TW: grief, suicide

As of late, I am often doing something so incredibly inane, like putting a jar of peanut butter in my cart at the grocery store, when all of a sudden I am startled by these unfortunate facts:

• I loved you so much when we were 11 years old.
• The last time I saw you, we were both 16 years old.
• At the age of 33, you decided that you couldn’t bear the suffering anymore.

It stops me in my tracks and I feel like I cannot breathe.

And yet, I’m supposed to check the peanut butter off my list and continue living, as though the world is the same now that you are no longer in it.

How can I bury this truth and lock it away in the back of my mind so that it does not haunt me at the grocery store, in traffic, or every time I find a photo from when we were so young?

I hate thinking about you because I hate the fact that my fondest childhood memories clash with the reality that you are not here anymore. That you are a memory now.

I hate thinking about how we lost touch. About how I once called you my best friend. About how I went to mass with your family and didn’t know what to do or when to sit or when to stand. About how cool it was that we could walk to the video store when I went to sleep over at your house. About how that world is gone now.

I hate thinking about how much pain you were in and how I didn’t know any better. I hate thinking about how I failed you. How I saw your posts on social media and decided to quietly sever our connection. It was making me uncomfortable, concerned even. But not concerned enough to reach out. Wouldn’t that have been weird though? We hadn’t seen each other since we were 16 years old anyways. Maybe I did know better after all.

I hate thinking about how I will never be able to make it right. I hate knowing you were in so much pain that you ended your life in such a violent, awful way.

I hate that I felt stupid for feeling this sad over you — a friend I only saw a few times when we were growing up, over twenty years ago now. I hate that all the memories came flooding back when I went through my boxes of old stuff and remembered that, oh, we were actually best friends and here are a thousand pictures of all the things I forgot we did together before I moved away. So now, I hate that I forgot how much you actually meant to me and I still feel like I don’t deserve to be sad.

And just as suddenly, the hate and anger dissipate.

I miss the excitement I felt when you called and I saw your family’s long, hyphenated last name taking up all the space on the caller ID.

I miss listening to No Doubt on the radio with you.

I miss watching that one scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers over and over again because Gollum made us laugh.

I miss checking the mailbox and seeing your handwriting on an envelope or a birthday card addressed to me.

I miss you. I love you. And I’m sorry.

You’ve carried me across black sand beaches and timeworn glaciers.

You are strong and yet delicate.

You cast a shadow that cannot be ignored.

You’ve held the weight of all the emotions I couldn’t bear to feel.

You grow and shrink as you need to.

You unapologetically bear scars and stretch marks and cellulite.

Your eyes are sunflowers.

You are speckled and freckled.

You withheld breath until I learned to rest.

You are capable of feeling earth-shattering pleasure and pain.

You wear the ink so well.

You are the map to my soul.

Content warning: death, loss, gun violence

I love Christmas — the lights, the desserts, the snow, the feeling in the air, the shared sense of celebration and joy.

This time of year hits differently for everyone, especially those with estranged family or those who are grieving. The sense of loss, sadness, and loneliness is only exacerbated by the feeling that everyone around you has access to joy, to peace, to family. And you envy everyone around you, eager to someday experience or to return to a time of communal happiness.

These last two Christmases haven’t felt quite the same for me. In 2020, I started decorating for Christmas on November 1st. The year had gone so slowly — it had dragged on, really — and I clung to anything that reminded of the passage of time, anything that made me feel like the pain of the pandemic might be over someday.

To experience another pandemic Christmas shattered a hope I didn’t realize I had. An optimism that was functioning as a lifeline. A dream that I didn’t want to wake up from.

And yet, here we are. It is three days after Christmas and covid cases are at an all-time high. I’m debating the efficacy of my cloth masks and ordering at-home rapid tests from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Today, as of only a few hours ago, I am grieving the loss of a family member, yet another obituary amongst a sea of death. She didn’t die of covid, as if that changes anything. Her death doesn’t come with headlines — like that of John Madden or Harry Reid — nor does it deserve any.

My experience feels all my own, devastating in myriad ways, and yet it is the same story that has played out over and over and over again throughout human history. But I have spent the last two years grieving — the 819,000 individuals who died of covid, the time I’ve lost to the pandemic, my sense of comfort and health in public spaces, the person I was before March 2020.

Grief has been a soundtrack on repeat. It has been the steady and relentless beat of a drum. The water that is always on the verge of overtaking me. The paralyzing reminder that I cannot fully fathom the scope of what is going on around me. As an empath, I have checked out as much as I can — enough so that I can wake up every day and still find a reason to live.

To grieve an individual person, in the midst of all this, seemed inevitable. I had been steeling myself for the loss of someone I loved because, for two years, death was just a cough away. Loss was all-encompassing, yet still breathtaking and disarming. Grief felt too familiar, a state of being I had accepted after spending two years living with residual trauma and mass death on a scale I had never witnessed before. And yet, the death of this one human being has been an insurmountable challenge, a complicated loss I was unprepared for. This juxtaposition has caught me off guard. It is the feeling that I am simply mourning yet another drop in the ocean that I am drowning in.

To remember that the pandemic is not only ongoing but at its worst with the spread of two highly contagious variants is to admit that I don’t know what I’m hoping for anymore. That scares me. I don’t know if I will realize when I’m out of the woods — or if I’ll ever leave these woods. How can I have hope if I don’t know what to hope for?

There is too much to grieve and no way to grieve it all. The minute I start to process one thing, it is replaced with another. If I’ve accepted the reality of the pandemic one day, then hours later, it is the arbitrary and pointless gun violence that plagues my home, the beautiful city of Denver. It is a reckoning, all over again, with the scope and the impact of one person’s decision to perpetrate violence. It is the momentary relief I feel that I was not there, that it was not me, that I was there 20 minutes later or 10 blocks away. And it is the almost immediate pain I feel knowing that it was someone else — a friend of a friend, a coworker I haven’t spoken to in years, a connection I lost touch with — who suffered instead. It is the devastating reminder that violence is insidious, that there is a second deadly epidemic to reckon with. And yet I wake up each day, fully aware of the omnipresence of these twin threats, attempting to live my life the best I can.

I am overwhelmed — emotionally, spiritually, and physically — by the things that I cannot control and by the suffering that I bear witness to. And yet in the smallness of my world, I still choose hope when I drink a glass of eggnog and put the star on top of my Christmas tree.

1. Taking the less comfortable chair.
2. A text message left on read.
3. You died before I could tell you about the electricity in the air at Stonehenge.
4. We could never figure out how we knew each other.
5. Leaving Madrid without saying goodbye.
6. Caring more about you than you did about me.
7. Holding my neck to one side upon impact.
8. He held my hand and my knees were locked and it all descended into tunnel vision.
9. Forgetting her mask in the car.
10. The look in her eyes at the pier.
11. Staring too long at the bloodstain.
12. The book of poems I loaned you.
13. Bringing him up at dinner.
14. Writing off the symptoms.
15. Hating the sin and loving the sinner.
16. Breaking it off before leaving for Reykjavík.
17. Cussing her out in the parking lot.
18. Waiting too long to try again.

Content warning: evangelicalism; discussions of homophobia, sexism, purity culture, PTSD, and domestic violence

I’m bisexual.

These are words I never expected to say (or write) publicly, yet here I am.

I’m grateful to be surrounded by people who are not threatened by these words. But I also recognize the weight of them — and the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders by sharing them.

My journey has been long and complicated. It is unique yet not uncommon. It is also mine and mine alone. This disclosure does not invite a slew of inappropriate and invasive questions. I don’t owe anyone information or explanations or reassurances.

