Saints and Sinners | Rethinking Faith, Judgment and Human Complexity

Growing up, we attended a small Southern Baptist church for some period of time. Not my whole childhood, but long enough for me to see what that world looked like from the inside and long enough for it to leave a real impression on me at that age, whether I fully understood it or not.

I have these flashes of memory from sitting in the uncomfortable, wooden pews, probably supposed to be paying attention. Instead, I was off in my own little world, playing hangman on a piece of paper, most likely the church bulletin, while the minister’s voice filled the room. It had this rumbling, loud, intense quality to it, that fire and brimstone kind of energy that didn’t really leave much space for anything else. There was a lot of talk about sinners, about burning in hell, about what happens if you don’t get it right. Then, almost like clockwork the service would shift into the altar call, Just As I Am over and over again, stanza after stanza, stretching on longer than it probably needed to. There was this intense pressure and urgency in the pastor’s voice that made everything feel very defined and very high stakes, especially as a child where it all felt like something closer to do or die.

And I remember, even then, feeling a little outside of it. Not scared exactly and not even angry at that point, just skeptical, not fully buying into it in a way I couldn’t have put into words back then. Something about it didn’t quite line up with what I was actually seeing in people, because the way it was being described felt so absolute. People were either this or that, saved or not, good or bad, in or out. And yet, the people around me didn’t feel that clean, no one really did if I was being honest. Most of the people I knew were a little messy and rough around the edges, but in a good way… and somehow those were the very people I was being told were headed for hell if they didn’t repent and rededicate their lives on Sunday.

I think I did end up rebelling against that in my own way. Not loudly or outwardly noticeable, at least not at that age, but internally. More like this almost unconscious pulling away from the idea that everything could be sorted so neatly and so quickly and that the work of judging is something we’re meant to hold as humans.

It wasn’t about God, or Jesus, or anything spiritual in that sense. It was more about the way something complex and living seemed to get reduced into a set of rigid categories and conclusions that didn’t leave much room for the reality of being human or for the parts of people that don’t fit neatly into those kinds of systems, especially within organized religion.

The more I paid attention over time, the more I noticed how much just really didn’t fit. The same person could be kind in one moment and cutting in the next, thoughtful and reactive, generous and self protecting, and there was always more going on beneath the surface than the labels and the system seemed to allow for.

And I think I really held onto that, even if I didn’t realize I was doing it. This sense that people are more layered than we tend to make room for, that we’re not all one thing or the other, not saints or sinners in any clean, definitive way, but some mix of things that can shift depending on the moment or circumstances, sometimes within the same day, sometimes within the same conversation.

I also think that’s part of what I’m drawn to, even if I didn’t always have language for it. That space where things don’t fully resolve, where more than one thing can be true at the same time, where something can hold both light and shadow without needing to be forced into one side or the other or labeled good or bad. I don’t really feel interested in labeling people as saints or sinners, because it feels too small for what we are and too final in a way that doesn’t match how we actually live or change or grow.

But I do think we carry some version of both. We’re all full of light and shadow. I see that in myself in the small ways I show up how I want to and the ways I don’t, in the moments I feel aligned with who I am and the moments I fall short, and it’s all there whether I like it or not. It’s just part of being human.

And maybe that’s the part that matters more, not trying to separate those pieces out or pretend one cancels out the other, but being willing to see them, to take responsibility for how they show up and to stay open to the fact that we’re all evolving, constantly changing, still not fully defined in any one direction.

I think that’s also part of why I’ve stepped outside of those earlier frameworks. My beliefs feel far more expansive now than anything that could be contained within a system of rigid categories, dogma or doctrine. And if that doesn’t quite fit within what I was taught or how it was defined, then I guess I’m out.

Although even that feels way too simple, because it doesn’t really match who I’ve come to understand God as being. There’s something that feels more honest about that to me than trying to get everything right or staying within some imagined line, even if it doesn’t come with the same kind of certainty. It’s a different kind of faith, although I’m not even sure that’s the right way to name it.

michel