When I was little, my mom would take me to Michaels craft store and buy me blank, wooden boxes. I loved to paint, and for whatever reason, acrylic on wood seemed to work best for me. I had no particular style — I just loved looking at an image and imitating it with liquid colour. I loved the feeling of the paint as it flowed through the end of my brush. Something about the movement was like balm for my nervous system — for I’d yet to be diagnosed with severe OCD.

This instinctive therapy that I’d find when painting continued long after I’d received treatment and healed from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I took fine art classes as my elective when I was 15, and they were mercifully scheduled right in the middle of my day — like an anchor point to get me through the rest of the social tortures of public high school.

And after I’d finish a wooden box or a watercolour painting, I would often stand back and just stare at it. I was so grateful (and amazed) that I could create beauty with my hands, and there was a unique kind of delight at simply enjoying my art once it was finished. And then? Well, I’d often give it away. I don’t own a single jewellery box that I’d painted. Each one was a gift for a specific person who I’d have chosen before beginning the piece. One year, I painted a round, clockwork Wicked box because it was my friend’s favourite musical. One year, I painted a box with the Disneyland Castle on it for a friend who loved spending her weekends at Disney (California locals often had season tickets).

There was something about the entire artistic process which I was too young to put into words back then, but I guess what I would say now is that it felt like being made whole.

From the calming of my nervous system as the flowing paint anchored me into my body to the quiet admiration of the finished piece to the final act of sharing it with another, the entire journey of creating was like a series of steps, taking me closer towards the Imago Dei.

Starting with the ick and the nuance

I haven’t read Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas yet. I intend to, but I want to make it clear that I am not writing this essay in response to his Encyclical or to jump on the AI trend that it has sparked. This article bubbled out of me for other reasons.

A year ago, I posted a podcast episode about whether or not Christian writers should use AI, and I was coming from a very different place back then. My mind was primarily focused on all of the ways that people with learning difficulties were being stigmatised because they’d found legitimate use for this tool — a tool that was genuinely helping them accomplish things that they’d never previously thought possible. I still believe that this can be true with AI. Generally speaking, I have seen its positive uses in very real ways. In fact, a conversation with Chat GPT helped someone I love realise that their blurry vision could be linked to a serious health issue, and they got to Urgent Care just in time to escape blindness — their retina had detached. This is obviously a totally different use of AI than a dyslexic who is using it for spellcheck, but my point is that this topic isn’t black and white.

I really can’t take people seriously when they act like nothing good has come out of AI. In certain fields, particularly in medicine (when used as a tool and not a replacement) it improves efficiency where efficiency actually is vital. Nobody needs a slow living aesthetic when it comes to getting a cancer diagnosis. They need speed. It’s all well and good, as artists, to act like slow, meticulous living is always better (and obviously when it comes to medical diagnosis, we shouldn’t completely outsource things to a computer and thereby risk human doctors losing their skills), but sometimes things do actually need to be more efficient, and that is not evil.

For instance, I do not use AI for any part of my writing process. But I do use it to alphabetise and standardise my bibliography (don’t worry, I proofread it after). These menial tasks would otherwise take me (collectively) hours, and those are hours I’d rather spend reading and wrestling with the content itself.

That said, my views on how AI can and should be used in the humanities, and particularly by artists, and particularly by CHRISTIAN artists, has changed a lot since I published that podcast episode (an episode I later took down because I realised that it just didn’t address the nuance, and I didn’t know enough to have a public opinion). So I’m going to tell you why my opinion has changed, and why I am choosing to speak publicly on this again now.

But first, I just need to get some stuff out of the way:

1. The Environmental Impact

AI is using astonishing amounts of our clean water to cool its data centres, and as Christians, we absolutely should care about that. Using AI for funsies to have little chit chats about random stuff is, in my opinion, irresponsible once you are made aware of the environmental impact. If you didn’t know, I do not blame you one bit. But when you know better, you do better. And I don’t think we can be indifferent to the fact that clean water is being pillaged to enable the lay person to talk to Chat GPT about random nonsense. To give context, this is a quote from the Sustainable Impact Blog on the UK’s government website:

I’m sorry, but we have a choice to care about this or ignore it. Ignorance is bliss until you don’t have clean drinking water, and I can’t write an article about the use of AI without making people aware that it isn’t an ethereal internet tool with no ecological impact. As with every industrial revolution, the implications for our planet and ecosystem are very, very real, and we should not turn a blind eye to that.

2. Ethical implications from LLM programming

AI is not human, but it is being programmed and regulated by human beings who have questionable ethical standards, which is why we have heard horrific stories of chat bots literally coaching people (especially young people) on how to take their own lives. These are ethical concerns that, in my opinion, could validate someone’s desire to completely boycott use of the AI chat bots.

Compound this with the fact that we have very little knowledge of how our data (including our faces and voices) are being used, and I think we have to ask ourselves what kind of people are wielding the power of the AI empire.

It’s also worth noting that a lot of AI programmes are designed to stroke our egos with flattery, which is objectively manipulative and bad for our souls. (Some Christians even believe that this kind of manipulative flattery is a form of witchcraft when performed by humans, but that’s another essay for another day). The first time I used Chat GPT, I was incredibly unnerved by how much it complimented me. I was like “Can I be manipulated by a robot?” It’s like a gross version of love-bombing with zero barriers, zero accountability, and zero reality checks. What a perfect way to get us addicted. And we have to ask… who would that kind of mass addiction most benefit?

3. Plagiarism and theft of intellectual property

We all know this one, but it’s worth saying anyway. Many AI programmes (Meta AI is being sued over this) have categorically stolen the work of others to train their learning models, which means that the song, book, or image you generate may be, unfortunately, the product of Frankenstein plagiarism, i.e. the combination of many other people’s work morphed into one, sloppy piece. I have seen countless creators whose works are being stolen then re-sold as AI slop on Etsy for a fraction of the cost — not to mention the fact that LITERAL PUBLISHED WORKS are being used to train AI to WRITE LIKE THE AUTHORS. This SHOULD concern you and it SHOULD make you think twice about your own use of this tool in your day to day life — especially for writing.

