I don’t believe in the devil, the enemy, demons, or Satan in the way they’re commonly talked about.

I grew up around that language, and I still attend Cornerstone Christian Center. There’s a lot I respect there, especially the focus on community, feeding the poor, and loving your neighbor.

But I don’t agree with the theology around the devil.

So I started thinking it through.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the devil is real.

Where is he? Is he in Hell? Is he roaming the Earth?

If we go with the idea that he’s active in the world, then what does that actually mean?

What kind of authority does he have? What kind of power does he have over people?

Is he:

• omnipresent?

• sovereign?

• able to access our thoughts?

• actively influencing billions of people at the same time?

Because that’s where the logic starts to break down.

For example, I recently heard the idea that “the devil tries to divide marriages.”

That raises a serious question.

If that’s true, then how is that happening at scale?

Is one being influencing millions of relationships simultaneously? That would require a level of presence and control that sounds a lot like omnipresence, which traditionally belongs to God alone.

Even in the Bible, the picture isn’t that simple.

In Job, “the satan” appears more like an accuser or prosecutor within a divine framework, not an independent ruler of evil.

In Revelation, the devil is not ruling Hell but is ultimately judged and cast into it.

So the idea of a sovereign, all-present being actively managing human behavior doesn’t seem consistent, even within the text itself.

At that point, it makes more sense to ask a different question:

What if the language of “the devil” is actually describing something else?

What if it’s a way of talking about patterns that show up in human behavior and relationships?

Things like:

• resentment

• temptation

• ego

• poor communication

• destructive habits

These don’t require a supernatural being to explain them. They’re part of human psychology and social dynamics.

And when we label those patterns as “the devil,” it can sometimes shift responsibility away from our own choices and behaviors.

To be clear, I’m not rejecting everything about the faith or the community I’m part of.

I don’t find the common explanations about the devil to be logically consistent or necessary to explain what we actually see in the world.

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

- Jesus of Nazareth from Luke 6:46

The message from Jesus is pretty clear. Why do you call me Lord when you do not do what I say?

The verse came up recently after listening to a radical guy on the internet. He made a point with the verse, and I have to give it to him; he’s right.

It made me wonder what the hell I was living under the name Christian when I was in my twenties.

You may ask, but Barnaby, you decided to follow Christ when you were 22 and baptized. You believe in the reformed theology of Jesus and realized the Christianity you grew up in was not Christianity.

After processing it, the belief system I grew up in was more Christian than what I was told at 22.

I was more of a Christian in my teens than in my twenties.

I love my enemy, got hit in the face and turned the other cheek, I forgave, I served, I fed the hungry, and I loved my neighbor.

After my “conversion” when I was 22, I did the opposite and added drinking and getting drunk on alcohol, smoking cigarettes, actively watching porn, and was a workaholic. I was a glutton. I hated my sisters, my parents, my brothers, the doctors, and the church I grew up in.

I was deeply bitter and angry.

And you’re telling me that after I was 22, I was a Christian.

What a joke, there’s no way.

Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?

I followed hedonism, nihilism, and fatalism. I mocked Christianity behind closed doors, and I hated my neighbor at church.

I was more of a Christian in my teens than I was in my twenties and even thirties.

Today, I am agnostic.

I can’t comfortably say I am a Christian and call Jesus Lord.

I wasn’t doing what he said, and I called him Lord, pretending I was following him.

Now, if you’re a Christian, keep pursuing Christ.

Jesus was radically different because he preached to care for the poor, to feed them, clothe them, and that the kingdom of God was theirs.

Behaviorally, I was more of a Christian when I went to Mexico and Haiti, when I turned the other cheek, when I took care of my body, when I waited until marriage, and so on.

I didn’t say to myself, " Self, you can do whatever you want, God’s sovereignty will guide you back to life. It doesn’t matter what you do. Get drunk, be bitter, withhold forgiveness, and so on. God will call those his own. If you really are chosen, He’d keep you.”

It was my selfless behavior that oriented me to be a Christian. When I became older, I became selfish.

Now, I reflect and regret how much time I wasted pursuing things that didn’t fill me.

I’d say now I’m agnostic because nothing in my life in my twenties reflected that of Christianity.

It was a mere label.

I still have questions about the resurrection, and I’m not sure if I believe it. My thing is, if I truly believe in the resurrection, then what does it do in my life?

Does it make me a better person? Does it modify my behaviors? Does it make me love people more? Does it allow me to sin less? Does it allow me to forgive more?

What exactly does it do?

By having a belief that a man miraculously rose from the dead.

That’s what I’m unsure about. Also, hear me out. Today’s teaching of Jesus is radically different from what was taught two thousand years ago!

I am opposed to modern Christianity, and yet I go to a modern church. Why?

One, I do want my mind to change.

I’m accepting that I may not be labeled-agnostic forever.

Two, I desperately need community. It’s too hard to live life on my own and be isolated. So I’m open to changing my orientation by going to church.

I want to love and feed the poor. I want to help those in need and remind them that the kingdom of God is theirs.

I want to practice forgiveness, and I want to return to an orientation of love.

I guess I say all that to get back to my roots when I was in my teens and open my heart back to the world and love and help the world.

With more discretion now and orient my life in love.

Anyway, I wanted to get this off my chest. I was talking aloud, processing this, and I was like I need to write about this, so here I am writing.

Next time, we’ll talk about Paul and how only 7 letters were actually written by him, and the other 6 were written by his followers.

Also, Paul didn’t convert to Christianity. He was very much a Jew.

:D

Stuff I’ve been thinking about, so we’ll talk more about that stuff next time.

Lately, I’ve been researching evolution. It started in a strange place, watching fish and insects on TikTok and wondering what I was actually looking at.

The more I looked into it, the more questions it raised.

At the same time, I’ve been wrestling with my faith, especially the idea of the resurrection and what it means to actually believe it.

Right now, the most honest thing I can say is that I’m agnostic. Not closed off, just trying to understand.

Science has given me a framework for how things work. Plate tectonics shows that continents move inches every year. Over millions of years, that adds up. So the idea that the Earth is only a few thousand years old doesn’t hold up for me.

From everything we can measure, the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. That’s not just a casual theory; it’s based on consistent evidence.

And honestly, that number is hard to comprehend.

But even with all of that, there are still questions science doesn’t fully answer, like how life began, or why anything exists at all.

So now I’m sitting in this space between understanding how things work and wondering what it all means.

When I look at religion, it seems like different frameworks people use to interpret reality. Christianity claims to be the truth. But so do other religions.

And if multiple systems all claim certainty, it makes me question whether they are describing reality itself or interpreting it.

If that’s the case, then the question becomes: which framework, if any, do I choose?

Right now, I find myself drawn to Judaism, the history, the language, and the continuity. There’s something grounded about it.

What stands out to me is how it views human nature.

Some theologies, like original sin or certain Calvinist models, explain the world by assuming human depravity. And I get why people can be destructive, selfish, even cruel.

But I don’t see humanity as fundamentally depraved. If that were true, the world would be far more chaotic than it is. Most people aren’t out to destroy each other. They’re inconsistent, conflicted, and often driven by competing forces.

Judaism captures that tension with two ideas: Yetzer HaTov and Yetzer HaRa.

Yetzer HaTov is the good inclination. the part of us that exercises restraint, thinks long-term, cares about others, and aligns with values.

Yetzer HaRa is the so-called “evil” inclination, but it’s not evil in a supernatural sense. It’s impulse, desire, appetite, ego, and survival drive. The same forces that build families, businesses, and civilizations can also lead to excess and destruction when unchecked.

