The Dark & Stormy 🌊

Reevaluating my faith actually saved it.

The hard, holy work of sorting out our faith:

I’ve been in another season of therapy, of processing harmful beliefs and events from my past so I can live freely and healthily.

In my cumulative years of therapy, I’ve learned to apply similar therapeutic methods of asking questions and evaluating whether my beliefs and actions are healthy to many areas of my life.

One of the most prevalent areas of evaluation has been my faith. Because I was spiritually abused by my mentally ill and abusive parent, my relationship with faith required reexamining so I could identify what was my parent’s manipulation and what was actually God.

I could no longer reconcile the spiteful “godliness” modeled by my parent with the kindness and compassion I’d been told characterized God.

Like a house with smoke damage must be stripped down to the frame and foundation, so my faith needed to be stripped down.

Just because the supplemental pieces are broken doesn’t mean the bones aren’t worth saving—but identifying what is broken is hard and holy work.

Much of my reevaluation of faith has centered around one main question: “Is this Christlike?”

It’s easy to justify or explain away all manner of injustices in the world, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t look like Jesus, I no longer want any part in it.

Like ripping down smoky drywall, I’ve sifted through things sold as godly—Christian nationalism, holy hatred, and religion—to discover a God more loving and kind and mysterious than I ever expected. 

Counter to the angry God that bade me endure abuse under the guise of honoring my parent, I’ve encountered a God who champions health and wholeness for all people.

God is so different than I imagined in the best of ways. But I had to lose what was harmful to discover what was worth holding onto. In losing those damaging beliefs about God and people, I’ve cultivated a faith worth saving.

It’s frightening to reexamine deeply held beliefs, to let go of evil masquerading as goodness—especially when there are people who will criticize this process.

It can be scary, this stripping away and seeing what remains. I understand why some continue clinging to a fractured because it is overwhelming to do the work of sorting and rebuilding.

But maybe asking questions and stripping down to the studs is exactly what we need to discover a God worth loving and a faith worth saving.

March Book Recommendation:

Contrary to viewing questions as detrimental to one’s faith, Marty Solomon of The BEMA Podcast has long encouraged curiosity as a necessary aspect of cultivating faith. In Asking Better Questions of the Bible, he invites readers to ask the questions the Bible is actually asking—and to discover a deeper understanding of God and scripture in the process.

March Blog Preview:

As a follow up to today’s post, this month’s blog will offer guiding questions for reexamining one’s faith. To receive the post straight to your inbox, you can subscribe here.