Part of the series: Living, Loving, and Leading in a Liminal Season
I remember when Stranger Things was released on Netflix. I think it was exactly 10 years ago? The opening scene, the graphics, the music, all of it just sucked us in. We were instantly captivated, transported back to the 80s through this strange sci-fi world.
In the series, it was called "The Upside Down."
In many ways, there's a connection to what we are experiencing in the landscape of faith in the U.S. We are in this liminal season, in-between eras, and in a lot of ways it can feel like "The Upside Down," an alternative reality that is disorienting, scary, and foreign.
It's been fascinating to start and pastor a church in one of the more de-churched areas of the U.S., the Washington, D.C. metro area, specifically Silver Spring, Maryland, and now spend the majority of my time coaching people and churches through this liminal season.
I've spent most of the past 10 to 15 years leading people, including myself, through this liminal faith landscape, and I've noticed there are some common reactions.
I bring these up simply to point out how deeply we've been formed to react to uncertainty, not necessarily by Christ, but by American culture. And I think it's important to differentiate between the two.
As I wrote last week, "the only way out is through."
Denial isn't going to get you, or us, anywhere.
Here are some of the usual reactions I see to liminality:
Dismissal
I can't tell you how many times I've pointed out what is happening in the broader religious landscape, or even raised questions rooted in Scripture, and Christians (of all people) dismiss it entirely.
Sometimes the dismissal sounds like, "You're just emotional," or, "You're upset, so you're not thinking clearly."
Other times people retreat into their own immediate experience and assume that because they aren't personally seeing something, it must not be happening.
"I don't currently have cancer, so cancer must not exist."
See how silly that logic sounds when we use a different example?
Our individual experience matters, but it is not the whole of reality.
Certainty Addiction
So many people see me criticize something they hold dear, and their immediate response is basically, "Then what?" or "What about...?"
They will only consider the critique if I can immediately provide a clear plan, a clear destination, and a clear alternative. Or they argue that the alternative would surely be worse.
Certainty has crept into American faith in toxic ways. For many of us, it has become an addiction — something I dug into more in Time to Move on from Certainty.
And anyone who has struggled with addiction knows that it is easier to keep reaching for the substance than to go through the discomfort of detox.
It is easier to keep shooting up on certainty than to embrace mystery and step into the unknown.
As my counselor said to me recently, "The body craves certainty."
Of course it does.
But spiritual maturity often requires learning how to live faithfully even when certainty is unavailable.
Control Addiction
Certainty's twin sibling is control — I wrote a whole piece on this dynamic in Fear, Control, and the Shared Ground Beneath Our Divisions.
This is one reason so many church belief statements and membership classes seem to keep getting longer. (FYI, both progressive and evangelical churches are doing this.) If we can define enough, clarify enough, regulate enough, and draw enough boundaries, perhaps we can keep the uncertainty away.
We see the same impulse politically.
It helps explain why so many Evangelicals have been drawn toward strong political figures like Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk, and why Progressives can become equally obsessed with winning arguments, proving facts, and dismissing people they believe are ignorant or morally wrong — a dynamic I explored more in Why Christian Nationalism Feels Biblical (and Isn't).
The expressions are different, but the underlying impulse can be remarkably similar: I need the world, and the people in it, to become more manageable.
Control is fed by fear, and fear is one of love's greatest enemies.
Some people would say hate is the opposite of love. But I wonder whether hate is often what grows out of fear.
This is why even well-intentioned slogans like "Hate has no home here" can sometimes stop short of the deeper work. Condemning hate is easy. Understanding the fear underneath it is much harder. Loving those people…even harder, but required, for actual change to take place.
And I would challenge my Progressive friends here too. Tolerance alone is not enough.
Tolerance can become little more than relational distance from people we disagree with. We tolerate one another while remaining strangers. And distance can preserve ignorance. Ignorance can feed fear. Fear can harden into prejudice. And prejudice can eventually become hatred.
I feel like Yoda said something like that.
The Christian alternative is not mere tolerance. It is grace (unconditional love).
Grace moves toward people. Grace listens. Grace tells the truth. Grace holds boundaries. Grace refuses to reduce another person to their worst belief, their political affiliation, or their most offensive opinion.
Grasping for control during liminal seasons is like pouring gas on a fire.
Comfort
Years ago, a friend shared a quote with me from a missionary working in a Communist country:
"You Americans are persecuted by your freedom."
That line has stayed with me.
Freedom in Christ and the freedom we experience as Americans are two very different realities, and it can be difficult to differentiate between the two.
Freedom of speech, for example, is a bedrock of American identity.
Scripture, on the other hand, teaches us that "the tongue is a fire" capable of enormous destruction in James 3. Scripture repeatedly calls us not simply to exercise our freedom, but to restrain ourselves for the sake of love.
An alternative way to think about following Jesus is this: the deeper into the Kingdom we want to travel with Him, the more we will have to surrender, restrain, and shed parts of our old selves.
This is what transformation looks like.
And it is a strange paradox of pain and freedom.
So many people resist leaning into the liminal experience because of the initial discomfort. We want to go back to what was familiar. We want relief. We want certainty. We want control.
But we may not realize that on the other side of surrender is a deeper kind of freedom.
The heavenly kind.
The Resurrection kind.
For those of you embracing the liminal journey, what am I leaving out? What are some of the common reactions you have experienced yourself or seen in others?
And for those of you who are skeptical, I hope you'll imagine yourself at a good meal with me, having a deep and rich conversation.
This is written with a warm heart toward you, people I dearly love.
It is also written as an act of submission.
I submit these thoughts for refinement because I believe truth is discerned in community.
AI Transparency Note: Every Seeds and Water post is written by a human. Many (not all) drafts are then submitted to AI for spelling, grammar, and phrasing suggestions. In short, we use AI as an editor, but not a writer.