Welcome to the Deconstruction.Zone newsletter! Thank you for reading.

Today we’ll discuss Jesus’ perspective on deconstruction. For a deeper dive into what deconstruction is, check out the post “What is Deconstruction and Why It Matters”.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post. And check out the last post: “The 3 Bs of Religion”.

Now let’s get started!

Let’s take a moment to look at the way Jesus is portrayed in the Bible.

Jesus came at a time when the religious valued tradition over truth; and comfort over compassion. Religion was about maintaining the status quo rather than seeking new knowledge.

Jesus preached against the religious norms of the day, declaring “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

But people then, just as they do now, resorted to denial, anger, and violence when asked to honestly evaluate their superstitious routines and traditions.

Just read this storyline in Matthew 12:9-14:

⁹ Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, ¹⁰ and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

¹¹ He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

¹³ Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. ¹⁴ But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Jesus’ very existence offended the religious leaders of the day. Why?

What is it about Jesus that offended the religious leaders of his time?

As with many authoritarian Christian leaders in the US today, the religious leaders of Jesus’ time had a significant amount of power over their local community. These leaders sought more power and authority, and the belief in a Messiah who would conquer Rome further stroked their ego — as this would only enhance their power.

But Jesus didn’t preach building Israel into a global superpower with the religious elite ruling the world.

Instead, he preached submission to the current secular government: “give onto Caesar what is Caesars” (Mark 12:17).

Jesus didn’t congratulate these men for memorizing scripture and being able to speak eloquently on the prophecies and theology of old.

Instead, he scolded them for caring more about their theology than the people around them. Jesus taught humility and love. And you cannot gain power with humility and love. You cannot use humility and love as a way to elevate yourself above others.

These religious leaders were interested in power over others.

They loved bragging about how far ahead of everyone else they were on the climb to the top of the mountain. But they never stopped to ask if they were climbing up the right mountain.

They were able to provide eloquent answers to many theological questions, but they never stopped to ponder if they were asking the right questions.

They had memorized how to wear the right clothes, how to wash their hands the right way, and how to interpret the teachings of Moses — but they cared nothing about the people around them.

Jesus always reframed conversations from knowing the truth about theology, to loving others.

Are you playing a game where the points don’t matter?

In the show Parks and Recreation, there’s an episode where the Parks and Recreation employees help facilitate a Model UN session for high school students. During the session, the goofy Andy Dwyer (played by Chris Pratt) reveals his strategy for winning:

“These kids are idiots. I've just traded all of Finland's boring stuff for every other country’s lions. I definitely have more lions than any other country in the whole world right now. I have no idea what’s going on, but if that ends up meaning something in this game, I’d say I’m set.”

This is how many people approach their religion! They set up their own scoring method, and then start comparing their success to the success of those around them. People who do worse than them on this system are lost souls, people who do better are overly zealous fundamentalists (who somehow still have it wrong).

If you tell these people they’re tracking the wrong metric, playing the game with the wrong scoring system, or perhaps even in a game where the points don’t matter (like in Who’s Line Is It Anyway?) — they get offended!

If all of these rules I’m following don’t matter, then I’ve wasted my life!

If I don’t have a deeper understanding of truth than everyone else, then I can’t lord it over them as a moral superior!

This is what the Pharisees and other religious leaders hated about Jesus.

Jesus spent his ministry deconstructing these scoring systems and replacing them with the one truth we all know: love others (Matthew 22:39).

Jesus Was Okay with Not Knowing

Jesus created very little theology. In fact, much of the theology of modern Christians is based on the teachings of Paul rather than those of Christ (which we’ll discuss in the future).

Anytime people claimed or asked for absolutes, Jesus responded in a way that left more questions than answers.

Why?

Jesus was okay with not knowing.

Even the night before his crucifixion, as he prayed in the garden, he didn’t know whether or not God would resurrect him! But he knew that loving others was the right thing — regardless of the long-term consequences for himself.

But most humans cannot handle not knowing.

We need to know the beginning of the story and the end of the story. We need to know what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. To leave something unknown breaks our brain!

