What’s Anchored Me Isn’t Following a Niche Version of Christianity

But if pressed, I would say I identify as a ‘freelance monotheist’

Image by Keegan Houser on Unsplash

For the majority of my adult life, I ideologically lived within the Christian fundamentalist and evangelical sect of Christianity. This was my religious and ideological home; I was a pastor for 15 years in these spaces. I became a pastor because I’ve always been interested in religion, and I am naturally a spiritual person who enjoys helping people and loves Jesus's life and teachings. What my time as clergy showed me was that Christian institutions in America tend to be more focused on building church brands and a pastor platform and are led by toxic narcissists. When I realized the American church has little to do with serving people and embodied the life and teachings of Jesus, I knew it was my time to go. In hindsight, I can look back at that season of my life and say with confidence it was some of the worst times in my 40 years on Earth.

Anxious, nervous, short-tempered, stressed, burned out, impatient, depressed. These are all descriptions that those close to me have used to describe me over the years. But I loosely still call myself ‘Christian.’ I’m Christian because I still love the person of Jesus and strive to follow the path of his life and teachings.

Strangely, for all of my Christian life, I was warned against straying away from the teachings of the Church. Most significantly, as a protestant, I was taught that the Bible is the greatest and most authoritative source of truth for all humanity. I have no issue with the Bible per se. I think it is sacred Scripture. However, I do not believe it is a book written by God, nor that it is inerrant or infallible.

2024 has been a year of deep personal reflection, processing, and transformation. What has helped me the most in facing my anxiety, impatience, stress, depression, and so forth has not been the Bible. At least not the Bible alone. It has been minimally the Bible and, more so, the teachings of Buddhism, Islam, and Stoicism.

If pressed, I would say I’m more religiously and ideologically aligned with the English Scholar Karen Armstrong in that, like her, I identify as a ‘freelance monotheist.’

A little over a year ago, I was introduced to the teachings of Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hahn. I was in a place professionally where I had left my career as a pastor and was starting a new tech career. The transition was rough, but I was fortunate to have a few close friends and the support of my family. Both tremendously helped the change go as smoothly as possible.

For my first year working in a support role, I did great work, met great people, and became a part of a growing SaaS company. But then, from one day to the next, things changed.

Though my performance remained consistent, my immediate supervisor seemed to have it out for me from one day to the next. I dreaded our weekly 1:1s because they became an hour-long session where I was called out for contradictory behaviors. One week I would be told I was wrong for not sending a video to a customer on resolving an issue. The next week I’d get in trouble for sending a customer a video instead of a support article. Often, I was given little to no context on why what I did was wrong or what expectation had changed that made an action I previously did okay but now was not okay. It became a weekly occurrence that I was being reprimanded for one thing or another.

Within a few short months, I was at my wit’s end, and if not for needing to provide for my family I would have gladly quit my job. Knowing I needed to stick things out at least until I could find another position I knew I needed to find a way to deal with my anger and frustration with how I was being treated by my manager.

Then I found a little book called Anger by Thich Nhat Hahn in my local bookshop. The book was maybe 120 pages long, and I blew through it in a few hours. I felt like I was sitting with a wise grandfather who resonated with what I was feeling and knew how to tame my emotional dragon.

The book taught me what I now understand is core to Buddhism.

Suffering and bad things are going to happen. It comes with the territory of living. At the same time, I can’t control the chaos around me. All I can do is control myself.

Practicing what Master Thich Nhat Hahn taught helped me deal with my manager and be a better husband, dad, and friend.

As a husband, I’ve grown in understanding before trying to be understood. I listen far more than I speak when talking with my wife. As a dad, I’m more comfortable living in the messiness of parenting.

I’ve experienced this as my kids actively come to me and share things they're struggling with or mistakes they’ve made. Their confidence in doing so is a direct result of their seeing that I won’t get upset or angry, but I’ll listen and try to offer guidance. The other day I began crying while sitting on my couch watching my 8-year-old son play. I was able to be so present in the moment watching him that I was overwhelmed with emotion.

Eventually, my manager was terminated from the company, and the new manager I have been working under is easily the best manager I’ve ever worked for.

Buddhism didn’t change who my manager was. Instead, it changed me.

Soon after reading Thich Nhat Hahn, I began studying Buddhism and continued to learn from this religious tradition. Then, October 7, 2023, happened. This is not the space to discuss the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

I will say after a few short weeks of watching Israel, with the most technologically advanced military the world has ever known, continue to relentlessly attack Palestine, which has no military of its own, I noticed something that blew me away. It seemed the more brutal the Israeli Defence Force was, the more the people of Palestine cried out to God.

What blew me away was not only how millions of people’s faith in God strengthened under the thumb of genocide but also how much these people ferociously showed love and compassion to one another.

Because of this, I began reading the Quran, connecting with Muslims in my community, and learning about the life of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The more I learned, the more evident it was that compassion and justice are at the heart of Islam.

The compassion victims showed to one another weren’t superhuman acts of heroism but living out their faith in the brokenness of their reality. This led my wife and I to sit down and reconsider how we lack compassion and justice in our lives.

One of the five pillars of Islam is the zakat or almsgiving. As a Christian, I believed this was the equivalent of tithing. With tithes, Christians give money to their local church to pay for staff, mortgages, utilities, and ministries. However, in Islam, the zakat is explicitly meant to be money used to serve and care for the poor and marginalized.

Not only has my family become actively involved in caring for Palestinian victims of genocide, but we’ve also started regularly setting aside money to care for those in need that we cross paths with in our everyday lives.

We’ve started carrying small bills to give to the poor in our neighborhood. We have a budget to buy a meal or hygienic products for someone in need. We don’t give to an organization that we trust to do these things, but we’ve taken ownership by choosing to engage in meeting directly felt needs as we encounter them.

Finally, a few years ago, I heard about a guy my age named Ryan Holiday. He made noise in philosophical and religious circles because of his research and experience living out stoic virtues. I initially bought a few of his books and watched some YouTube videos, but lost interest pretty quickly.

His books sat on my bookshelf for over a year, collecting dust. Then, earlier this year, I decided to pick them up and see what all the fuss was about. After reading his first book, The Obstacle is the Way, I quickly consumed two more of his books: Ego is the Enemy and Stillness is the Key.

The impact these works have had on me is far more significant than I could have anticipated.

Embracing Stoic practices has helped me increase my emotional resilience and the ability to manage reactions to external events, which has helped me find greater peace amidst chaos.

In the last few weeks, my wife was unexpectedly laid off. As much as the loss of income puts us in a difficult spot financially I’ve been able to model temperance by processing my emotions in a healthy way. Even as the news of being laid off hit me, I kept asking myself, “How can I walk through this with wisdom, courage, justly, and temperance.”

Like Buddhism, it helps me focus on what I can control, thereby reducing anxiety and frustration while also encouraging mindfulness and presence in my daily life.

The ethical virtues of Stoicism of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance align perfectly with the virtues of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

Anxious, nervous, short-tempered, stressed, burned out, impatient, depressed. Are these still true of me? Absolutely. But I’m more controlled, thoughtful, others-minded, and willing to press into my emotions instead of running away from them.

I can better look at reality as it is, good or bad, and be present and thoughtful.

What’s anchored me isn’t following a niche version of Christianity but expanding the traditions and experiences to gain wisdom from a broader range of perspectives.