It’s taken me years to recognize how deeply the performance-based theology of my youth shaped my thinking — not just spiritually, but socially and creatively, too. I don’t think that was anyone’s intention. It was just… the air we breathed. And it’s a tough atmosphere to detox from.
In many church circles, Christianity had been reduced to a formula:
Believe this + Behave like that = You’re in.
That’s tidy. It’s reassuring. It gives us control. But the problem is—it’s not Christ.
Jesus wasn’t about formulas. He didn’t hand out fill-in-the-blank worksheets to the disciples. He invited them to follow. To emulate.
When I finally confronted how performative my faith had become, I started realizing that much of it was more about managing appearances than pursuing transformation. And that’s a painful wake-up call. Because performing is exhausting. Pretending to have certainty is even more so.
But once I stopped trying to prove I “had it all together,” I could finally start asking real questions—and that’s where faith actually started to get interesting.
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Part 3 drops next Friday.