Unfortunately, there are some things we cannot know for sure (at least, not yet). None of us know, from personal experience, what happens when we die. None of us know, from personal experience, how the universe started. None of us know, from personal experience, if life exists on the far edges of our universe.

When we don’t know, we’re left with two choices:

1. Ask questions, explore, and seek truth — being okay with not knowing in the interim (and perhaps never knowing).

2. Find an “easy” answer and accept it as truth (whether it’s true or not) so we don’t have to live in the unknown.

Jesus preached #1. Many Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other leaders (religious and secular) are more than happy to give you an answer that works for choice #2 — and often one that conveniently benefits their agenda.

And people are drawn to these authoritarian leaders. It’s hard to live our lives not knowing 100% what’s going to happen next. Many of us would rather follow someone confident and be wrong later than to admit we don’t have an answer today.

Just as in Jesus’ day, many religious leaders fear deconstruction and questioning the status quo

While there are some Christians who accept and validate deconstruction to an extent, most Christians are afraid of admitting there are questions that have hard answers, or no answers at all.

For believers, admitting that they are playing a game without actually knowing what points matter just doesn’t work — you cannot evangelize that you “might” have the truth.

While Jesus spent his life tearing down overconfident responses to unanswerable questions, his self-proclaimed followers have forgotten that message and now speak about him with the same authoritarian confidence he spent his entire life fighting against.

So today we end up in the same environment Jesus would have experienced 2000 years ago. Religious leaders (today in the form of Christian Nationalists, Jewish Zionists, and Islamic Extremists) declaring anyone who disagrees with them a tool of the devil.

In Matthew 12 we read about Jesus:

²² Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. ²³ All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

²⁴ But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

When their worldview was threatened with new information, these religious zealots refused to evaluate their understanding of the world.

They could have evaluated this information, reflected on their current beliefs, and either embraced these new ideas or proven them wrong — gaining a deeper understanding of truth along the way. But instead, they doubled-down on their authoritarian answers and declared anyone who disagreed (including Jesus) a prince of demons.

This same defense for indefensible arguments is made by religious people to this day.

When something is discovered that cannot fit into their worldview, rather than evaluating whether that worldview needs modification, it is declared the work of the devil — allowing for the believer to avoid any real intellectual evaluation of the topic.

So the next time someone says your questions, lifestyle, or very existence is a tool of the devil, know you’re in good hands if the Christian worldview is true — as the same was said of Jesus.

We would all be better off accepting Jesus’ teaching on love

Gandhi’s famous quote rings just as true now as it did when he was fighting for Indian independence:

In graduate level business courses you’re taught there are three categories of information you need to keep in mind when developing a successful business strategy:

• What you know

• What you know you don’t know

• What you don’t know you don’t know

Jesus accepted each of these areas openly and honestly. Meanwhile, most religious people today force everything into the first category.

This disingenuous way of looking at information results in harm to self, others, and society at large. When you require an answer to every question, you allow yourself to deceive others and be deceived by others.

And all we can know for sure is that you are here, I am here, and any good God worthy of worship will celebrate those who choose to love their fellow humans.

In Conclusion…

From the new testament we can see that Jesus:

• Was okay with not knowing.

• Understood that loving others was always the right decision.

Because of these views, the religious of the day:

• Recognized Jesus’ teachings would allow people to think for themselves — removing their need for these religious elites, and eliminating their power.

• Chose to call Jesus a tool of demons in order to maintain their power — allowing them to brush him off without having to address the challenging statements he brought into discourse.

Today, people fall into the same trap:

• Wanting to have absolute answers to everything, even things they cannot know for sure. This is comfortable, while not knowing is uncomfortable.

• Desiring power over others and being more than comfortable using religion to acquire it.

• Being willing to call things they don’t understand or cannot explain “demonic”.

Personally, I desire to pursue truth down whatever path it takes me — regardless of my upbringing, what society expects of me, or what makes me feel comfortable.