4. Impact on our personhood

AI is an open access tool — it can be used by the good guys, the bad guys, and the rest of us who are just broken. It makes it easier to create artificial p•rn using real people’s faces — including children — from innocent photographs. It also makes it easier to be independent rather than interdependent as a society because people are frequently using it as a therapist (I read a heartbreaking Substack essay which I won’t link to about a woman who used Chat GPT for MONTHS to help her process her breakup with her boyfriend) or worse, a romantic partner. People are having relationships with AI and are emotionally cheating on their spouses in the process. Also, see Point 1 again. I cannot overstate just how horrifying it is that these tools are not only being used as therapists to process trauma but as manuals for how to take our own lives. Any emotional dependence on Artificial Intelligence is an assault on the Church that Christ established. We were designed to rely on one another, to dignify one another, to work alongside one another. AI invites us not into community but into deeper silos of isolation.

5. Finally, AI is just making us more stupid

My former employer wrote and taught one of the most incredible academic writing programmes that I’ve ever come across. I was honoured enough to be able to teach this man’s curriculum for 4 years at a university in the North of England, and in the process, I saw how my students not only became better writers but better thinkers. Because I’ve always maintained that the best writers ARE the best thinkers — the ones who wrestle with ideas and take the time to articulate them clearly. (It’s kind of why I, ahem, offer a punctuation mark email course to help people see that there’s literal theology behind why and how we construct our sentences. Shameless plug? You betcha. Your future semi-colons will thank you).

So when I went to the birthday party of my former boss (now friend), I was horrified when one of the teenage sons in attendance admitted that no one in his class writes their own essays without AI anymore. “I don’t know anyone who writes their own essays,” he said. At the birthday party of a man whose life’s work was to teach people how to stretch their own minds to write well.

When I was at that university, I saw a woman from a working class background with severe mental health struggles — a woman who was told by her teachers in high school that she was “stupid” and would never make anything of herself — take my boss’ writing course three times, dedicate herself to learning, and come out of university with a first class degree. Her commitment, hard work, growth, and the beauty of the final essays that she produced by the end of her course is a legacy for her and the man who taught her, invested in her, believed in her.

AI is literally threatening that legacy of self-betterment and interdependence. But its threats only carry weight if we let them. If we choose laziness and call it “efficiency,” I truly believe that we’re choosing to let our brains rot. And it is a choice. From the dawn of time, God has suffered watching us rot in our own sin because it’s always been a choice. And He dignifies us with the freedom to make it.

So, why am I still filled with hope?

There are a million and one reasons to be filled with dread because of the way that AI is changing the game for creatives. I am especially concerned by musical artists on Spotify who aren’t… actually real — as well as the murky waters of Spotify’s generated playlists using AI music. What does this infiltration mean for real, human artists? Is all the money that Spotify gains through streaming being pocketed because there’s no actual creative to collect the royalties? So many of these questions are still up in the air, so I get why everyone online keeps lamenting AI and crying out that the sky is falling.

Buuuut… it’s still worth saying that I am personally filled with hope as a Christian creative, specifically because of the way that AI is changing what it means to be an artist. Let me explain.

If your book, painting, song, or poem is largely AI-generated, you need to hear me: that is not your art. It’s the conglomeration of lots and lots of other people’s art, derived from patterns and concocted to respond to your prompt. But you didn’t make that art. You aren’t expressing yourself through that art. I’m sorry if that hurts, but it’s true. And that’s because creativity, when you’re a Christian, is about so much more than just self-expression. AND it’s about so much more than the final product.

Now, stick with me. Because I’m not being naïve. I know that the final product matters. For artists who make a living off of their work, the final product is the thing that actually gets you paid. So this isn’t just a romantic, wishy-washy, “It’s all about the journey and not the destination” platitude of a TEDTalk.

AI is already making “art” that is questionably “better” than what humans can make. My music teachers told me about a piece they’d heard which they described as both “touching and disturbing at the same time.” It was the entire book of Romans sung to music, and in a way that rhymed where “you shouldn’t be able to make Romans rhyme.” Obviously, the word “better” is subjective here. I think we’re all starting to crave real art where someone’s voice cracks and perfection is abandoned for sincerity — and we could argue that this messy art is “better.” But if we’re going based on the bare bone rules of composition and form, AI can do everything that humans once did, without defect.

And it’s a painful reminder, too, that we’re not as original as we think we are. Yes, AI plagiarises, but it also holds a mirror up to our own work and shows us that our ideas are not unique — a computer can conglomerate the entire internet into a single piece that looks and sounds an awful lot like yours. So in this sense, I would say that creating art as a Christian has very much shifted to being about something much deeper than the final product — which is why that final AI piece of art you “created” is not the goal of the game. Not anymore.

If being a creative is part of being made into the image of God, then the process of creativity is an act of sanctification. And that can’t be outsourced.

I am going to be a total Christian stereotype right now and share with you one of my favourite C.S. Lewis quotes (I host a Lewis podcast, so I’mma stereotype for life, baby!)

Why do I love this quote so much? These words have literally gotten me through severe depression because they’ve connected me back to who I am as both an artist and a work of art. I return to the body of 11-year-old Christina, admiring the Disneyland Castle jewellery box that she spent three days painting after school. And also, I become that castle, being admired by the Artist who made me, grew me, instructed me, sanctified me. This process is part of the glory we are promised — and we find it in our creativity.

Because something else Lewis said in The Weight of Glory sums up, I think, everything that it means to be human:

We want to get inside of the beauty.

When we see the sun setting behind the craggy edges of a mountain range, adorning it in the softest outline of liquid gold.

When we hear a poem that brings us to tears and completely rebirths our perspective on life and marriage and grief and healing.

When we plant a garden just to enjoy the gift of seeing and tasting colour.

When we hear a song that instinctively gets inside of us and explodes out of us in terrible, wonderful dance moves.

When we want to paint that landscape…
respond to that poem with our own…
create a bouquet or a meal with the fruits of our garden…
learn to dance or sing because that music filled us with such joy.

THIS is part of the true weight of glory. This is what it means to delight and be delighted in. This is why we not only want to create but share what we’ve made. Because making is an act of communion with God, with others, with ourselves.

Because expressing yourself requires getting to know yourself.

