Broad philosophical streams that have fed into some of my doubts These are stark, unnuanced statements. In fact, I love huge parts of modernism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, industrialism, and more. But…
Modernists taught us to separate God from science
Postmodernists taught us to reject all metanarratives
Industrial revolutionists taught us to separate humans from soil, water, food, and community
The Pill and poststructuralists taught us to separate sex from our bodies, minds, relationships, identities, and procreation
Some things I’m extremely sure about
No place for rigid ideologies and syncretism. History and current events have taught me that communities who follow Complete Jesus, Full Jesus have weathered attacks by syncretism and authoritarian rule
God and I talk. My focused conversation with Jesus and the Holy Spirit this morning taught me that God likes me and wants to help me be more patient
Goals for a better future flounder, remain derivative without Jesus and the New Creation. I wrote my first book, Creating Local Arts Together (William Carey) for Christian audiences. It required holistic, compelling, comprehensive glimpses of a world better than this one. The New Creation Jesus will inaugurate at the end of time provided this. I later wrote two books for secular audiences that required describing what a better life for people looked like: Artistic Dynamos (Routledge), and Make Life for a Better Future (with Katie Van Buren, Oxford). We couldn’t find a non-God vision of what Good is. So we basically removed Jesus from these books’ frameworks.
The most attractive metanarrative? If you had to adopt one metanarrative, a story that’s true for all of the universe, wouldn’t you want one where the creator of everything chose to demean himself in extremely humiliating and painful ways to understand and show love to us humans?
Some literature that has been part of my faith journey, mostly supportive
“Why I am not a Christian,” Bertrand Russell
Surprised by Hope (2008), Broken Signposts (2020), Simply Christian (2006); NT Wright
Letters from a Skeptic (2008), Gregory and Edward Boyd
Mere Christianity,The Last Battle, God in the Dock, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom (2021), Andrew Petersen. Related album: Light for the Lost Boy, Don’t you want to thank someone
Behold the Lamb of God (“The true Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ”) album“Don’t you want to thank somebody?”
The Language of God (2006), Francis Collins. Francis Collins is most famous for leading the International Human Genome Project, which successfully mapped the entire human genome, and for his long tenure as the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under three presidents, overseeing major initiatives like the BRAIN Initiative and the "All of Us" research program. He is also recognized for his landmark discoveries of disease-causing genes, such as those for cystic fibrosis and progeria, and for his bridging of science and faith. Anti-Trump.
The Reason for God (2008), Timothy Keller
Believe (2025), Ross Douthat, NY Times columnist, former senior editor at The Atlantic. Argues it's rational and necessary to embrace organized religion, not just vague spirituality, because it provides the best explanation for the universe's fine-tuning, human consciousness, and supernatural experiences, offering a path from doubt to meaningful commitment, ultimately pointing toward Christianity and Catholicism as fulfilling explanations for existence, unlike materialism or atheism.
The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theology (2022), Abigail Favale
Am I just my brain (2019)? Sharon Dirckx
Missionaries of the State: The Summer Institute of Linguistics, State Formation, and Indigenous Mexico, 1935–1985,, Todd Hartch. Key historical examination tracing the development of SIL in Mexico, its collaborations with the government, and the rise of opposition from Mexican anthropologists and indigenous movements.
Fishers of Men or Builders of Empire?: The Wycliffe Translators in Latin America, David Stoll. Critical perspective on SIL's activities, particularly its connection to Wycliffe Bible Translators and its impact in Latin America.
Developing Intimacy with God, Alex Aronis. Ignatian spiritual exercises, mostly geared toward Protestants. Superb. Has had a profound influence on my faith journey.
Faith and non-faith and faith in my God journey A Perfect Family Dad a pastor, Mom the church organist and marimbist, and four kids who were scared to misbehave because it might cost Dad his job. We believed that we were sinners, but we could accept Jesus into our hearts to be saved from Hell and let into Heaven. And we needed to be ready in case the Rapture happened (“I wish we’d all been ready”). I never quite figured out how my pretty tame sins required Jesus’ death: I had never drunk alcohol or smoked pot, had sex with anyone, or gotten anything but A’s in high school. But I did what the other church kids had modeled, and went forward at a morning service when I was 11 to publicly declare that I had decided to follow Jesus.