Hopefully, you’ll join me on this journey to honestly seek truth wherever it leads us, even if the answer is sometimes": “I don’t know”.

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Thoughts? I’m certainly not a biblical scholar (although I’ve taken the equivalent of a religion minor in Bible classes) and appreciate feedback on these topics.

Do you believe today’s Christians would follow Jesus if he came today?

As you reflect on your own worldview, are you willing to live like Jesus and say “I don’t know”, or do you prefer to ignore hard questions as the tools of demons?

Until next time, stay inspired!

Welcome to the Deconstruction.Zone newsletter! Thank you for reading.

Today we’ll discuss the 3 B’s of Religion and how they can help us better understand why someone changes their worldview.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post, “Jesus Taught Deconstruction — and the Religious Hated Him for It”. For a preface to that article, check out last week’s “What is Deconstruction and Why it Matters”.

Now let’s get started!

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Take a moment to think about why someone might leave your specific faith community…

What reasons come to mind? Especially if they claim to no longer believe in God all together?

I can tell you exactly what I concluded as a few close friends left my Christian faith:

1. Somehow they were hurt by the church. Either their perception of God, or their interaction with someone in the church, brought them tremendous pain — causing them to leave the faith.

2. They wanted to live in sin. There is some expectation God places on believers that this person doesn’t want to follow. Perhaps they’re cheating on their partner, wanting to do drugs, or becoming overly obsessed with worldly wealth.

If only I could fix their hurt or convince them that their sinful desire wasn’t worth giving up eternity in Paradise, I could bring them back into the fold.

And actually, sometimes those are reasons play a role in why people leave. But I was missing one very prominent reason — and that’s where the 3 B’s of Religion come in.

What are the 3 B’s of Religion?

Christians and non-Christians alike have used the 3 B’s of Religion as a sociological tool to evaluate why people join and leave faith communities.

The three Bs are:

• Belief: The actual faith claims and tenants of the religion.

• Behavior: The rituals and lifestyle expectations of the religion.

• Belonging: The community and connection someone feels in the religion.

These 3 B’s give us an easy rubric for evaluating why someone joins or leaves a specific denomination or worldview. All three can play a role in why someone church hops, with different people prioritizing the three differently.

But, when someone is desiring to pursue truth, only one of these matters.

How the 3 B’s are Perceived by the Faithful

Take a moment to ponder, once more, the scenario where someone leaves your church.

Looking back, I realized that the only justifications I considered for my friends leaving were:

• They were hurt by the church (belonging).

• They wanted to live in sin (behavior).

I never seriously considered they didn’t believe we had the truth! I couldn’t fathom this because the evidence was so overwhelming. We can’t be wrong.

People frequently claim to accept their own worldview based on beliefs, while declaring those who left did so because of a lack of belonging or unaligned behaviors.

Why? Because it allows you to disregard the intellectual claims of the person — instead writing them off as emotional or angry.

This person grew up with the same views, education, and experiences as you.

An outsider can be written off as never having known the truth. But this person grew up knowing the same “truth” as you and determined it wasn’t truth at all. To intellectually accept them means to admit that your beliefs may be wrong.

And to admit that you might not have the truth is a belief that cannot be held by an evangelical religion like Christianity or Islam. Your entire mission is to convince other people your view is right — and that’s hard to do if you admit it might not be.

Beliefs are All that Matter — Start Here for Intellectual Conversations with Non-Believers

People may jump from one church to another because of the behaviors or belonging associated with that congregation, but they won’t give up the faith altogether.

A religious person will never be able to have a meaningful conversation with an ex-believer as long as they start with the assumption this person left solely because of behaviors or belonging.

This requires you to assume that the person you’re communicating with is so dense and short sighted that they would choose to give up an eternity of never-ending joy, happiness, and purpose for a triviality like trying marijuana (behavior) or because someone stole their parking spot at church (belonging).

While people may retroactively recognize aspects of their prior faith community tied to behavior or belonging, that’s not the reason they left.

Every person I’ve met who left their religion left as part of a journey toward a deeper understanding of truth. They’ve left to remain in moral alignment with their beliefs.

