Without question, the number-one source of pain for those who’ve shifted toward a more progressive Christianity comes from the tension with friends and family who haven’t made the same journey, and who think we’ve risked our salvation as a result. Show me one freshly shifted progressive Christian and I’ll show you ten emails, texts, and Facebook comments from loved ones expressing their “concern.” And that’s just from Thursday.
We know well the disappointing look when we FaceTime with Dad while sitting next to our partner, or the anxious tone in Mom’s voice when she calls to check in and casually drops a “So, have you been going to church lately?” We read between the lines when Pastor David, our youth leader from high school, vaguebooks about “praying for my former sheep who have wandered from the fold.” We eventually stop opening emails from Grandpa Lawrence because we can’t handle one more Max Lucado book recommendation or David Jeremiah sermon link, risking forever tainting our precious memories of playing at Papa’s house when we were five.
Leading up to the writing of this book, as I told people “It’s kind of like a survival guide for becoming a progressive Christian,” almost without fail the responses included hope—if not desperation—that I would include a chapter like this one. For many of us, the pain of feeling like we’ve let the entire family down simply because we’ve wandered to a new part of the house in search of light to keep us warm pokes at us daily. And we don’t know what to do about it. We don’t know whether to sever communication entirely or to keep the lines open. We don’t know whether to share with our family what we believe, or to smile and change the subject. We don’t know whether we should block old friends on Facebook or stay in contact because, “I dunno, maybe I can help them see things differently?”
To make matters worse, thanks to the religious framework that fashioned you growing up, your mind gives conflicting messages on how to interpret these pains. Whereas a logical explanation might identify the pain as “This hurts because I love my family and I feel disconnected from them,” we get stuck wondering “But what if it’s the Holy Spirit convicting me because I walked away from the faith?” Yeah. That one hits home.
It’s so damn confusing, and you’re not alone in your tangled mess of emotions. Almost no one I’ve interacted with over the years feels like they’ve nailed this part of the Shift. Not everyone struggles to come to peace with who they used to be and how they used to believe. Not everyone experiences a war waged within them while their spiritual insides expand. But we almost all get flustered when attempting to maintain healthy relationships with the conservative community we no longer belong to.
Each person’s context differs, but across the board, people I’ve met report feeling sad, confused, and lonely when shifting away from their conservative religious communities. There’s no way to cover all the various scenarios, but I hope the following might be helpful for many. Also, I’m not a therapist. This book is no substitute for the insight and assistance you would gain from talking to a professional about your particular family dynamics. If nothing else, perhaps the ideas in this chapter become the catalyst you need to consider establishing new boundaries and practicing healthy self-care—both of which you might best accomplish under the direction of a therapist and/or spiritual director.
That being said, in my experience, the best thing you can do when navigating relationships with your more conservative friends and family is show up fully as yourself. Be open, vulnerable, and empowered with a range of grace-filled options depending on the kind of reaction you receive—whether positive or negative. To show what I mean, let’s explore the story of Jesus sending out his friends “like sheep among wolves” (Matt 10:16).
Four things stand out to me in Matthew 10 when Jesus sends his twelve disciples out on their first mission without him:
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give. Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts—no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. (Matthew 10: 5–11 NIV)
First, Jesus began by establishing where they should travel and on whom they should focus. The directions were clear: travel to Jewish towns, not to gentiles or Samaritans. This meant that the men and women the disciples would be engaging with were, in a very real sense, people from within their own communities. These were relatives and friends of friends, those with whom they shared values, customs, and religious ideas. Jesus sent his disciples on a mission, and their target audience was essentially their own demographic.
Second, the disciples were given two tasks: proclaim the nearness of the kingdom of heaven, and perform acts of liberation. Based on what we know of first-century religious practice and messianic expectations, it’s safe to say that in the eyes of their audience, the disciples’ mission would have been seen as progressive. That makes this a reasonable parallel to your own experience of returning home for the holidays and trying to explain to cousin Carl why you don’t go to that one church any longer.
