A new crisis of faith

Radical honesty, disillusionment, alcoholism, objectification, loving what's real, stuff like that

I was reflecting earlier on the fact that it’s been a year since I went to Texas to connect with American Christian influencer Bethany Beal. I wrote a whole post about the experience (and my over-identification with Bethany and Dave’s journey) several months ago, so I won’t rehash any of that here. But what is striking to me, looking back on that time as a marker, is how different my perspective is now. For better and for worse, the last year—with all of the ideological conflict we’ve witnessed playing out around us publicly and personally—has changed me in ways I’m still processing.

Reckoning with reality is often accompanied by grief, and I’ve been experiencing what feels like a loss of my own innocence for some time now. There was a hopeful optimism I had when flying to San Antonio to meet my philosophic opposite last May that I don’t have anymore, at least not in the same measure. I am—and I don’t like saying this—more jaded about Homo sapiens today than I was even a few months ago, and much more pessimistic about our ability to change our minds, or to not get led down a violent garden path to nowhere.

This makes total sense for the cultural moment we’re in, and there is some healthy self-protection value in it, but man. What a brutal evolution of thought that seems suspiciously aligned with the interests of people who would gladly stone us to death if it increased their net worth. Nowhere near as fun as realizing that you’re allowed to be nice to yourself or that you don’t have to tell the Trader Joe’s cashier anything about your upcoming weekend because that’s really personal and it was wrong of them to ask.