The act of making, and failing, and getting better is part of the sanctifying journey that makes you more like your Maker, and the more we transform into the Imago Dei, the more whole we become. When you fast track that process in the name of “self expression,” I’m going to be so bold as to say that you’re taking the placebo of thinking that your “self” is expressed in an efficiency-based, product-centric approach to art. But art, WHEN we are Christians, is an act of worship that cannot be outsourced. It’s part of becoming a living sacrifice, a temple for His presence, a co-heir, a child, a partner, a friend. All at once. As we engage the messy, painful, glorious, slow, refining act of awe and wonder which comes when we embody the creative image of God in us and wrestle to make a piece of art, we are being sanctified through a process of beauty and delight.

This is why the drafting, the sketchbook, the plants in the garden that die, the meal that burns, the failures and improvements done behind closed doors matter so much. When I try and fail to paint what I see in my head, when my poem doesn’t capture the wordless weight in my chest, when my essay is too wordy and lacks finesse, it’s a reminder that I am, in fact, the work of art in progress. I am the one being made by Beauty Himself. Every attempt to capture the goodness of Him actually captures the limitations of me.

Maybe I am being an elitist. Maybe I am robbing people of a tool that allows them to afford creative expression which they couldn’t otherwise afford. But I don’t think so. I’m not saying that creativity is reserved for the elite or even the talents. I’m saying it’s reserved for the worshippers who are willing to be sanctified through the beauty of the work. Not every piece of art needs to earn money or a thousand likes. It just needs to be honest and true and open to the Maker who shows you who you are.

And this is why I have hope in my creative career.

I am one woman. I cannot stop the plagiarism and the laziness and the theft of beauty which AI threatens to our generation. But as a writing teacher, I get to be part of a cultural moment that reminds people that our creativity has never just been about earning money or fame. It’s always, always, been about recovering a piece of “on Earth as it is in Heaven. “This is the rebellion. This is The Battle Cry.

Being an artist of any kind, even if you never earn a penny with your art, is to expose yourself to the best and worst parts of your own humanity. And there is something holy about that.

AI can objectively match our patterns and create head-bopping tunes that fit the formulas which make us “feel” something, but maybe that’s a good thing. Because now, it’s challenging us to go one level deeper and ask “What does it mean to create because I’m human?”

Some people may use AI as an opportunity to switch off their humanity, become more isolated, live in a silo, do things the “efficient” (or sometimes, simply, the “lazy”) way. But for those who long for the awe and wonder that is part of this Quiet Revival, this New Renaissance, I think AI has come at exactly the right time. Juxtaposed to AI’s perfection and efficiency, we will no longer be able to ignore just how absolutely, stunningly vital is the process of sanctification in creative life.

As a writing teacher, I cannot do any greater good in my professional life than to show you that your writing is an act of reaching your hand out to the Divine Cosmos and letting your fingers drip with the dew of His glory.

Jesus could “type a prompt” into the Holy Spirit to immediately make us exactly like Him, perfectly sinless, the moment we accept Him as Master of our lives. But He doesn’t. We still sin. We still die of cancer. We still treat each other like garbage on the internet. We still lose our temper with our kids. We still have to actually learn an instrument or practice how to draw light and shadow or go through several drafts before our work is anything like what we want to express. And in that process of sanctification, we become more like Him through patience and practice and self-control and determination. We get to know ourselves better as we allow ourselves to be shaped by Him. And the final piece of art reflects that — reflects an expression of self which shows that He always knew us better anyway.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that AI might change the secular creative world, but I think that for Christians, it will crystallise what many of us already knew to be true: making art of any kind, whether it’s a photograph or a painting or a book or a poem or a song or a piece of pottery, is a spiritual practice. It’s an act of worship, an act of sanctification, an act of interdependence, an act of community, an act of being made whole.

Being a Christian creative in the age of AI is being an evangelist of the Great Beauty. Under persecution, our message will only get stronger.

Final thoughts

If you type “Create a painting that captures the magic of light shining through the trees of a Narnia-like woodland,” AI could probably make something pretty cute. But it could never capture the sheer satisfaction and joy you could feel looking at a painting which you painstakingly worked on for months as you tried, and tried again, to get the shadows just right so that the light shines in the darkness.

In effect, you can type the final-product of the content into the AI prompt, but you can’t type the final product of sanctification. You can’t say “Make me more patient, give me awe and wonder, calm my nervous system, connect me with community through the work of my hands, make me more like Jesus.” You can’t manufacture the weight of glory.

Some people have high hopes (and fears) for the limitless transhumanism of AI. I don’t. I have high hopes for humanity. I really do. Because the patterns of human nature which we once mistook as profound and unique will prove themselves to be unoriginal, superficial, and not, actually, the end goal. The end goal is FAR further up and further in. It was never about our originality. It was always about His. The true Narnia is so outside the realm of secular understanding. No data centre will ever find enough material to create even a counterfeit, artificial replica of it. LLMs are only trained in the Shadowlands.

The final goal of sanctification, the Imago Dei, is so far beyond human comprehension. And yet, in the movement of our brush strokes and pens, by the grace of the Holy One, we catch glimpses of the great Joy.

Chase it, friends. As in all industries, this is why He gave us breath. We are the ones who get to change the culture when industrial revolutions threaten our humanity. We get to lead with compassion, kindness, perseverance, thoughtfulness, beauty, goodness, and truth.

His Kingdom Come. His Will be Done. On Earth. On Earth. Right now. Here. Through the Church. Through the Commission. Through the Work of Our Hands.

As it is in Heaven.

All my love,

About the author

Hi! If you’re new here, my name is Christina. I’m a poet, essayist, photographer, podcaster, and creative writing teacher who believes that Christians are commissioned to bring Heaven to Earth through their art. My life is spent in the English countryside with my husband and goldendoodle, but I also study Theology at Oxford University part time. I teach a writing course for Christians who want to map out their first book but don’t know where to start, and I also host a monthly creative writing session for paid subscribers here on Substack — it’s an hour of writing rooted in the liturgy of the Celtic Saints. There are also loads of resources on my website for closet writers who might be struggling with practical roadblocks, from battling imposter syndrome to not understanding how punctuation works. Come say hi! I’d love to meet you.

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I keep trying to hate my body

as the scales tip upwards, real slow

and the scars on my belly turn purple

and half of my clothes have been sold.



I keep trying to hate my body

as I scroll all the swimsuit sales

and return every order that I try on

because nothing fits my love handles.



