When Giants Fall, the Work Remains
Why One Death Doesn’t End the Fight
This wasn’t on my publishing schedule, but sometimes the news hits and you just have to write. Thanks for letting me process this one out loud with you.
James Dobson is dead.
I’m not celebrating. I’m not grieving either.
I’m just tired.
The Man vs. The Machine
Here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud…Dobson was never really the problem. He was just the most recognizable face of it.
The theology that taught me God’s love came with conditions? Still preaching from pulpits every Sunday.
The biblical interpretation that made my friends hate themselves for who they loved? Still being taught in youth groups.
The view of masculinity and femininity that crushed anyone who didn’t fit the mold? Still shaping how Christian parents raise their kids.
Dobson’s gone, but the machine he helped build is humming along just fine without him.
Why I Can’t Just Move On
People keep asking me why I don’t just walk away from Christianity altogether. Why I keep writing about faith when it caused me so much pain. Why I don’t find a nice, secular therapist and work through my church trauma in private like a normal person.
The answer is sitting in a pew somewhere right now.
She’s twelve years old, maybe thirteen. She loves Jesus with the kind of pure, desperate love that only kids can manage. And she’s starting to wonder if God could ever love someone like her back…someone who doesn’t fit the box, who asks the wrong questions, who feels things she’s not supposed to feel.
I write because somewhere tonight, a teenager is lying in bed praying for God to make him normal, to take away the parts of himself that his youth pastor says are sinful, to help him become the kind of son his Christian parents can be proud of.
I write because I know what it’s like to believe that God’s love is real but not for you. To think that everyone else got the memo about how to be a good Christian, but somehow you missed it.
The Work That Remains
Dobson’s death doesn’t change the work I feel called to do. If anything, it makes it more urgent.
Because while we were all focused on the big names and the famous voices, this toxic theology kept spreading like a virus through Sunday school classes and small groups and family dinner tables. It infected how people read their Bibles, how they pray, how they see themselves and others.
You can’t kill an idea by outliving its spokesperson.
So I keep writing. I keep pushing back against the lie that God’s love is conditional. I keep insisting that the gospel is bigger and wilder and more inclusive than the version I grew up with.
I’m not trying to tear down faith…I’m trying to dig it out from under the rubble of bad theology and toxic teaching. I’m trying to show people what it might look like to follow Jesus without all the fear and shame and exclusion that got tangled up with his name.
For the Kids Who Come After
Every time I write about spiritual abuse or toxic theology or the damage done in God’s name, I think about that kid in the pew. The one who’s starting to suspect that maybe they don’t belong in God’s family after all.
I want them to know that the God I’ve found on the other side of deconstruction is nothing like the one they’re teaching them about. That there’s a version of faith that doesn’t require them to shrink themselves or hide parts of who they are or spend their life trying to earn approval they already have.
I want them to hear about Jesus from someone who actually sounds like Jesus…full of grace and truth, fierce in love, gentle with the wounded, and absolutely uncompromising when it comes to protecting the vulnerable from those who would use religion to harm them.
The Long Game
Dobson’s influence will outlast him by decades. The books are still on the shelves. The teachings are still being passed down. The damage is still spreading to new generations.
But here’s what I believe…slowly, stubbornly, one conversation at a time, we can build something different. We can raise kids who know that God’s love isn’t something they have to earn. We can create communities where people don’t have to choose between their faith and their humanity.
We can write a better story about what it means to follow Jesus.
That’s why I do what I do. Not because I think one essay or one book or one conversation will change everything. But because I know what it’s like to discover that everything you were taught about God was smaller and meaner and more conditional than the truth.
And I know there are kids out there right now who need to hear that there’s more.
Dobson is gone. But the work…the real work of healing and rebuilding and reimagining what faith can be…that’s just getting started.
And I’m not going anywhere.
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This is what needs to be said. I am a Christian today because I had the model of my father, a geologist, wrestle with the issue of short age creationism and come to the other side with his Christian faith intact, and his vision of God larger. When I later discovered that I was gay, his earlier struggle helped me through that dark valley and into the light of God‘s greater grace. …. What you are doing in your writing is vital for so many.
This is so good. And so important. Thank you.