I’ve been wrestling with God, and it’s exhausting. A weariness has settled into me, coating my days with a thin sheen of fog. I used to think for a living, but those questions had clearer answers. I can set a 5-year talent strategy for recruiting and retaining your staff. I can plan your event for hundreds of people. I can even get you promoted and into a flow where you are working fewer hours and producing better work. What I can’t do, yet, is find solid footing with the Divine.

Our pastor warned us about a midlife lull. During our premarital counseling, he said that we were in the exciting part. Wedding showers, followed by a big wedding, then baby showers to come. He said that the kids get older, and people don’t throw you parties anymore. You settle into a quieter life. Our inside joke for years has been WHERE’S THE LULL? I thought that my forties would be it. Instead, here I am starting a blog and having an existential and spiritual crisis.

If I could sum it up neatly, it wouldn’t be a crisis. Think of the noise of a vacuum cleaner. It’s not painful, but it prevents you from thinking. There is a vacuum cleaner inside my head, spinning, sucking up my energy. It’s fueled by questions like: If God isn’t real, why do James’s prayers get answered? Can I disentangle the church from God? Is our particular flavor of church mostly for white people? What does it mean to be an evangelical? Is there a place for me, with God, or with the church?

Let me back up and explain how this maelstrom came over me.

Growing up in rural Oklahoma, you get one brand of religion. Show up to church. Memorize scripture. Judge outsiders. Church was about socializing and appearances, not walking with Jesus. There were a few years where I was really into this particular brand of Christianity. I was an insecure middle schooler seeking identity and stability, and hey, all my friends were doing it. The feelings I felt then were sincere but shallow. I wound up being Southern Baptist not because I chose it after thoughtful consideration but because my friends went to that church.

And that’s how I wound up losing my *dramatic pause*

religion at church camp. I was about 14. One of the impassioned evening speakers said Mother Theresa was a lovely person. She did a lot of great things. But she's burning in hell right now because she’s Catholic. Hearing this provoked my visceral reaction. I’d passionately followed Jesus, only to learn He was busy damning Mother Theresa to hell.1 It was a moment of pure, disgusted clarity. I didn’t immediately leave the church, but my heart was not in it after that. I stayed engaged socially through part of high school and then drifted away.

When I was a sophomore in college, I moved into the sorority house. There I was blessed with a Bible thumper roommate, fond of metaphorically hitting me over the head with her beliefs. Despite her sneaking alcohol into the house and staying over with her boyfriend, she somehow found the time to remind me on multiple occasions that she was praying for me because I was going to hell. She’d get this seemingly sincere, worried look on her face as she told me I was a sinner.

This only got more charming when she began dating my friend, who was similarly minded. Because this was the early aughts, my friend and I got into a fight on AIM. (AIM generation, where you at? Remember crafting the perfect away message?) I had said something about how I supported gay marriage, and he wanted to inform me that I was hell-bound for those beliefs. The fight ended with him saying that he didn’t want to talk to me or be friends with me anymore. This is a guy who’s been in my life since 8th grade. And now we are suddenly not friends anymore, and I’m going to hell. Again.

To top off the year, my high school sweetheart and I reunited that summer. He debated for a long time whether to date me, since he had become Christian at college. He finally decided that he wanted to, and then after a few weeks where we both sincerely thought we were on the “date to get married” track, he broke up with me abruptly because I was not a Christian.

We’ve already talked about my people-pleasing tendencies and fear of rejection. Telling someone they are bound for eternal torture and fire is the ultimate rejection. Person after person told me I wasn’t worthy, wasn’t good enough, to be their friend or partner. (There are more stories in the years that follow, so just imagine more in this vein.) The cumulative effect was devastating. I withdrew from any semblance of religion. I was done with religious people, religious institutions, religious conversations. I once rejected a message on OkCupid because the guy’s profile mentioned Jesus.

And then I met James.

When we started dating, James was managing a Jason’s Deli. My more elitist friends were skeptical that I was committing to a man who supervised sandwich-making, but they didn’t know.2 It’s not my story to tell, but I share this snippet to show his character. In a situation where he had every right to cut ties and walk away, he humbly took an hourly job to support his friend instead. James professed to be a Christian, and in big life moments, it became obvious that he lived with integrity to his values.