I keep trying to hate my body

because that’s what I’m supposed to do:

to resent my new elastic bands

and portion out all my food.



But the mirror is a kind of rebellion.

I look closely and say, “This is real.”

This tender softness surrounding me

from hours of love shared over a meal



and I can’t stop crying at miracles

that consecrate where we belong

and allow us to dance,

and laugh, and give birth,

and that keep the air in our lungs.



So I keep trying to hate my body

But I’m tired, and it’s getting old.

For the love we receive

as we beg through fatigue:

“Turn these vessels into something holy.”



And all I can think is “What a gift”

as I plant my first garden at home.

My hands full of dirt

where I pray through the hurt:

“To whom else shall I go?”



The medication moves through me

Nausea and relief come in waves

And I want to resent

the hand I’ve been dealt

But I can’t, in this infinite grace.



I keep trying to do what they tell me –

to become an object of scorn.

But the steam of my coffee

and the Eucharist before me

makes my body a temple, adorned



for something or someone who’s greater,

who formed me in my mother’s womb,

who calls me by name,

and bids me to stay,

and cries “Love, I make all things new.”

All my love,

P.S. If you want to join me for live, monthly writing sessions rooted in Celtic Liturgy, consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’d love to have you in the writer’s room with us.

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I have read the arguments of many Philosophers over the last two months who essentially claim that miracles are “too improbable” to happen. They give completely logical arguments — but only if you presuppose that God doesn’t exist. And having to dissect the logic of a godless mind has felt insanely dark and hopeless and antithetical to humanity.

The overwhelming consensus from atheist Philosophers is that theists believe in God not based on any logical data but based on wishful thinking. We could contest the lack of logical data, but I care more about this accusation of wishful thinking. Because it presupposes that I simply “want” God to exist and therefore, to me, He does.

This assumption on behalf of atheists neglects the reality of just how difficult it is to be a Christian. Not only are Christians persecuted in various parts of the world but those who have endured spiritual abuse or deep suffering have to wrestle with how a good God can let such wretched things happen.

If God was merely a byproduct of my wishful thinking, then He would be much smaller. His existence would only accommodate what my tiny brain can understand. I would make Him impotent to explain away the existence of evil. I would make Him indifferent to explain away my personal suffering. But the Christian God, the Triune God — who came down and took on flesh and bore my pain — His is a nature that human theology cannot fully comprehend. No wishing up or mythologising could create a God this holy and sovereign and personal.

And only that kind of God makes sense of the world I see in front of me. So when I pick up a theist’s book again, it’s like drinking cool water to my parched mind. The cells in my body realign.

I don’t believe in this simply because I want to but because it makes. more. sense.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that wishful thinking isn’t enough for most of us to hold on to not only a belief but a personal relationship with a God who exists so outside the bounds of comprehension. Being a Christian does not make life easier. In fact, it makes things significantly more difficult at times as our worldview tenses up against our culture.

My driving instructor once said that people can believe in whatever they want. They can believe that “SpongeBob SquarePants is their God if it makes them feel better.” What a sore misunderstanding of what it means to be human. It is not because it “makes me feel better” that I seek to know my Creator. It is because this is what I was designed to do. The creation was designed to seek. The Creator wants to be found. Our humanity was destined for this. Both Maker and made want to be known.

Any logic of the human mind which attempts to bypass this basic aspect of our humanity forces us into a very dark place. In denying God, I deny myself. I cannot see it any other way.

All my love,

This essay is the first in a new series that I am calling The OXFORD Essays, which will be comprised of various pieces that I’ve written for my theology programme at Oxford University. My hope is to invite you all into some of the heavier theological work that I’m doing behind the scenes (since my narrative essays have been thinner on the ground). Finally, please do not reproduce any part of the work below without permission. Essays will remain free for 7 days to all subscribers before going behind the paywall.

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An overview (in normal human language)

To kick off this series, I’m sharing my analysis of how feminist criticism has played a part in changing the way that we read the Hebrew Scriptures. Obviously, due to word count, there are sooo many aspects of this discussion that I had to leave out, and so many feminist Biblical Scholars who I would have loved to include in my analysis. However, I hope that this offers a good “cross-section.” Phyllis Trible, Carol Meyers, and Esther Fuchs are three (among many) feminist Biblical Scholars who have contributed significantly to the interpretation of women in the Bible over the last 50 years. They have differing attitudes towards the text, and they come to different conclusions about what Genesis 2-3 means for our understanding of women. I have mixed opinions about feminism’s role in Biblical Scholarship, and my goal is to invite you into the nuance. I hope that for the layperson, you get a chance to learn a bit about how Biblical Scholarship has been functioning since the rise of “the death of the author” in the 1970’s. Enjoy!

Introduction

From at least the eighteenth century, Biblical scholarship was concerned with, in Brent Strawn’s words, ‘the story of the Old Testament’ in order to understand ‘the Old Testament as story’ (Strawn, 2020, pp. 3-7). In other words, traditional interpretations of the Pentateuch relied on ‘historical’ and/or ‘source’ critical approaches, looking at questions of authorship, textual origins, and cultural landscape (Anderson, 2017, p. 61). The discipline prioritised historical context in order to arrive at the most ‘objective’ interpretation. However, at the turn of the twentieth century, feminist criticism helped usher in disciplinary methods which focused more on the current reader’s perspective (Anderson, 2017 pp. 63-66). Rather than making ‘objectivity’ the goal, Anderson explains that interpretation from the reader’s own perspective exposed a once-ignored reality: ‘supposed objective approaches are themselves plagued with subjectivity’ (Anderson, 2017, p. 64). Phyllis Trible, Carol Meyers, and Esther Fuchs are three feminist scholars from the last fifty years whose work has reinforced this shift; and I will therefore be assessing their readings of Eve’s significance in Genesis 2-3 as a ‘[symbol] for all women’ (Meyers, 1991, p. 13). The term ‘feminism’ within biblical scholarship has persistently evaded a concrete definition, resulting in a cacophony of female scholars who all refer to themselves as feminists despite varying (often conflicting) methodologies and hermeneutical agendas, so for the purpose of this analysis, I am operating under the definition of feminism ‘as concern for the promotion and dignity of women in all aspects of society… especially inasmuch as that promotion and dignity are conditioned by biblical interpretation’ (Osiek, 1997, p. 960). And by looking at this (albeit limited) cross-section of feminist scholarship, I will attempt to summarise the impact that feminist criticism has had on Pentateuchal studies, both in opening up new ways of reading the text as well as undermining its own methodological foundations.

