Faith, Relearning to Trust
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 injury that could no longer be ignored.
Four inherited ideas did not merely challenge my faith; they distorted it:
- a shame-based anthropology—the insistence that I was totally depraved
- a fear-saturated horizon—the threat of eternal conscious torment
- a morally incoherent providence—the belief that God ultimately causes suffering
- a love–hate contradiction—language of love paired with exclusion and contempt toward others
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 sustained honesty and the courage 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 quietly train us in how to see God, neighbor, enemy, authority, suffering, and power—shaping reflexes before arguments.
Some ways of believing form humility, courage, repentance without shame, and love that can remain present under strain.
Others—often unintentionally—form fear, rigidity, or the need to control in God’s name.
So the question is not only Is this true?
But the harder one: What kind of people does this way of believing tend to produce?
Discernment and Repair
At times, faith must be examined—not to abandon it, but to rescue it from distortion.
What is often called deconstruction can be understood as discernment after injury. When done slowly and with care, it is not demolition, but the careful removal of what no longer bears weight.
Returning 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—especially where violence, exclusion, or domination are justified in God’s name.
Refuting the Distortions
Relearning trust has required not only naming what harmed, but refusing to carry it forward.
My studies have helped me locate when these beliefs arose, who promoted them, and why they spread. More importantly, they have shown me that none of them align with Jesus, the early church, or the faith I am willing to live into now.
What I have come to reject—clearly and without apology—is this:
From “totally depraved” to image-bearing goodness
Humans are made in the image of God—called very good. Sin is real, but it is not our essence, nor our final word.
From fear-based hell to freedom from terror
Eternal conscious torment has never been a normative belief within Judaism. While some marginal Jewish texts explored severe judgment imagery, the fully developed doctrine of endless torment emerges only later—shaped decisively by Greco-Roman philosophy rather than the Jewish story Jesus inhabited. Whatever one believes about judgment, a faith centered on Jesus must reject terror as a means of control. Love and endless torment cannot share the same space.
From divine control to genuine freedom
God does not cause evil or suffering. God opposes them. A God who meticulously controls all outcomes becomes indistinguishable from a God who condones violence. The God I trust grieves, resists, and heals—rather than scripting harm.
From professed love paired with exclusion to enemy-love without exception
Any theology that justifies contempt, exclusion, or hatred toward others follows the logic of empire, not the way of God. Jesus’ command is not selective love, but love of enemies.
I do not find these distortions merely mistaken.
I find them abominable—because of the harm they cause and the God they misrepresent.
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.
For me, faith continues not as possession or certainty,
but as a way of walking—attentive, relational, costly, and unfinished.
For historical background on Jewish and early Christian understandings of judgment, resurrection, and the afterlife—particularly the non-normative status of eternal conscious torment within Judaism and its later development under Greco-Roman influence—see Segal, Sanders, Collins, and Ramelli.
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