To do so would have been dangerous to my own soul because I would have believed that my truest self had arrived. Nothing would be further from the truth. My credentialed self would have arrived, but my true self would have remained lost. To wrap one’s identity in that which is fleeting is the beginning of the illusion. The truest profession you can have is your own self, with all the joys and flaws that come with it.

I want to make it clear that I have no problem with traditional local churches. Even though my own spiritual journey seems to be moving away from them, it might have never began without them. If the least that can said is that I gained an awareness of Jesus from those places, then that is enough. There may be no better foothold than that. No matter where our paths have taken us since then, many of us who have emerged from such spaces cannot deny we owe the traditional local c

What if suffering isn’t proof that God is absent, but evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ is present in a deeper way, allowing us to experience His love amid the evil in the world?