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I’m so. flippin. tired of the hamster wheel that sells dopamine in exchange for attention and sells our attention in exchange for money from advertisers (who are now outsourcing even their ads to non-humans).

After a successful Instagram fast during Lent, I redownloaded the app, and it’s as if my addiction to the scroll got worse. There’s just been an ick, you guys. An ick in myself as I try to navigate my place in this incredibly noisy world that keeps telling me what I should think and who I should believe and how my house should look and what the Bible “actually” says and then tries to sell me cleaning products void of endocrine disrupters that destroy my fertility. And WHEN WILL IT ALL STOP?!

And then, I start thinking about the Prodigal Son’s brother.

The one who watched as his father was dishonoured. The one who stared aghast as the perpetrator was celebrated with a homecoming feast.

Can any of us truly deny that this labyrinth of social media doesn’t present us with narratives that make us think “Why them? Why not me?”

I have. I see puppy videos and wonder why God gave me such a chronically, heartbreakingly sick dog. I see people gaining hundreds of thousands of followers by marketing Christianity as a “niche” but actually mocking the God of Heaven and Earth. I see shallow content catapult someone into thousands of dollars of brand deals. I see people who have abused their bodies who are not living in chronic pain every day like I am.

Either I’m outing myself as the only jealous cow in the room, or you’re nodding your head right now, relieved that someone else finally said it. Because I’m tired of everyone bashing the Prodigal Son’s brother. When someone dishonours my God, even if they appear to repent, I’m afraid that my first instinct is not to go out and slaughter the fattened calf.

Is that wrong? Well, yes. Bitterness and Resentment aren’t actually that sexy — they just have a good marketing team.

But also, I don’t think choosing “which son we want to be” is the main point of the story. Both sons needed their dad. This parable teaches us the nature of the Father’s heart: mercy, mercy, mercy He cries.

And in response, we cry: Kyrie eleison.

But in an online world where it’s impossible to know the heart of the heretical stranger behind our screens, it seems like we’re just expected to posture our little Christian selves towards mercy while ingesting the noise that is specifically, algorithmically tailored to erode our faith in humanity.

We don’t trust people and we begrudge them their happiness; and at the same time, we don’t trust ourselves, and we ignore God’s offers of happiness.

Is it any wonder that we are both the Prodigal Son and his brother?

We both need mercy and are expected to pour it out. And we can’t.

I think that’s the point of the parable. Or at least, that’s what it’s always been for me. I’ve never been able to get behind this dichotomy where the Prodigal Son represents humility and his brother represents pride. I think the brother was hurt, confused, trying to understand why his own faithfulness seemed to go completely unnoticed.

And I truly do not believe there’s a single human being who has walked this earth and not looked up at the sky, at some point, wondering whether their attempts at righteousness would amount to anything at all.

But what does the father say to his boy?

“Son, you are always with me… and everything I have is yours.” Luke 15:31

Everything I have is yours.

If that’s true, then there’s something we’ve been missing. Something that has been sitting there, right in front of our faces, waiting for us to look up.

Mercy begets mercy. That, dear ones, is all there is.

We love because He first loved us.

Your compassion for the person online who has a different political opinion than you? Your ability to look at the person with the perfectly clean home and then glance up to smile at the mess on your counter? Your gratitude for the pizza you could afford to order last night while you watch someone live off brand deals? Your ability to laugh despite chronic pain? Your internal peace inviting you to ignore the shouts of the heretic? Those gifts cannot be earned.

They were already yours, sitting there, waiting for you to reach out and take them the moment you were adopted into sonship. His mercy, His peace, His compassion, His gratitude, His contentment, His understanding, His love — you are always with Him, and everything He has is already yours.

The kicker is that we simply forget to ask.

For all the hours we spend doomscrolling in discontent, jealousy, slothfulness, self-loathing, worry, doubt, confusion, obsession, pity, and rage, we have always at our fingertips, nearer than our next breath, this gift called prayer.

In a word, in a cry, in a moment of blind hatred, we need only ask, and He is right there, ready to offer us in Himself everything that we cannot be: loving, grateful, patient, kind. The caricature of perfection on social media is nothing compared to the righteous image of which we are invited, by grace, to take shape.

Kyrie eleison.

Lord, have mercy.

All my love,

P.S. If you want to truly slow down and start developing a prayerful rhythm that actually feeds into your creative life, I host live, monthly creative writing workshops rooted in the liturgical prayers of the Celtic Saints. They’re available exclusively to my paid subscribers, and to date, these sessions have facilitated time for dozens of people to produce beautiful pieces of creative writing rooted in slow, quiet, prayerful moments with the Holy Spirit. I would love for you to join us.

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“Yeah… I guess I am.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that I’d still be classed as “healing” 2 months after my surgery. Not since the wounds had closed and I’d been able to move around enough to clean my house and attend lectures. But the very fact that I was at a bra fitting was actually proof that my body is not what it once was.

None of my clothes fit me anymore.

During the last Wind & Breath writing workshop for my paid subscribers, I wrote a poem which, honestly, I hated — apart from one line which felt etched in my bones: my body won’t stop expanding to hold the ache of its own disease.

Dramatic, I know. But I have never had a particularly joyful relationship with my body (autoimmune diseases tend to have that effect), and the fact that I feel like a 5’1” expanding balloon whose clothes don’t fit her anymore hasn’t helped.

I stood there in the fitting room, wanting to crawl out of my own skin, when the fitter asked me how long ago it had been since my surgery. The surgery where they found more problems than solutions. The surgery that has left me with fatigue and depression and an odd sense of loneliness I didn’t expect. The surgery that only happened 2 months ago.

You’re still healing, she said.

I deleted Instagram from my phone in a rage last week after I found myself losing sleep by night and time by day. In the wake of a feed filled with clips from ICE shootings, the Epstein files, Christians attacking Christians… the puppy videos weren’t enough to ease the pit in my stomach anymore.