For a long time, I had no desire to share this information with anyone. I was afraid that it would complicate my relationship with my religious friends and family who still believe that being gay is a sin.

But like so many others, the pandemic forced me to reconcile with myself, to figure out who I am when everything else is stripped away: Who am I? And am I proud of who I am?

In answering this question, I acknowledged that I want to be authentic, and for me, coming out felt necessary to living a purposeful life that could have a positive impact on the world.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether to come out to my broader social circle. In a lot of ways, it feels like I am unnecessarily complicating things. I’ve also realized that coming out might help to challenge existing norms about what bisexuality can look like. But most importantly, the freedom and belongingness I feel when I’m with the people who love and support me is something I want to experience with as many people as I can.

While I have questioned my sexuality for some time, my history as an evangelical had always made it clear that faith and homosexuality were mutually exclusive, that there was no way to be queer and belong in the evangelical church.

To this day, I am still coming to terms with the grasp that this deliberate, persistent, and toxic conditioning had on my life and how it shaped my journey in ways I did not expect. My internalized homophobia took many years to recognize and will likely require many more to entirely unravel. And as much as I wish I could disentangle them, my faith journey and my sexuality are intertwined. I cannot talk about coming out without talking about how deconstruction and reconstruction helped me get here.

I’ve structured this post around my own personal clobber verses — the verses that were used to break me down and rebuild me in the image of the evangelical church, not the image of God.

So this is my story — messy and snarky and wordy and true.

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

It is a strange thing to go through life believing that everyone you encounter, including yourself, is fundamentally evil.

Evangelicalism taught me that human beings were wicked, sinful, and absolutely worthless without faith and the love of God. I was often reminded that when God looks at me, all he sees is sin. Believing in Jesus was the only way I could be tolerable to God. He was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to look at me.

Because I was fundamentally evil, I couldn’t trust my heart. As a child, when I learned to trust in God with all my heart, I followed instructions. And when I learned everything works together for good for those who believe in God, I wholeheartedly agreed. So when I learned not to trust my heart, I obeyed.

The consequences of this conditioning were far-reaching: I couldn’t trust myself. But as an adult, it was my heart that showed me the inconsistency, hypocrisy, and cruelty of the conditioning that had shaped my entire life.

In evangelicalism, there’s a tension between your heart and God’s will. You cannot trust your heart because it is wicked and of the world. Instead, I was supposed to read the bible and pray. If I wasn’t sure what to do, I could ask my pastor, my teachers, my parents, or other believers for advice. Because evangelicalism assumes the heart is untrustworthy, feelings and desires are often explained away as misleading in lieu of spiritual certainty that can be gleaned from the bible or the church.

This mindset requires the locus of morality within evangelicalism to shift. Your own internal compass can’t be trusted, so you have to turn to an external source to determine whether something is right. The bible fills this gap as a Christian’s instruction manual for life, a measuring stick by which you can assess the holiness or wisdom of a specific choice.

To better understand what this means in practice, it’s important to know that evangelicalism privileges a literalist, fundamentalist interpretation of the bible as the infallible word of God. Though the text was written by people, it is still perfect because it was inspired by God. You can consider the context in which the bible was written, especially books that clearly fall into certain genres like poetry or allegory, insofar as you still accept the literal nature of the bible. The framework of biblical literalism essentially requires that the bible itself — or rather, the most recent preferred version of the English translation — be insulated from criticism.

I was often reminded that Jesus is the word of God made flesh and that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Therefore, I had to live my life believing that absolutely everything about the bible — written by many different authors in a completely different time and culture from my own — was just as relevant to me as it was to every other person in history. But as Rachel Held Evans asks in her book Inspired, “What business do I have describing as ‘inerrant’ and ‘infallible’ a text that presumes a flat and stationary earth, takes slavery for granted, and presupposes patriarchal norms like polygamy?”

In my apologetics lessons (meaning how to argue in defense of your faith) growing up, this perspective was often decried as “cultural relativism.” But the bible is like any other text — its message is inherently constrained by the time and manner in which it was written. This fact does not implicitly negate the spiritual wisdom the bible has to offer.

When I had reservations or concerns about what the bible said, I had to assume that I was the problem, not the bible. My doubts and questions were the result of “unresolved sin” in my life or my “rebellious, sinful nature.” I needed to pray more or read the bible more or talk with others to understand why I was wrong and why God is so mysterious.To belong in evangelicalism, I had to filter my entire life through the lens of biblical literalism because I couldn’t trust myself. Every thought, every feeling, every desire, every ambition had to be cross-checked against the bible. This was the only way to ensure that I was living my life in a way that was pleasing to God.

So because the small-mindedness of evangelicalism stipulates that the bible’s worth and usefulness is predicated upon its literal application, the impact and consequences of bad theology go unchecked. The word of God, filtered through the mouths of human beings, goes unquestioned.

Though it’s heresy to criticize or reject certain problematic aspects of the bible, it’s acceptable, righteous even, for pastors and church leaders to point to the same verses over and over again as justification for excluding gay people from the church. Spiritual leaders rebrand abusive and hateful messages about queer people as truth and love. After all, they are simply following what the bible says, which is what any good Christian would do, freeing them of the responsibility for the consequences of such teachings.

In sermons and bible studies, queer people are demonized, portrayed as pariahs and object lessons instead of living, breathing humans with souls and dreams and desires. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is wielded to draw some kind of artificial line between a queer person and their gayness, to show that love is conditional and that inclusion in the faith is dependent on one’s willingness to conform.

Away from the pulpit, evangelical leaders position themselves as therapists, when they have no relevant qualifications or experience, and give questionable and unsound advice that puts gay and trans people in harm’s way. In the church, queer people are expected to undergo conversion therapy, divorce their same-sex partner, de-transition to their biological sex, or simply remain celibate for their entire lives in order to be “right with God.” And so, evangelicals call it “love” when they disown and abandon their gay and trans children, refuse to attend the gay weddings of their friends and family, and equate homosexuality with pedophilia.

Such harmful doctrine causes the most vulnerable people in the church to believe that they are fundamentally at odds with God’s love simply because of who they love. To achieve some sense of belonging, queer evangelicals are left to choose between authenticity and acceptance, to sacrifice wholeness for compliance, to be tolerated instead of free.

When I chose to listen to what my heart was telling me, it was clear that the hatred, pain, and devastation caused by evangelicalism’s culture wars against LGBTQ+ rights are diametrically opposed to the loving God that evangelicalism claims to worship. My attendance at non-affirming churches was condoning the dehumanization and marginalization of queer people. Yet when I questioned the implications and consequences of this doctrine, my fellow evangelicals said that I was wrong, not the church and certainly not the bible. I was criticized for being “soft on sin” and having “too much empathy.” I was accused of being brainwashed and led astray by my college instructors. I was admonished for heading down the wrong path.

So if I couldn’t question or criticize the bible, I would question my role and participation in evangelicalism instead.

If evangelicalism requires me to follow a god who is small and petty, who cares more about genitals and gender roles than actual people, then I want no part of it. I refuse to idolize the doctrine of biblical literalism by valuing the bible more than the lives and well-being of queer people. Any version of Christianity that requires me to participate in the marginalization of the vulnerable is wrong. We absolutely must question and critique the bible when it is used as justification for abuse, like it very much has been against the LGBTQ+ community. It is not heresy to question theology that leaves a trail of brokenness and suffering in its wake.

And so, it is not queer people who must change in order to belong in the church. It is evangelicalism that must repent of its own hypocrisy. It is evangelicalism that idolizes the bible by weaponizing it in service of the subjugation and marginalization of queer people. It is evangelicalism that lies by calling hatred and intolerance love and by calling love an abomination. It is evangelicalism that sins against God by prioritizing dogma and doctrine over the lives of queer people.

