“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…”
— Romans 12:2, ESV
The strange thing about a question like this is that almost everyone will answer it differently.
What kind of Christian were you told was acceptable?
For some, the answer is denominational.
For others, it is political.
For others, it is cultural, familial, social, racial, sexual, economic, or regional.
Some were taught that an acceptable Christian votes a certain way, marries a certain way, speaks a certain way, dresses a certain way, worships in a certain building, obeys a certain pastor, submits to a certain doctrine, and never asks too many questions.
Some were taught that an acceptable Christian is quiet.
Some were taught that an acceptable Christian is loud.
Some were taught that an acceptable Christian never doubts.
Some were taught that an acceptable Christian never gets angry.
Some were taught that an acceptable Christian does not listen to the body, does not trust the soul, does not question the denomination, does not grieve too loudly, does not love the wrong people, does not stand too close to the wounded, and certainly does not make respectable people uncomfortable.
But Christ did not come to make people acceptable to systems.
He came to make them alive in God.
That is a very different thing.
Most of us are not given a clean choice when we are young. We are born into families, and families carry religion like heirlooms. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes faithfully. Sometimes abusively. Sometimes without even knowing why.
Baptist because the family was Baptist.
Methodist because the family was Methodist.
Catholic because the family was Catholic.
Episcopalian because the family was Episcopalian.
Pentecostal because the family was Pentecostal.
Non-denominational because the family insisted it was not a denomination while behaving exactly like one.
We inherit patterns before we understand faith.
We inherit language before we know prayer.
We inherit suspicion before we know discernment.
We inherit denominational loyalties before we know Christ.
And that is where I have to be careful with words.
Because denomination and faith are not the same thing.
A denomination may carry faith. It may guard sacraments, Scripture, prayer, tradition, beauty, and centuries of holy witness. It may form saints. It may protect people. It may give language to devotion.
But denomination is not automatically faith.
Faith is deeper.
Faith is the soul responding to God.
Faith is trust.
Faith is surrender.
Faith is wrestling.
Faith is the trembling yes.
Faith is the cry, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”
Faith is the Holy Spirit moving in the hidden places where no church sign can reach.
A denomination is a vessel.
Faith is the living water.
And sometimes the vessel serves the water.
Sometimes the vessel mistakes itself for the water.
That is where things become dangerous.
Children are often baptized before they can walk, brought to Sunday school before they can spell doctrine, trained in a tradition before they can ask whether they know Christ at all. I am not saying that is always wrong. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it gives a child language for grace before the world teaches them despair.
But there is a difference between formation and indoctrination.
Formation opens the soul toward God.
Indoctrination closes the soul around fear.
Formation teaches a child to listen for the Holy Spirit.
Indoctrination teaches a child to fear the wrong questions.
Formation says, “Come and see.”
Indoctrination says, “Do not look anywhere else.”
Even Christ gave people a choice.
He called.
They followed.
He invited.
They responded.
He did not make anyone love Him.
He did not drag the disciples by the throat into holiness.
He said, “Follow me,” and the road opened before them.
Christ is the door.
The Holy Spirit is the key turning inside the soul.
And no denomination can manufacture that.
It can prepare the room.
It can teach the prayers.
It can set the table.
It can preserve the sacraments.
It can preach the Gospel.
But it cannot replace the living encounter with Christ.
“I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved…”
— John 10:9, ESV
When I look back over my own life, I can see how deeply denominational Christianity shaped me before I understood what was happening.
My early teaching began in parochial school, but the cost made it impossible to continue. Then came Arkansas, and with it a brand of Christianity so conservative, so fearful, and at times so spiritually suffocating that I was terrified as a child.
I remember being in places supposedly filled with God and feeling more afraid than safe.
That is a wound.
A child should not feel terror in the house of God.
A child should not learn that God is mostly waiting to punish.
A child should not be taught that love comes with a denominational contract and a list of people to fear.
And yet, not everything was awful.
There was one Baptist church that made me feel safe, and most of that was because of the preacher. That community practiced what they preached, at least as I experienced them then. I loved them. I felt something honest there.
But as I grew older and encountered other Baptist churches and other Christian communities, I became horrified. The pattern repeated too often.