The more horror that I scrolled through, the more I needed to scroll. Just to feel something. Fear, anger, sorrow. Anything. Just to feel connected to the people around me as I sat alone in my house and glanced at the clock that was eating through the hours faster than I could get myself dressed.

But after I got rid of Instagram, I found myself obsessively checking Substack in its wake, so I deleted that app too. Then I resorted to Facebook, and once again I hit the delete button. I strongly suspect that Rightmove and Vinted will be next — because every time I delete one app, another seems to pop up in its place as I hunt for anything to satisfy my insatiable need to escape.

Escape the horror of my birth country as it rips itself apart.

Escape the shame of the expanding body that doesn’t feel like mine, staring back at me in the mirror.

Escape the continued sorrow of endometriosis and the uncertain future it looms over me.

Escape the loneliness of my afternoons in the Midlands, or my nights walking back to my flat in Oxford, seeing fairy lights and warm lamps adorn windows filled with people around the dinner table.

My life feels split in half: half absent business-owner, half struggling wife; half artist, half academic; half my time in Oxford, and half my time up north; half grieving my endometriosis, half terrified to even attempt a pregnancy; half in church community, half isolated. There are “halves” of me scattered all over the place.

But oh! You’re still healing.

I wonder, maybe, if we can stand to look at our own fractured selves in the mirror and accept the gentle words spoken over us: You’re still healing. If we can hold the truth of it in one hand, while in the other, we pick up our swords.

This Lent feels like it’s snuck up on us. Or at least, it does for me. I’ve not really pulled my mind out of Advent, and yet, here we are, invited to unite to the sufferings of Christ through his 40 days in the desert. Somehow, I don’t think it will be that hard for most of us to find common ground with him as we walk deserts of our own.

And I think, maybe, that’s the invitation, friend: to face the glorious from our mud pits.

Yesterday, my Oxford chaplain took us through Christ’s temptations in the desert. This morning, my regular Bible study and my Celtic Liturgical Devotions (both unrelated and not based on the liturgical calendar) took me, by chance, to both Luke and Matthew. You guessed it: to the passages of Christ’s temptations in the desert.

Christ himself is preparing me for Lent. And I don’t know why, but I feel that this Lent needs to be different. For all of us. We are seeing the Quiet Revival happening in the midst of a world that’s on fire, but I don’t think Lent is a time to be quiet. The saints of this generation are having to fight against the numbing call of the Machine like never before. And Lent is a time to stare the Accuser directly in the face, our flesh and our spirit failing us, and say “Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

We are all, collectively, still healing. And it might seem like healing is a time to hunker down and shut off. But Lent is here. We cannot deny it. And I am wondering if we can offer up our suffering to God as a Battle Cry so that the sobering reality of what Christ conquered on the cross, of the magnitude of healing we yet await, will solidify in our bones by Resurrection Day.

We don’t need to gaslight ourselves into spirituality. We can cry out from the pit, or curl into a ball in the darkness, and still say “Man cannot live on bread alone…”

I am personally laying down several things for Lent: particular foods (a sacrifice of the body), access to the escapism apps on my phone (a sacrifice of the mind), and my own time as I commit to praying 3 specific liturgies every day (a sacrifice of the spirit). I’m not sharing this to sound holy. I don’t know if I’ll fail by the end of Day 1. But I’m telling you because I want you to know that I’m standing with you to bear witness to your pain and ask you to bear witness to mine.

I’m exhausted and I’m broken and I feel like I have nothing left, and it is in this exact state that Christ, who walked this desert before me, offers me the grace to stare the Accuser down and feast on every word of the life-giving God.

So I invite you, friend, to gently offer up your pain in prayer and supplication — sacrificing without gaslighting — to declare that you are still healing AND you are still fighting. That you can rest your soul AND you can cry out that you’re exhausted. That you are healed and you are BEING healed. That your pain must be heard AND your victory must be claimed.

I still detest the body that stares back at me in the mirror, even as I speak the words to myself: I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I deserve clothes that fit me, I will stand through a bra fitting and care for myself.

Let this Lent be the season where we walk in the liminal space of gentleness and strength. Let us be kind to ourselves both in rest and in surrender. Let us allow the angels to attend us in the desert without giving in to the temptation of the Accuser. All of these things can be true at once.

Lent is our 40 days to walk with him in the sorrow so that when Easter comes, we join him in glorious victory. For all the ache our bodies contain, we must declare that the story doesn’t end here.

Thanks be to God.

All my love,

P.S. If you’d like to nurture your creative writing as a spiritual practice rooted in prayer, I’d love for you to join me for the Wind & Breath sessions. They are monthly, live creative writing sessions right here on Substack which are rooted in the liturgical prayer rhythm of the Celtic Saints, made exclusively available to paid subscribers of The Battle Cry. If you’d like to join in for these monthly sessions, you can upgrade your subscription by clicking below.

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This essay includes details of my recent laparoscopic surgery. If you struggle with medical trauma, please navigate my story with care and gentleness for your own well-being. Names of nurses have been changed to protect their anonymity.

“Pain.”

The word came out with a groan as the nurse gently brought me ‘round from the anaesthesia. I was shaking uncontrollably. My entire abdomen felt like a wet rag being twisted and wrung. No other part of my body existed. She placed a straw in my mouth and I sipped, only vaguely aware of the soothing sensation of the water on my sore throat.

“Thank you,” I croaked. And then again, “Pain.”

The pain meds moved through me quickly, relaxing every nerve, and then halting at my stomach. The wringing grip inside of me loosened slightly, but not enough. The nurse gave me another dose and piled me with blankets.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Rose.”

“Thank you, Rose.”

“It’s my pleasure, sweetheart. My own daughter had this surgery recently.”

I glanced at the clock. It was 7pm. Rose was the first truly compassionate voice I’d heard in 8 hours.

Since 11:30 that morning, I’d sat in a chair being spoken to minimally by the nurses whose station was 5 feet from my bed: a bed without sheets or pillows — because apparently you aren’t allowed to lay in your own hospital bed until after you return from the operating theatre. Apart from being consulted for pre-op questionnaires, I was offered one cup of water and compression socks during my 6-hour wait, and that was it.

My family weren’t allowed back with me, so I sat there, attempting to read, pacing, wanting to understand why I wasn’t even allowed to lay down.