And this willingness to pursue truth over tradition is a GOOD thing! At least, according to Christianity. As we’ll discuss next time — it’s the kind of thinking Jesus taught.

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Thoughts? Do the 3 Bs resonate with your understanding of what worldview someone holds? What do you currently think is the main one or two Bs for why you’re part of your currently faith/worldview community?

Until next time, stay inspired!

Welcome to the Deconstruction.Zone newsletter! Thank you for reading.

Today we’ll discuss deconstruction: what it is, why it matters, and how to evaluate your own worldview honestly.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post, “The 3 B’s of Religion”, which will be followed by “Jesus Taught Deconstruction — and the Religious Hated Him for It”. And check out the last post: “Why Faith Can’t be Used as Evidence for Belief”.

Now let’s get started!

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I was shocked as I stared at the details of the proposed homeowners insurance policy this agent had presented through my Gmail inbox.

My wife and I were scrambling to close on our first home within the 30 days allotted - so I almost didn’t open up the insurance policy - just assuming the $1200/year was the norm and acceptable. And hey, we need homeowners insurance to receive the mortgage!

But I thought, perhaps, I could increase our deductible and save a hundred dollars per year.

So I opened the quote and started reading through it. There were all kinds of unnecessary riders included with this policy!

• Insurance for animal attacks on your property (we were on a quarter acre lot in a neighborhood and had no pets): $50/year.

• Identity theft protection (if you use credit cards to make your purchases, this is already covered): $100/year.

• Insurance for mold damage up to $10,000 in repairs (with a $5,000 deductible, so a very small window of benefit): $75/year.

In total, after going through and cutting out these irrelevant expenses and modifying this policy to fit our needs, I reduced our total policy from $1200/year to $600/year.

Considering my income was low at the time, and my wife was in school, that extra $50/month was incredibly valuable. We could actually go out for an occasional date night!

What is Deconstruction?

Most of us take our worldview how I almost took this insurance policy - exactly as it’s handed to us.

We don’t question. Because it gives us what we need to make it through the day, we accept it in its entirety.

But just because something looks nice on a superficial level doesn’t mean we should accept it without further evaluation.

On the show Arrested Development, the Bernie Madoff-type patriarch goes to prison for fraud, leaving the rest of his family broke and living in the model home for an undeveloped neighborhood.

While this home looks beautiful, it was built for show and not functionality — and the early episodes show the family perpetually struggling with the broken and non-functioning parts of the house. What appeared impressive at first glance, fails to withstand scrutiny and deeper inspection.

This is exactly what worldview deconstruction is all about: taking a topic and, instead of accepting it all as a packaged insurance policy or flawless house, evaluating each individual aspect to ensure it holds up and meets your needs.

It’s taking apart the wall, brick by brick. Inspecting each brick to ensure it’s well made and safe to use as a foundation for the next level of bricks. If one brick doesn’t seem to hold up or fit, you set it aside for further inspection — potentially leaving it out of your wall permanently.

Deconstruction matters if we claim to care about truth

Just because someone else told me this is what I need doesn’t make it true.

In fact, the only people who will tell you not to seek information beyond what they share are con artists and cult founders.

Particularly when the person declaring you “need” something benefits financially or otherwise from you accepting that belief (like an insurance agent increasing your coverage or a preacher declaring the benefits of tithing), it’s essential to closely evaluate their claims.

Truth can always hold up under close inspection. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a lie.

And if I want to be a person of integrity, I must do everything I can to know the “why” behind my beliefs and actions - especially if I’m going to present them to others as truth, or act in a way where others are impacted by this worldview.

Before I vote on a topic like abortion, immigration, gay marriage, or universal healthcare, I need to make sure that my views are built on a strong foundation — because my actions can have life or death consequences for others.

By periodically reviewing what I hold to be true, and changing my beliefs as I gain new knowledge, I become a role model others can follow. Instead of telling other people to stop living how they were raised and start living how I was raised, I can invite them to join me on a journey of continual discovery as we seek truth together.