While our connection was immediate, it took us a long time to work out religion. I lived in fear that he would wake up one day and decide he needed a nice Christian girl. We aren’t official members of our church because of me. He’ll never be an elder because of me. Church pastor, also off the table. He’s saddled to this non-believer and has to hear her harangues on the insularity of the church after every conference and retreat. I don’t want to derail into the particulars of our marriage, but let me say this - it’s good to practice loving and respecting someone with whom you disagree. It’s given us both a more compassionate, wider lens on life, and that could never be a bad thing.

Watching James walk his well-worn, clear spiritual path is part of the inspiration for me hacking through the knee-high weeds of my own path. It’s undeniable how he’s changed. He is a better husband, father, and friend because of his commitment to God. Watching him change has been some of my inspiration for beginning my own journey.

His path will always be different from mine though. He moves with the ease of one who has grown up in the church, a white male whose culture is dominant. I am a woman, so already there are thousands of people who believe I’m lesser than my man. For context, inside church culture, it’s hotly debated whether women are worthy enough (smart enough? Wise enough?) to serve as leaders, have roles as elders, or be pastors. Navigating that as a woman of color makes it even more fraught.

A text that has inspired me over the years is The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. In it, she introduces the concept of synchronicity. When you pursue a creative endeavor, you will begin to see signs and encouragements. Things will fall into place. As Cameron says, “Learn to accept the possibility that the universe is helping you with what you are doing. Become willing to see the hand of God and accept it as a friend's offer to help.” Synchronicity nudged me to a particular friend, also a woman of color, and her advice was to make a list of the most compelling things about Christianity.

This is where it gets chaotic because, well, my head is chaotic. There isn’t a neat narrative. This is the messy middle, and I share it in hopes of encouraging everyone who is in the messy middle of something. Maybe it’s spiritual, maybe it’s a relationship, maybe it’s a career move. The process is the same. We seek information, then try to make sense of it. It’s all a muddled soup until the clarity arrives.

What are 3 things that are compelling to me about Christianity?

• Sacrificial, unconditional love

• The Holy Spirit as an ongoing presence, a guide that grows stronger as you align more

• Prayer / direct communication with higher powers

What are the 3 most repulsive things about Christianity? Note: I focused solely on the actual content of the Bible here, not the institution of the church.

• Eternal condemnation to torture

• A male-centric deity and sacred text, which lends itself more easily to patriarchal abuses

• A god who kills at will: the Flood, Jericho and Canaan territories, Sodom and Gomorrah

In the last few weeks, I’ve been grappling with the genocidal god piece, perhaps because we are currently inundated with news of child slaughter in Palestine. I also told two friends of my difficulty reconciling Biblical inconsistencies, which is a problem as old as, well, the Bible. They explained that once you step into faith, those concerns and doubts fall away. As someone who’s still on the other side, I find that hard to believe.

I don’t think that they were implying this at all, but. Once I accept Jesus, I won’t care that His father murdered everyone alive except Noah and his fam? If you begin by brushing off the Flood as necessary, by saying the Israelites deserved to possess Canaan and kill its babies, then it’s just a short journey to not caring that there are mass graves on the news. The Palestinians are literally modern-day Canaanite descendants, so maybe God just hates them, yeah? “We don’t know the ways of the Lord.”

I am deeply convicted that Jesus would not approve of this line of thinking.

Let’s say I can make peace with genocidal God though. The harder task might be making peace with the church. I’m using “the church” for brevity, but it includes all of the following experiences: a 4-day Christian conference, a Christian marriage retreat, church almost every Sunday, and a 4-day student camp. I’ve already mentioned an absence of prayers for Palestine. In 2024, Black Lives Matter has only been mentioned in a derogatory way, in multiple venues. There are snide comments about gay and transgendered people.

I hate that I’m proving the smug liberals right because you are SO annoyingly smug, but you’re right - I cannot see much evidence of Christian acknowledgment of oppression, or much compassion for the oppressed. In fact, at one of these events, I heard repeated insinuations that American Christians themselves are persecuted. I’ll let Rachel Held Evans say it better than I can:

“When you belong to the privileged class of the most powerful global military superpower in the world, it can be hard to relate to the oppressed minorities who wrote so much of the Bible. (and no, their oppression did not consist of getting wished “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” at Target. That’s not actual persecution, folks.)”

It’s not malice, which might be easier to understand. It’s blithe unawareness. Not thinking twice before showing a video of a man repeatedly turning down kids like they’re pieces of unwanted clothing because “the Spirit” told him to, or tossing off a derogatory remark about people coming out of closets. I look at the signals these organizations give, intentionally and unintentionally, and frankly, the godless libs create a more welcoming environment for people like me.