I studied the Bible, went to church camp and BYF (Baptist Youth Fellowship), prayed before meals, and grew in my knowledge and experience of God and true (though sometimes shallow) community. There were wonderful moments and insights, and our family was actually really fun and adventurous and musically gifted, and our parents stayed together and loved us. And I was the best Expectation-Follower of the kids, I think. Doubts were not allowed, so I disciplined my mind not to have them. OK, not to express them.
So I went to Brown University in Rhode Island—very exotic to a midwestern lower middle class suburban pastor’s kid. I lived in a dorm with New England preppies, my rugby playing, every Saturday evening vomiting roommate, a shroom growing dorm rapeller, a high society non-practicing Jewish State Department son, an obviously-on-scholarship football player who promoted porn, and the gayest man I had ever seen. Also a Southern Baptist social activist and a serious musician and future businessman. Outside the dorm, many Brown students and professors disdained any sort of Christian practice. Brown’s Academic Dean said to me, “Christianity had a good run, but ultimately failed. It’s time to move on.”
Doubt PileI started listening to myself and others question my faith: Isn’t the Bible mostly imaginary stories? Did Jesus exist? How can you say you’re the only one who’s right? And how can you follow a religion that includes horrors like the Crusades? I’d already sewn seeds of doubt in high school by reading things like “Why I am not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell, and being unimpressed by sometimes illogical arguments by people like apologist Josh McDowell. I passively allowed these and other questions to pile up into a high mountain I didn’t think I could climb anymore. I came home to Canton in June 1981 an agnostic (see journal page below).
I sort of tried to pray sometimes, spent some time at L’Abri in Massachusetts, but mostly accepted that I couldn’t know whether God existed. I think I started long-distance dating Ellen Bartlett—a friend of Tia Lori from Northwestern University (NU) InterVarsity who lived in Middletown Rhode Island—at the end of that freshman year. We overlapped some, wrote letters to each other, thought we were in love, until Ellen dumped me because she felt 'unequally yoked.' I was no longer the Christian boy she met. That was Thanksgiving 1981 at her house in Middletown, where Ellen’s parents had invited me and some of her NU friends. After trying unsuccessfully to get drunk at a couple of bars (the bartenders sold another NU friend and me drinks but knew we were underage and so must have reserved the actual alcoholic ingredients for others), I revisited all of the intellectual questions I had let fester. Andrés Tapia reminded me of strong, rational (if incomplete) answers to those questions that I already knew, and I decided to pray. Pointing me to Psalm 119:32 ("I run in the path of your commands because you have set my heart free"), God brought memories of His love and freedoms in church, camps, retreats, family, and my own times in nature and prayer to mind. Intellectual dross removed and God-experiences remembered, I put my whole self over the line of following Jesus no matter what.
So I was an agnostic for about six months, and some years later made this vow: “Jesus - I vow to you to live a life of spiritual purity. There is no circumstance--zero—in which personal involvement with another god would be warranted.” Of course, Ellen still dumped me. A good thing, since I got to know and Know Mom.
I still get nervous when I doubt something about God, or engage with enemies. But I’m sure questioning, doubting, thoroughly reviewing what you believe, letting others have a go at some of your presuppositions can be crucial to living a full, rewarding, compassionate for yourself and others, dancing existence.
Public attacks for being a Christ follower
Brown U. Ivy league, while student. 1983. Example: “Because [Schrag’s] argument is obviously colored by his faith, reasoning with him on any level other than Christian is probably futile… Sigh. Nonetheless…his (and Christianity’s inherent) religiocentrism: the presumption that Christian Doctrine, singularly insures salvation, Truth, and goodness is, I’m afraid, b-i-g-o-t-ed….”
Academy, while professional: “Your life is a profound contradiction.” “...typical to medieval colonialism.” “I'm not at all comfortable with …. [Schrag’s announcement of the CLAT Manual & Handbook] suggestion that we should recommend this two-volume source to students.” [Christian students]
From UCLA grad student friend: “... this new breed of missionary or what I have termed an ethnomusical missionary-isin the business of using carefully engineered music to bring about Christian conversion and devotion…”
Some things that nudge or shove me toward continuing to believeEvidence and rationalityCompelling support exists for each of these statements, available everywhere. See, e.g., James Choi’s “Why I am a Christian (even though I don’t believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy)” at faculty.som.yale.edu/jameschoi/whychrist. I haven’t expanded on these, and probably won’t.