Deconstruction can be difficult and uncomfortable, but it’s one of the most valuable activities for anyone who desires to be a person of integrity with actions that align with truth. And we’ve been called to deconstruction by the sharpest minds throughout history — including Jesus, who we will discuss in a couple of weeks.

How to deconstruct your worldview

Deconstructing your worldview doesn’t mean giving up everything you once held to be true. It means honestly evaluating the “why” behind your beliefs and recognizing any shortcomings.

So how do you go about deconstructing your worldview?

First, you must give yourself permission to be critical.

Then, you must ask yourself what assumptions each of your beliefs is built on, and start validating those assumptions by confirming they have legitimate support behind them.

For example, far too many Americans believe in a Flat Earth. What assumptions must this belief be built on?

• There is a group of global leaders who have a tremendous amount of wealth and power and want you to believe the world is round (because somehow that benefits them).

• Every astronomer and physicist at the thousands of universities around the world are either deceived or lying — despite spending their entire careers studying this topic.

• Countries around the world are willing to invest billions of dollars into NASA and other space programs to maintain this lie — even when those countries find themselves at war with each other. They’re paying graphic designers and computer artists to fabricate a perpetual collection of images from space.

• Our telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T are lying to us about the satellites being used for our phone GPS navigation.

• Airlines are lying about their flight paths.

• The thousands of leisure sailors who circumnavigate the globe by ship every year are either lying or deceived.

And this is just scratching the surface of the assumptions that need to be made to hold this belief! Yet many people have embraced it whole-heartedly.

We’ll talk about conspiracies in the future, but for now we’ll just quote Carl Sagan and say “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Once we have our list of assumptions, we then start diving into each one of those to see what evidence they are built on. If the entire belief in a Flat Earth is dependent on a global cabal of powerful people determined to deceive us, then we need to spend a lot more time evaluating that claim before we just accept that the world has an edge!

As you start to do this with your views, both large and small, you become someone who can eloquently speak to what they believe, while gaining an open-minded perspective toward others — recognizing we all believe false claims until presented with new information and experiences in a compelling manner.

Conclusion: The world would be a better place if more people deconstructed

Our identities are often tied up in our worldviews. And this makes it incredibly difficult for us to take an open-minded approach to being curious about these strongly held beliefs. We’re afraid that, if we question too much, we’ll find out their wrong — and then we’ll be stuck rudderless in the ocean of life.

But fear is never a reason to choose ignorance. And the good news is, humans are resilient — and there is something incredibly rewarding and freeing that comes from transitioning your worldview and continuing to thrive.

With every change you make to your worldview after deliberate inspection, you grow closer to the truth.

And when we recognize that we don’t have all of the answers, we can become more forgiving and accepting of others. As Charles Darwin wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”. By identifying our own shortcomings in the past, we can gain a deeper sense of humility and become more accepting of others today.

Yes, a world where we all deconstructed our worldviews through deep introspection and study would be a world with more joy, love, and acceptance.

I hope you have a desire to join me in pursuing truth and making the world a better place. If you do, let’s remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “If you want to change the world, start with yourself.”

Thoughts? I would love to hear your view on deconstruction and how it impacts our lives for better or worse. You can use the comments below to help expand the dialogue — I welcome both agreement and debate in a desire to pursue truth.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, stay inspired!

Welcome to the first Deconstruction.Zone newsletter! Thank you for reading.

Today we’ll discuss the problem with using “just have faith” as a reason to believe something is true — and what to do instead.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post “What is Deconstruction and Why It Matters”.

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Okay, let’s get into it…

I grew up within the Christian community — willing to accept as truth what was shared with me by preachers, professors, and my family and friends.

There were many times when I would ask a hard question about God’s existence, but it wasn’t until my late 20’s that I began noticing a clear trend...

Almost every conversation around evidence for God’s existence ended with the phrase: “Sometimes we just need to have faith”.

• How do we know God was involved in the writing of the Bible?