Third, Jesus wanted the disciples to fully rely on the hospitality of those they ministered to. This meant the twelve should show up in town completely empty-handed and open-hearted. They were to throw themselves at the mercy of others, trusting that people would care for them. What a vulnerable position! This was no arbitrary request, for I’m not sure you can adequately or accurately proclaim the nearness of God without also being fully vulnerable and open in the process.
Finally, I am moved by how deeply the disciples must have been convinced in the life-giving way of Jesus, apparently ready and willing to give their actual lives for it. After imparting his instructions, Jesus warned the disciples about the dangers awaiting them. Verses 16–42 recite reason after reason why this short-term mission trip was the worst idea ever. He confessed to sending them out like sheep among wolves, predicting they would encounter no shortage of persecution—including arrest, flogging, being disowned by family (sound familiar?), and possibly even death.
Instructed to show up vulnerable, open, and reliant solely on strangers’ hospitality, the disciples had their marching orders. But then Jesus told his friends to pay close attention to how people responded. Nestled between the mission directives and the predictions of impending suffering, Jesus equipped his followers with two proper reactions according to how their hosts might receive them. A response for their response, if you will.
“As you enter the home,” Jesus said, “give it your greeting” (v. 12). In other words, they were to assume the role of initiators. They were to meet people where they were with openness, kindness, and respect. “If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you” (v. 13). The disciples were under no obligation to force their peace, message, ideas, and acts of liberation onto those they would encounter. If a home or community was open to them and provided hospitality and safety, they were to respond with gratitude and grace. Should the disciples encounter hostility, or should the home or village refuse them hospitality, thereby rejecting their dignity and devaluing their worth, Jesus instructed the disciples to let their peace return to them.
It’s kind of like when you bring a gift you believe is awesome to a white elephant party but all night long you watch as people pass it over. “Fine,” you say, “if no one wants this hand-crafted ebony shoehorn engraved with Daffy Duck, I’ll take it.”
Then Jesus goes one step further. Not only do you take your Daffy Duck shoehorn back, but you leave the party altogether and refuse to accept the party favor the host wants to force on you. “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet” (v. 14, emphasis mine).
It is here, in the center of the Venn diagram of Florence the Machine, Taylor Swift, and Jesus of Nazareth, that we discover a path for navigating the challenge of difficult relationships with our more conservative friends and family: Shake. It. Off.
You know that scene from Monsters, Inc. where a monster returned to the scare floor after a disastrous attempt at scaring a child only to discover the child’s small white sock clung to his back? Immediately, a red alert blared, initiating code 2319. In swooped the Child Detection Agency (CDA) to secure the premises and decontaminate George Sanderson, the orange, single-horned scarer who brought human clothing into the monsters’ world. The CDA tackled George to the ground, carefully extracted the sock with large metal tongs, and sealed it in a contraption designed to incinerate the dangerous article of clothing back into star dust. Though they decimated the sock, the CDA still needed to shave George of all his monster hair in the event any of the child’s cooties remained. Returning to the realm of the monsters with any trace of the human world would endanger everyone.
That’s what comes to mind when I hear Jesus tell his friends to “shake the dust from their feet” should they encounter people hostile to their presence. Scholars disagree on the precise meaning of this old Jewish idiom, but the general idea was, “I’m leaving this behind, because to take it with me would be hazardous.” Like a sock stuck to George’s back.
Bold, brazen, and a bit unexpected, Jesus gave his friends this response to empower them to face hostility with both grace and truth. It let them accept the rejection of those who would not receive them. This wasn’t permission for the disciples to isolate themselves into like-minded bands of followers. Nor were they instructed to reject people in town right out of the gate if they held different ideas about dietary laws, temple taxes, and so on. The whole point is that they were to initiate contact, be the ones to show up open and vulnerable—then, if they experienced rejection, they were to respond by shaking the dust off their feet. If their openness and vulnerability were not met in loving and welcome embrace, then Jesus’s suggestion (perhaps even command?) was to say yes to their no. Shake it off, and move on.
When such scenarios took place, it was the disciples being rejected, not the other way around. This distinction is key.