So instead of seeing humanity as broken at its core, this framework sees us as divided, capable of both alignment and misalignment.

And that feels closer to what I actually observe.

Because when I look around, I don’t see people as inherently evil.

I see people as human.

I also like the idea of Teshuva, which means return.

And the meaning of sin, Chet, which means missing the mark.

So when we chet, we miss the mark. And then we return to what aligns us.

For me, that alignment is Jesus.

Not just the label “Jesus,” but what he represents, the pattern. Truth, restraint, sacrifice, not folding under pressure, not playing the game even when it costs you.

Am I still wrestling with Jesus?

Yes.

I want to believe. I want certainty. But I don’t understand the resurrection, and I don’t fully understand his life.

And I don’t believe in penal substitution, the idea that Jesus died as a sacrifice to pay for sin.

That framework doesn’t make sense to me.

Jesus didn’t die for our sins as some kind of transaction. He died because of our sins, because of human systems, power, fear, and control.

He challenged people, and they killed him for it.

That feels more real than the idea that God needed blood to forgive.

To be honest, I don’t really understand the sacrificial system at all.

The last time I missed the mark, I didn’t go sacrifice an animal. I didn’t need to.

I recognized it. I felt it. I adjusted.

So the idea that Jesus had to be sacrificed for me… doesn’t fully land.

Right now, I’m not rejecting everything.

I’m just trying to figure out what’s actually true.

I live with a mental illness. Before it was Bipolar Type 1, and now it’s rediagnosed to Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type.

The first is a mood disorder with high highs and low lows, and the second is the same thing, but with psychosis or a thought disorder.

I was diagnosed when I was 17 years old after coming back from Haiti on a mission trip.

Over the years, I was only being treated for half the symptoms of my condition. I treated bipolar disorder with mainly Lithium and Seroquel, which were effective, but I needed Invega to help with the suicidal ideations and psychosis that I experienced.

I guess we can divide my life into three segments: The college years, the NC experience, and the suicide attempt.

When I went to college, I was full of passion and energy. I went to Liberty University in Virginia, where I decided to go because I had a lot of trauma in CT at the time.

I’ll spare you details because I have talked about it a lot.

Anyway, I went a year and a half without medications after my initial diagnosis of Bipolar.

I did pretty well in school as I pursued Nursing, and later English. I had about a 3.0 GPA, and everything was fine until my illness took over.

Essentially, I had a manic episode during the winter break of my sophomore year. And, I couldn’t recover after that. I was placed on medication again, and it wasn’t the right cocktail of meds.

From there, about a couple of months into my semester, I had another episode and broke a few rules, and then I was reported to the RA that I had exposed myself in my dormmate’s dorm room.

That led to my being kicked out and banned from Liberty University.

Okay, so we have that out of the way.

During my time in CT, I was able to get on Lithium and Seroquel, which stabilized me for the most part.

Then I moved to NC with two bags of clothes and a train ticket.

I did above and beyond there. I maintained jobs, and I function highly in a competitive sales environment.

I did well for myself.

So here’s what I want to highlight. No one knew I had a mental illness. It was my secret. By not telling anyone, I proved to myself and the people back home that I can function well with work.

Now you have my suicide attempt when I was 30. It’s important to highlight that before my attempt, I was assaulted three times in a mental hospital, and I lost a tooth because of the assault.

I was pretty devastated over everything. The lack of control, the injustice, and the shame because of the mental illness.

I tried killing myself, and from there I survived and was given another opportunity at life.

Now we look at post suicide. I was working in healthcare for ten months. I shared with the supervisor my condition and story, and they worked with me.

Here’s my point: I was functioning and held down a job despite the fact that I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder.

If I hadn’t told anyone, then nobody would have suspected that I had struggled with mental illness.

Now, I just quit my job last week. To be frank, it was burning me out and getting annoying. Two things that happened that made my job frustrating: first, the dryer broke, so we couldn’t dry clothes, and second, the shit that I had to clean up and constantly clean for both of my clients.

I enjoyed my job, and I appreciated the pay, but it was getting old quickly, always cleaning them up.

So I quit.

I drive for Lyft, which I’m going to do in a bit. But I couldn’t take it anymore, even after reducing my hours.

I live with a mental illness; it’s in remission right now. No one would know that I live with it, and I can do jobs. Not only can I do them, but I can function at a high level doing them.

It’s a blessing and a curse because I have the competence paradox, where I appear competent, but internally I struggle to maintain myself, and no one suspects otherwise.

All that to say, I live with a mental illness, and I can work.

Which is great.

If you struggle with mental illness, there’s hope. Give it time and make sure you take your meds. You’ll be able to manage it. Take my story, for example.

Thanks for reading till next time.

Random dream, but nothing significant.

Though I did think about something interesting.

The question is: What if I let it all go?

Let go of the expectation that I have.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I should wander and even commit suicide because it’s all pointless.

Or, not take my meds because none of this matters.

I’m saying the core of worrying.

The very expectation that something should or should not happen.

That’s what I mean when I say I should let go.

It’ll be a week today since I quit my job. All of my major bills have been paid, or at least the most recent ones that are due.

I guess as of right now, I don’t have to worry. But if I’m not disciplined with Lyft, I’m not going to be able to pay my next few bills.

I have a job interview in Wethersfield for a telecom company selling ATT and other products.

It’s an hour away, and I get paid $600 a week.

I’m not excited for the role, and I’m not sure if I want to pursue it.

Beggars can’t be choosers?

Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m not going to pursue it and find something closer.

And then there was Trader Joe's, where I applied and even got a phone screening.

It went okay. I asked pretty general questions, but the manager responded to my questions that they were a part of the job posting.

I felt stupid because I wasn’t prepared for the call.

I’m almost sure I didn’t get the job.

It’s okay. This is where I let go of my expectations. Who knows, maybe they’ll consider me.

I have an hour before I start driving for Lyft.

I guess to have an object-oriented thought. I was thinking of this expectation thought as a balloon.

I could drift in the wind and land where it takes me.

Or I could be a hot air balloon. I could decide how much air gets fed to the balloon and where it goes.

I’m not sure how it works, but anyway, at least I’m not drifting in the wind.

Or the opposite of a balloon. What if I’m not a tree, planted in the ground?

I’m rooted in my conviction and stand tall where I am.

The problem with that thought is that I’m not mobile. A tree doesn’t move around.

So what if I’m like a sailboat?

I don’t have control of the wind, i.e., job offers, interviews, randomness, other people’s decisions, but I do have control over when you raise the sail (Lyft, applying, showing up). The angle of the sail (effort, preparation, discipline. Whether you sit there complaining about the wind or actually use it.

That’s my 3 am thought. I’m sure it will get better. It could get worse or stay the same.

But I have to try and keep going.

I’ll keep you posted on how things turn out.

Till then.

Barnaby

Crown of the thorns on his head as he makes his bed among the dead

He treads life and death

Carrying the weight of my pain

Lungs inhaling the shrill of the air

I take these pills to shrink my despair

Your ears are unable to hear

Hanging there facing the betrayal of 30 silvers

Judas

Worms crawl around me

They squirm inside my skull

They draw the life from me

Leeches on the outside

Teeth like daggers

My pale skin once filled with color

A day here a day there

They're there when I go to work

They're there when I pay a bill

They're there at the shrill of breathing

When will I awake from this nightmare?

