Formation Born of Fracture
This posture did not emerge in abstraction.
After decades within American Evangelicalism—and a culminating season shaped by overt Calvinist theology—I found myself carrying forms of spiritual trauma that could no longer be ignored.
Four inherited ideas did not simply challenge my faith; they distorted it:
- A shame-based anthropology—the insistence that I was “totally depraved.”
- A fear-based horizon—the possibility of eternal conscious torment in hell.
- A morally incoherent providence—the belief that God not only permits suffering but ultimately causes it.
- A love–hate contradiction—a system that speaks of love while making room for contempt toward LGBTQ+ people, other religions, certain ethnicities, and outsiders of many kinds.
These were not abstract disagreements. They shaped my nervous system, my prayer life, my capacity for trust, and my ability to love.
Naming this mattered. Encountering alternative theological visions helped. But healing has required more than new ideas—it has required ongoing honesty, reflection, and the willingness to remain with unresolved questions.
Faith as Formation, Not Ideology
I have come to understand faith less as a closed system of propositions and more as a formative way of life.
Theological frameworks are never neutral. They train people—often quietly—in how to see God, neighbor, enemy, authority, suffering, and power. They shape reflexes before they shape arguments.
Some frameworks reliably form humility, courage, repentance without shame, and love that can remain present under strain.
Others—sometimes unintentionally—form fear, rigidity, or the need to control in God’s name.
These reflections ask not only Is this true?
But a harder question:
What kind of people does this way of believing tend to produce?
Discernment, Deconstruction, and Repair
At times, faith must be examined—not to abandon it, but to rescue it from distortion.
Some of what appears here engages what is often called deconstruction. I understand this not as rebellion or loss of faith, but as discernment after injury.
When done slowly, relationally, and with care, deconstruction is not demolition.
It is the careful removal of what no longer bears weight.
Images of God That Harm and Heal
Much spiritual damage comes not from disbelief, but from believing in a God whose character contradicts love.
Images of God do not remain abstract. They lodge in the body. They shape prayer, fear, politics, and belonging.
Here I continue to ask:
- Which images of God generate fear, shame, or compliance?
- Which images invite trust, courage, and costly love?
- How do our theologies train us to respond to power and vulnerability?
Truth that cannot be lived eventually becomes coercive.
Returning, Again and Again, to Jesus
A constant thread through these reflections is a return to Jesus—not as symbol or slogan, but as revelation.
If Jesus is the clearest picture of God, then any theology that requires us to set aside his way of love in order to defend God must be questioned.
This commitment raises difficult questions about violence, power, nationalism, exclusion, and judgment—questions I do not pretend to resolve quickly or cleanly.
An Open—but Serious—Posture
This page is not an argument to win or a system to adopt. It is an offering of witness—unfinished, accountable, and open to continued formation.
Some reflections here may change. That is intentional.
For me, faith continues not as possession or certainty, but as a way of walking—attentive, relational, costly, and unfinished.
SeePhas 