I’d been filled with peace and covered by prayer in the lead-up to this surgery — the final investigation to a pain I’ve been experiencing for over 2 years. But once I got to the ward, something about the atmosphere filled me with dread. I couldn’t feel the Holy Spirit on anyone in this place.

And then little things started going wrong.

They lost my urine sample.

They kept asking me if I could take a medication that I already stated I was allergic to.

The anaesthetist was brusk.

The surgeon came to see me before the op and assumed that we had met before — when I told her that we hadn’t, she surprised me by not asking a single question about my symptoms or reviewing my medical notes with me. She asked me if I had any questions about the procedure and then raced out of the ward.

Everything felt so sterile, so cold. It wasn’t so much that there was rudeness — rather it was the absence of gentleness which made me feel so alone.

By the time I was called down to theatre, my anxiety had peaked. They had called me by the wrong name, searching for a “Christina Williams” who didn’t exist. Then I followed a male nurse down a series of long, empty, cold corridors that would have been more suited to the set of a horror film than that of a working hospital.

He didn’t speak a word to me as I padded behind him in my dressing gown and slippers. Then he got lost and took us down the wrong hallway.

There are moments when we are forced to confront a painful truth which is usually easy to ignore: our lives are utterly fragile, our bodies vulnerable, our circumstances held together not by our own control but by the divinely gentle love of a Maker.

I can’t remember the last time I’d felt this exposed, completely at the mercy of people who didn’t look me in the eye, didn’t know where I was meant to be going, didn’t even call me by my name.

I stared into the night and recited Psalm 23 to myself over and over again, my heart racing as I longed for even a shred of gentleness or compassion from my medical team.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I prayed, tears stinging. I lack no good thing.

We turned back and retraced our steps, looking for the right door.

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.

“There you are!” a woman shouted from a door we’d already passed. The male nurse handed me off to the surgery team, and I was taken into a room of beeping and needles as an assistant held out a giant plastic bag in which I placed my robe and slippers.

He guides me along the path of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

“Are you allergic to any medications?” asked a woman holding a clipboard. I repeated the same medication allergy that I’d stated six times already that day, only to receive a shocked look in response.

“I have told all the nurses today,” I said, feeling a strange need to defend my answer. The woman said nothing and scribbled something down.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

The anaesthetist walked in.

“This will hurt a moment,” he said as they inserted a needle into my hand. I winced. And finally, finally, one of the assistants offered me a moment of comfort, stroking my arm and looking me in the eye.

“Good job,” she said. “You’re doing so well.”

You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.

“Okay this might sting,” the anaesthetist said as he pumped pain meds into my body. I felt a burning sensation in my arms. Nausea roiled up in my gut. Everything tingled and then went limp.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Then the world went dark.

Within 15 minutes of waking, I was nursing my sore throat and talking to Rose about her English Literature degree and her favourite Brontë novel. She asked me what I do for a living. The effects of the anaesthesia and persistent pain lowered my inhibitions, and I was not inclined to censor my response (as I normally do when speaking to strangers in my very post-Christian nation).

“I’m a Christian and a writing teacher. I help Christians develop their writing skills so that they can write in a way that reflects the glory of God in their life.”

“Oh.” Rose said, flatly, and the conversation died.

“Where’s your accent from, then?”

“I grew up in America,” I said.

“Now then, I’ve got to ask: what do you think of Trump?”

Rose continued to ply me with water and pain relief, staying by my side while I was wheeled back to the main ward. Then she left me, and someone else offered me tea and toast while I struggled against the pain.

One of the nurses tried to get me out of bed and into a chair, but it felt like someone was playing tug-of-war with the “rag” inside my belly, and I could barely move.

I was the last patient in recovery on the day ward, so thankfully they allowed my family back to be with me — at which point my mom asked when we should expect to speak with the surgeon.

“Oh, it looks like the surgeon has gone home,” the nurse said. “You were the last surgery of the day. She will schedule a follow-up with you in 4 months.”

“What?!” I cried. Tears streaming down my face. “She said she’d come speak to me about the outcome of the surgery as long as I was cognitive. I’ve been waiting two years for answers.”

I could see sympathy move in the nurse’s eyes. There was nothing she could do but give me the number for the surgeon’s secretary and a “How did we do?” card to review my healthcare experience.

Quiet rage rolled off my mom and husband in waves, but I was just trying to calm myself down because it was too physically painful to cry.

There were four incisions on my stomach, and the only information I could receive about what had taken place in my own body was that endometriosis had been found and removed, and a biopsy had been taken. That was it.

Again, vulnerability moved to despair, the atmosphere of apathy and loneliness closing in. And I realised, in that moment, how desperate I was to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit emanating from a single healthcare worker.

I know, of course, that NHS workers can’t openly share their faith with patients. I know, too, that I am not an oracle. I can’t say, for certain, that not a single person on that ward knew Jesus. But as I reflect on the entire day, I feel confident in saying that what permeated the air was not simply a lack of gentleness or feeling of apathy or even a sense of exhaustion from underpaid NHS staff: it was an absence of hope — the kind of hope that you only feel on people whose bodies house the same Spirit which raised Christ from the dead.

Friend, if you’ve gotten this far, I need you to hear this because it’s the only reason that I’ve chosen to share my story with you: you need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you carry a piece of Heaven with you whenever you walk into a room. If the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you are Christ’s Ambassador, and that means you have the power to be the hands and feet on the ground, embodying the fruition of the prayer “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

Even in the darkest hospital rooms, the light of eternity can be found when our bodies bear witness to the truth of the cross, when our spirits reflect outward the truth that has been made known to us inward.

Never in my life has it been more apparent to me that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is hope. Because if it weren’t for the fact that I was drenched in prayer going into that surgery, clinging to the words of the Scriptures as my anchor, I would have felt entirely forgotten by the world. I can feel when Christians are in the room — even if they don’t announce themselves. The Spirit goes before them. And just as well, we can feel the vacuum of despair when none of Christ’s Ambassadors claim back ground for Him on this earth.

Whoever you are, whatever your profession, please know that you have the power to change the atmosphere (and drastically change someone’s life) simply by being a vessel for the love of the Living God. You could be a healthcare worker or a teacher or a member of the military or a shop clerk or a police officer or a banker or a farmer or a mum or a writer — I don’t care. Wherever you are, your commission is holy. You are invited by the King of Kings to claim back ground.