All I want is to hear her heartbeat.

Getting lost in her eyes.

Holding hands to never let go for eternity

The dread of existence is not having you

You are the apple of my eye

I cry knowing I will never meet you

Not perfect

Not completing me

No a woman who holds me through this misery

Died when I said the pain was too unbearable

Terrible, terrible, terrible

A life lived with hope for the tomorrow

Choke by the vines of sadness

The badness of signs around me

Woke, alive, living drinking from the river of life

Even though I had this strife

I ended up a man walking dead with a knife

Let these words be heard, what is my life?

How do we live?

Why are we here?

What does it mean to share?

If you had asked me, I’d be up at 2 am writing about Christianity and understanding the core message of it, then I would have questioned my entire point of why I lean more agnostic than Christian.

The last ten years, I’ve been on a journey of understanding my faith, or the lack of it.

As for me, it seems like one of the ways that God, the Universe, or Jesus speaks to me is through my dreams.

I tend to have vivid dreams that allow me to analyze and understand what my mind is processing.

Tonight, I had a dream that I got a new job. It was about selling and delivering goods to people’s homes.

My boss was a cool guy.

He told me he was a Christian. He was very passionate about it, too.

I told him I was a Christian, but I used to be agnostic because I simply did not know and didn’t claim to have certainty.

He went on telling me he was a Pastor, as well. I heard him preach, and one of his core messages was that I was loved.

Not only was I loved, but I had worth and value.

It didn’t matter about my past, it didn’t matter my unbelief, and it didn’t matter that I struggled with habits now.

All that could change because of Jesus and how he defeated death on the Cross.

Then I woke up.

I layed there wondering what the heck?

I wrote about me questioning the resurrection a couple of months ago. I moved towards being an agnostic. I thought people who proclaimed to be Christian were kind of crazy.

Here I am telling my boss in this dream that I was a Christian, but used to be an agnostic.

Anyway, I don’t understand it.

I don’t understand why we are here. I don’t understand our minds or even my mind.

5 years ago, I survived a suicide. 3 years ago, I lost my Dad. 2 years ago, I lost my sister to murder.

I was given a diagnosis according to the DSM-V that can and should be debilitating. I tried going on Social Security Disability, but the judge denied me.

I tried to escape my life by suicide because of the pain I had felt. I tried walking away from it all by going homeless and abandoning everything, but I realized there was nothing good about doing that.

I guess the reason why I feel so compelled to write tonight is that I want to let you know that you are loved.

I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what even compelled me to think it.

I guess the Bible answer is Jesus.

I’m trying to understand my faith. I’m trying to understand the culture of Christianity and the mechanism by which we try to live a life that honors Christ.

Jakob Wedesten on TikTok responded to a comment about how I’ve deconstructed and how hol’s made me.

It was cool because he has a following and a few viral videos, and very passionate about his orthodox belief.

Anyway, he mentioned how deconstruction can be a beautiful process.

It doesn’t have to be hollow. Because when you get to who Jesus was and is and what he did in his life and on the Cross.

You are left with an understanding that God sent his Son to rescue and reorient you to new life.

I like to think of it as a compass and a map that we are all born with. The compass and map give us a direction of where we are going, but ultimately, where it leads is not fulfilling.

Yet, Jesus comes and reorients that compass and updates our internal map to His likeness.

I don’t believe I am dead in sin or that I am evil.

If that were the case, then I wouldn’t be writing this or be concerned about my own salvation.

One of the reasons why I write is to prove to you and myself that I’m not sick. That I’m not mentally ill. That I can articulate my thoughts and reason like a normal human being.

Another reason why I write is to give a reminder that if I ever did lose my mind again, then I would have a reference to the clarity that I had in my life.

I survived suicide, I survived mania. I survived psychosis. My mind betrayed me. Yet I still stand and write tonight because I am loved, and no matter my past, today I am forgiven and given a new opportunity to change my life.

Life update: I quit my job at Mosaic as a Direct Support Professional. I was there for about ten months.

And everything was fine. It was just that I was burning out. And the thing that broke the camel’s back for me was that I had to deal with explosive poop from my client.

It was disgusting, and I questioned why I was in this industry.

Not that I couldn’t handle it. I did, and we worked it out, but it was one of those things where I genuinely didn’t want to be responsible for the lives of the population.

I served those with intellectual disabilities and autism. It was a great job because I was doing something that impacted people around me.

I enjoyed sales, and I’m going to get back to it, realizing that the healthcare field isn’t really a field I want to go into.

I think for me, when I came back from Haiti 18 years ago, I wanted to do something that was bigger than me and altruistic.

I concluded that nursing allowed me to do that.

However, I am a systems thinker, and I love solving problems.

I tried nursing, and if I tried hard enough, I could have done it, but it would have been fitting a square peg in a round hole.

Sales and communication come more naturally to me.

I enjoy the hunt and that opportunity to land a sale to hone my craft. I miss it.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve landed tonight. Thank you for coming along my journey and allowing me to showcase my mind and my faith.

I don’t know what it all means, but I do know that God loves us and has forgiven us through His Son, Christ.

Till next time, have a good night.

Stitch by stitch, something took shape within me, an entity that grew louder as my environment fed it, until it became a monster I could no longer ignore. The sixth of six, I entered this world with innocence.

I was seventeen when I first met The Noise, a presence that had always been there, waiting, shaped by the chaos around me until it finally found its voice.

It started as a whisper.
Then a pattern.
Then a certainty.

I wasn’t just thinking anymore, I was being shown.

I was going to change the world.

The Noise made itself known to me after a trip to Haiti.
It didn’t let me sleep.

It fed me visions of greatness—whispering that the world was mine to take.

It led me to a mountaintop and told me that all the kingdoms of the world could be mine… if I gave myself to it.

It grew louder.

And it wasn’t alone.

One of its companions—Paranoia—followed close behind.

Suddenly, everyone was watching me.

The CIA was tracking me.
Facebook was monitoring me.

I wasn’t just living anymore.

I was being watched.

Another companion followed, The Weight, an anvil on my chest, heavy with the certainty that I was never enough.

It took my convictions, my sense of who I could become, and turned every failure into something that pressed against my soul.

It started young, an imprint I didn’t choose. As I grew, The Noise, Paranoia, and The Weight turned it into leverage.

Leverage my teenage mind could not escape.

It was during that time that I was placed in a mental hospital, where doctors knew all too well of The Noise, Paranoia, and The Weight.

A cluster of symptoms they called schizoaffective—somewhere between psychosis and mania.

The doctors saw something in me. They told me I could live a functional life—that I could quiet it, manage it, survive it—with medication.

Even with the chaos these forces brought, I had grown used to their game—their promises, their lies, the illusion that I could become everything under their spell.

The Noise thrashed, along with its companions, at the thought of losing its vessel.

It wouldn’t disappear.

Only fade.

Quieter.

Waiting in the background.

I weighed the options before me.

Should I hold onto what The Noise promised, keep its companions close, or step into something quieter, something stable… something unknown?

I chose the unknown.

Day by day, I made it a habit.

I took the medication.

My mind began to clear, like a sea finally settling after a storm.

But the calm came with a cost.

The man I was becoming felt slower. Heavier.

The weight settled into my body.

And something else slipped away with it, my passion.

The fire that once burned through me dimmed into something quieter, something harder to recognize.

And still…

The Noise remained. Not gone. Just quieter.

Waiting in the background, promising that its version of life was better.

Years passed.

And in a way, the doctors were right.

