Over the past twenty years I have watched more people walk away from faith than walk back toward it. Recovering Christians moving past me in the opposite direction, more of them every year, some angry, mostly just tired. Worn down by an expectant god who seemed to require apology before offering encounter. A god who demanded you get your paperwork in order before he would call you his.

I understand why they leave. I left too, for a long time, in my own way.

What grieves me is not the leaving. Wrestling with our faith is part of the journey. The grief is because most stop at a suspended existence where the soul still wants to believe in something Holy and good but their experience no longer supports this. It is hard to find a way back to faith through an institution that still wounds.

This is why a genuine reintroduction to the Creator becomes a watershed. Not a return to religion. A return to home.

The soul in harmony with its Maker is our original design. That is not theology. That is anatomy. We were built for this. Conditional love is what drives us into hiding, behind fig leaves, behind doctrine, behind performance. But the love that made us does not require us to perform before it will hold us.

So go. If you need to.

Follow the road as far as it takes you. Let the tides carry you out. Dance in the dark. Howl at the moon. Worship the creation until you feel safe enough to lift your eyes to the Creator again. Drown out the bad doctrine, the fear-laced dogma, the voice that told you that you were a wretch before it told you that you were loved.

You will find, somewhere out there past the exhaustion of it all, that your soul has been crying out for connection the entire time. Not for a system. Not for a set of practices. For the cosmos itself. For the heartbeat you were held against before you had words for anything.

That cry will lead you home.

Rebellion against religious order is not rebellion against God. Abba is not a god of chaos, but neither is Abba waiting for us to follow a prescription. The path home is not prescribed. It is personal. It is yours.

John Newton knew something about the long way home. He spent years as a slave trader before the grace he later wrote about found him. He did not arrive clean. He arrived wrecked. And the song he wrote from that wreckage has outlasted almost everything else his century produced, because it is true, because it names what the soul already knows:

How Amazing, Grace, really is.

Not found because he followed the right steps. Found because the One who was looking never stopped.

That is the Cosmic Creator I am learning to trust.

Soul satisfied. Life abounds.

Reflection Prompts

1. Have you ever been in the halfway place, no longer inside the faith you were handed but not yet moving toward anything else? What did that feel like from the inside? What kept you there?

2. The entry suggests the soul cries out for connection with the Creator whether we acknowledge it or not. Do you recognize that cry in yourself? What have you reached for to quiet it?

3. Where did conditional love first teach you to hide? Was it in your family, your church, or somewhere else? What did you learn to cover, and what did that cost you?

4. Newton arrived wrecked, not clean. What is your relationship to the idea that you do not have to be repaired before you are received? Does that feel like grace or does it still feel too easy to trust?

Not because it was wrong, but because you’ve grown, and what once felt like guidance now feels like restriction. So now you arrive at a quiet crossroads. A deeper, more honest recognition:

I can’t stay here and remain true to what is awakening in me.

So you begin to choose something different. Not to abandon faith, but to rediscover it. To keep what is alive. To release the rituals and doctrine that entangle. This is where many hesitate because, once you step beyond the lines, there is no clear outline waiting for you.

No checklist. No guaranteed affirmation. No one telling you you’re doing it right. Often, it is quite the contrary. Once you get past the discomfort and break away from the chains that entangle and snare you, you discover your true personal relationship with the Divine.

You begin to notice what resonates with your soul, what brings life. You stop performing belief and start believing.

I am not asking you to follow me. Otherwise, I would be creating my own doctrine for you to follow blindly. My essays are for provoking patterns and engaging your soul, but my journal prompts are for you to architect your own doctrine of faith between you and your Creator.

I am inviting you to begin. Bring a journal. Bring an open mind. Bring your questions, your doubts, your longings. There is no hurry.

Let your expression take shape, not according to what is expected, but according to what is true.

Journal Prompts

What beliefs or practices no longer serve who I am becoming?

What parts of my faith or life still feel alive and worth carrying forward?

What does a more authentic expression of my faith or life look like right now?

Where am I still looking for permission instead of trusting my own experience?

What would it mean to create instead of conform?

Reflection

Write a paragraph just for you on one of the following:

I was never meant to color inside someone else’s lines forever.

Some of the beliefs that once protected me are now preventing me from becoming who I was created to be.

I do not need permission to pursue what feels honest, alive, and deeply true within my soul.

