You’ve caught me mid-evolution. If you were to ask me my thoughts on, say, universal basic income or penal substitutionary atonement, my answer three years from now might well be different than my answer today. 

I was born in a German hospital to American parents. My mom says the nurses were nice, although they insisted on bundling me up in layers of blankets even though it was late June. My childhood was defined by moves: Germany to Arizona to Nantucket back to Arizona and then, ultimately, to Midland, Texas, where my parents hoped to find more support for their conservative, homeschooling lifestyle than was available on the outskirts of Grand Canyon National Park.

Aside from college at Texas A&M University (whoop!) and a three-year stint in Houston, I’ve lived in Midland since 1997. If you look up “politics of Midland, Texas,” the map is solid red. No Democrat vs. Republican race here is ever even close. Yet here I am telling you I might be open to the idea of universal basic income. How did that happen?

The Internet, I guess. Books. Movies. Coming face to face with all kinds of people—truly, ALL kinds of people—and realizing that I could have either certainty or reality, but not both. 

I don’t care about politics or religion for their own sake. You’ll never catch me running for office. I have no intentions of becoming a pastor (or “Children’s Ministry Director”). Yet I find myself with strong opinions about guns, taxes, gerrymandering, immigration, abortion, LGBTQ+ issues, the Bible, gender roles, and pretty much everything else. 

Why? Because I want a robust, healthy, meaningful life for all of us and those topics are inescapably intertwined with our lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic was something else, wasn’t it? Nothing remained untouched. Though I am still grieving all the losses our world suffered during those years, in some ways I’m grateful for how it shook things up. Some of my friends who had subsisted on fast food and Advil their entire lives suddenly became obsessed with standing on grass to connect with the electrical energy of the earth. Others who had lived and died by science suddenly became very selective about which science they deemed relevant. We all became hypocrites in one way or another because the world, it seemed, became a whirling orb of contradictions.

Many of us are now rebuilding our worldviews. There is freedom in starting over. You might be afraid to voice your questions because people in your life have let you know that their acceptance of you depends on you staying in line. That was the case for me. It’s scary to violate those expectations, but I believe this: it’s even scarier not to. 

The truth is not afraid of pressure. It’s not an IKEA dresser. If an ideology crumbles under pressure, it wasn’t the truth.

So please! Ask your questions! That little contradiction that niggles at the back of your mind, that discomfort you feel in certain situations because you know this isn’t who you want to be but you don’t know another way…those feelings come from somewhere—or Someone—good. Unearth it. Opening all these cans of worms is one of my very favorite things to do. I’d love for you to join me.