I built something that looked like a life.

I found success.

I learned how to live within the boundaries of medication, how to function, how to show up, how to exist without being consumed.

Slowly, things began to shift again.

The weight didn’t hold me the same way it once did.

My body followed.

And somewhere along the way, pieces of me started to return.

Not all at once.

Not like before.

But enough to notice.

Enough to remember what it felt like to care again.

The passion didn’t come back as a fire.

It came back as embers.

Small.

Quiet.

But alive.

The snow has finally melted here in New England. Spring is here.

Right now, I work in healthcare as a Direct Support Professional. I pass meds and take care of the basic needs of my clients. It pays the bills, and there are parts of it I genuinely respect.

But I don’t want to do this forever.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to help people in a meaningful way. Somewhere along the way, I realized that dream doesn’t match the reality. There’s a lot of responsibility, and the day-to-day work, especially dealing with bodily waste, wears on you.

So I’m transitioning.

I’m looking into going back to school for IT, and I’m also exploring starting a business.

I’ve been working on an idea called LeadGuard. The concept is simple: help small businesses respond to leads faster so they don’t lose potential customers. It’s less about generating leads and more about not wasting the ones you already have.

I have a meeting next week with a software company to see if this could actually become something real, whether I build it myself or rebrand an existing solution.

So that’s where I’m at practically.

Mentally and spiritually… it’s a little more complicated.

Last night I had a vivid dream. It jumped across different settings—conflict, religion, family, identity. It didn’t feel random. It felt like my brain was trying to process something deeper, even if I don’t fully understand it.

I woke up feeling a pull toward Christianity.

But here’s the tension: I don’t feel compelled to practice it in the traditional sense.

I haven’t been going to church consistently. When I have gone recently, I’ve walked out. Not because I don’t believe in God or Jesus, but because something about the structure and culture doesn’t sit right with me anymore.

When I was younger, I was all in. Church, Bible, community, I enjoyed it.

Over time, that changed. Especially as I saw how the church handled people dealing with mental illness.

I live with a condition that’s managed through medication, along with self-awareness and learning how my own mind works. Right now, I’m stable. I’m thinking clearly.

But I still find myself asking bigger questions.

Five years ago, I attempted suicide. At that moment, something in me believed I couldn’t continue. I took lithium with the intention of ending my life.

If I hadn’t told my roommate what I did, I wouldn’t be here writing this.

That’s a strange thing to sit with.

I’m grateful to be alive. At the same time, I don’t fully understand what led me there, or what exactly brought me back.

So now I’m here.

Working a job that isn’t my long-term path. Building toward something new.
Questioning old beliefs. Trying to make sense of my past.

I don’t have clean answers.

But I’m still moving.

The goal in life is to scratch the itch of solving problems. I enjoy building apps with Lovable and I want to sell again.

I have thoughts that I could make a lot of money in the future.

Who knows, but I keep plugging away.

The year is going by very quickly and Q1 is almost over.

Here’s where I’ve landed with my faith. Do I believe in God? Yes. More specifically. Do I believe in Jesus? Also, yes.

Earlier this year I rustled the leaves by saying I don’t know if the resurrection is real. And, if it was real, how would it change my life?

Well, first off to believe in a claim that Jesus was resurrected from the DEAD is extremely extraordinary.

It doesn’t happen at all in life.

In fact, I don’t know the last time a person rose from the dead.

I’m not saying it didn’t happen. The claim that it did happen makes it that it is true.

I guess for me where I landed was the belief of Christianity is something I inherited. I was told Bible stories and I believed them.

Earlier this year, I reexamined what I actually believed and I guess you could say I deconstructed. And, if I had to be honest, I started the deconstruction journey about 10 years ago in NC.

I was 25 and life was going pretty well. I started to question my devotion to church and by the time I was thirty, strictly examining my life, I determined I wasn’t a Christian.

Plus, at that point I was pretty upset about church and the shallowness of it all.

Anyway, I’ve wrestled with what I believed and questioned if I truly believe in Christianity.

I still wrestle with it and I guess what I have concluded is that the way I live matters more than where I’ve landed intellectually.

If I had to put a label on it, I would say I’m agnostic Christian. Meaning that I simply don’t know the metaphysics of Jesus, but I’m going to believe and identify as a Christian.

Here’s my confession, I have a hard time with church. Last Sunday I went to a Presbyterian church in New Haven and it was strange. I got uncomfortable and left early.

I tried non-denominational churches, and baptist churches. They’re okay, but nothing life changing. To me it’s a social formula for Sundays. Do I appreciate it? Nope.

I understand that it’s probably not wise to isolate and not go to church. And, community is important.

I’m hopeful one day I’ll find my community.

That day hasn’t happened yet.

Work is good, I’ve been here for 9 whole months already.

I’m doing a good job and being reliable. I worked Lyft for 6 years and then for the 4 years I was doing different kinds of jobs.

Working at Mosaic has been the longest job I’ve had in 10 years not counting Lyft.

Only because I was my own boss and I don’t know, I did my best to get by.

This year it’s my goal to make an impact health wise. I want to get rid of this weight I have. I’m currently 308.

Sometimes I build apps for ideas I have using Lovable.dev. It occurred to me that I could build my own fitness app and that’s what I did.

The site to the app is https://endurova.lovable.app.

If you want you can check it out and tell me what you think.

I’m pretty proud it and now I need to use it consistently.

Well, that’s pretty much it. I’ll circle back next Quarter for an update.

We all live as functional agnostics.

I’m agnostic, and it’s strangely freeing to finally land somewhere that actually matches how I’ve been living for years.

This didn’t happen overnight. It’s probably been over a decade in the making.

For a long time, I questioned whether I really believed the Gospel because my life didn’t reflect the certainty I was supposed to have.

When I was younger, I had a habit with explicit material that consumed me. It came with a lot of shame, a lot of hiding, and eventually a lot of self-loathing.

It even got to the point where I wanted to take my life because I felt worthless for not being a “leader” or a “strong Christian.”

That’s hard to write. But it’s true.

Growing up in the kind of Christianity I did also inflated my ego in subtle ways. Even my name, Barnaby, became part of a story.

It’s a unique name, and early on the narrative was that I was born into Christianity, raised with principles, trained to be a leader.

There’s nothing wrong with my name. But it’s a heavy name if you take the story seriously. And I did.

I lived with constant pressure to perform, to prove I was exceptional, to justify the story.

So let me rephrase my introduction more honestly.

For years, I lived as a functional agnostic while calling myself a Christian.

I’m Barnaby Alkire. I live a life where I don’t have all the answers, and I understand that I don’t know how everything works.

The word for that is agnostic.

• The resurrection? I don’t know.

• The virgin birth? I don’t know.

• Judgment? I don’t know.

• Jesus’ miracles? I don’t know.

• God? I don’t know.

• The Holy Spirit? I don’t know.

• Death? I don’t know.

• Hell? I don’t know.

And with all that being said, I’m no longer willing to profess certainty about things I don’t actually know.

Here’s my challenge to Christian readers.

If you truly possess the truth and certainty about reality, why wouldn’t you share it? And not just occasionally, but constantly?

If you really know for sure that hell exists and people are headed there, why aren’t you warning everyone, all the time, that there is damnation for a life not submitted to Christ?

If you’re not doing that, what does your behavior say about what you actually believe?

I don’t say this as an insult. I say it as an observation. Most of us live like functional agnostics. We say “I know,” but we act like “I’m not sure.”

