Link Love + The Bible isn't My Center
What has changed since 2010?
Two years ago I ran a survey for Sayable readers and I still refer back often to the answers I received there. There was one response in particular that I think about really often and before this week’s Link Love, I wanted to chat about it a bit (especially for new-new readers and for old-old readers—assuming the readers who’ve been with me for the past 5-7 years are fairly familiar with the fare they’ll find here).
The response was to the survey question, “Knowing this is completely anonymous, is there anything you’d like to say to me?” They said, “I’ve been following you since [2010ish] and from time to time, I wonder if you're wrestling with traditional orthodoxy in a way that draws you away from the bible.” My answer was as follows,
Hmmm, I want to say a whole-hearted NO to this question, but I think, if I’m honest with myself, I would say it’s become a both-and for me. The ancients used to talk about the two books of God, one being the Bible and the other being nature, and as I grow, I resonate with this. God has revealed himself in every rock and tree and human being just as God has revealed himself in scripture. And just as scripture has been twisted or interpreted or translated imperfectly, so is the world and everything in it. So I would say a more honest answer to your pushback here is that I am not being drawn away from the Bible as much as I am learning to carry the Bible in tandem with all of life. I hope this makes sense.
This answer was formed in conjunction with what has become one of the most important shifts of my spiritual life, which you can read more about here. Pay close attention to the pencil sketch in that link.
This concept has completely rewired the way I navigate life, writing, friendships, my ideas of growth and formation, and more. If the most significant shift of my 30s happened in 2010 when I realized the genie god I’d been worshiping in my moralistic therapeutic deistic faith was a house of cards and God was never going to be in my debt no matter how good I was and also that God loved me, regardless of what I’d done or do, then the most significant shift of my 40s has been the acknowledgment that orienting my entire life around the church or the bible was constantly throwing me into a state of disorientation when I learned new information about the bible or various institutions/leaders failed me or others. Keeping these (good) things at my center instead of keeping the Good Shepherd at the center was sending me ricocheting all over the place whenever something changed, fell apart, shifted, or became untenable with a life of integrity.
Something had to change.
And it did. I realized that keeping Jesus at the center of it all, perfect God and man, perfect love, also someone to discover more about for the rest of my days, someone who would not fail or falter, but who I would perceive differently in different days and times, who I would experience different facets of throughout life, I realized he would keep me rooted and grounded more than orienting my life around the church or bible or men and women who meant well but sometimes failed or theology or [fill in the blank]. And he has. I am more rooted and grounded in the love of God than I ever have been in my life. And because of that, I feel more free to move around God, to explore different facets of what it means to be a person of faith and conviction, to explore different ways of practicing faith in God, and, in my vocation specifically, to not write solely about matters of faith.
I wanted to share that today because I got an email from someone who unsubscribed recently. In it, they said, “It’s obvious to me that you don’t care about Christianity anymore, at least in your public writing. I can’t remember the last time you mentioned the bible.”
And I thought to myself, Go in peace. And may the peace of God be with you. And may you one day experience a kind of faith that is not limited to orienting around the words of scripture but it encompassed by and oriented around the true Word made flesh, who fills out all the corners of life, even the farthest ones, even the ones you think of today as profane.
It is true that the writing I do on Sayable in 2025 looks different than it did in 2005 and in 2010 and in 2020, and I pray with all my heart that it looks even more different in 2030 and 2035, and onward. I make no promises to stay the same and staying the same will never be my aim. I promise to change, to shift, to learn, grow, to ebb and flow, to sometimes wander far enough to challenge myself (and hopefully you!) but never so far that Jesus cannot reach me—which, if you think about it, is impossible anyway.
If you’re new here and you aren’t a person of faith, you are welcome here. This has always been a place where I wrestle with the persistent doubt in God that has clung to me my whole life and the faith that goes against my every instinct.
If you have been here since the early days and you’re disappointed with where I am now, please do hear me when I say you are still welcome here and wanted, even with your disappointment. I hope you see me continue to grow up before your eyes.
Now, shall we have a full-on smorgasbord of great writing, beauty I’ve saved, and some shows/books that just dropped my jaw over the past two weeks?
Here’s some Link Love for ya.