Jesus existed
Jesus’ resurrection happened
The Bible is historically trustworthy and currently relevant when handled wisely and objectively
The complexities and unimaginably exact requirements necessary for human existence and growth point strongly to a Guiding Hand separate from the universe
Science and faith are absolutely and necessarily compatible and interdependent
A central fact of humans is that they believe in and experience the supernatural
Suffering, thriving, and a good God coexist
Jesus’ insistence on each human coming to him for salvation is possible, just and beautiful
Experiences with God, and Disciplines that Helped Open the Door
Ignatian spiritual practices have solidified and expanded my understandings and experiences of Jesus. The two pages from my journal below are an encomium to Him.
Prophecies prayed and danced over me.
Vows Two vows have proven to be solid foundations throughout my life as a believer: ● Jesus - I vow to you to live a life of sexual purity. There is no circumstance—zero—in which sexual involvement with a woman other than Barb would be warranted. 8/10/90, Tahquitz Camp. Turn my heart to Barb. ● Jesus - I vow to you to live a life of spiritual purity. There is no circumstance—zero—in which personal involvement with another god would be warranted. 3/2/02, Culver City, CA. Turn my heart to you, God.
Experiences and engagement with Christ-followers in wildly diverse social and spiritual contexts
Christian adjacents:
Ngiemboon - believe in high God - Sse.
Young British women returning to Jesus
Love
So many examples….
Rejecting childhood faith, De- and re-construction, Rebirth of faith
Christian deconstruction is the process of critically examining, questioning, and dismantling one’s inherited Christian faith, often driven by disillusionment with church culture, trauma, or intellectual doubts.
Giving up - … twisted sinner, help me. Believe me when I say I’ve given up.
… when death & resurrection; I’m giving up
Lay down - God I need you.
Recent thoughts with no flesh yet (green & orange journals)
We’re screwed up, but not screwed
Some contexts that feed my doubts
Context when people - sometimes friends - have been actively publicly antagonistic, attacking me for being a Christ-follower
Or benignly having radically different beliefs that led me to share so many values, especially about loving people who have been in the edges of society & care for the Earth
I’ve learned a lot of who I’ve become over years & years
Why do Christ-followers so often fall in line with the great sociopolitical, idol-driven movements, ideologies that make up little and big anti-Christian invertebrates?
If you’ve deconstructed your faith, to actually engage with the possibility of following Jesus you’ve got to do the work - honestly, emotionally, with insights and frameworks
Praying with…
Ignatian spiritual practices
Etc.
Recognizes ideas and experiences that are clearly or might be God talking with you, walking with you.
Engage with the whole Jesus, complete, full, really real; not truncated, syncretized versions. Describe, engage with, talk to, worship
Anti-holistic followers of Christ: ideologies lead away from Jesus. Muck, around, floating in an estuary with little direction leads to who knows where. Living 2 lives, hiding each from the other, leads to breaking and despair and brokenness
Don’t you want to have someone to thank? Instead of a soulless universe?
Examples of reconstruction - John Mark Pantana: “I don’t know anything anymore…but Eternity’s a great place to start.”
My goal: a full, holistic, grounded, rigorous theology that accounts for: horrors committed by seeming Christ followers; pain. Now and Not Yet
My high view of Scripture:
God breathed the whole canon;
respectfully acknowledge sociotemporal context, literary and genre forms
Tells one primary story
Primary revelation from God
Scripture interprets Scripture
Plain meaning when possible
Value: guides how to live, what to do, how to think - when applied to daily life
Bible often holds 2 things in tension [antinomies?]
Flourishing - supposed to have been at the beginning, and telos reality
Current troubles, storms, trials
What does this say about God?
Recent, from orange journal We are living inside antinomies Not only just _____ or _____ but both are radically true
Free will | Predestination
I choose | God ordains
God includes | God excludes
Love embraces | Love rebukes
Why doesn’t Jesus not speak more audibly, visibly now?
We’re in the Now|Not Yet phase of God’s broad arc of history.
Jesus: Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again.
I no longer live, but Christ lives in me; He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is set on Him; eg. Why don’t I experience this now, and what role does God’s sovereignty play?