We left off the story with me attending Ellerslie for 9 months as an 18-year-old boy. The first 9 weeks before Christmas of 2011 were like I was on a high. The following 6 months after I returned were profoundly disorienting in my spiritual journey. I knew I wanted to be a Christian, but all the fiery passion I had experienced for the previous year was stripped away, and I was forced to rebuild my identity as a Christian in a much more foundational way.
The following 11 years became a continual exploration of the Christian world, especially evangelicalism. The number of theological expressions, missional priorities, and perspectives on spirituality I’ve experienced is my only claim to being someone you read. I have such a diverse background of philosophies and expressions of faith that what you’re really getting from me here is nuance. But the most important thing I learned along the way wasn’t a doctrine or a position. It was much simpler than that, and I’ll get there.
Sitting Under the Preachers
The first stop from Ellerslie was listening to sermons of “Reformed Baptist” types. Think of John Piper, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll (regrettably, but just being honest), David Platt, all the way to watching (regrettably again) Wretched, while taking in John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, among others. Here, I continued to learn that Scripture is central (even if I might approach it differently than they do, I would argue that I hold to the authority of Scripture as seriously as any of them). There was a point when I dove into apologetics, like Ravi Zacharias (problems here as well), William Lane Craig, among others. In another season, I did street evangelism.
Biting Hard
Part 3 will focus on my time in Brantford, Ontario. But how did I get there? I moved to Brantford so that my now ex-wife could finish her education and start her career. We quickly began attending a church there called Freedom House, which would be my church if I were living in Brantford. Brantford and Freedom House are where I became a husband and father.
Through those years, I was still consuming a boatload of content, mostly sermons. In my first year of marriage, I became absorbed in American politics, and like any good conservative evangelical, I bit hard into Republican politics. Lucky for me, I entered at a transition point from prima facie Christian interest in politics to a much more brazen anti-Christian demeanour in the Republican Party. Yeah, I’m talking about the rise of Trump.
My foray into thinking about politics was watching the 2015 Republican primaries. At some point, I caught on to Ben Shapiro, listening to his daily podcast, then those in the same sphere as him (Glenn Beck at one point). You’ll learn far more about how I feel about these things as the blog progresses; my political evolution is less important than simply surveying the scope of my exposure.
Where Ideology Met Real Life
Throughout this time, I did what a good conservative does: work hard. I worked general labour and warehousing jobs for the first 5-ish years of my marriage. In this time, I also became deeply aware that the sermons and politics I was listening to had little bearing on the people I was engaging every day. Something was “out of touch” regarding the way we think about everyday life. There was simply too much ideology that wrote off a substantial number of people’s individual experiences. While it’s fair to have certain beliefs about how one might live, reconciling those beliefs with a wide array of experiences is difficult. I didn’t yet know how to hold that tension, but I was about to learn.
Just Listen
From this point, I continued as a committed member of my church, but also began my education in social work, which coincided with Covid-19. Our church struggled through the pandemic, and this time became increasingly isolating. However, my social work education had a more profound impact on me than isolation did. I was introduced to the “other side” of a number of issues I had encountered in listening to politics. Think of it like this: if I was listening to Ben Shapiro and the religious right, I was suddenly thrust into the progressive and secular left. Here is the key that I learned: listen. Just listen. Be patient. You don’t need to make any decisions about people’s morality or decide on anyone’s eternal standing before God. You can just listen, be patient, and ask the Holy Spirit for understanding.
When you listen, you begin to hear the logic, both emotional and intellectual, behind the issues people are facing. You begin to recognize what’s going on, how they got to where they are, and why they feel the way they do. This was a golden opportunity to simply understand people. There were working professionals, longtime researchers, and activists all working on and discussing similar issues. There were a variety of views from similar backgrounds, and sometimes similar views from a variety of backgrounds. While everything leaned far left, there existed the same kinds of diversity, and same personality struggles that had been noticed within my own space.
Similar values were expressed with different behaviours, while similar behaviours were arrived at from differing values. It’s all so tangled. People are layered, and none of us have the real solutions. No ideology or religion truly has things figured out. I may be a Christian, but I recognize that practice is far from ideals in many spaces. People are easily perceived as hypocrites everywhere they exist. Finding squeaky clean people with no issues is rare.
Becoming Complicated
Looking back, this part of My Story isn’t about any one event. It’s about a long, winding journey through a diverse set of ideologies and beliefs. I get the sense that I have a unique perspective on how ideology, relationships, and God’s heart in Scripture all relate to one another. A pastor I knew would always say, “Eat the meat, spit out the bones.” I’ve lived this out over the past 16 years, and while I may seem young (I am, don’t let this blog fool you), sometimes you start a career in wisdom young, and grow into it by intentionality, gifting, and God’s providence.
Here I am at a Baptist church in rural (reliably conservative) Southwestern Ontario. My views are… well, complicated, because the experiences that shaped them are too, and as one of my favourite rappers says, “I am becoming Complicated.” Faithfulness looks complicated. It doesn’t make sense to everyone all the time unless they know you more deeply. That’s okay; it’s not our role to perform for everybody.
My conclusions are focused on navigating the question: how does this love God and others best? Who does this impact, and how does my own faithfulness to my ideals affect others? How do I mitigate that effect? What impulses do I have that need to be held in patience that would harm others? Questions like these help us thread the needle between faithfulness to God and faithfulness to others. I haven’t mastered any of them, but I’ve learned to start by listening, both to people and to the Holy Spirit.
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