Hate the other.
Fear the outsider.
Control the body.
Shame the queer.
Keep Black and brown people under social pressure.
Preach love while practicing exclusion.
Talk about Christ while building fences around the people Christ would have touched.
I know not every Baptist is like that.
Not every evangelical is like that.
Not every conservative Christian is like that.
Not every mainstream church is like that.
I know that.
I have met faithful people in many traditions.
But I also cannot pretend that certain streams of Christianity have done tremendous damage. Especially where fear, money, politics, purity culture, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, racism, nationalism, and religious performance have been fused together and called Gospel.
That is not the Gospel.
That is empire wearing a cross.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
— Matthew 7:15, ESV
The acceptable Christian I was shown was often not a free soul in Christ.
He was obedient to the group.
He knew whom to condemn.
He knew what verses to quote.
He knew what sins counted publicly and what sins could be hidden privately.
He knew how to say “love the sinner” while making sure the sinner knew love was not really on the table.
He knew how to defend the denomination.
He did not always know how to love.
That disconnect broke something in me.
I was taught that Christians should love everyone as Christ loves us — with a caveat.
Love everyone, as long as they meet our standards.
Help the community, but quietly judge the people you are helping.
Serve the poor, but talk badly about them afterward.
Say everyone is welcome, but make sure queer people know there is an asterisk beside the welcome.
Read the Bible in context, but cherry-pick verses when you need ammunition.
Speak of grace, but make guilt the air everyone breathes.
I learned how to talk out of both sides of my mouth.
I learned how to say the religious thing while inwardly splitting apart.
I learned how to hate the other.
I learned how to hate myself.
I learned how to look in the mirror and see not a child of God, but a problem.
That is not faith.
That is deformation.
And eventually, I could not do it anymore.
I became disillusioned with faith and Church. I turned my back on God. I was angry, hateful, foaming at the mouth over the faith I had once loved. I could not understand how people could treat God’s word and Christ’s commands with such carelessness and cruelty.
I could not be part of a faith that acted that way.
So I left.
I cursed God.
I walked away.
And I began searching elsewhere.
For a time, I moved through pagan paths and other spiritual roads. Eventually, I encountered Palo Mayombe, a powerful and, to me, frighteningly serious tradition. I will not explain all of that here. It is not mine to simplify or reduce for someone else’s curiosity.
But what troubled me was that even there, Christ kept appearing at the edges.
Christian elements kept returning.
The thing I thought I had left behind kept standing in front of me.
I tried to ignore it.
I tried to explain it away.
I tried to talk to my Padrino about it.
But something in me knew I could not serve what felt divided inside me. I could not keep pretending that my soul was not being pulled back toward the Light.
Eventually, I left that house too.
And then, for a while, I believed in almost nothing.
That is its own wilderness.
Not freedom exactly.
A blank place.
A silence.
A spiritual no-man’s-land.
But God was not finished with me.
I began to wonder whether Christ had been trying to reach me through the very things I thought were taking me away from Him. Maybe God had been speaking through the Christian fragments that kept appearing in that other world. Maybe grace had followed me into the places where I thought I was hiding.
Then came the experience I can only describe as swimming in warm honey.
The Holy Mother came to me.
Saint Michael came to me.
It was not an idea.
It was not a mood.
It was not church language.
It was presence.
The Mother of God stood near me with a tenderness that did not excuse my pain but held it. Saint Michael stood like protection, command, and fire. I was told there was a plan. I was told the Lord had not abandoned me. I was told I would be guided out of the spiritual hole I had fallen into.
I wept.
I listened.
I became a mess.
And there, in that honeyed visitation, my path back to Christ began.
Not back to the acceptable Christian I had been taught to perform.
Back to Christ.
There is a difference.
The acceptable Christian I had been taught was afraid of too much.
Afraid of queer people.
Afraid of other religions.
Afraid of questions.
Afraid of bodies.
Afraid of women.
Afraid of the poor.
Afraid of history.
Afraid of scholarship.
Afraid of mysticism.
Afraid of anything that did not fit neatly into the denominational box.
But Christ is not afraid.
Christ moves toward the broken.
Christ eats with the wrong people.
Christ touches the unclean.