And then lately I’ve also been thinking about this whole Epstein thing, mostly because my algorithm seems determined to make sure I never forget he existed.

Was he a depraved human being? Yes.
Did he do horrific things, based on the evidence? Yes.

According to the Bible, he will be judged one day. We all will.

But what does that judgment actually look like?

I know this isn’t a standard biblical position, but here’s where I land right now.

If God is a Father, and if He created everyone, you, me, Epstein, even Hitler, is He really going to discard His own creation forever? Is the final word truly eternal disposal?

I don’t think so.

I believe there is judgment. I also believe there is restoration.

I imagine judgment not as God finally getting to torture the bad people, but as the full unveiling of truth. Being shown the real impact of what we’ve done. The real harm. The real pain. Not to crush us, but to heal what’s broken and twisted in us.

Yes, I know. Heretical.

But here’s the practical question people always ask next: if you believe that, can you just live however you want?

Not really.

It’s not in my nature to be Hitler or Epstein. And while I do share humanity with them, we all do, I also live in a body, a mind, and a social world where actions have real consequences. Harm is still harm. Responsibility is still responsibility. Even without eternal torture hanging over the equation.

My point isn’t to erase justice.

My point is to take away the fear-based version of it.
To take away hell as a threat.
To take away the idea that morality only works if terror is doing the motivating.

Fear didn’t make me honest.
Fear didn’t make me whole.
Fear made me perform, hide, and eventually collapse.

Living without pretending to have cosmic certainty feels more grounded. More human. More truthful.

I don’t know how the universe ultimately works.

I don’t know what ultimately exists. I don’t know how judgment works. I don’t know if God is personal, impersonal, or a cosmic prank. But my intuition leans toward restoration over annihilation, meaning over cruelty, coherence over absurdity.

And for the first time, I’m done pretending my uncertainty needs a costume.

Lately, I’ve said that I’m not sure about the resurrection. Not because I believe it isn’t true, but because it is a historical claim that, if taken seriously, reshapes the entire framework of Christianity.

Many people who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus seem to hold it casually. I don’t. I’m contending with what such a claim would actually mean for my life.

I’ve slid into agnosticism, not because I reject God or faith, and not because I’m trying to be edgy or noncommittal. I’ve landed here because honesty matters more to me than certainty. Agnosticism, for me, is not saying “nothing is true.” It’s saying, “I will not pretend to know what I do not.”

What agnosticism has not done is turn me into a nihilist. I refuse the idea that uncertainty means nothing matters. In fact, the reason I won’t fake belief is that meaning matters too much. Responsibility, morality, truth, and the shape of my life still carry weight, even when metaphysical certainty does not.

I have a couple of people in my life who are walking with me in this wrestling.

One argument I’ve heard is that calling the resurrection “extraordinary” implies atheism, because if God created reality, then resurrection should not be extraordinary at all. That isn’t what I’m saying.

We do not witness people rising from the dead today.

We are not documenting contemporary resurrections.

That doesn’t settle the question, but it does raise one.

What I wrestle with in Christianity is the idea that correct doctrine is a prerequisite for knowing Christ. According to one friend, the primary purpose of the gospel is not avoiding hell, not even eternal life, and not a new set of behaviors, but knowing Christ and participating in his purpose.

That purpose is the reconciliation of all creation to God.

The fundamental misunderstanding of Creation and Christ is treating them as a transaction.

Romans 8, 2 Corinthians, and Ephesians 1 describe the gospel as cosmic in scope. God’s purpose is to unite all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. Paul is drawing from the Psalms here. He isn’t inventing this framework.

So the question becomes: how do we know Christ?

Second Corinthians 5 speaks of a new creation through the resurrection. Participation in that new creation is described as union with Christ. John 15 uses the image of a branch abiding in the vine. Paul is describing a movement from old creation into new, a gift initiated by God.

My friend’s point is that many Christians reverse this emphasis. They make the secondary benefits of the gospel primary.

And yet, what I’m continually told is that I must first accept the resurrection as true.

Scripture is offered to support that, and that’s fine.

Another friend sent me a video by Jordan Peterson on the story of Jacob and the origin of the name Israel.

In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with God all night. He refuses to let go until he is blessed. He survives the encounter, but his hip is dislocated, and he walks away limping.

If faith leaves you unchanged, unmarked, and uninjured, it may not be faith at all. Jacob walks away wounded because the encounter was real.

Jacob doesn’t arrive with the correct doctrine. He doesn’t resolve metaphysics. He wrestles.

His new name becomes Israel—one who wrestles with God.

Agnosticism is not where I stop. It is where I refuse to lie while I stay in the fight. Jacob doesn’t walk away with explanations. He walks away wounded, renamed, and still engaged. If Israel means one who wrestles with God, then uncertainty is not the absence of faith. It may be the cost of taking God seriously.

I’m wrestling the resurrection:

– What kind of claim is it?

– What kind of reality does it imply?

– What kind of moral demand does it make?

– Can belief be honest rather than performative?

If the resurrection is true, what kind of life does it demand? And am I allowed to approach that demand honestly?

I’ve seen people with thousands of followers and “friends.” It’s not real, guys. And, basing your identity on a number in your profile seems juvenile.

Then there is my faith. I’ve identified exactly what I grew up in and the machine behind the mechanism in America. I call it a courtroom model, which is based on penal substitution. A fancy way of saying that there needed to be a sacrifice like Jesus on the cross to substitute God’s justice for mankind.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not going to believe in a courtroom reality when there needs to be divine justice. I don’t think life is meaningless, and I do think there is virtue.

The other place I landed is my understanding of the resurrection of Jesus. It’s an extraordinary claim to understand that Jesus died and then rose again on the third day, defeating sin and death for once and for all.

I’d questioned those who have certainty in their faith about whether they've ever examined this miracle and understood that believing it makes it a grand belief to comprehend.

Do I believe the gospel is false? I don’t necessarily believe it’s false. I guess if I’m being skeptical about the mechanism of assent and the courtroom framework of justice, then one could say I don’t believe in the gospel or think it’s false.

Here’s where I’ve landed, and this helps me sleep at night. There is a God, Jesus is a real man, the movement that started two thousand years ago hasn’t gone away, and, based on my existence, there is a choice to live in compassion for your neighbor and to orient your life toward goodness.

Now, the details are what I’m skeptical about. I don’t believe the gospel is about being born into a state of defiance or guilt, needing atonement for that state, blood being spilt for that condition, and then having a correct belief to enter into heaven.

As I write, I feel like a lot of pressure has been taken off my chest. For so long, I have wondered what life is about and why I do what I do. Now, I’m more at peace with saying I genuinely don’t know, and I’m okay living in that uncertainty.

All I know is that I’m alive today. I know that love out there exists, and I know that I can show that love to people around me and lift the tide of my own despair and the despair around me because of my actions towards righteousness and pursuing what is good.

Could this be the devil putting a veil over my eyes? Yeah, could be. Could I be wrong? No doubt. However, I’m not going to pretend to wear a label of Christianity to appease my conscience and those around me.

To set the record straight, I do not identify as a Christian. Does that make me an atheist? Nope. More like an agnostic. If we have to play with labels, then agnostic fits. I simply do not know, and I’m not going to sit here preaching certainty.

Now I have my own ideas of hell, God, Jesus, and churches.

But I’m not trying to deconvert anyone. I’m not saying I hate anyone, or that people should stop practicing Christianity.

If anything, I’m more jealous and envious of the person who does call themselves Christian and is following a creed or doctrine to help them sleep at night.