Some of you may read this and believe that I’m too wrapped up “in politics”. To this I say: it was political when the coach took his case to the Supreme Court to have his right to pray on the field. It is political when private, religious schools receive vouchers. The politics are always happening. Because the issues that matter to me may not affect you, you can dismiss them as just politics. I definitely see the politics on both sides though, and to declare otherwise is to deny a large body of legislative work.

I’ve yet to see the church own its role in suicide and murder rates of gay and transgendered people. I’ve listened with gritted teeth as I heard that “men are the most important” people, and a woman suffering postpartum depression should “serve” her husband (yes, it’s what you think), even if she doesn’t want to. You can classify these as one-off instances, but over the last several years, these “one-off” things have built me a bigger picture of who Christianity cares about.

You may want to argue that being an Asian isn’t exactly persecution either, and that’s a whole other conversation. The reason I’m bringing up other groups of people is because I believe, as Lilla Watson said, our liberation is bound up together. If you don’t see how advocating for fewer Black murders or transgender suicides would benefit every group in our country, then there are a lot of resources on liberation (and liberation theology) that can help you connect those dots.

“No one is free until we are all free.” - Emma Lazarus

The structures I see in Christianity now are best symbolized by my experience today at camp: hordes of students swarming over the cafeteria, freely grabbing, while the hourly workers sweat and labor for them. I think my version of church camp would involve serving these hourly workers a nice meal, asking how we could be helpful, and demonstrating a posture of humility. We aren’t here to serve these workers, though. We are here to LEARN ABOUT JESUS.

About that Jesus. He deliberately spent his time with the outcasts and misfits. He said the last shall be first. I don’t think Jesus would make a snide remark about a person’s sexuality. I think he would flip over the tables in the detention camps. And that’s really the heart of my dilemma, and the dilemma of so many who are deconstructing - we see Jesus and the church as being almost irreconcilable. So, on goes the vacuum cleaner in my mind, whirring with questions about God and Jesus and inerrancy and church structures and on and on and on.

Many of you reading this are near and dear to my heart, regulars in my in-person life. To you I say, please give me the breathing room I need to figure this out for myself. I know some of you have already put a book in your Amazon cart for me. Remove it. Those of you who want to offer well-meaning advice in the comments, I ask you to pause for a moment and ask why you are uncomfortable with my struggle. Why it unsettles you to see ambiguity and confusion.

It’s weird, sharing something with the entire internet and then drawing lines around your privacy. It feels contradictory, honestly. I’m sharing because it’s been one of the defining conflicts of this year for me. I’m sharing because I think there are a lot of people out there who are struggling through something big, and I hope this reassures you that you’re not alone. I am not sharing in hopes of receiving advice or judgment. The price of admission for writing publicly though is that you always receive both.

Some of you are going to add me to your church’s prayer list and despair over my impending eternal torment. (It worries me too, guys. Hell sounds very threatening. I can’t seem to fake a belief, even to save my ass from burning alive forever, so here we are.) Some of you are going to think I’m a fake progressive since I spend so much time in spaces that completely ignore the struggles of so many oppressed groups. I’m not speaking enough truth to power and such. My hope is that a few of you will understand that I’m wrestling with big intellectual concepts and emotional waves. That I want to believe there’s more than this life, and I also want to believe in a grace and love that is large enough for everyone.

I’ve rambled on for what is by far my longest post, and I’ve got no tidy conclusion. Three thousand words to say idk. That’s the reality of life, though. I envy those of you who are already certain of your spirituality or lack thereof. I miss being one of you who just didn’t care enough to think about it. Wherever you’re at, I hope you’ll extend some compassion to me.

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Postscript: I deliberately wrote this while at church camp, a nice full circle moment from my adolescent experience. As I finished writing it, I watched a sermon that answered many of my questions and healed part of me. My neighbor pointed me to this pastor, I checked out his church’s website, and in a few clicks I found his lesson on Jericho and genocide in the Bible. I believe I was meant to find this sermon, and it has been a balm to me in the chaos.

Post-postscript: If there weren’t good things about God/Jesus/the church, then I wouldn’t even be wrestling with all this. Of course there is good. What I’m saying is that the bad is so bad that I’m having trouble seeing past it, and all the well-meaning advice to ignore/not question/shove aside is NOT working for me. There are thousands of people in a similar space (just google “deconstructing evangelicalism”), so I am comforted that I’m not alone.

PPPS: If you comment, please aim more for empathy than advice. I’m feeling more fragile about this than anything I’ve posted yet, and it felt like a too-large step in vulnerability.