• How do we know the Bible wasn’t political propaganda to justify mass genocide?

• How do we know Jesus really was the son of God and was raised from the dead?

• How can we be sure that the right books were compiled into our modern Bible?

• What is the value of prayer if studies show it doesn’t improve outcomes in any measurable way?

• How can we confidently claim the Bible to be a source of truth and morality when there are good Christians who use this book to justify contradictory stances on everything from homosexuality, to abortion, to the death penalty, to what foods are appropriate to eat?

• How can we be so sure that our denomination of Christianity really does have the truth when other Christians (along with Muslims, Jews, and many other religions) are as confident as we are in their own version of “truth”?

Turns out, when you ask these question and press for evidence, the conversation inevitably ends with a version of the same phrase: Sometimes we just need to have faith.

We don’t know the answers to these questions, but we have faith that God has placed us in the right place, with the right knowledge, to have the right worldview — regardless of what others may say or believe.

As I continued to read and research about religion, history, science, psychology, and philosophy, I came to discover that faith is the lynchpin for a belief in God. When the evidence ran out, we resorted to “faith” as the reason to believe.

I was using “faith” as the foundation for my beliefs.

But what does it mean to “have faith”?

When a word can mean anything, it ultimately means nothing.

Let’s use the word “soon” as an example.

• When will you be home for dinner? Soon

• When will you buy a new vehicle? Soon

• When will humans return to the moon? Soon

• When will Jesus return? Soon

In these examples the word “soon” can mean anything from a few minutes to years!

When you respond to my question with “soon”, you’ve provided a non-answer because I have no knew information I can use to take action or make decisions. I need a response like “in 5 minutes” or “next month” to be able to take action on your answer.

Faith is a similar word.

If I say “I have faith my wife will give us a ride home from the airport”, I could be making two very different statements:

1. I spoke with my wife, gave her a time and location to meet us, and she agreed to be there. Because I have an existing relationship with her and she has historically kept her word, I trust she will be there for us this time.

2. OR: I’m single and a romantic, and I think it would be an amazing meet-cute if I first encountered my future wife at the airport baggage claim. So, I hope I’ll see an attractive girl at baggage claim. I’ll ask her to give us a ride home. If she agrees, I’m going to ask her to marry me!

The same phrase: “I have faith my wife will give us a ride home from the airport” has a very different meaning depending on whether the word “faith” is defined as “trust” or “hope/unfounded-confidence”. And the definition I’m using will certainly play a role in your decision to either wait with me or call an Uber.

The fluid definition of “faith”

Good communicators know we must agree on the definition of a term before we can incorporate it into the discussion.

When we don’t agree on the definition, we can argue for hours while essentially saying the same thing. Alternatively, we can use fluid definitions to dishonestly manipulate the conversation — either deliberately or by accident.

This is what often happens in a conversation with “faith”.

When a believer says, “We don’t know for sure if God exists; we just need to have faith”, what is she actually saying? Is she saying we “hope” God exists, or we have “evidence” God exists?

Really, she’s using hope as evidence. She’s saying, “I’m going to believe this is true because I want it to be true”.

And while she’ll permit this for her beliefs, she won’t consider it a legitimate evidence for belief in another person’s beliefs. For those she will require evidence.

If you want to be a good communicator, it’s always better to replace “faith” with a word that has a more consistent definition - like trust or hope.

But this raises a problem for believers. Saying I hope my God exists doesn’t elicit the confidence needed to win converts. And saying I trust my God exists requires you to procure further evidence to warrant that trust.

Neither of these substitute words allows a preacher to shut down an inquiring mind and calm a curious congregation like he can with the word “faith”.

I have yet to find a definition of “faith” that works as evidence - please help me!

As I shared from the beginning, faith is often used when we run out of evidence.

The problem is, this requires faith itself to be a valid form of evidence.

If I catch you at the gas station and say: “Wait! You don’t need to waste your money on gas — just use water instead, it’s free!”

You respond: “Water won’t fuel my car".

And I say: “It will if you just choose to have faith”.