Yet even years after I left the church, when I believed that I had “de-conditioned” myself on the surface in that I unequivocally loved, accepted, and supported the gay people in my life, I still failed to recognize my own queerness.

1 Corinthians 6:18–20

18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

In the summer heat, I sat in my car under the shade of a towering ash tree and rested my head on the window.

My muscles were tense and knotted. I tried massage and dry needling, trigger point injections and steroids, acupuncture and chiropractic appointments, meditation and breathing exercises. I couldn’t relax my muscles, and I didn’t know why. Until that moment in a doctor’s office, when I realized the pain of my spiritual conditioning and the pain in my body were one in the same.

For many years, I was in denial at just how harmful the messages were. But as I look back, the indoctrination was relentless: In class, in youth group, on Sundays, in the books I read and the media I consumed, it was the same message, over and over again. It was drilled into me by James Dobson, Joshua Harris, John and Stasi Eldridge, Elisabeth Elliot, Shaunti Feldhan, Stephen Arterburn, and Shannon Ethridge and reinforced by the adults in my life:

Think about sex all day long — but not like that:

“Think about what you’re wearing. Remember, modest is hottest. Make sure the holes in your jeans aren’t too revealing, that your cleavage isn’t showing, that your skirt isn’t too short, and that your bra straps are covered. Men are visual and they can’t control themselves. They’ll remember every sexually stimulating thing they ever see. It’s your responsibility not to give them anything to lust over.

Porn is everywhere. It’s on tv and the internet, in magazines and commercials, at the mall and at the gym. Women who wear sports bras and yoga pants, women in strapless dresses and halter tops, women modeling bikinis or lingerie. It’s all pornographic.

Premarital sex is bad and evil. Your hormones are raging and you have to pretend like they don’t exist. Sexual sin is the worst kind of sin because you’re sinning against your own body. Before marriage, don’t touch anyone. You probably shouldn’t even date or kiss. Once you lose your virginity, you are tainted, ruined, irrevocably damaged to your future husband.

After marriage and with your husband, sex is healthy and holy. Keep your husband interested. Give him any kind of sex any time he wants it. He’s entitled to it — the bible says so. Even if you don’t want to, if you’re not in the mood, if you’re uncomfortable, or if you’re in pain. It’s a sin to deny your husband sex, so go and be a good wife.

Submit to your husband. Your input is valuable and all, but you don’t have the final say on anything. It’s your husband’s job to lead you. If he’s a good, god-fearing husband, he’ll listen to you. In return, he’ll be expected to die if and when needed. Totally fair tradeoff. So if he wants to buy a hot tub and you don’t think that’s a fiscally responsible decision, that’s too bad. You’re getting the damn hot tub.

So your husband cheated on you. Did you give him enough sex like you’re supposed to? Did you quit your job and stay home and have babies like you’re supposed to? Did you let yourself go? Maybe you’re just not as young, as thin, as sexy as you used to be. That’s probably why. Forgive him and try again.

So your husband abuses you. Well, that’s not ideal. But maybe you’re not as submissive or as quiet or as helpful as you should be. Maybe you’re not satisfying his needs or giving him enough sexual release. Keep trying to make your marriage work. I know it might be scary and that he has access to guns. Try couples therapy with the pastor, who has no training in therapy but really knows his bible. Your husband will probably apologize and repent, so it’s your job to forgive and move on. God really hates divorce. Especially if there are kids in the picture. You don’t want your kids to grow up without their father, do you?”

If I wasn’t learning these expectations in school or at church, they were reinforced in the Christian media I consumed in my free time. Books and music and magazines for Christian girls told me what to wear, what to eat, what to say, and what to think. In this messaging, I was reduced to a sexual object, whose only value was my sexual purity, beauty, fertility, and ability to conform to “biblical womanhood.”

As a woman, I was simultaneously the crown of creation, God’s finest handiwork, a biological masterpiece, yet I was mocked, belittled, and marginalized for being a woman. Having emotions made me weak and unreliable and hysterical; having boobs made me a temptress and a stumbling block; having opinions made me rebellious and uncontrollable. I was always too loud, too ugly, too fat, too something.

Years and years of these messages made one thing crystal clear: I had no control over my own body.

As Linda Kay Klein writes, “Evangelical Christianity’s sexual purity movement is traumatizing many young girls and maturing women haunted by sexual and gender-based anxiety, fear, and physical experiences that sometimes mimic the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.” In her book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, Klein documents how young girls and women engrossed in the purity movement experience panic attacks, paranoia, and nightmares: “We went to war with ourselves, our own bodies, and our own sexual natures, all under the strict commandment of the church.”

Klein also references Dr. Shelley Uram, as featured in the work of Dr. Brené Brown: “…The brain does not differentiate between overt or big trauma and covert or small, quiet trauma — it just registers the event as a ‘threat we can’t control.’” It took many hours of therapy for me to recognize that the repetitive, shaming messages I learned day in and day out throughout my childhood were “small, quiet traumas.”

It felt wrong to call these experiences traumatic, as though they didn’t meet certain criteria or weren’t harmful enough. But purity culture stole my self-confidence, self-worth, vulnerability, and agency, only to fill the void with shame. It was traumatic.

I learned to repress my sexuality before I even learned what my sexuality was — and heterosexuality was my only option. My body was a problem, not a temple. It was an instrument designed for the pleasures and uses of others. It was a gift for my husband, a tool for producing children, a vessel for worshiping God. But it was not my own.

I was afraid of my own power, my sexual appeal, and my capacity to seduce, to tempt, to lead astray, to stumble my brothers in Christ. I was ashamed of being feminine, not being feminine enough, having shoulders, being too tall to wear short shorts, not being small and delicate and petite. I hated my body because it was a vehicle for sin and an inconvenient residence for my mind and heart. My own body was a weapon used against me; it was a weapon I could wield against others; and it was a battlefront where I fought back against sexual immorality. So I never bothered to understand my body, to listen to it or take care of it. I treated it like an afterthought.

When I was 17, my partner and I started dating, and even then, I was already saddled with the burden of protecting his eyes, heart, and mind from lusting after women, myself included. If he cast a passing glance at another woman, it meant that I had to do better. I expended inordinate amounts of mental and emotional energy monitoring the clothing of every woman we passed by. Occasionally, I would spend a few extra seconds sizing up a woman’s potential as an object of lust. Purity culture taught me to objectify other women the way it had objectified me. I wasn’t a person anymore. Women weren’t people anymore. They were hazards in the form of disembodied cleavage or over-enunciated curves.

In learning that neither my emotions nor my body could be trusted, I detached myself. I burned up with guilt and anger, shame and fear, insecurity and self-loathing, anxiety and depression. But I pretended like those feelings didn’t exist. I didn’t want to notice them or acknowledge them. Admitting that I had emotions would be proving them right — it would prove that I was a woman.

I resigned myself to a godly life, one that eventually required giving up control over my body, relationships, and future. I was simply a satellite orbiting a man’s world. My worth was contingent upon my proximity to a man. Being a godly woman meant that I had to conform my life to the parameters of “biblical womanhood”: submission, silence, and sex on demand (after marriage, of course).

The years of toxic theology and spiritual abuse permeated every aspect of my being. It ate away at my heart and mind and soul. But I didn’t realize that it wreaked havoc on my body as well.

“The imprints of traumatic experiences are organized not as coherent logical narratives but in fragmented sensory and emotional traces: images, sounds, and physical sensations,” Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. It was only when I accepted the trauma of purity culture that I was able to understand the impact it had on both my mind and body.