Christ speaks with women in public.
Christ heals on the wrong day.
Christ calls fishermen, zealots, tax collectors, doubters, and sinners.
Christ breaks respectability open so mercy can get through.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.”
— Luke 4:18, ESV
This is what Christ said of His own mission.
Good news to the poor.
Liberty to the captives.
Recovery of sight to the blind.
Freedom for the oppressed.
Not denominational branding.
Not political control.
Not spiritual gatekeeping.
Not megachurch theater.
Not private jets paid for by wounded people desperate for hope.
Not the Gospel turned into a business model.
Not the Word made flesh reduced to a fundraising machine.
Jesus was a carpenter.
Son of God, yes.
Lord, yes.
Savior, yes.
But also a carpenter.
A man of dust, wood, sweat, walking, hunger, prayer, grief, friendship, tears, and touch.
He did not tell His followers to build empires on the backs of the poor.
He did not tell preachers to get rich terrifying vulnerable people.
He did not tell priests to guard the table like a private club.
He did not tell denominations to become kingdoms competing over who owns God.
He said:
Follow me.
Feed my sheep.
Love one another.
Proclaim good news.
Take up your cross.
Serve.
Wash feet.
Forgive.
Do justice.
Love mercy.
Walk humbly.
“He has told you, O man, what is good…”
— Micah 6:8, ESV
That verse has become one of the great correctives.
What does the Lord require?
Not performance.
Not image.
Not denominational arrogance.
Justice.
Kindness.
Humility.
And yet look at what we have done.
We have crossed Christ with politics until people cannot tell where the Gospel ends and the party platform begins.
We have turned denominations into tribes.
We have mistaken institutional loyalty for holiness.
We have allowed wolves in sheep’s clothing to dictate what Christianity should look like.
We have let money become a sacrament.
We have let power become a doctrine.
We have let fear become a form of worship.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, ordinary souls are still starving.
People need Christ.
Not the brand.
Not the weapon.
Not the sales pitch.
Christ.
The living Christ.
The wounded Christ.
The risen Christ.
The Christ who says, “Come to me.”
The Christ who sees the exhausted soul underneath the performance.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
— Matthew 11:28, ESV
This is where my understanding began to change.
I realized that reading Scripture in context is essential. Not just grabbing verses. Not just repeating what a preacher said. Not just using the Bible as a shield for inherited fear.
Read.
Study.
Pray.
Contemplate.
Ask questions.
Learn history.
Learn how denominations formed.
Learn where doctrines came from.
Learn what Scripture is actually saying and what people have projected onto it.
Let the Holy Spirit breathe through the text.
Let Christ be the lens.
Because Scripture without Christ becomes dangerous in human hands.
But Scripture through Christ becomes bread.
I also learned that not everyone in the Church was out to destroy me.
That mattered.
There are holy people everywhere.
There are Catholics full of mercy.
There are Baptists full of grace.
There are Methodists full of fire.
There are Episcopalians full of tenderness.
There are Pentecostals who know prayer in their bones.
There are Orthodox Christians who carry mystery like incense.
There are independent sacramental Christians holding old altars in strange rooms with no applause.
There are saints hidden in traditions that wounded me.
There are people outside Christianity who have sometimes shown more Christlike mercy than those who loudly claim Him.
That realization softened me.
It did not make me naïve.
But it softened me.
I learned that ecumenism is not weakness.
It is not giving up truth.
It is recognizing that Christ is larger than our fences.
I learned that one does not have to belong to one particular denomination to be catholic in the little-c sense: part of the universal, sacramental, mystical body reaching across time, place, language, altar, and wound.
Eventually, I found the Independent Sacramental Movement. Within that framework, I found my current Order. I found a bishop and brothers. I found a way to be sacramental, ecumenical, traditional, mystical, queer, wounded, and still Christian.
I went through formation in a way that felt ancient to me: reading for orders, discernment, prayer, study, obedience, conversation, and the long, slow testing of a call.
And here I have to say something that may annoy people.
I do not understand why we have made ministry so expensive.
I understand training.
I understand accountability.
I understand that chaplaincy, counseling, hospitals, hospice, trauma, and public ministry require preparation, ethics, and boundaries.