I was raised to color between the lines. The lines were clear. Stay inside them and you’re affirmed. Step outside and you’re corrected. I never quite got it right. I know that wasn’t my overseer’s intention. Yet communication is a receiver defined phenomenon. It does not matter what they say, only what we hear.

One of the reasons I write anonymously is to honor my parents, I know their intention wasn’t to harm. Yet harm they did. Coloring outside the lines didn’t lead to curiosity. It led to correction. Those that color between the lines well are labeled “good Christians.” Those that find themselves coloring outside the lines are “troubled, wrestling with faith, being led into temptation.”

I had these deep experiences and encounters with the divine, yet rarely did they come at church, in Sunday school, or during small groups. What I learned in those settings wasn’t about the infinite abundant love of the Cosmos. I learned all of the things that brought shame, fear, and wrath.

My questions were “too much,” and obedience was what was expected more than enlightenment. So I conformed where I could and hid the parts that didn’t fit. Because underneath all of it, I never lost my love for the divine. I just lost the love for the rituals and practices I was being instructed in.

But what if the tension wasn’t something to fix? What if it was something to listen to? What if not fitting the mold wasn’t a failure but a signal? A sign that something in you is alive enough to resist being reduced to a formula. Something in you that is still seeking, not religion, but encounter with the divine.

So today is not about resolving that tension. It is about honoring it.

Journal Prompts

Where in my life have I felt like I didn’t “fit the mold” in a religious context?

What tension have I carried between what I believe and what was expected of me?

Where did I learn to question myself instead of trusting what I felt?

What have I held onto, even when the structure around it no longer worked?

Reflection

Go deeper on one of the following statements.

Write a paragraph just for you:

Early in our spirituality we can confuse devotion with spiritual experience.

There are parts of us that only begin to breathe once we stop performing spirituality for acceptance.

Essay Excerpt:

Imagine that my daughters broke free from their previous indoctrinated practice and threw themselves into as many eclectic styles as they could. Each completed work brings them zeal and joy. Each piece is a reflection of their soul in the image they created. Yet in their minds would always be the words of their early father disapproving of their work. Could they ever bring it to me without fear of my judgment? Words of critique would wither, not nourish.

There comes a moment for many of us when we step outside the lines.

We question what we were taught. Pull back from systems that once defined us. We explore new ideas, new practices, new ways of seeing the world.

It should feel like freedom, but even after leaving a belief system, the internal structure of it can still live inside you. You may no longer follow the rules, but you still feel them, especially when there is some ingrained fear of cosmic karma. You may no longer believe the doctrine, but you still hear the voice.

It shows up in the form of second guessing and needing to justify our choices. We can change environments, communities, even identities, and still carry the same patterns of thought, fear, and approval seeking that were formed there.

Even in a wide open space, you can feel confined. It is very challenging to hear the voice of your higher power when your conditioned brain is accustomed to hearing confirmation from others.

Freedom is not found in rejecting everything that came before. It is found in learning to trust that the divine can speak directly to you. Allowing ideas to float through your psyche without rushing to label them right or wrong, allowing a curiosity to exist without needing immediate certainty.

Journal Prompts

Where in my life have I “broken away” externally, but still feel internal tension?

What beliefs have I rejected, but still feel emotionally influenced by?

When I make decisions, do I feel free, or do I feel like I need permission?

What voices from my past still shape how I evaluate myself or my choices?

What would it feel like to believe something even if it contradicts what I was taught?

Go deeper on one of the following statements.

Write a paragraph just for you:

If your identity depends on proving your past was wrong, your past may still be defining you.

You can leave the system in a moment. It takes time to leave the system behind.

Healing begins when you stop asking permission to trust your own experience with the divine.

You may have left the church building years ago, but has fear of judgment ever truly left your body?

Wounds have a long lasting effect. The earnest love of our overseers doesn’t make them any less susceptible to bad parenting practices or bad doctrine. Because they meant well, loved deeply, and tried hard does not negate that wounds were created.

My dad was my hero and role model in my youth. I cared so very deeply about what he thought of me, which is why it was so confusing to both him and me when we began to have this tension in my 20s, ultimately leading to me cutting off contact with him about three years ago. What I actually yelled at him was, “Get the &%$# off my property.” I think it shocked both of us. I didn’t quite understand why I was rejecting him. I know that he didn’t.