My body learned to associate certain experiences and sensations with the fear, shame, and guilt normalized by both purity culture and evangelicalism at large. Certain words or songs made me feel like I was sinking into a church pew, trying to make myself as invisible as possible. Unwanted advances from men evoked memories of tugging on my shorts and adjusting my shirt, just in case my clothes were too revealing and causing him to stumble. When I walked through the doors of a church, my body felt heavy and my muscles tensed up. I was afraid without knowing I was afraid, and so my body resorted to decades of muscle guarding to protect me, causing stubborn myofascial pain.

Ultimately, my heart knew that I not only wanted more but also deserved more from evangelicalism, yet I ignored it. My mind knew that I had agency and control over my own life, but I locked my doubts away, convinced they were just sinful gut reactions to the undeniable truth. And even though evangelicalism told me that my body was not my own, it was my body that knew I needed protection from evangelicalism.

Ephesians 5:22–25

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.

In coming to terms with my sexuality, I had to reconcile being both bisexual and married. This wasn’t hard because my marriage never fit the mold that evangelicalism had idealized.

Evangelicalism’s vision of marriage revolves around a hierarchy rather than a partnership. Complementarianism — the idea that men and women had different gender roles and should fulfill different but complementary roles in marriage — was treated as one-size-fits-all prescriptive guidance. There was no room for deviance because complementarianism was treated as the biblically sound model for marriage. Men were expected to provide for the family and be the strong, masculine spiritual leader, while women were expected to be nurturing, submissive, and sexually desirable as well as have and raise children.

These narrow expectations of prescriptive evangelical theology are a double-edged sword: On the one hand, the guidelines are strict, with tenuous textual evidence at best. There are, however, plenty of generic ideals outlined in the bible that can be manipulated into biblical mandates. Such biblical mandates are often conveniently advantageous to the church and its leaders. And when you fail to meet the requirements, you are vulnerable.

This lack of textual evidence doesn’t stop evangelicals from using the bible to justify advising women to stay in abusive marriages or get married straight out of high school or stop working to raise children. But this advice keeps women dependent — on a husband, on a church, and on a pastor.

Instead of treating people as individuals, with unique needs and goals, the church holds them to one of two expectations, based solely on their sex, and outlines their responsibilities accordingly. This advice robs women of their agency and their opportunity to create a life for themselves, separate from evangelicalism or their marriage. Such expectations provide a biblical basis for preventing vocal and outspoken women from having an influence over men and for keeping women in their place. For example, in evangelical churches, women are typically not permitted to “hold authority over a man,” meaning they cannot serve in positions where they direct or lead men, and are often relegated to positions in children’s ministry, for example.

Additionally, these expectations pressure women in particular — regardless of whether they have careers, children, or both — to continue giving freely of their emotional labor. Such labor is critical for men and children, churches and communities to thrive, at the expense of women’s own independence, opportunity, and choice.

On the other hand, because such prescriptive gendered expectations are so difficult to fulfill and because they fail to accommodate individual difference, these norms are easily challenged by those who do not fit the mold. I grew up with a single mom, and when I learned about the model of complementarianism in marriage during my junior high and high school years, I was skeptical because I’d already been confronted with its stark limitations. My home life was written off as inferior or broken, as if it could only be made whole by the addition of another parent. And evangelicals felt comfortable telling me so, even after my mom had remarried, because they were “speaking the truth in love,” like there was something I could actually do about it.

Instead of adapting to or incorporating my family experience into evangelical theology, it was yet another instance where the church expected me to fit their mold. Those who felt compelled to “speak the truth in love” to me refused to engage in any sort of critical reflection as to why their narrow expectations didn’t accommodate the reality of my family and my experience — a family that was just as valuable and loving and an experience I had no role in creating. It wasn’t possible that the church’s expectations were wrong; it was my family that was fundamentally out of alignment with God’s will.

Add to this the complications of determining whether a divorce is biblically acceptable: According to some evangelical churches, divorce is only biblically justified due to infidelity or marriage to a partner who is not Christian — because these are the only two acceptable circumstances mentioned in the bible. Because the writers of the bible could not fathom any other circumstances in which divorce would be a sensible conclusion to a marriage, it is acceptable doctrine to force women in abusive relationships to stay until the situation in their marriage changes insofar as it checks one of the two aforementioned permissible boxes. Essentially, the absence of textual evidence is treated as evidence itself.

Of course, establishing a theological framework based on the absence of textual evidence results in an inconsistency of beliefs in evangelicalism: The bible only mentions male and female; therefore, only two genders exist. The bible does not give you permission to end your own suffering in the case of a terminal illness, but it is perfectly okay to extend your life, and likely your own suffering, with medical treatments. Unless those medical treatments are derived from aborted fetal tissue, in which case that might or might not be okay, depending on who benefits. And even when there is textual evidence for something, like a biblical woman with a career or the verse “in Christ, there is no male or female,” it is conveniently ignored in service of keeping women subservient.

Such inconsistency presents a challenge for the average churchgoer. So instead of teaching you how to cherry-pick which verses of the bible to follow, which would surely raise questions or inspire dissent, evangelicalism encourages you to attend church and obey the verses your pastor has cherry-picked for you instead. As a result, the church has accrued significant political power and social capital in conveniently equating a narrow interpretation of the bible with a politically conservative platform.

Evangelical Christianity taught me that my salvation and my belongingness in the church were predicated on my willingness to adhere to such a flimsy, unprecedentedly narrow biblical lens. Evangelical Christianity prioritized theological and doctrinal superiority and indoctrination over an adaptive and resilient belief system. And as a result, evangelical Christianity, with its unearned entitlement to the moral high ground, led me down the path of deconstruction.

When that narrow lens failed to hold up to scrutiny, it was easy to see how so many of my closely held beliefs fell short when confronted with reality. When I questioned one thing, I started questioning more — especially doctrine that hinged on the interpretation and application of a single poorly translated verse, of which there were many. The more I questioned, the more it all unraveled.

And then I began to grieve.

I grieved all the ways I tried to fit into boxes that were not designed with me in mind. I grieved the text that my entire life revolved around, until I recognized how it was manipulated to abuse me. I grieved the relationships I lost, because our only shared foundation was the faith I now question first thing in the morning and as I drift off to sleep at night. I grieved the years I spent distrusting my own heart, believing it was fundamentally depraved. I grieved the ways I refused to listen to my own body, instead storing up unacknowledged feelings as stress, tension, and pain. I grieved the years I spent not trusting my own heart and mind and body because, at the end of the day, that’s what I am.

Once I extracted the toxic hatred instilled in me about gender roles and sexual orientation, I began to realize how it permeated everything I believed. At first, amidst my discomfort with my own queerness, I viewed my marriage as an escape hatch from disclosing my sexuality to anyone.

When I have come out to other people in my life, they often ask about my partner, who is nothing but supportive. Because our marriage thankfully never resembled the patronizing God-husband-wife-kids hierarchy that evangelicalism declared as “holy,” it was easier for us to construct our marriage as a healthy partnership.

So as I unlearned these harmful beliefs about gender, sexuality, and marriage and began to discover my own identity, I was able to see my marriage as it has actually been: a safe haven and a landing place where my partner and I are free to be ourselves, entirely. It has been a space where love is not predicated upon what I do or don’t believe, whether I am a submissive wife, or the people I find attractive.

Freeing myself — from the church, from the relentless spiritual guilt, and from the expectations I could never meet — empowered me to start discovering who I really am, to re-examine and re-configure my own life.

And so, after many years of deconstruction, I started to rebuild.

