literally means “God”!). His intent is plain: this is a theocentric novel.

10. “Parables frequently allude to OT texts.”17 Okay, this one not so much, at least as far as I know / remember.

11. “Most parables appear in larger collections of parables.”18 Levi is currently writing a sequel….!

One final note, however: parables are not one-for-one allegories. Snodgrass notes that too often “interpreters want them to be theological identities—complete pictures of theology.”19 But “no single parable does everything, not even everything about a given topic.”20

Theo of Golden—just like The Shack before it—should not be seen as an ultimate statement of theology. But it should be seen as “coming through the back window” and saying something about the kingdom of God.

All I’m trying to say is that Theo of Golden is a parable! Theo of Golden is a parable! Theo of Golden is a parable!

—

I’m writing a piece for an online publication about wealth and fame in the pastorate. I’m writing about pastors who make gobs of money and wear clothes like fashion models and drive cars like professional athletes. It’s so easy for me to judge them.

But I wrote it while sitting at a coffee shop sipping a latte and wearing my fancy Madewell t-shirt and my fancy Madewell jeans.

As I write this, I’m getting to know someone who does not have as many material possessions, who doesn’t have time to sit in a coffee shop and ponder life. But the other day they told me how excited they were to give someone a piece of their clothing simply because the other person needed it and how much they enjoy getting to know our unhoused neighbors.

They’re out there serving the unhoused while I’m sitting in coffee shops judging highly paid pastors while wearing Birkenstocks.

—

I think it’s important to think about Allen Levi’s target audience. I don’t know him personally (although I wrote him a letter, and he sent a lovely letter back!), but it’s been written elsewhere that he is a longtime Young Lifer. Young Life—at its best—seeks out the middle schoolers and those living with disabilities and the high schoolers and the single moms and the gang members and the college students who would never step foot in church. It wants to find any way it can to tell those who feel far from God and church how loved they are by a God who created them and knows them.

I think Levi’s intended audience is the same.

No, I don’t think Theo was primarily written for me or for any of us literate Christians on Substack; I think it was written for the person who would never formally read something about God or Christianity, someone who—if they are ever to encounter Jesus—must encounter him through the back window, not the front door.

So, then, what’s the point of Theo of Golden? Or, to put it in parabolic terminology, what is Allen Levi’s “rhetorical point?” What is the one truth he is trying to impart to his reader?

I think it’s the same thing a Young Life leader is trying to tell a kid: they are loved by a God who created them and knows them.

Theo of Golden is a parable trying to tell its audience—trying to tell you—that you are loved by Jesus.

—

This is what I’ve taken away from Theo of Golden:

In a lonely and mad world—in a world full of the overwhelming, of bombs in foreign countries and militarized forces in our own—we can do small things with great love. We can kiss those we love, make meals for those afraid, and give clothes to those in need.

We can remind each other that we are loved by a God who created us intimately.

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PS I wrote a long paper in grad school about Wendell Berry’s use of parabolic writing in his short stories and in Jayber Crow. Parables are everywhere!

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S A Y A B L E

The Book I Hate Most in the World Right Now

Last fall I started to see chatter everywhere about this new book. When I looked it up, I realized it wasn’t a new book at all. It had been self-published by the author in 2023, and then traveled through word of mouth to Oprah’s ears, where she called it one of her favorite books of the year in 2025. It was then published by an imprint of Simon & Schust…

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7 months ago · 269 likes · 62 comments · Lore Wilbert