It’s not uncommon when journeying through the Shift to hear from those within our old communities that our movement toward progressive Christianity is a rejection of them—the people and the relationships. Deep in our hearts, however, we know that our rejection is rooted not in the people (whom we love) but in the beliefs and attitudes and behaviors that we can no longer get behind. Conversely, our experience is that it is we who are met with inhospitable postures, no longer welcome at the table. And in those moments of personal rejection, I wonder if Jesus’s invitation to say yes to their no is exactly what our well-being needs.
The charge to shake the dust off their feet provided Jesus’s disciples a healthier and more peaceful alternative to fighting back (e.g., “You will hear our message and accept our healing, dangit!”) or remaining in place as doormats, passive recipients of perpetual rejection. Jesus knew what all enlightened people know: you cannot control how other people act. Which is why he gave his disciples the next best thing, a demonstrable action they were fully capable of carrying out so they could stop casting their pearls before swine and move on to a place that would receive them.
It might sound harsh at first, but I believe this principle of shaking off the dust offers us a powerful path forward when we encounter the obstacle of constant tension and conflict with our more conservative friends and family members.
In life, all we can hope to control are our own thoughts and actions, and that’s hard enough. It’s an illusion—a dangerous one at that—to think we might be able to control or change how our friends and family think. The power in the act of shaking the dust from our feet is how it communicates both what I’m doing for myself and what I’m no longer doing for you. For my own well-being, I am leaving. I will not stay here as a willing participant in your nonacceptance. And this dust, a residue of your rejection, I’m leaving it here too. I refuse to take it with me and thereby remain enslaved by your disapproval.
To shake the dust from your feet says, “This connection between us is unhealthy. I have vulnerably opened up to you, but instead of welcoming me or showing me respect as a fellow beloved child of God, you made it clear I am unwelcome. You reject my ideas, my questions, and my concerns. More than that (as many LGBTQ people know so well), you have rejected me as a human. This has gone beyond simply disagreeing into a place of hostility. You have attacked me, blamed me, made accusations against me, and refused to give me space to be seen or heard. For me to remain in this relationship would not be healthy, so I’m out. As I shake the dust off my feet, I am declaring that your accusations and your attempts to shame me will no longer succeed. You have decided I’m not welcome. You have caused this division between us, and I am not responsible for mending that. It’s not my job to fix us, and it’s certainly not my job to fix you. In spite of my posture of humility and earnest desire to connect with you, you have chosen to remain fixed in your old ways, refusing to consider that maybe you don’t have everything figured out. In your fear of new information or new ideas, you closed the door on me. On us. That is the bed you have made, now I leave you to lie in it.”
Whew . . . yeah, feel free to pause and take a breath.
By the way, sometimes rejection from our old friends and family looks more like ghosting than slamming a door in your face. Lots of progressive Christians report that when they left their faith communities, they weren’t met with pitchforks and Bible-thumping so much as silence and avoidance. When I got fired in Arizona and exited the church abruptly, most people never bothered to say goodbye. There’s a unique type of pain in being ignored by a community you spent over five years ministering to. One family, months after the fact, responded to one of my emails and explained, “Look, no offense, but the center of our friendship was our relationship through the church.” At the time, that was hard to hear. But, looking back, I now respect their honesty and appreciate that I heard anything from them at all. Turns out, I prefer direct rejection over a spiritualized silent treatment.
None of this is easy, by the way. Lest my impassioned pleas to shake the dust deceive you, I know this stuff is undeniably hard. These are real relationships with real people—people you love and who have been a major part of your life. Shaking the dust might come across as cold and ungenerous, but I assure you that love can be both its driving factor and its main ingredient. There is a difference between the Christ pattern of dying to yourself so that you might be reborn, and being a victim of someone else’s intolerance and fear. It’s not always an easily discernible difference, I’ll grant you that. But the better we can learn to identify which is which (or find a therapist who will see it more clearly than we can), the better off we’ll be.
If you find it overwhelming to even imagine initiating the shaking of dust from relationships in your life, you’re not alone and you’re not a failure. This stuff is hard. To help normalize this, here are four factors that contribute to just how challenging this process can be.
