For a long time, faith was complicated for me.
I grew up around Christianity. Church was part of my life from a young age. I learned the basics of who God was, what Christians believed, and what following Jesus was supposed to look like.
But as I got older, some of the people who taught me about God also became part of the reason I struggled to understand Him.
One father figure in my life publicly claimed Christianity and eventually became a pastor, while what I experienced at home looked completely different. There was fear, abuse, and a huge disconnect between the man people saw on Sunday and the man I experienced the rest of the week.
That can mess with the way you see God.
Because when somebody represents God to you but doesn’t feel safe, eventually you can start wondering whether God is safe either.
When church doesn’t feel safe
I stayed around Christianity as I got older, but there was another struggle.
A lot of the people around me had lived very different lives than I had. They hadn’t experienced fatherlessness the way I had. They didn’t understand the instability, loss, abuse, poverty, and chaos that had been part of my story.
Sometimes Christianity started to feel very black and white:
Here are the rules. Follow them.
But life didn’t feel that simple.
Pain wasn’t black and white.
People weren’t black and white.
Later, I went through a season where I made a major life decision that people in my church strongly disagreed with.
And I want to be honest about that season too.
I wasn’t handling everything perfectly. I was struggling heavily with my mental health. I made mistakes, and looking back, there are things I probably could have handled differently.
I’m not saying every decision I made was right or wrong.
That isn’t really the point.
The point is that at the time, I already saw my flaws.
I didn’t need more people pointing them out.
I didn’t need religion thrown at me.
I needed community.
I needed people willing to sit beside me, ask if I was okay, love me, challenge me when necessary, and still remind me that I wasn’t beyond grace.
Instead, I often felt judged and pushed away.
I heard condemnation.
What I didn’t feel enough of was:
“Are you okay? We’re still here.”
That created a lot of church hurt.
For a while, even walking into a church became difficult.
Eventually I had to separate two things I had always treated as the same:
Christians and Christ.
They are not always the same thing.
I had to rebuild what I believed
I eventually had to stop simply accepting what other people told me about God and start asking some hard questions myself.
Who do I actually believe God is?
Who is Jesus?
How would He respond to someone who is hurting, confused, imperfect, or has made mistakes?
The more I looked at Jesus, the more I saw somebody who moved toward broken people.
People with messy lives.
People religious society had written off.
People who didn’t have everything figured out.
I also saw Jesus challenge religious leaders when rules, appearances, and self-righteousness became more important than mercy, humility, and loving people.
That changed something for me.
I started realizing that God wasn’t necessarily the person who hurt me while using His name.
And some of what I had experienced from Christians wasn’t necessarily an accurate picture of Christ.
That distinction helped rebuild my faith.
Relationship before religious performance
This has become one of the biggest things I believe about Christianity.
I don’t believe Jesus came simply to create another religious system where broken people have to follow enough rules before God will finally accept them.
I believe Jesus came to restore relationship between us and God.
That doesn’t mean how we live doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t mean truth or obedience don’t matter.
It means the order matters.
Obedience comes out of relationship. It isn’t the entrance fee for one.
You don’t earn your way into God loving you and finally get access to Him once you’ve fixed yourself.
Relationship comes first.
And when Christianity becomes more about appearing righteous, policing other people, keeping score, or deciding who is good enough, I think we can miss the heart of what Jesus came to do.
Jesus didn’t come because everybody already had their life together.
He came because we didn’t.
You don’t have to fix yourself first
I think a lot of people believe they need to change before they can approach God.
Stop struggling.
Break every bad habit.
Understand the Bible.
Clean everything up.
Then maybe God will want them.
I don’t believe that.
Bring the mess.
Bring the questions.
Bring the anger.
Bring the doubt.
Bring the parts of your story you don’t like talking about.
God isn’t waiting for some future cleaned-up version of you before He wants a relationship with you.
I believe relationship with Him is part of what begins changing you.
You don’t renovate the house before letting the builder inside.
Knowing about God isn’t the same as knowing God
I’m still growing in this too.
There are seasons where I’m closer to God and seasons where I know I need to become more intentional again.
But I’ve learned that knowing information about God and actually knowing God are different things.
You can know Bible stories.
Know theology.
Know Christian language.
Know the right answers.
And still barely spend any time with Him.
Think about any other relationship.
If you never speak to somebody, never listen to them, and never spend time with them, you wouldn’t expect the relationship to become deep.
Why would our relationship with God be different?
The more time I spend praying, reading Scripture, asking questions, and being honest with God, the more I understand His character and His love.
Relationship takes time.
Faith can be complicated when you never had a healthy father
This matters especially to me because of the men Unashamed Journey is trying to reach.
If you grew up without a healthy father, the idea of trusting a Father you cannot physically see might not automatically feel comforting.
Trust may already be difficult.
Maybe people who were supposed to protect you didn’t.
Maybe authority didn’t always feel safe.
Maybe depending on yourself became one of the ways you survived.
Then somebody says:
“Just trust God.”
That might sound simple to them.
It may not feel simple to you.
I understand that.
Faith for me hasn’t meant never having questions.
It has meant learning that I can bring those questions to God instead of allowing them to keep me away from Him.
If you don’t know where to start
You don’t need a perfect prayer.
You don’t need Christian language.
You don’t even need to pretend you’re completely convinced.
Start honestly.
Something as simple as:
God, I don’t know exactly what I believe right now. But if You’re real, I want to know You. Help me recognize You in a way I can understand. Show me who You really are, not just who people have told me You are.
Then stay open.
Read about Jesus.
Ask questions.
Spend time with God.
Don’t fake certainty you don’t have.
I believe God is big enough for honest questions.
A simple place to begin
For the next seven days, give God ten minutes before the noise of the day starts.
Read a small passage from one of the Gospels and ask:
What does this show me about Jesus?
What does this challenge in me?
What would change today if I actually lived this?
Then talk to God about whatever came up.
No performance.
No pretending.
Just honesty.
What faith means to me now
Faith isn’t pretending everything is okay.
It isn’t pretending Christians never hurt people.
It isn’t following enough rules so God will finally like you.
For me, faith has become learning who God actually is underneath everything other people told me He was.
It has become discovering that the God I once wondered might reject broken people is the God I now believe moves toward them.
You don’t need everything figured out.
You don’t need your whole life cleaned up.
You don’t need to become somebody else first.
Start the relationship.
And let God meet you there.