👓 Doing Better, Boundaries, and Looking Back on Faith

Plus some quick IGQ updates!

👋 Oh hi!

We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming after a fabulous week of launching I’ve Got Questions into the world. Thank you so much if you shared on social or told someone in your workout class about the book. Thank you if you came to our first two bookstore events (it was seriously so much fun to see your faces). Before we jump into today’s essay, I wanted to quickly share a couple of upcoming bookstops with you!

Saturday, Feb 15: I’ll be at Interabang Books for a conversation with my dear friend, Courtney Cleveland, and to sign your books! If you haven’t bought the book yet, consider supporting indie bookstores and purchasing it from Interabang directly. This event is free and open to the public, so tell your DFW friends to come hang out!

Sunday, Feb 16: Also free and open to the public, I’ll be preaching at Restore Austin (home of

Zach W. Lambert

and

Amy Lambert

) at both their services (9:30am and 11:30am). I’ll be around to say hi after the second service!

Thursday, Feb 20: Come hang out with me and Sophie Hudson in Auburn, AL at Auburn United Methodist Church (hosted by the excellent Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers). This one is free as well, but you need to RSVP here.

Friday, Feb 21: Kendra Adachi and I will be chattin’ it up at The Book Worm Bookstore in Powder Springs, GA (right outside of Atlanta). The event is currently sold out, but Julia has opened up tickets to the signing line so we can say hi and hug each other’s faces.

Wednesday, Feb 26: I’ll be guest teaching at Vestavia Hill Baptist Church in Vestavia Hills, AL. I love this church and this event is also open to the public (if you want dinner, which you do it looks amazing, you can order it here).

I’ll also be in Charlotte(ish), NC and Grand Rapids, MI in March. You can see more about those events here!

If you’ve had a chance to read I’ve Got Questions, would you be willing to leave a review (if you liked it, obviously, if you didn’t, we don’t have to talk about it)? Even if you didn’t buy it on Amazon, you can still leave a review there, and reviews help authors so much. Other options for review spots are Goodreads, Storygraph, or Fable, if you use any of those platforms.

Okay, ENOUGH OF THAT.

When I asked for questions this week, I noticed we had a bit of a thematic pattern. I thought it might be fun to group them up here and have a little thinky think about the ways we look back to our original faith in the midst of or post-deconstruction.

Q: What would you say to us elder ministry leaders who now know better but feel complicit in ways that have hurt others in the past?

A: A few years ago, on this very Substack, I wrote a series of posts about how I came to hold an affirming theology. In one of those posts, I told a story about how I really effed up (that’s honestly putting it lightly) when I intentionally outed a guy in the ministry I worked for, which got him fired. Even if I wasn’t affirming (which I was at this point), I needed to repent for my actions. They were gross and awful and dehumanizing and painful.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to repent, how to apologize. Here’s how it went:

The role I played a long time ago in my (small) position of power weighed too heavily on me, and I tentatively attempted to find Eric on the internet, to see how he was. In my desire to not re-open wounds or you know, center myself, I hesitated to reach out. My finger hovered over the ‘message’ button on Instagram for months: What do I say? Is it even appropriate? What would it matter? What if he’s worked through it and doesn’t want my apology? What if it wasn’t even that big of a deal to him? I agonized (remember? I second-guess everything.) and prayed over it. You know that scene in Gone with the Wind where Melanie is dying and the doctor tells Scarlett: “Look you need to be a person. This woman is dying and now is not the time to attempt to unburden your own conscience, you sociopathic white woman”? I felt like I could go full-Scarlett and unintentionally make it all about me, which I knew would not accomplish what I needed to accomplish: humbling myself. I consulted with a couple of queer friends and they, along with Holy Spirit, nudged me to consider that while I could not guess his response, offering an apology from a posture of humility was literally the least I could do. So I sent a rambling and barely coherent message, attempting to express my heart as best I could. I attempted to be clear in the ways I knew I harmed him. I tried not to let myself off the hook at all. And it really sucked. It sucked to be honest about the ways you have been a villain in someone else’s story, but I knew an apology that offered less than that would not be enough. And I waited.

Honestly, I didn’t want him to respond. But he did. And it was hard to read, but it was also deeply kind. The brand of kind that comes from a well of wisdom and understanding. He told me that my actions completely changed his opinion of Christians and that he wasn’t one anymore due to my actions. He was very clear that my apology was a beginning but not an end. He told me it had a huge effect on him and how anger ate away at him. But the kindness with which he told me these things (a kindness I for sure did not deserve!) was truthful, in that I needed to understand what a theology of exclusion does to a human soul. It sucked. It freaking sucked. It still sucks.

There’s no way we can go back and undo any of the harm we caused. But what we can do is honestly face it, repent to God and that person, and do better as we move forward. If there’s someone you’ve specifically harmed, and they haven’t actually asked you to never speak to them again, it’s worth it to humbly apologize. Even if they do not accept it, even if you do not get a response at all. If you’re talking about a more generalized hurt, maybe by your teachings, I believe the way you live your life now is a powerful testament to the ways you’ve grown and changed. Regret is a tool of humility; it doesn’t have to drive the bus of your life, but contrition begets repentance. There’s a reason you wish you could take all of it back; don’t ignore or downplay that, but how you respond to past harms says more about the person you are now than the person you were then. Ask for forgiveness, and change your behaviors. Even if you don’t get the absolution you’re looking for from that person, you can continue in life knowing the pain of that mistake, and you won’t (hopefully) make it again.