We went for over two years without speaking to each other. It was not until I was in personal therapy that I began to understand that well meaning people can still pass down fear, shame, overcorrection, and unhealthy doctrine.

For the first few months of therapy I bristled when my counselor asked me if I knew what “spiritual abuse” meant. I kept denying and downplaying the role of my father wound. I may not be on speaking terms with him but I still wasn’t going to admit that as a 40 year old man with my own family, I was being held back by daddy wounds.

I now know that to accept and acknowledge my parent wounds is not dishonoring them. It is simply telling the truth about our formation.

My dad and I renewed our relationship two months ago. I did not feel released to begin this Substack until our relationship was restored. It has taken thousands of pages of journaling, therapy, and more than 300 hikes in the woods away from church, religion, and all the clutter that clogs my thinking for me to come to an understanding of my higher power apart from my dad’s voice preaching at me.

This week’s essay, “Coloring Between the Lines,” was one of the first pieces I wrote nine months ago.

ESSAY EXCERPT:

Imagine if, as preteens, I instructed them that true art was about mastering mimicry first, giving them intricate silhouettes to trace and shade. When they brought me the finished product, instead of marveling at their creativity, I graded it like math. “Why did you use this shade of grey to light the sky?” I would scold. “The sun is on the right side of the picture. Why are you not casting a shadow to reflect this image? Haven’t I told you one hundred times before how to draw the perspective of a shadow?”

Over the next few months, we will uncover some areas that may be clear to you now. Others may just begin to be exposed. This week’s essay was about me feeling forced to color in between the lines of religion before there was time for personal intimacy with a creator. The more time I spend around those of us in our 40s raised in Christian homes, I hear similar experiences. Over the next few months, before attempting to jump right back into a deep expression of faith, we will take some time to recognize our hurts, shame, and bad doctrine that accelerated the fracture between our souls and the divine

Well meaning parents often overcorrect. Their own personal fears lash out with strict, often suffocating structure. The list of taboo subjects, TV shows, curse words, and secular friends gets longer each year. Young souls seeking to establish their identity and follow their curiosity find a lot of correction, over parenting, and spiritual dogma pushed upon them. Not just in the home, but it seems like every Sunday school lesson, church small group, and youth group is tied to a cautionary tale about avoiding behaviors that lead to backsliding, repenting for “bad things,” and making our behaviors Christ like. Not much time is spent reinforcing that we are loved just as we are by the divine.

This is a lot of responsibility for a youth who is still trying to discover what it means to engage and interact with a Cosmic being while also going through puberty.

Journal Prompts:

Over the next few months, we are going to gently uncover some of these places in ourselves. Not to condemn our parents, pastors, or churches, but to honestly recognize where shame, fear, or performance disconnected us from authentic spiritual intimacy.

Awareness is not dishonor.
It is the beginning of healing.

Take a few minutes and go back to your earliest recollection of a faith experience. Did you have an encounter with the divine that led to peace, joy, and contentment? Or was your faith experience shaped by fear of stepping out of line and overcorrection from spiritual leadership?

Sketch out the freshest memory of when you learned to perform religion instead of expressing a personal relationship. Was it a mentor, teacher, loved one, or pastor that introduced the conditioning?

It is important to acknowledge that well meaning and loving individuals can mistakenly wound and shame us.

What parts of my spiritual life have been shaped by approval rather than authenticity?

When did a faith practice I once loved begin to feel like an obligation?

Go deeper on one of the following statements. Write a paragraph just for you:

“Approval can teach you to perform, but it rarely teaches you to live.”

“Many of us were taught to monitor behavior before we were taught how to rest in love.”

“As children and teenagers trying to discover identity, curiosity was often met with correction. Questions were treated as rebellion.”

“Many people were introduced to a constrained dictator long before they encountered a loving Father.”

Each coloring book showed their progression. With practice and time, coloring between the lines became natural. Not due to correction but encouragement. My praise kept them drawing. As with many things that give us pleasure and satisfaction, their talent developed. Tracing taught them control. Experimenting with colors created their own aesthetic. No longer needing the silhouette of the giraffe in the Sahara, they began to find their own inspiration.

Today one prefers watercolors on canvas, mixing palettes until just the right color highlights the painting. The other makes jewelry from rocks and stones she finds, smoothing out edges in a tumbler, polishing them with cloth, making beaded bracelets, necklaces, and earrings that turn magically into wrapped presents under the Christmas tree.