I am not against education.
I am against turning the call of God into a debt machine.
When did we decide that the ability to serve Christ must be locked behind degrees many cannot afford?
When did the priest, pastor, brother, or chaplain become acceptable only after passing through the machinery of credentialing?
When did we forget that Jesus said, “Go,” not “Go once you can afford the approved pathway”?
Again, I understand training.
But I grieve what money has done to ministry.
I grieve how often the poor are told to serve Christ from the margins while being blocked from formal service by the cost of entry.
I grieve that someone may be called to the dying, the grieving, and the wounded, but find every door guarded by tuition, paperwork, systems, and institutional caution.
Some caution is necessary.
But not all gates are holy.
Some are just gates.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
— Matthew 9:37, ESV
If the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few, why do we keep making the road to labor so impossible for those without money?
That question stays with me.
But it does not excuse laziness.
It does not mean we can do whatever we want and call it calling.
Formation matters.
Humility matters.
Accountability matters.
Boundaries matter.
Knowledge matters.
Spiritual maturity matters.
A person who wants to serve must also be willing to be formed.
But formation is not the same as prestige.
And education is not the same as wisdom.
A degree can help.
It cannot replace love.
A certificate can open a door.
It cannot make a soul holy.
A title can identify a role.
It cannot prove a vocation.
Christ looks deeper.
Christ looks at fruit.
“Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”
— Matthew 7:20, ESV
That is the test.
Not size.
Not money.
Not microphone.
Not building.
Not denomination.
Not charisma.
Fruit.
Do people encounter mercy?
Are the hungry fed?
Are the wounded tended?
Are the dead honored?
Are the lonely remembered?
Are the poor seen?
Are the sacraments handled with reverence?
Is Christ proclaimed with humility?
Does the ministry create healing or fear?
Does it bring people closer to God or closer to the leader’s ego?
The acceptable Christian I was taught often cared more about appearance than fruit.
But Christ cares about fruit.
He cares whether love becomes action.
This is where many people misunderstand faith.
They say, “God will take care of it,” and then do nothing.
They say, “I’ll pray for you,” and then refuse to lift a hand.
They talk about trusting God while ignoring the person bleeding in front of them.
But Scripture does not let us do that.
“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
— James 2:17, ESV
That does not mean we earn grace.
It means grace makes us alive.
And living things move.
Love works.
Mercy acts.
Prayer becomes flesh.
If someone needs food and I only offer a holy phrase, what good is that?
If someone needs housing and I only offer religious language, what good is that?
If someone is dying alone and I only say, “God has a plan,” while refusing to sit beside them, what good is that?
The Word became flesh.
So our faith must also take on flesh.
Hands.
Feet.
Presence.
Bread.
Water.
Rides.
Phone calls.
Hospital visits.
Cemetery prayers.
Eucharist.
Grief care.
Simple help.
Actual work.
Not performative holiness.
Embodied mercy.
Christ is not a stick of gum we keep in our pocket, take out when convenient, chew for a moment, and put away again.
Christ is not a charm.
Christ is not a brand.
Christ is not a hobby.
Christ is Lord.
Savior.
Brother.
Friend.
Shepherd.
Teacher.
Fire.
Door.
Bread.
Living Water.
The one who calls us out of ourselves and into life.
And yes, He helps us.
But He does not always do the work for us.
Like a good parent, He teaches, guides, strengthens, corrects, blesses, and then sometimes sends us out of the nest.
Not abandoned.
Sent.
Not unloved.
Commissioned.
Not alone.
Trusted.
That is part of maturity in Christ.
We ask.
We pray.
We listen.
We receive.
Then we act.
We do the work placed in front of us.
We stop pretending that spirituality means floating above responsibility.
We stop using “God will handle it” as an excuse to avoid what God may be asking us to do.
There is a simple life at the heart of this.
Not easy.
Simple.
Release the excess.
Release the false self.
Release the denominational arrogance.
Release the need to be seen as acceptable.
Release the baggage that keeps the soul cluttered.
Stop buying what you do not need to impress people who do not know your soul.
Stop justifying spiritual laziness with religious language.
Stop confusing comfort with blessing.
Stop confusing wealth with favor.