Epilogue

It has taken me so long to come out because I felt obligated to first convince the evangelicals in my life that homosexuality isn’t a sin. I convinced myself that it was just a matter of them not knowing or being uninformed. That if evangelicals only knew the pain caused by their homophobia and discrimination, they would stop hating queer people and start loving us instead. That if only they had read the right books or listened to enough counterarguments, they would change their minds. So I gave them books and sent them articles and asked hard questions I was hoping they’d reflect on.

Some rationalized their homophobia away by saying they’re just following what the bible says. Others refused to entertain a more compassionate view of gender identity and sexual orientation or to imagine a vision of the church where gay people aren’t just tolerated but loved and accepted. But a few wanted to listen, which made my efforts seem worthwhile.

I realize now that this was my own insecurity over not being loved and accepted for who I am by the people I call my friends and family. I felt this pressure to first convince everyone that I was still acceptable, permissible, before I could disclose this facet of myself. Some have questioned why I would bother labeling myself in this way or have downplayed my disclosure because I’m married so it “doesn’t matter anyways.” But this is exactly the point. I’m bisexual, and yes, I’m married to a man. My marriage does not negate the fact that I’m bisexual.

Maybe my story and my experience will soften hearts, change minds, and provide more insight into what being bisexual looks like. Maybe it won’t. But I wrote this for me, first and foremost.

When I log on to social media and see my queer friends and coworkers and former students living their lives so authentically, so boldly, so proudly, I’m inspired by them. And I want to feel that sense of freedom and authenticity in my own life.

I often wonder what it would take for evangelicals to reject their homophobic theology. I’m tired of trying to figure out the answer. I don’t know, and at this point, I don’t care. I can’t teach or force or persuade evangelicals to treat queer people with love, compassion, and dignity.

But I refuse to live my life in a way that coddles homophobia or to sacrifice my own authenticity so that I can be tolerated by evangelicals. It’s not my responsibility to convince others that queerness isn’t a sin. It’s not my responsibility to confront the people I love with the consequences of their homophobia. It’s not my responsibility to proselytize an affirming theology to people who refuse to consider a more ethical perspective. It never was.

I don’t know what to make of this faith that shattered me into pieces and told me not to trust myself or my heart or my mind or my body. I don’t know how to belong to a faith that has left me with such irreparable damage, resentment, and trauma.

Since leaving the church and evangelicalism, I’ve never been happier, healthier, more self-assured, more myself. But this is never what I wanted, never what I had expected or anticipated for myself. A lot of people I used to know would write me off now as lost or on the wrong path or misled by the world. They would say that I’m too focused on myself or deliberately sowing discontent or blaming an entire religion for the harms perpetrated against me. I don’t listen to them anymore.

Evangelicalism remains in denial of the harms and abuses perpetuated by its teachings. Though sometimes it is painful to revisit these teachings that held me captive for so long, I feel compelled to interrogate them, to highlight the church’s harms and abuses. In doing so, I am able to use the voice I was never able to use, to advocate for myself and for others, and to reclaim bits and pieces of myself along the way.

Resources

If you’re interested, here is a list of resources that have helped me along the way on my deconstruction journey.

If you’re interested, here is a list of resources, in no particular order, that have helped me along the way on my deconstruction journey. I don’t necessarily endorse these authors, but if I’ve found something helpful in their work, then I’ve listed them here.

I’ve also got a very long “To-Read” list on Goodreads, so I’ll update this list as I find more:

· Inspired, Searching for Sunday, Faith Unraveled (previously titled Evolving in Monkey Town), and A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

· The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk

· Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein

· UnClobber by Colby Martin

· Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell

· Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler

· Untamed by Glennon Doyle

· The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever by Jamie Wright

· The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone

· That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart

· Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor

· I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

· Educated by Tara Westover

· The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe by Richard Rohr

· Boy Erased by Garrard Conley

· The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones

· What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything by Rob Bell

· God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

· Genesis for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Controversional, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible by Peter Enns and Jared Byas

· Shameless: A Sexual Reformation by Nadia Bolz-Weber

· Facing the Music: My Story by Jennifer Knapp

· You are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity by Jamie Lee Finch

Content warning: mental health issues, covid-19

In March of 2020, I drew a long breath of fresh, spring air, thick with the scent of flowers from European mountain ash trees, and I never let it out.

I looked outside my window at a life that seemed a thousand miles away. People: My neighbors. Walking in shorts or shoveling snow or unloading groceries. People who could get me sick. I ordered masks in a few different patterns from a local business that usually makes customizable bow ties and pocket squares, which sat unused and dusty in lieu of yoga pants and slippers.

I checked the news all day long. My Twitter feed refreshed every 5 minutes. I scanned the Johns Hopkins dashboard every hour for updated case numbers.

“It’s on that cruise ship,” I said to my partner as I scrolled through an article. “They have nowhere to land.”

“Who’s taking a cruise right now?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

For weeks, I woke up and my jaw was sore.

On the second to last Sunday in March, I wept over the death of a friend.

Stay 6 feet away at all times.

In April, I went outside. I wore a mask. I walked my dogs and hated wearing a mask. I did it anyways — but only when the sun kissed the clouds and there were more people than I could count on one hand.

Coronavirus lives on surfaces for up to 3 days.

I ordered groceries. I ordered food. I ordered random shit from Amazon because there was nothing else to do. I wanted to save the restaurants. I enthusiastically tipped the delivery drivers who brought it all to my house. I couldn’t save the restaurants.

Woman contracts covid from Instacart worker.

I wiped down the bananas, the 20lb-bag of rice, the styrofoam containers of fried rice and taquitos and chicken korma. I wiped down my packages of Clorox wipes with Clorox wipes. I sprayed the doorbell with Lysol.

I checked the news. I always checked the news. Sometimes, I remembered to relax my jaw.

In May, I went to the grocery store. I was tired of bruised produce and delivery fees, and I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to see what it was like.

Surgical masks caked with stubborn snow tossed on the ground of the parking lot. An ocean of plexiglass. One sticker separated from another by six feet, telling me where to stand, thanking me for my compliance, and reminding me that we are “stronger together.”

The face shields, the masks, the hand sanitizer, the wipes, and the pallets of toilet paper, stacked high like a fortress between everyone and the virus. If I bought more toilet paper, I would be safe from covid. Even if I didn’t need it, I should buy it. It might not be there later. These times are so unprecedented, and we can worry — about the trees, the hoarding, the economy — later. I’ll use it eventually.

I felt these things and thought these things and wondered if hoarding was the only thing I could control right now. I grabbed a package of toilet paper, and then, I put it back. But I grabbed those Clorox wipes so goddamn fast, and I watched my cart like someone was waiting to steal them from me.

In June, I got laid off, and I laid in bed. I cried on the phone with my mom. I said “fuck social distance” and I cried in the arms of my friends. My friend gave me a sadness present and we drank wine from water bottles as we walked the trails near my house. I panicked about what would change and what I could afford. I forgot to wear my mouthguard one night, and I ground my teeth so hard that I chipped a tooth.

I went to the doctor to get 90-day refills of my prescriptions in case I had no health insurance the next month. I saw my therapist, a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, a physical therapist, and an orthopedic specialist in pursuit of temporary relief from chronic pain.

In June, I also got rehired. I was grateful because no one else I knew got rehired. I didn’t say anything because it felt wrong to have good news.

Then, I ran away to Breckenridge for a few days. I wondered if I was making the right choice, if traveling 80 miles away was 80 miles too far in a pandemic. But there, my soul was replenished by the alpine air and frigid lakes and visions of columbines, and I remembered why I kept on living.

In July, I worked, and I learned the ins and outs of my new job. I went to my doctor to tell her I got a new job and that I was probably depressed because I was tired every waking moment and I wanted to die. I got my bloodwork done and learned I had a b12 deficiency. They taught me how to give myself injections: once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year.