The coloring books of their youth served them well during their elemental formation, helping to guide them on their journey. Charcoal on parchment might not inspire a toddler in quite the same way. Not understanding how delicately charcoal needs to be held, the whole set would have been broken in an afternoon, our house full of wails from both them and their mother over broken materials, charcoal on furniture and hieroglyphics on the walls. Tears not art is what would have been made.

Untethered expression would not have served them well in their youth, no more than rigid conformity serves them in their adolescence. Older and more experienced, knowing what their unique individuality brings to the creative surface, they are much more suited for free form art.

Imagine, if as preteens I instructed them that true art was about mastering mimicry first, giving them intricate silhouettes to trace and shade. When they brought me the finished product, instead of marveling at their creativity, I graded it like math. “Why did you use this shade of grey to light the sky?” I would scold. “The sun is on the right side of the picture. Why are you not casting a shadow to reflect this image? I told you one hundred times before how to draw the perspective of a shadow”

You can see it can’t you? In an effort to teach them art, I would have robbed their joy. They would mumble an apology and walk off to correct it like homework to be completed before playing with friends instead of articulating their joy on canvas.

By their teen years they would be so conditioned as to what was expected of them in art that they would either walk away from the practice entirely the moment it stopped being compulsory or become so good at following the rules of order, having learned that the right way to get affirmation and kudos from others was to parrot what was expected, they would become mimics instead of free spirit creatives. Never knowing how to bring art from their soul, only how to find confirmation and applause from others.

Imagine that my daughters broke free from their indoctrinated practice and threw themselves into as many eclectic styles as they could. After finding nourishment for their soul, excitement in the hand, and a desire to express themselves more, they began to practice art off canvas: molding, sculpture, metalwork. Each completed work brings them zeal and joy. Each piece a reflection of their soul in the image they created.

Yet in their minds always would be the words of their early father disapproving of their work. Could they ever bring it to me without fear of my judgement? Words of critique would wither not nourish.

This was the case with my introduction to the God of my understanding. A practice taught to me before an experience created in me.

My deepest passion from my youth has been the divine. Yet my experience never quite colored between the lines. Now in my 40’s, I have a depth and an expression of faith that envelops me. The presence of the Divine Creator is my comfort from my first waking thought until my last conscious breath as the sun sets.

I will forever be grateful to Christianity for it was there in my youth I was introduced to the God of my understanding. Yet I was forced to color in between the lines for far too long for me to feel comfortable expressing myself in a routine practice of religion.

From my youth I was institutionalized to color between the lines. Raised in Latin America by Pentecostal missionaries, and then later as a pastor’s son I was expected to have a certain level of “Christian mimicry” that I never quite was able to pull off. Eventually, coloring outside the lines resulted in punitive punishment. From experience I can tell you that there is no greater way to push a kid out of a faith practice than to correct them for coloring outside the lines on a blank sheet of paper where only you as the parent or the minister know the technique that is expected.

Yet despite the strict and suffocating oversight of my parents and equally criticizing community, I developed a deep faith. This has been my angst for decades. It has taken me thirty years to articulate it. My journals are filled with a generation’s worth of turmoil, angst, beauty, heartbeat, and frustration regarding faith, Christianity and religion.

I have seen and practiced the Protestant religion to its fullest expression. There is much beauty, also much unhealth, so much so that it has made practicing the religion detrimental to my experience of the divine. In many cases those who don’t color between Christian lines appropriately are met with criticism, judgment, and torment.

I welcome you to a journey. Here are my footsteps. I will show you my practice. Let it inspire your own, not so that you may color in between my lines but so that it might show you the way to your own path as the Cosmic Creator is your guide.

In the name of Abba, Gaia and my rabbi Jesus,

A.B. Evangelical

Moment for reflection.

Before you move on to the next article to read, media to scroll or task to complete, give yourself the gift of a few moments of reflection. Crack open your journal while the essay is still fresh. Jot down your initial thoughts.

Are you agitated at the language used?

Did the essay resonate with a something familiar?

Hurt that others like me have had this experience?

Indignation my words?

Most of us are accustomed to consuming knowledge and then moving on with our day. Take 5-7 minutes and put pen to paper. Think at the rate your pen writes.

Tomorrow, for those of you who have chosen to journey deeper you will begin receiving journal prompts to engage with.

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