Stop confusing public success with fruitfulness.
Live simply.
Pray honestly.
Serve concretely.
Love without performance.
Study with humility.
Listen for the Holy Spirit.
Follow Christ.
Do the work He gives you without whining that it does not look like someone else’s ministry.
That last part is for me too.
Maybe especially for me.
Because I have spent so much time asking what my ministry is supposed to look like.
I have tried to force doors open.
I have mourned the communities that did not form.
I have been angry that the road did not look like the one in my head.
But perhaps the acceptable Christian I was taught to be had to die before the actual Christian in me could live.
The acceptable priest.
The acceptable gay man.
The acceptable servant.
The acceptable believer.
The acceptable wounded person.
The acceptable mystic.
All those false versions had to be stripped down.
The dark night did not only test my faith.
It exposed the false Christianity I had absorbed.
It showed me how much of my fear was inherited.
How much of my ministry image was borrowed.
How much of my self-hatred was taught.
How much of my understanding of God had been polluted by people who spoke His name but did not carry His heart.
And now I am left with the deeper questions.
Why am I Christian?
Who am I in Christ?
Where is my place in the Lord?
What has He actually called me to do?
What must I release?
What must I keep?
What must I stop performing?
What must I finally obey?
These are not small questions.
These are Jacob questions.
Night-wrestling questions.
Hip-out-of-socket questions.
Bless-me-or-I-will-not-let-go questions.
They are questions every Christian should wrestle with at some point.
Not because doubt is failure.
Because unexamined faith can become idolatry.
If you never ask who you are in Christ, someone else will answer for you.
A denomination.
A preacher.
A parent.
A political party.
A culture.
A wound.
A fear.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Do not let them.
Do not let someone who has not done their own inner work dictate the shape of your soul.
Do not let a denomination replace Christ.
Do not let a preacher’s fear become your theology.
Do not let family expectation become vocation.
Do not let money become the measure of ministry.
Do not let the acceptable Christian kill the living one.
Christ does not call us to be acceptable.
He calls us to be true.
True in Him.
True in love.
True in mercy.
True in repentance.
True in service.
True in the hidden places.
True when no one is watching.
True when the denomination cannot save us.
True when the old self is dying.
True when the Spirit says, “Come deeper.”
Maybe that is the heart of it.
The Christian I was told was acceptable was too small for the Christ who called me.
Too narrow.
Too afraid.
Too performative.
Too controlled by human systems.
Too worried about appearance.
Too quick to condemn.
Too slow to love.
But the Christian Christ is making in me is something else.
More wounded, yes.
More mystical.
More honest.
More sorrowful.
More grounded.
More difficult to categorize.
More willing to stand at the threshold.
More willing to care for the dying and the dead.
More willing to pray under the mantle of the Sorrowful Mother.
More willing to admit that the Holy Spirit does not always move according to denominational policy.
More willing to believe that Christ can use a broken, queer, stubborn, scarred priest who has walked through other spiritual rooms and still come back to the Door.
Christ is the Door.
The Spirit is the key.
The Father is the house.
And I am still learning how to enter without dragging every false version of myself across the threshold.
So I ask again:
Why am I Christian?
Not because I fit the mold.
Not because the Church has always been safe.
Not because denominations always tell the truth.
Not because Christians have always shown me Christ.
I am Christian because Christ came looking for me.
In the fear.
In the rage.
In the wandering.
In the honeyed presence of the Holy Mother.
In the sword-bright protection of Saint Michael.
In the dark night.
In the questions.
In the locked doors.
In the dead.
In the dying.
In the wounded.
In the strange, stubborn light that would not go out.
And now I know this:
I do not want to be the Christian I was told was acceptable.
I want to be the Christian Christ is forming.
Even if it takes the rest of my life.
Even if the road is strange.
Even if the door opens slowly.
Even if I limp away from the wrestling.
Let me be real.
Let me be faithful.
Let me be useful.
Let me be emptied of what is false.
Let me be filled with what is Christ.
Let me love God with all my heart, soul, and mind.
Let me love my neighbor without caveat.
Let me do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.
Let me never mistake the vessel for the water.
Let me never mistake the denomination for the Door.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025.