1. Clunky. Shaking the dust off your feet is clunky because most people are not well-practiced in the art of setting (and keeping) boundaries, especially with family and other close relationships. Many who grew up in more conservative Christian homes (myself included) have a degree of arrested emotional development in part because natural and normal emotions (such as anger) were seen as unspiritual. As a result, we did a lot of suppressing and spiritual bypassing (using spiritual ideas to avoid or explain away unresolved emotional issues and psychological wounds, a way to check out instead of check in). Finding the words—let alone the fortitude—to express that we won’t be subject to any more shaming or accusations is incredibly clunky. A good therapist or targeted reading on the topic can support you in clearly articulating what you need.
2. Unclear. How can we tell the difference between genuine disagreement done in mutual respect versus, I don’t know, how you often end up feeling after leaving your sister’s house? They keep insisting they respect you, the choices you’ve made, and what you believe nowadays. And yet every time they mention some statistic about how kids need both a mom and a dad your gut tells you a different story. Part of what makes it so hard to know if or when to shake the dust off your feet is this sort of murkiness. There isn’t always a clear distinction between what are normal challenges that arise within any type of close relationship, and what are patterns of mistreatment and dehumanization that render the relationship unsafe. In these cases, it’s often helpful to tell a trusted friend about your experiences. If they start freaking out and wondering why you’re letting yourself be treated that way, that could indicate that it’s time to shake some dust.
3. Counterintuitive. I say it’s counterintuitive because there is a strong undercurrent in Christianity to be bridge builders. We have been preconditioned to think the most Christlike posture is one that continually shows up and tries to connect and make peace (as though peace in this context means complete reconciliation). Which is why shaking the dust from our feet can conjure objections such as, Is this really what Jesus would do? Yes, he would! That’s the point of this chapter.
4. Painful. Perhaps the biggest reason why so many people don’t do more dust-shaking is because it’s painful. Short and simple. Here I am, safely behind my keyboard, suggesting that you walk away from some of the most meaningful relationships in your life. Yeah, sure, Colby. I’ll get right on that. I hear you and I feel you. Easier said than done. Who wants to make the choice between not having a parent in their life versus having a parent around who’s constantly jabbing at you and picking fights? Where’s the obvious choice in that? There isn’t one, I’m afraid. Often, we endure the pain of unhealthy relationships because the pain of not having the relationship at all strikes us as unbearable. If it feels like managing relationships with our more conservative friends and family is a lose-lose scenario, that’s because it often is. On one hand, we would suffer the loss of a meaningful relationship. On the other, we endure the loss of dignity, self-care, and our freedom to flourish gets stifled. When we truly count the costs, however, maintaining relationships with people who hold you back from becoming the best possible you ultimately poses the greater threat to your well-being.
I’m not advocating you leave at the first sign of discomfort or disagreement. I’m all for having grit and resilience. Yes, sometimes it’s absolutely the right call to hang in there and declare that you’re not going anywhere. This can be a powerful statement, like Kumail Nanjiani in The Big Sick showing up at his parents’ house for dinner and stubbornly announcing, “I’ve decided I won’t let you kick me out of the family.” But in my experience, and in the stories I’ve heard from others, this tenacious posture of “Here I am, you can’t get rid of me” is only effective if we pair it with both healthy boundaries (at least, on your side of the fence) and a grounded sense of your true identity. Once we find our footing, confident in the truth that we are a loved child of God—full stop—then we can show up in difficult spaces more likely to withstand whatever jabs or passive-aggressive questions come our way. It is only from this empowered and grounded place that we can vulnerably open ourselves to announce, “I am here, asking you to receive me. I will respect both myself and you by accepting whatever response you give, be it hospitable welcome or painful rejection.”
I’m also not suggesting that shaking off the dust implies permanent separation. Establishing new and healthy boundaries might be necessary for a season, but you may need to reexamine them down the road to see if they still make sense. Shaking off the dust might be only the first step, albeit a necessary one to give you space to breathe, heal, and grow. But it doesn’t mean you won’t someday be open to knocking on their door again.
