Our Fatal Sincerity: How I Loved God Out of Existence

At ten years old, I knew all kinds of things: that prayer could cure diseases, that demons could possess human bodies, that I was immortal, that the world would probably end in my generation, that God loved me deeply, that I wanted him in my life more than anything, and that I was a revolting self-righteous hypocrite who deserved an eternity of suffering. Our Fatal Sincerity is a memoir of my next seventeen years of daily seeking a relationship with God and coming up empty-handed. It is also a handbook discussing the theological inconsistencies that made my particular Christian experience possible and cataloguing the angles of psychological manipulation that were employed to make the Christian world narrative feel so real that I questioned my own sanity far sooner than I questioned its accuracy.

For everyone else who has been made to feel wicked or insane for not hearing voices, I’ve written Our Fatal Sincerity to say that you are not alone and that the world beyond the church is not devoid of joy or acceptance or fulfillment.