Would you put water in your fuel tank? No! Not unless I proffered further evidence to show how your engine has been upgraded to run on water.

Yet Christians do this all the time. When the evidence runs out, we are told to just have faith.

And maybe faith does work as a substitute for evidence — but I have yet to find an intellectually honest definition that works for Christianity without also legitimizing the existence of Zeus, Thor, and Santa Claus.

Can you help me? I built the flowchart below to assist with my own exploration — and I would love for someone to find a definition that breaks this chart!

If there is a definition of faith that works as evidence for the Christian God but not every other belief system, whoever identifies this will be responsible for converting and saving millions of non-believers (or at least me). So please try!

If we cannot find an intellectually honest definition of faith that can replace evidence as a reason to hold a belief, then we need to stop using “faith” as our reason to believe.

We must instead follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Thoughts? I would love to get other people’s opinions and definitions related to faith. Please use the comments below to interact and help expand the dialogue — I welcome both agreement and debate in a desire to pursue truth.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, stay inspired!

The second most challenging and stressful point in my life was realizing there is no god.

As a conservative Christian, my entire life was built inside this worldview. My social network, education, career, and sense-making strategies all required a foundation on Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

Over my one year journey of “deconversion” and 7 years of revalidating, I studied science, philosophy, morality; I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before; and sought out the counsel of every religious leader and thinker I could find.

But once I had committed to seeking truth above tradition, all of these arguments I had once taken for irrefutable proof of the divine became painfully weak. In my mind, the evidence for God was about as compelling as the evidence for Santa Claus. And I was scared.

Scared on multiple levels.

First, there was the obvious fear, pain, and depression that comes with realizing this life is all we have. For a Christian, every time life gets hard, someone you know dies, or you have your own near-death experience, you find comfort in knowing a fair and just God has an afterlife planned out for you in paradise. It doesn’t matter what happens here, because a better life is to come.

But here’s what’s surprising. It was equally difficult realizing that I couldn’t speak openly and honestly about it with my closest friends and family members - the community I relied on for emotional and spiritual support.

After “testing the waters”, it became clear that opening up about atheism isn’t acceptable. Most Christians aren’t comfortable with unanswered questions or people who seem to be pursuing truth in a way that leads them away from the church.

I thought being Christian in a secular America was hard - until I became atheist in a Christian America.

I can’t blame Christians - because I did the same thing. When a few close friends told me they were struggling with faith, my investigative skills went to work seeking out the hidden sin or soured relationship leading them away from God. It never really crossed my mind that someone would leave religion in pursuit of truth. Faith is like a marriage and only ends if some psychological issue impedes the health of the relationship. Find and solve that issue, and the relationship is saved!

I believed (as I had been taught) giving up Christianity would result in my life falling apart. My marriage would be ruined, my job and finances would collapse, I would be drawn to all kinds of immoral acts I didn’t want to participate in, and I would never find peace, joy, or satisfaction in life.

But this isn’t true. Morally upstanding seekers of truth can (and often do) come to the conclusion there is no god.

And the good news? You can find just as much (if not more) peace, happiness, joy, and morality as a non-believer as you did as a Christian! So don’t despair. It’s a painful process to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, where your Christian worldview is no longer equipped with the tools to guide you and you don’t yet have new coping mechanisms developed; but you will come out the other side! There are plenty of tools to find happiness outside of religion. You just have to take time to learn them as you transition from the religious tools you are now leaving behind.

The purpose of this newsletter is twofold

First, it’s to honestly discuss the challenges, issues, and beliefs around religion (primarily Christianity). I share this in hopes of helping non-believers, questioning believers, and the faithful all of more honest discussions as we seek truth together.

Second, it’s to help new atheists or struggling believers discover that you can find true joy and peace beyond religion. It’s a painful journey for many - but joy exists on the other side!

While this is a very intense topic, I hope we’ll be able to have some fun and crack jokes (not too offensive) in the process.

Together, let’s seek to pursue truth over tradition, and courage over comfort. In the end, may we all be better off for it!