In August, I found a psychiatrist. I had never seen one before. I brought a list of medications I had tried: Lexapro, more Lexapro, trazodone, more trazodone, and even more trazodone. Wellbutrin, Zoloft, more Wellbutrin, more Zoloft, Trintellix, more Trintellix, Buspar, Seroquel. I was tired of trying things. She told me about newer options, like transcranial magnetic stimulation and ketamine injections, which I politely accepted brochures on.

I took her up on the transcranial magnetic stimulation. Every weekday for 7 weeks, I went and sat in a chair, where they strapped a helmet to my head and zapped my brain every 30 seconds. The right side of my body would twitch uncontrollably, and I would start to slur mid-sentence. I felt like a science experiment.

Then, I gradually started singing again, by myself at my house, in the car, in the parking lot. I stopped to admire the golden hues of aspen leaves and I smiled behind my face mask at the grocery store. My therapist and I had nothing to talk about. We said goodbye through the screen, and I felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.

2020 was supposed to be the year of traveling, of turning 30, of chasing dreams. Instead, it became a year of small traumas, repetitive traumas, collective traumas. Yet I found healing.

When there was nothing to do, I looked at timelines for some of my long-dead relatives on Ancestry.com: Harry probably read newspaper accounts about the Paris Peace Conference. Joseph may have eagerly read the daily news hoping to hear more about Dr. Barnum Brown’s fantastic fossil discoveries in 1900.

What a life each person must have lived. What strange times to be alive in. What unique events to bear witness to.

As I think about my own branch on the family tree, I realize someone might eventually think the same thing about my own life: Witnessed the 9/11 terror attacks unfold on television. Tried to find work during the 2008 economic crisis. Survived the covid-19 pandemic.

I survived. But I did more than that.

I ground my teeth so hard that my mouth couldn’t open all the way. I lost my job. I cried on the couch in my living room and outside under the ash tree and in my bed and in the shower and on the bathroom floor. I turned 30. I drank margaritas at 2 in the afternoon. I held my breath as I walked by other people, who were too close for comfort. I accidentally touched my face in the grocery store and spent the next five days convinced I would get covid. I felt my heart break when the death count kept getting higher and higher and higher. I did telehealth therapy in my basement. I voted by mail. I accidentally drowned my succulents. I drove through downtown Denver at night, just to remember that it existed. I drank too much wine during FaceTime happy hours with my best friends. I found my first gray hair. I forgot to put on my mask before I walked into Target, and everyone panicked. I drank a bottle of champagne when I learned there would be a woman in the White House. I felt grateful to be alive.

And I got vaccinated.

How the evangelical church idolizes marriage through its tolerance of domestic violence

Content warning: Abuse and domestic violence

I’m angry at evangelical Christians, even though I was one.

But there is a tightrope to walk: on the one hand, I have left evangelical Christianity behind completely and entirely, with no plans of ever going back. There are many others I know who have done the same. On the other hand, there are others I know and love who are still involved in that world and that culture.

Writing, I’ve come to realize, is how I can channel this anger and resentment into something productive and powerful. But when I write, my intention is not to hurt others or to insult the evangelical Christians I know and love. My intention is to speak broadly about the subculture, the institutions propped up by it, and, in turn, the institutions that prop up evangelical Christianity itself: To shine a light on the implications of bad theology.

There is an important distinction to make here. There are systems, and there are people. When I speak about systems, there are inherently people that participate in those systems, who further the needs and goals of those systems in (un)intentional ways. There are people who truly believe in the goodness and the significance of what they are doing. There are people who don’t know better, and there are people who act maliciously for their own benefit.

In other words, there are people, who are capable of good things and bad things. And at times, whether something is good or bad is not always immediately clear, especially when you are immersed in a particular way of thinking for so long. My goal here is not to accuse anyone of anything, but to call out toxic ideologies and mindsets that then lead to problematic and harmful behavior. In other words, intentions matter, but impact matters more.

It’s also important for me to note that I was an active participant in and member of this subculture. I have regrets over past beliefs and how those beliefs informed the way I perceived and treated other people (and myself). With each toxic belief or behavior subconsciously ingrained in me from the church that I am able to unlearn, I get closer to becoming the person I want to be: confident, gracious, and rational.

The institution that is most critical to evangelical Christianity — and that has given rise to a plethora of questionable and unsound spiritual guidance — is marriage. So much of what is wrong with evangelical Christianity can be traced to the extraordinarily narrow constraints placed on what a marriage should look like. The church has created rigid and unattainable standards, and when marriages fail, it is often attributed to a lack of faith, the presence of sin, or both. When spouses can’t — or don’t want to — fit into the so-called “biblical definition of marriage,” the consequences can be dangerous.

There is a lot to say about the church’s view of marriage, far too much for one post. But the significance of marriage in the church cannot be overstated. In evangelical Christianity, the importance of heterosexual marriage goes beyond its role as the only acceptable context for sex. To understand the scope of the church’s cultural, social, and political influence, you have to understand that marriage is a metaphor for the relationship between Jesus Christ and the church.

The spiritual significance of marriage has influenced a variety of perspectives on what marriage should look like. An inevitable part of these discussions is divorce. The standards for divorce are quite high. Divorce should always be treated as a last resort. When this standard is universally applied as the foundation for marital counseling for couples in completely different situations with completely different issues, it can end up doing much more harm than good.

In a nutshell, there are two acceptable reasons for divorce: 1.) adultery and 2.) abandonment by an unbelieving spouse.

In the first case, the reasoning is fairly obvious: The spouse in question has been “sexually immoral” by having sex outside of marriage. In this scenario, divorce is acceptable because the sanctity of the marriage has been compromised by sexual sin. The second condition is a bit more complicated: Essentially, divorce is permissible if a Christian is married to an “unbeliever,” and the unbeliever has initiated divorce proceedings. In this situation, divorce is acceptable because it is preferable that the believer enter into a marriage with another believer as opposed to being “unequally yoked” with an unbeliever.

There are a lot of scenarios that aren’t accounted for in these two narrow justifications for divorce. Some Christians argue that abuse, in contrast to adultery or separation from an unbeliever, is not a viable justification for divorce in any circumstance. You read that correctly: if a man is abusing his wife, the wife still does not necessarily have grounds for divorce.

Before I dive into this, there is extensive debate on this issue within Christianity generally, depending on your denomination or the specific church you attend. Many churches ultimately argue that divorce is okay when one spouse is abusive, but only with a variety of conditions attached. Some churches don’t expressly address what to do in the case of abuse but emphasize the two biblical grounds for divorce. Others still reiterate that there are only two acceptable grounds for divorce. But generally, Christians are torn on this issue, especially pastors.

My focus here is on the argument for what women should do when they are experiencing domestic violence. (Note that this argument pertains to a heterosexual couple, where the husband is the abuser.) There is an elaborate set of hoops the wife is expected to jump through in order for divorce to eventually become a viable, bible-based option.

First, the wife should remove herself from the dangerous situation by moving out of her home. In theory, the woman’s church will support her during this process. Then, the wife is expected to pray for her husband’s reconciliation with God, that he eventually repents of his sin of physical violence. Ultimately, the wife should be working towards reunification with her husband as the ideal outcome. During this time apart from her abuser, the woman is not permitted to date anyone else, but she can take advantage of whatever legal options are available to her — legal separation is apparently permissible, though I am unaware of where Jesus muses to his disciples on the differences between legal separation vs. divorce in the eyes of God.