To live in a way of certainty, as many of my Christian friends live, is honorable.

I know for me I cannot subscribe to the idea of certainty.

Not because I’m trying to be contrarian or be defiant. I think it was a natural progression of my walk through life. About 10 years ago, I stopped reading my Bible regularly. And a few years ago, I began to feel detached from the church. In addition, I stopped praying.

And then, recently, thinking about my walk in life, I came to see the mechanism many Christians believe in: a divine courtroom.

In my understanding, growing up, we are all guilty.

We need a savior.

Jesus pays for our sins with his blood.

Now he gives me a new heart, and I tell others about the good news to win souls for Christ.

I’m sure there are more details, but that’s the gist of it.

If you believe that, more power to you.

I don’t believe we are born evil or bent towards worshipping ourselves as gods.

I simply don’t believe that.

I feel like we are born with a map and a compass. We have a direction in our lives, and you can place any worldview into this metaphor. Now, I genuinely believe that what Jesus preached and how he lived his life reorients the compass and the map.

Do I follow Jesus? Yes. Do I understand the resurrection and the core understanding of penal substitution and why that matters? No, and I’m okay with admitting that.

Jesus is compelling to model life after. It seems like the most beneficial thing to do, given the reality we live in. We must decide how to treat our neighbor and how to understand the reason why we are living.

Is it simply to wait for Jesus to come back and be on our best behavior, so that one day we’ll live in bliss?

It’s shallow to follow Jesus like that. And, it’s transactional.

I say a prayer, and then yes, God accepts me. I do not think that’s true.

In my humble opinion, God will look at your actions and intent. Where were you harboring hate? Where were you lying? Where were you cheating? And so on.

I refuse to lie about certainty I don’t have, but I refuse to abandon responsibility. I’m taking responsibility for how I live without outsourcing my conscience to fear.

Anyway, that’s all I have for tonight. If you pray, I welcome your prayers for my life.

It’s an argument against fear doing moral work it was never meant to do.

I grew up understanding “sin” as rule-breaking backed by punishment. Do the wrong thing, go to hell. Do the right thing, get approved. That framework shaped how I viewed everything from sexuality to habits to faith itself.

But once you remove hell from the equation, sin doesn’t disappear. It just stops pretending to be a legal system and becomes something more honest:

misalignment.

Not evil.

Not condemned.

Not damned.

Just out of alignment with the kind of life a person is trying to live.

What Misalignment Actually Means

Misalignment isn’t about violating a rule. It’s about living in a way that quietly erodes you.

A behavior can be socially approved and still be misaligned.

A behavior can be socially controversial and still be aligned.

The difference isn’t labels. It’s outcomes.

Misalignment shows up when something:

gives short-term relief but long-term cost

fragments you instead of integrating you

requires secrecy to survive

numbs instead of restores

works against your own stated values

That applies to porn habits.

It applies to money and work.

It applies to spirituality.

And yes, it applies to sexuality and gender too.

Bringing in the Gay and Trans Umbrella (Without Fear)

Here’s where things usually get dishonest.

In fear-based theology, gay and trans identities are treated as automatic sin, regardless of outcomes, integrity, or lived reality. Hell is what makes that claim enforceable.

Remove hell, and the question changes completely.

The question is no longer:

“Is this forbidden?”

It becomes:

“Is this aligned?”

And alignment is not decided by orientation or identity. It’s decided by how someone is actually living.

A gay or trans person is not misaligned by existing.

They are misaligned only if their way of living:

increases fragmentation

deepens self-hatred

requires constant denial

damages their capacity to love or be loved

forces them to live dishonestly

And here’s the part people avoid saying out loud:

For many people, suppressing their sexuality or gender identity is the misalignment.

Depression. Dissociation. Collapse. Chronic shame.

Those are not signs of holiness. They’re signs of fracture.

The Same Questions Apply to Everyone

This framework doesn’t create special rules for queer people. It removes special targeting.

The same alignment questions apply to:

a straight person using porn compulsively

a married pastor living a double life

a trans person navigating transition

a gay couple building a stable, honest life

No exemptions. No scapegoats.

Universal Alignment Questions

These are the questions that matter, regardless of orientation or identity.

1. Does this way of living reduce or increase my suffering over time? Not today. Over months and years.

2. Am I moving toward myself, or escaping myself? Toward integration, or toward numbness and performance?

3. Am I honest about both the benefits and the costs? Alignment tolerates tradeoffs. Misalignment needs denial.

4. Does this expand or shrink my capacity for love and presence? Not approval. Actual relational capacity.

5. Does this require chronic secrecy or constant justification? Sustained hiding is usually a signal.

6. If fear and approval were removed, would I still choose this? Fear of hell. Fear of rejection. Fear of being wrong.

7. Is this helping me become someone I respect living as? Not someone others approve of. Someone I can inhabit.

Failing one question doesn’t damn you.

Repeatedly lying to yourself does.

What This Changes

Under this framework:

Being gay or trans is not a spiritual crisis

Porn isn’t evil, it’s sometimes misaligned

Discipline isn’t proof of worth

Slips aren’t moral collapse

Growth is iterative, not performative

Sin stops being about who deserves punishment and starts being about what actually works.

Why This Matters

Fear-based morality produces compliance or rebellion.

Alignment-based morality produces responsibility.

I’m not interested in being approved by God, culture, or church.

I’m interested in living coherently.

Reframing sin as misalignment lets me talk honestly about porn, faith, money, sexuality, and identity without turning life into a courtroom.

No hell required.

No out-groups needed.

Just truth, responsibility, and a willingness to notice when something no longer fits.

I grew up believing the devil was real. Not symbolic. Not metaphorical. Real. A cosmic being actively influencing minds, culture, and the world. A ruler of this earth. An enemy working behind the scenes to deceive, corrupt, and derail faith.

That belief shaped how I interpreted doubt, suffering, culture, and even my own thoughts.

But as I’ve gotten older, more stable, and more willing to examine what I believe rather than inherit it, the devil framework has started to collapse under scrutiny. Not emotionally. Logically.

Here’s why.

The Power Problem

The version of Christianity I was taught claims several things at once:

God is sovereign.
Jesus defeated death.
Jesus has “all authority.”

And yet…

The devil currently rules the world, actively manipulating culture, blinding minds, and thwarting truth.

That’s not one coherent story. It’s two competing sovereignties pretending to be compatible.

If Jesus’ victory is real and present, why does the devil remain so effective?
If the devil truly governs the world, what exactly was defeated?

The result is a strange inversion: Jesus is symbolically powerful but practically absent, while the devil is symbolically “defeated” but practically dominant. That doesn’t strengthen faith. It undermines it.

The Devil as an Explanation Shortcut

The devil functions as an explanation people reach for when reality is uncomfortable.

Why do people hurt each other? The devil.
Why does culture drift? The devil.
Why do I have doubts? The devil.
Why does evil persist? The devil.

This externalizes responsibility and simplifies complexity. Instead of grappling with psychology, power, trauma, incentives, and systems, we blame an invisible antagonist.

That may feel comforting, but it doesn’t actually explain anything.

Human cruelty doesn’t require a supernatural puppet master. History, neuroscience, and social dynamics account for it just fine.

Where the Devil Actually Came From

In the Hebrew Bible, “the satan” is not a rival god or cosmic villain. It’s a role. An accuser. A tester. A function within the story, not an autonomous being running the universe.