To that end, in the event you do choose to explore reengaging with a relationship that previously required dust-shaking, your upgraded worldview as a progressive Christian benefits you greatly. One of the things I’ve noticed as a result of the Shift is a newfound ability to more easily separate a person from their beliefs. This affords you increased capacity to interact with (and show love to) someone with whom you disagree on a number of issues.
For example, you could imagine how this new superpower makes showing up to family reunions easier for you than, say, for your more conservative relatives. Because you are now able to separate Uncle Jake’s belief about a literal six-day creation from the fact that he is as much a loved child of God as you are. But when a person is convinced that their standing with God hinges on correct belief (like Uncle Jake and the rest of the family in this scenario), then ideas or questions that challenge those beliefs feel scary and threatening. Not only do your new ideas about evolution make Uncle Jake feel uneasy, but in his mind your heretical beliefs place you outside the family of God. So, now he’s scared of you and scared for you. Such a climate of fear and anxiety does not sound like my idea of a good time. But if you’ve gone through a season (perhaps precipitated by shaking the dust off your feet) of grounding yourself in the truth that you are loved, that you are okay, and that you are free, then at least now you might be able to imagine walking into the lion’s den with your head held high, ready to hand out grace and love to all.
Now, there’s a massive exception to that last paragraph. If you exited or were kicked out of your conservative community because you are LGBTQ and your sexual orientation or gender expression were unwelcome, or because you’re a woman who could no longer exist in an ecosystem relegating you to an inferior status, then showing back up to family reunions or accepting your old small group’s dinner party invitation becomes infinitely more complicated—and for good reason. I’m reminded of the words of activist and writer Robert Jones Jr.: “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”[1] Sure, you can separate your grandma’s identity as a loved daughter of God from her belief that only Christians will get raptured and go to heaven. But it’s a whole other ball game to set aside your brother’s insistence that because you’re gay you cannot be a Christian, or because you lack certain genitalia you should not be leading or teaching men. In such cases, not only does shaking the dust off your feet become necessary for survival, but you might need to keep your hard boundaries in place until your friends or family have softened their hearts or changed their minds. Do not continue to give people the gift of your presence if they cannot give you the gift of your humanity.
Dear readers, if you’ve ever shown up on someone’s doorstep and made yourself vulnerable, seeking their hospitality, acceptance, and peace, but instead received rejection or shaming, I am so sorry. That was wrong and you did not deserve it. I empathize with the instinct you might have to try to build bridges or reconcile. It’s natural to take familiar Christian principles such as sacrificial love and forgiveness, reflect on how to live them out, and then get all twisted up and conclude that the way of Christ would never look like ending a relationship. But I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the life and teachings of Jesus reveal to us about relationships.
I offer you this permission slip, should you need it. You hereby have permission to create new and healthier boundaries with the people in your life who will not accept you as you are nor hold space for your beliefs. It is okay to shake the dust from your feet when they reject you.
It is hard, but it is good.
In fact, it might be the only realistic route toward the possibility of one day having an authentic relationship with them built on genuine acceptance, mutual respect, and true vulnerability.
If you are reading this book from the perspective of a more conservative Christian, hoping to understand the heart and mind of a loved one who has gone down the path toward progressive Christianity, first let me say: thank you. Your efforts to understand your loved one create the building blocks for showing true love.
Maybe you’re reading this in desperation, a final attempt to understand your son or daughter. Maybe you’re reading this in curiosity because you genuinely can’t wrap your head around why your friend has “left the faith.” Whatever the reason, you’re doing it, and that’s amazing. Thank you.
I also want you to know (if you haven’t picked up from this chapter already) just how much you are loved by the person who bought this book and feverishly turned to this chapter, anxious for help with how to navigate their relationship with you. I’m sure there are moments when you question their love for you because, after all, if they really loved you, why would they [insert any number of beliefs or actions you find troubling or dangerous here]. Please know that their decision to follow the voice inside them—what I would call the prompting of the spirit, what Abraham heard when he left his father and mother’s home to traverse the unknown—isn’t about you. They are not choosing this path to spite you, though perhaps it feels that way. No, they love you, and they long for the day when you can share a cup of tea and talk openly and honestly about your differences, each holding space for the other to be seen and heard.