Nevertheless, there are a few possible resolutions to this situation: 1.) The woman’s husband will die and she can remarry, 2.) the man sees the error of his ways and reconciles with his wife, vowing never to abuse her again, and 3.) the husband pursues another woman sexually, thereby checking the box for one of two “biblically sound” reasons for divorce, giving the woman an out. Never mind the fact that this other woman will become the abusive man’s next target.

There are numerous problems with this. First, but not foremost, there isn’t a single verse in the bible that provides instructions for someone in an abusive marriage. There is no verse you can point to with literal instructions or guidelines for a woman to follow if her husband is abusing her. None whatsoever.

Consequently, this guidance has no biblical grounds. This advice is provided only with general verses about the nature of marriage as a lifelong commitment (1 Corinthians 7:39), and specifically identified situations in which divorce is acceptable (Matthew 19:9 and 1 Corinthians 7:15, both cited earlier) as evidence. As such, this very specific advice — that a woman should move out of her home and work towards reconciliation without dating anyone else while waiting for her husband to sleep with someone else, thereby giving her an excuse to exit the marriage — is far beyond the scope of the textual evidence provided.

Secondly, and most importantly, if your spouse abuses you, it is well within your rights to divorce that pathetic excuse for a human being. No, Jesus never technically “gave you permission” to do so. There are no letters in red that say abuse is an acceptable reason for divorce. But based on the best evidence we have — Jesus’ empathy for the powerless and marginalized and his outrage at religious hypocrites who exploited and abused their own authority and positions of power — I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t tolerate the weaponization of scripture in an effort to preserve a marriage with a violent spouse.

The Jesus that is actually portrayed in the bible would be this woman’s getaway driver. She could call him in the middle of the night, and he would drive her to the police station. He would help her file a police report and a restraining order. He would give her a spare bedroom or a couch to sleep on while she made other living arrangements. She would cry on his shoulder. He would find her a lawyer and remind her that she deserves so much better than any man who would lay a hand on her out of anger. This is not only what Jesus would do, but what any decent person should do.

Jesus would never put the “sanctity of marriage” above a woman’s life, safety, and wellbeing by pressuring her to reconcile with her abuser. I want to emphasize that any god with those priorities isn’t worth following.

This guidance puts real women in danger. Though not explicitly stated in this argument, women are expected to take risks in an effort to reconcile with their spouse. How can you reconcile with a spouse without seeing them? How do you know when they’ve “reconciled” with God? In addition, what if the spouse has access to firearms? How do you know when it is safe to move back in? There’s no way to know if the spouse has “changed his ways” unless his wife moves back in and he abuses her. Why is that an acceptable risk? What if children are involved? And, the most obvious question: what if the woman doesn’t want to reconcile with her husband?

In this argument, the woman is robbed of all agency — her future and her marriage are dependent on whether her husband sleeps with someone else. It is a criterion that needs to be met, through no control of her own, in order for her to leave her toxic and physically violent marriage. In other words, the morality of her behavior and her decision to seek a divorce depends on the decisions and choices of her husband. In what other context is the righteousness of our behavior dependent on the sin of another?

Additionally, in adhering to this interpretation, the church is essentially arguing that one sin is more egregious than another: Adultery is worse than abuse. Adultery is so bad that it is worth ending a marriage over. A marriage simply cannot survive adultery. Abuse, in contrast, is less of a problem. It’s “fixable.” You can get through that.

This is the problem with extrapolating universal guidelines for divorce based only on a narrow selection of verses that don’t address every possible situation or context you might encounter: You’ve elevated the letter of the law over the spirit of the law.

The stakes of the church’s bad theology are high, and this emphasis on preserving a marriage at the cost of a woman’s mental and physical health is deadly. Women should be under no obligation to stay with an abusive spouse. If you refuse to accept abuse as a reasonable justification for divorce because it is not explicitly stated in the bible, then you are complicit in the violence perpetrated against the women whose lives you only claim to value.

If you attend a church or read a book or receive counseling that advocates for this interpretation of abuse alone as insufficient grounds for divorce, know this: This church, this author, this pastor does not care about your marriage. They care about Marriage. The sanctity of marriage. The idea of marriage. That church, that pastor, that author is willing to sacrifice the lives of women at the altar of biblical marriage.

And you deserve better than that.

“So what do you believe now?” a friend asks me over a dinner of chicken fried steak, buttery rolls, and mashed potatoes dripping with gravy.

I finish chewing my food and pause for a few moments to formulate my response. “I’m still Christian,” I say as I stare at the ceiling. “But I don’t buy into 99% of what people think Christianity is.”

“Like what?” he follows up, attuned to the uncertainty in my voice.

There’s a laundry list of items that go through my head. As I’ve made a life for myself — away from church, away from Christian education, away from my undergraduate and graduate studies — my faith has become defined by what it’s not instead of what it actually contains. Not necessarily because this is how I want to define it, but because the trappings of American Christianity necessitate it.

This seems like a topic that is simultaneously appropriate yet unwieldy over dinner at Texas Roadhouse.

These friends of mine do not believe in a god. I can’t help but see the irony in how infinitely more comfortable I am talking to them about my faith than to others who were raised as fundamentalist Christians or evangelicals and still identify as such. They listen, in an attempt to understand. They listen out of curiosity. They listen in order to synthesize my beliefs with those of other Christians. They listen because they are my friends.

They do not pull out a bible to recite “clobber verses” and prove me wrong. They do not half-listen in order to win. They do not interrupt with the goal of persuading me to another position. They do not challenge me to defend everything I believe, don’t believe, or don’t know much about. They do not make assumptions about all the other beliefs I might also hold.

They listen.

When I was younger, my family only attended church sporadically, but I was enrolled in private Christian schools up until college. I was far more immersed in Christianity than just attending a church service every Sunday. Everyone I knew was Christian. Everything I learned was framed within the context of living a Christian life.

So much of what I learned seemed harmless. Growing up in a small, private Christian school gave me a tight-knit circle of friends I went to class with, year after year. I got to know my teachers well, and they taught me for several years in a row. I even invited several of my teachers to my wedding, proud to show them the person I had become.

I can’t help but remember the joy I experienced when I reflect on this time of my life.

I remember doing sword drills, flipping through the well-worn pages, curled upwards at the corners, of my Psalty bible. I remember being the first in my youth group to recite 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 and getting a donut as a reward. I remember spreading my arms out wide as I sang the words “I may never fly o’er the enemy/but I’m in the Lord’s Army.” I remember inviting a girl at my school to Awanas (partly because I wanted her to know Jesus and partly because I wanted to earn more Awana bucks). I remember playing the leader of the Shepherd Kids for the Christmas musical one year. I remember watching The Donut Man in daycare after school. I remember singing along to Two or More in the car with my mom and my little brother.

The nostalgia and the certainty of my childhood faith have been powerful forces in my life, but they have dulled and waned over time, like a full moon obscured by thick gray clouds. It has become impossible to look back on the joyful moments without remembering the troubling propaganda embedded within them:

• Other religions were ridiculous and obviously untrue because of their infinite gods or absurd creation myths.
• Losing my virginity before marriage would liken me to a wad of used chewing gum.
• God’s will isn’t necessarily for us to die with dignity; if our end days are filled with suffering, we are to embrace it, just as Jesus did when he suffered on the cross.
• One time, I made a joke about homosexuality and got in trouble because “sin isn’t funny.”
• God created the universe in literal, 24-hour days, and no other interpretation was biblically sound.
• I can’t count how many people have told me that I come from a “broken family.”
• One lesson I learned in bible class involved an illustration depicting numerous people riding down a slide into the depths of hell, with God being depicted as merciful for plucking a few people off of the ladder.
• I was taught to wear modest clothing so that my brothers in Christ didn’t lust after my body.
• When I was planning my wedding, I told people I wasn’t changing my name, only to be met with accusations that I was sinful for not submitting to my future husband.
• Anxiety is selfish because you’re making everything about you instead of about God.
• In literature class, the scene where Lady MacBeth “unsexes herself” became an opportunity for my teacher to explain how unnatural it was for men and women to act like members of the opposite sex.
• Someone at my husband’s old church messaged him and told him that he shouldn’t marry me because it wasn’t “God’s will.”