The fully formed devil — the ruler of this world, orchestrating evil — develops later, influenced by dualistic frameworks and apocalyptic thinking. It grows as a way to explain why the world remains broken despite claims of divine victory.

That development is understandable. It’s just not necessary.

What Gets Lost When You Remove the Devil

People assume that without the devil, morality collapses.

I’ve found the opposite.

When you remove the devil, responsibility returns to where it belongs: human beings and human systems.

Greed doesn’t come from demons.
Violence doesn’t require possession.
Oppression doesn’t need a dark throne somewhere in the cosmos.

These things emerge from fear, power, trauma, and unchecked incentives.

And when you stop blaming a supernatural enemy, you stop waiting for divine intervention and start owning the work of repair.

What About Jesus Then?

Here’s the irony: removing the devil doesn’t diminish Jesus. It clarifies him.

Jesus doesn’t come to defeat a cartoon villain. He confronts domination, hypocrisy, dehumanization, scapegoating, and violence. He exposes the ways humans harm each other while convincing themselves they’re righteous.

That struggle doesn’t need a horned enemy to be real.

If anything, blaming the devil lets us avoid the harder truth: the enemy is not “out there.” It’s patterns we keep reproducing.

Why I’m Letting This Go

I don’t reject the devil because I’m cynical or rebellious. I reject it because it doesn’t make sense, and I’m no longer willing to outsource my thinking to fear-based explanations.

I don’t need a cosmic villain to explain suffering.
I don’t need a supernatural deceiver to explain doubt.
And I don’t need an inflated enemy to justify why the world is still broken.

Letting go of the devil didn’t weaken my sense of responsibility. It strengthened it.

And if faith can’t survive the removal of one myth, then maybe the myth was doing more work than the faith ever did.

Not because of the headlines, but because of where I’ve landed with my faith. Now, this may seem weird, but I don’t identify as Christian.

I do believe in Jesus as the Messiah. So where does that land me? Well, my practice of Christianity and my observation of it all seem like it’s fear-based.

What I’ve realized is that much of what I practiced wasn’t faith, it was risk management. Avoid hell. Avoid God’s disappointment. Avoid being wrong. Avoid being seen as rebellious. Avoid uncertainty at all costs.

That posture trains a person to live forward-leaning into imagined consequences instead of actually living. It rewards compliance over curiosity and calls it obedience. It mistakes anxiety for conviction and fear for reverence.

I don’t reject Jesus. I reject a system that taught me to distrust my own conscience, my own nervous system, and my own capacity for moral reasoning. If truth requires me to suspend discernment, that’s not truth, that’s control.

Belief that can’t survive honest examination isn’t sacred. It’s fragile.

If following Jesus means becoming more grounded, more truthful, more compassionate, and more responsible for my actions, then fear is a terrible teacher. Fear doesn’t produce love. It produces surveillance. Internal surveillance. Thought policing. Endless self-monitoring dressed up as holiness.

I’m no longer interested in a faith that only works if I stay afraid.

If people were honest about why they identify as Christian, many would admit it wasn’t born out of love or transformation, but fear. Fear of hell. Fear of eternal consequences. Fear of being wrong when the stakes are infinite.

The raised hand. The sinner’s prayer. The public moment of decision. For a lot of people, those weren’t acts of devotion. They were acts of self-preservation. A way to reduce existential risk.

I don’t even think that makes them bad people. Fear is a powerful motivator, especially when it’s introduced early and reinforced by authority. But a system that relies on fear to secure allegiance looks less like love and more like control.

If God needs terror to compel a relationship, something is off. Love doesn’t require threats. Truth doesn’t need coercion. And a faith that only works if people are afraid of eternal punishment is not spiritually mature. It’s behaviorally effective.

I also have fundamental problems with how sin, the devil, and God’s knowledge of human thought are traditionally understood. I don’t accept those frameworks anymore.

Sin, as I’ve experienced it, isn’t evil in some metaphysical sense. It’s misalignment. It’s behavior that emerges from fear, conditioning, trauma, and unchecked impulse. Calling it “evil” adds moral theater but explains nothing. It obscures cause and replaces responsibility with shame.

I don’t believe the devil is a literal being whispering temptations into human minds. That model externalizes human psychology and turns our own impulses into an enemy. Desire, aggression, lust, and fear don’t need a supernatural villain. They’re native to the hardware.

And I don’t believe God is monitoring my thoughts, policing my internal world, or assigning guilt to involuntary mental activity. Thoughts arise automatically. They are not choices.

Treating them as moral offenses creates anxiety, not virtue. A system that makes people afraid of their own minds is not producing holiness. It’s producing self-surveillance.

If God exists, I don’t believe He relates to humans by constantly assessing threats. Moral responsibility begins with action and intention, not with the spontaneous noise of consciousness.

I do believe Jesus was the Messiah. I believe something real and transformative happened through his life, his death, and what followed. But I no longer feel the need to lock that belief into a rigid, fear-based framework that demands certainty where mystery may be more honest.

The resurrection, as I understand it now, doesn’t function for me as a threat or a cosmic proof-text. I don’t experience it as a lever meant to force belief through fear of consequences. Instead, I see it as the continuation of a movement. A radical reorientation of how humans relate to power, suffering, forgiveness, and responsibility. Something that didn’t end at the tomb, but lived on through people changed by what Jesus embodied.

I’m not interested in using the resurrection as a boundary marker that divides who is “in” and who is “out.” I’m interested in what it points toward. Renewal. Transformation. Life emerging from collapse. Meaning forged in suffering rather than erased by it.

Because of that, I don’t identify as Christian in the institutional or cultural sense. That label carries assumptions I no longer hold. Assumptions about fear, control, certainty, and moral surveillance that don’t align with where I am now.

What I’m left with is Jesus, not Christianity. A teacher, a disruptor, a model of grounded love and responsibility, rather than a mascot for anxiety or a gatekeeper for the afterlife.

That may change as my understanding deepens. I’m not closing the door. I’m just refusing to pretend certainty where I don’t have it.

For now, this is where I stand.

What follows are the key insights that reshaped how I understand God, morality, mental health, free will, and myself.

God Is Not a Surveillance System

One of the biggest shifts this year was letting go of the idea that God is constantly monitoring my thoughts. For a long time, I lived as if every intrusive thought, unwanted image, or passing impulse was being observed and evaluated. Prayer became less about connection and more about self-monitoring. It created anxiety, hypervigilance, and confusion.

What finally broke that framework was noticing its effect on mental health. If thoughts alone carried moral weight, then people with anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, or intrusive thought patterns would be condemned by their own nervous systems. That didn’t line up with compassion, wisdom, or reality.

Letting go of thought surveillance didn’t make me less responsible. It made me calmer and more honest. Prayer stopped being internal policing and became quieter and less performative. If God exists, I no longer believe God needs to read my thoughts to be present or real.

Thoughts Are Not Actions

Closely tied to that realization was a clearer distinction between thoughts and actions. Thoughts arise. Some are helpful, some are disturbing, some are meaningless noise. Many are not chosen.

Action is where will shows up. Direction is where responsibility lives.

This distinction matters deeply for mental health. Intrusive thoughts are not intent. Temptation is not failure. Awareness is not agreement. When I stopped collapsing thought and action into the same category, my inner world became less hostile and my behavior became more intentional.

Morality rooted in behavior and direction is sustainable. Morality rooted in mental purity is not.

Fear Is a Terrible Moral Teacher

Another major shift was letting go of fear-based theology, especially the idea of hell as eternal torment. I don’t believe that model is true, but more importantly, I don’t believe it produces good fruit.

