His yoke is easy and his burden is light because His grace is it. His love is it. And I feel LIGHTER—a thousand pounds worth of doctrine, truth, dogma, law, rules lighter because I now really get it.

As soon as we were done memorizing all the verses, we’d head out for game time. I’d watch as the same kids who were flying through the levels, “mastering” verse after verse, were the ones cutting in line, pushing their friends, and cheating in the games to make sure they won.

But even though church was a good experience for me—I now know church has been a place of harm and destruction for so many others. And for so long, I’d used the same excuse others keep giving me: the church is made up of broken people. And it’s true. But also—THE DEEPLY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS OF THE CHURCH ARE PERPETUATING THE BROKENNESS. And someone has to stick their foot into that cycling wheel of toxicity to stop the momentum, even if it means they lose a toe, or even their whole damn foot. I’m cautiously inching my foot towards those spinning cogs.

But even though church was a good experience for me—I now know church has been a place of harm and destruction for so many others. And for so long, I’d used the same excuse others keep giving me: the church is made up of broken people. And it’s true. But also—THE DEEPLY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS OF THE CHURCH ARE PERPETUATING THE BROKENNESS. And someone has to stick their foot into that cycling wheel of toxicity to stop the momentum, even if it means they lose a toe, or even their whole damn foot. I’m cautiously inching my foot towards those spinning cogs.

Or we can look at our past, learn from our present, and say, “We have been doing church the same way for centuries despite a changing understanding, changing culture, and changing technology and it’s time to adjust based on what we know is best.”

The moment we stopped experiencing the arc of God’s beautiful redemption story and started memorizing random sentences completely out of context without taking into consideration anything other than the literal black and white words.

Many, many years ago we paired Christianity with Purity. We strapped ourselves with this burden of impossible perfection. Then, we doubled down by armoring it with Judgment towards the rest of the world. “Don’t let those sinners in... " We didn’t say it, but we didn’t have to. They heard it. And then we realized we were talking about ourselves and decided we’d better keep that to ourselves.

I just can’t imagine THIS being God’s plan. People are DYING. Literally, gay and transgender human beings are killing themselves over this and have been for decades. Their blood is on our hands. Marriages and families are being destroyed because men and women are repressing desires that can’t be repressed. This CAN’T BE God’s desire for us.

Could human connection heal the disconnect?

If we, as an entire church body, regularly and intentionally met the physical and emotional needs of those who looked and lived differently would our hearts be softened towards each other?

As I delve into the more "black and white," more incendiary topics, I don't want this page to be a debate forum. As a 9, that's probably my own personal hell. So unless the Holy Spirit is like... girl, put that crap online, some specific understandings and questions will be saved for small groups of trusted friends and family.

We don’t have to feel guilty in our grace-lavishing, for he lavished it on us first. ON THE CROSS he dispensed it wildly. First to the thief hanging next to him and then to his murderers: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

My dad went to an all-white school 55 years ago. These aren’t stories from our distant past. They are still here, the consequences of them are still here, haunting us now. And not acknowledging it continues to draw a not-so-invisible line between us.

The great paradox never changes with time. The only truly Christian virtue is humility.

Our human nature, or maybe just our Christian-ness, has a tendency to identify the sin in everyone else, which has a tendency to build walls. But isn’t scripture a story of walls being torn down? Of veils being torn in two? Of the divide between Jew and Gentile being bridged by a cross?

I had gone to church my whole life and never thought one thing about the way it would feel to walk through the doors as a newbie, all the ways church feels like a “Members Only” lounge.

Know the lingo. Know the soundtrack. Know the traditions. Know the rules.

It’s in this bubble we raise our children, protecting them from all the outsiders, the no-gooders, the “least of these.” Shielding them from the destitute, the addicted, the desperate. Surrounding them with “Christian” people. Listening to “Christian” music. Sending them to “Christian” camps.

The teacher who shows up to her classroom while it’s still dark outside and walks slowly around her classroom, touching each chair, asking the Holy Spirit to come down, praying that the way she serves them and cares for them today would show them something about God’s great love for them.

That classroom is church.

The family who opens their home every week to college students, feeding them a home-cooked meal and promising to be a surrogate mom or dad for the next few years.

That home is church.

But can’t we look at history, the way interpretation has continually changed, and say TRUTH is something we should always pair with humility? With a foundational understanding that even if the Word of God isn’t fallible, humans are?

It’s in reading my bible—not doing a bible study or a devotional, but just sitting and reading it word for word and doing my best to understand—that I have been like, “WHAT?!” or “That’s been used out of context A LOT,” or “I wonder if there are other ways of interpreting that – oh yes, there are.”

The deeper I go, though, the more I realize … all these questions have been asked for a lonnnng time. You’re not stupid or crazy or alone.