In general, Christian education aims to instruct students in a way that is “consistent with biblical truth.” What this “biblical truth” looks like in application is a rigid interpretation of the bible that almost always toes the republican party line. The people in power at these institutions truly believe in the unwavering piety of their hardline stances on evolution, abortion, sex outside of marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. They portray Christian education, like the United States, as a “city on a hill” while demonizing public education.

Consequently, in Christian education, Christianity and American exceptionalism are inextricably intertwined. Politics isn’t just a tool for influencing the culture: it’s a battleground where evangelical Christians are fighting to preserve the moral superiority of the country. To reinforce this, Christian schools can’t just teach Christian values. These institutions must conflate conservative values and biblical truth in order to secure their own influence and to raise up a generation that will carry the torch and vote accordingly.

With this in mind, it’s clear why I was taught that everything was black and white. Or, more accurately, red and blue.

It wasn’t until I started growing up and had choices to make — who to befriend, who to date, where to go to school, what to study, what jobs to apply for — that I began to question what I had learned. Slowly, I realized that everything I was taught had been filtered through a very narrow lens, one that many other people did not share.

But I didn’t know that I had a choice. I was in this bubble that I never realized I could leave — until I did.

I can’t point to a specific moment when I left the evangelical community I grew up in. It happened little by little. Small fragments and pieces of my heart and mind drifted away, and as I reconstructed my identity, my beliefs, my sense of self, and my view of the world, I just sort of realized that I had left that world behind.

It started in college. I know this validates the biggest fears of evangelicals and conservative Christians, as evidenced by the many books I’ve found in Christian bookstores with titles like Can You Keep Your Faith in College? or How to Stay Christian in College. But I wasn’t brainwashed by my professors. I was taught how to think.

In fall 2008, during my first semester of college, I was taking a creative writing workshop. I was shy and quiet, rarely offering my opinion or perspective on the works we read for class. I remember reading “Sea Oak” by George Saunders, a short story about a male stripper who works at a place called Joysticks. As you can probably guess, my very sheltered 17-year-old self had never read a story with dialogue like “show me your cock.” I dutifully annotated the story in my dorm room but showed up bright and early to my professor’s office hours to…ask some questions.

I put on as much Christian swag as I could find: my “Saved by the Cross” bracelet, my purity ring, and my “Faith as Small as a Mustard Seed” necklace all made an appearance that day. I cringe thinking of the questions I asked my instructor. Are all the stories we read like this? Do you have any edited copies of our textbooks? Can I opt out of reading short stories about male strip clubs? And so on.

In my head, I anticipated that this experience would be everything my Christian teachers warned me about. My obviously godless instructor would be furious that I even uttered the words “I’m Christian” in his office (as if he couldn’t tell from the obnoxious amount of Christian jewelry I was wearing). He would fail me for asking such stupid questions and publicly humiliate me in front of everyone else at our next class, in the style of God’s Not Dead or the atheist professor chain letter.

Of course, none of that actually happened.

He was extremely patient with me. He explained that a lot of the stories and poems on the syllabus would address adult themes and language, and because I was in college, I could probably expect the same sort of content in all of my classes. He encouraged me to read critically and with an open mind, to understand the literary value and significance of each piece we read. I left his office feeling encouraged but nervous and weary of how many more penis-centric stories I would have to read.

I didn’t abandon my beliefs that day. Instead, it was one of many experiences that nudged me towards a more complex, realistic, and meaningful faith — one that is better suited for the world that we are called to love wholeheartedly.

Even with years and years of a private Christian education, complete with prayer in every class, weekly chapels, Bible classes, and “mandated” church attendance, my particular brand of faith simply could not stand up to scrutiny. Mostly because my brand of faith wasn’t just “Jesus.” It was “Jesus and” a very long laundry list of other non-Jesus things: Jesus and America. Jesus and patriarchy. Jesus and heteronormativity. Jesus and creation. Jesus and conservatism. Jesus and hell.

But when I returned to the bible, it was clear that this “Jesus and” brand of faith only made sense if you selected certain passages while ignoring others. It could just as easily be Jesus and love, grace, social justice, equity, kindness, acceptance, and so much more.

As I transitioned into a world where Christianity was one of many perspectives and not the only perspective, I struggled to see the faith I was aching for: the faith that could move mountains, make the impossible possible, and bring love and belonging to a suffering world.

Today, I am 27, and I am still unlearning things that seemed harmless at the time but that led me to divide the world into two camps: Christians and everyone else. Saved and unsaved. Good and evil.

Little by little, I’ve been able to strip away so many of the assumptions that colored the way I viewed the world and the people within it.

As I struggle to put my experiences in context and to form a cohesive narrative of my faith, it feels as though I am constantly reliving experiences I would rather put behind me. This is mostly because I still experience epiphanies that show me how some pre-conceived notion has covertly shaped my thinking on one thing or another. In these moments, I feel as though I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg — like I’ll spend the rest of my life unlearning things that I didn’t realize were still ingrained in me. Accepting this reality is a daily struggle that has made me cynical and skeptical about Christianity.

While I can’t speak for other evangelical Christians who spent most of their lives going to church and attending Christian schools, I can say that so much of the faith I learned growing up is an insult to what Christianity really is and should be.

It was too easy. It told me that I knew everything I needed to know. I knew who to love and who to conditionally love. I knew when I did right and when I did wrong. I knew the answers to the questions that have occupied theologians and philosophers and scholars since the beginning of time.

But I reject a faith where the people who claim to love a god who made us all in his image also refuse to attend a gay wedding because it “validates that lifestyle.” I reject a faith that teaches us we are all equals in theory while women are prohibited from being pastors in the church. I reject a faith where privileged, white American Christians travel the world and disparage other religions while proselytizing their own.

Leaving fundamentalism has been isolating in so many ways. There has been so much pain as I’ve walked away from some people and been left behind by others. But I know that it has all been worth it because the life I have now is more freeing and more fulfilling than ever before.

The best part is that this new iteration of my faith doesn’t pretend to be the answer to everything. Instead, its beauty is in its complexity; in its emphasis on love and grace above all else; in its acceptance of all people; in its ability to grow and adapt and evolve; and in its relevance to an ever-changing world.

I want to dive more into this book because there’s so much I want to say: about it, about myself, about depression and anxiety. But I know that will take time and energy and emotional labor that I’m not ready to expend yet. In lieu of that future blog post, I’d still like to put together my list of #reasonstostayalive, inspired by Haig’s hashtag. So here they are, in no particular order:

• my dogs
• learning new things
• rainy days
• rainbows
• pinwheels
• flowers
• other people’s dogs
• road trips
• ice cream
• driving with my music turned all the way up
• birthdays
• peach bellinis
• roller coasters
• sitting around a fire pit on summer nights
• s’mores
• beer
• books I can’t put down
• candles
• fall colors
• a fresh pot of coffee
• corn mazes
• phone calls with friends
• laughing
• cookie dough
• sunsets
• snow-covered trees
• massages
• red wine
• Christmas lights
• meditation
• traveling to new places

What are your #reasonstostayalive? I know I’ve listed a bunch, but there are plenty more to choose from. :)