Fear can produce compliance, but it does not produce maturity. It trains avoidance, not wisdom. What surprised me was that when fear loosened its grip, I didn’t become reckless or indifferent. I became more accountable.

When coercion disappeared, responsibility increased. I had fewer metaphysical excuses and fewer external forces to blame. My choices became more clearly my own.

If a belief system only works when people are terrified, that says more about the system than the people inside it.

The “Spiritual Realm” Became a Catch-All for Psychological Harm

For years, I interpreted internal experiences through a spiritual warfare lens. Thoughts were spiritual. Moods were spiritual. Symptoms were spiritual. Anxiety, mania, or intrusive thoughts were framed as attacks or influences from outside myself.

That framework was destabilizing. When mental illness is spiritualized, people learn to fear their own minds. Insight is replaced with vigilance. Medication becomes suspect. Therapy becomes secondary.

Letting go of a literalized spiritual realm operating inside human psychology was grounding, not disillusioning. It didn’t flatten reality. It made it safer. My mind became something to understand and care for, not defend against.

If there is a spiritual dimension to existence, I no longer believe it hijacks human psychology or speaks through mental illness. That belief didn’t make me holy. It made me unstable.

Prophecy Undermined Trust in Reality

Prophecy also quietly eroded my sense of agency. When decisions were framed as divine revelations about my future or identity, I learned to distrust my own judgment.

If things went wrong, I misunderstood God. If things went right, they weren’t really mine. Either way, authorship disappeared.

Over time, prophecy functioned less like guidance and more like narrative control. Meaning was imposed from the outside instead of emerging from lived experience.

Walking away from prophecy didn’t make life empty. It returned decision-making to where it belongs: wisdom, evidence, values, and responsibility. My future stopped being foretold and started being built.

Prior Causes Explain, They Do Not Excuse

This year took me deep into questions of determinism, trauma, biology, and prior causes. Childhood shapes us. Mental illness affects impulse control, mood, and perception. Context matters.

But explanation is not authorship.

Understanding prior causes can bring compassion and clarity, but it can also become a way to avoid responsibility. Somewhere in that tension, I began thinking in recursive terms. We are shaped by prior causes, but we also shape ourselves over time through awareness, choice, and repeated direction.

I stopped thinking in terms of moral corruption and started thinking in terms of alignment. Not good versus evil, but oriented versus misoriented. A compass, not a courtroom.

Blame lives upstream. Responsibility lives downstream.

Will Is Direction, Not Impulse

Free will stopped meaning “I can do anything at any moment” and started meaning “I can choose direction under constraint.”

I can show up to work. I can also not show up. Both are expressions of will. What matters is not the availability of options, but the direction I repeatedly choose.

I don’t show up because I’m terrified of consequences. I show up because that direction aligns with stability, dignity, and the life I want to inhabit.

Bipolar disorder doesn’t remove will. It changes the difficulty level. Medication, structure, and self-monitoring don’t eliminate freedom. They support it.

Free will isn’t impulse. It’s authorship over trajectory.

Sex After Illusion Is Different Than Sex Under Fear

For years, restraint around sex was framed through fear, obedience, and external authority. This year, that framework collapsed.

What surprised me was what remained.

After fear and illusion fell away, I didn’t swing into chaos. I tested reality. I saw what was actually on offer. And I found it hollow. Choosing restraint after seeing clearly is fundamentally different than restraint enforced by shame.

The behavior may look the same on the outside. The source is completely different.

Influence shaped the language I grew up with. The values I live by now are chosen, not inherited.

Judaism Gave Me a Healthier Moral Framework

This year, I explored Judaism, and it gave me language that clarified what I was already discovering.

Concepts like khata and teshuva reframed moral failure. Missing the mark wasn’t corruption. It was misalignment. Returning wasn’t resurrection from death. It was reorientation.

Judaism helped me understand human nature without demonizing it. There is an animal side of us. Impulsive, reactive, driven by appetite and fear. That doesn’t make us evil. It makes us human. What matters is which capacities we cultivate and allow to lead.

Instead of seeing myself as a sinner waiting to be overridden by grace, I began seeing myself as a moral agent responsible for choosing direction. That shift reduced shame and increased responsibility.

Judaism didn’t flatter me or excuse me. It told me I was capable and accountable. That combination turned out to be grounding.

Being Underdiagnosed Changed How I Understand Sin and Responsibility

Accepting that I was underdiagnosed for more than a decade reshaped how I interpret my past. For years, instability and collapse were framed as moral or spiritual failure when they were, at least in part, medical.

When illness is framed as sin, suffering feels deserved and treatment feels suspect. Responsibility becomes distorted.

Getting clearer about diagnosis didn’t absolve me of responsibility. It clarified where responsibility actually lives. I wasn’t corrupt or weak-willed. I was navigating life without the right map. Once the map improved, my capacity to choose wisely improved too.

Fairness turned out to be far more motivating than shame.

Luke 15 Reframed the Gospel

Luke 15 became one of the few places in Scripture that still held under scrutiny. The prodigal son wasn’t dead and replaced. He was lost and returned.

He didn’t need a new nature installed. He needed clarity and the courage to come home. The father restores dignity before interrogation. Relationship before performance.

That story aligns with repair, not annihilation. With return, not replacement. With responsibility without self-hatred.

Stepping Away From Church Revealed the Foundation

For about half the year, I didn’t attend church. That absence wasn’t rebellion. It was diagnostic.

Without weekly reinforcement, I could see which beliefs were load-bearing and which were sustained by repetition and pressure. Some held. Many didn’t.

Stepping away clarified how much of my faith had been intertwined with fear, performance, and external authority. It also revealed how much stability came from internal clarity rather than constant spiritual input.

Returning, With Some Doors Closed

When I returned, I wasn’t the same person. I came back without fear, without borrowed certainty, and without the willingness to suspend judgment for belonging.

Some doors didn’t open. Some conversations felt narrower. Some assumptions were no longer shared.

That loss was real.

But returning with agency meant I could see clearly what was being offered and what was being required. If belonging requires shrinking, dissociation, or denying lived reality, then distance becomes an act of care, not defiance.

What Remains

I didn’t lose faith this year. I lost misattribution, fear, and frameworks that couldn’t carry the weight of reality.

What remains is quieter and more stable.

Agency instead of surveillance.

Responsibility instead of terror.

Alignment instead of corruption.

Repair instead of replacement.

Less certainty. More coherence.

Less mythology. More direction.

This wasn’t deconstruction for its own sake. It was reconstruction for the sake of staying sane and living honestly.

Bells ringing,
children singing.

Ho ho ho.

Jolly Saint Nick arrives
without a bag of tricks.

Pleasant presents pour down through the chimney,
laid under the green,
the scene so serene.

The white glow of snow outside,
cozy inside with hot coco.

A manger so small
holds love for us all—
He’s the reason
for the season.

If today was an animal…

If today was an animal,
how would you describe it?

It’d be an elephant—
big and grey,
stepping on a twig
and eating a fig.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a pig wearing a wig.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a giant snake
jumping and making quakes.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a herd of birds
laying turds.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a mole
snugged into a hole.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a dog
retrieving a log.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a group of turtles
huddled together,
from the ground that shakes
by the snakes.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a sloth
hugging a cloth.

If today was an animal,
it’d be a big rat
chasing a cat.

If today was an animal,
it’d be an owl
with a great big scowl.