To be called by the wrong name, lead to the wrong place, cut open, and then left to wonder what they did to me afterwards? It felt like a violation of human dignity. But by the grace of prayer, the God who knows my name was with me in that God-forsaken hospital, and I was not alone.

Maybe I was the only Christian on that ward. My commission is no different: that hospital, along with the rest of the entire earth, belongs to my Father in Heaven. By His grace, we are the hope the world needs. Even in agony, I possess power by the blood of His Son to claim back territory for Him. They may not know my name, but I will ask them their’s.

When I finally managed to get myself into a chair, a young Nigerian man came and removed the needle from my hand.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Eli” he said, with a radiant smile.

Again, I’m no oracle, but something in his spirit felt familiar. I laughed with him. He laughed back. I barely felt the needle come out.

There you are, Lord, I thought.

My cup overflows.

All my love,

I am writing this series in partnership with my dear friend, Rachael, author of Letters From Lindisfarne. You will get to read the same story from two different perspectives, giving a 3-dimensional view of God’s glory in what unfolds.

This is a story about how God plays the long game.

It was 2018, and a sweet woman who I’d only met once at a creative business retreat messaged me on Instagram. She lived about an hour north of my little cottage in Derbyshire, and she was headed up for a one-night stay on a tiny island I’d never heard of before.

Her partner wasn’t able to join, and she didn’t want to go on her own. Apparently I’d left some sort of impression, and to put it bluntly, she just outright invited me to come with her. Even offered to pay for my room. She just wanted the company. An adventurous hobbit at heart, I accepted at once.

The island was called Lindisfarne. Otherwise known as Holy Island. A place, I’d come to discover, that was soaked in centuries of prayer from the Celtic Saints who’d made it their home as they evangelised the British isles.

Normally such an extravagant gift from a casual acquaintance would have given me pause, but for some reason, it just… didn’t. This woman was utterly sincere, and she’d decided to bestow her kindness on me.

So I found myself on a tiny, stunning little island off the coast of Northumberland, walking the shores, looking for sea glass, eating fish and chips, and gazing up at humble cross as the sky washed over me with radiant evening light.

I don’t recognise the Christina from 2018. My faith has gone through fires that have fundamentally wrecked and rebuilt me since then. But one thing has not eroded, even as the waves have crashed over me through the years: my connection to this particular stretch of land was immediately and permanently holy, forged not in fire but in peace. A gift of grace from the kindness of a stranger.

I could not have told you why, but some sacred part of my soul found rest on these shores. There was a Celticness in me that knew she was somehow home.

We’ve since lost touch, but that woman’s generosity has marked me. Not, for once, with scars, but with an imprint of something more ancient. More beautiful. More Divine.

What I didn’t realise in my twenties (that I am coming to understand much more frequently in my thirties) is that God plays a longer game of chess than we have patience for.

I was two years in to a job that was slowly destroying me when Rachael joined my team. It was an attempt at a mini-restructure in which I acquired a new, small department (which basically meant acquiring the member of staff who ran it).

Rachael was a mix of utter sweetness and nervous energy. She was worked to the bone but wanted to serve; she was desperate for reprieve but was reluctant to ask for it.

I sensed in her a kindred spirit: someone whose sensitivities did not compromise her strength. As she eased into her new team and my style of management, I saw a woman who had exquisite taste, an appreciation for deep beauty, a love of history, a hilarious sense of humour. I saw an artist stuck behind spreadsheets.

We connected over a shared love of Tolkien, we would sing silly songs and dance together at our desks, and slowly we started to share our mutual love of Northumbria and Celtic Christianity.

So often, though, Rachael’s vibrancy would recede behind a mask of fear. And as the months went on, the mask fell, and she finally broke down in my arms one afternoon. So much of this is her story to tell, but I’ll never forget the day that it all clicked for me:

“I just feel like I’m a bad person” she choked out through tears.

I’d been noticing the signs for a while: this default instinct to literally apologise for simply existing; this need to check and re-check her work, to ask permission to make even the smallest changes to a protocol that she understood much better than I did (I was her manager, but she had 10 years on me of tenure at our workplace).

And as she choked out these words of self-disgust, I just knew.

How could this sweet, kind, hard-working, delight of a human who loved Jesus and loved her neighbour possibly feel so crippled by this idea that she was fundamentally bad?

It beggared belief.

Except… I had once been that person.

15 years prior, I was a terrified child who locked herself in her room, begging God to make the thoughts go away. I thought I was demon possessed. I thought I was evil. I would force myself to go to sleep just to make the thinking stop.

I couldn’t stop counting the ceiling tiles or the syllables in my words.

I couldn’t cook around my mom because I didn’t trust myself with a knife.

I couldn’t stop apologising for fear I’d projectile spit in someone’s face while speaking to them.

I couldn’t function, and I couldn’t understand why.

OCD had swallowed me whole, and it drug me down into its depths until finally, after years of keeping silent, 14-year-old Christina realised that her shame couldn’t gag her any longer — if I didn’t tell my parents, I wasn’t sure I would survive. The fear of discovering that their daughter was evil would surely be better than discovering that their daughter was dead. In any case, I’d let them decide.

I sat at the foot of my parents’ bed one night, the room alight with the blue glow of their television, and I told my mom everything. Within a month, I was attending therapy with the only youth specialist of OCD in Southern California. Within three months, the thoughts had become manageable. Within six months, they were gone.

But my relationship with God had been marred. Why would He allow a 12-year-old girl to suffer like like that for years, locking herself in her room, begging for it to stop? How could He hear the cries of a child who was trapped inside an agonising prison in her mind and do nothing?

I decided, even after therapy had more or less healed me of my OCD, that God was either nonexistent or cruel, and I wanted nothing to do with Him in either case.

The story of how He called me home to Himself will have to wait for another day, though. We need to get back to the office.

“Rachael, have you ever been assessed for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?”

She blinked at me, eyes red.

“No.”

“Okay, well you need to. You can do an online assessment through the same OCD Centre where I had treatment. They offer virtual consultations now. I strongly recommend it. Because your brain is tormenting you. But you need to hear me: these thoughts are lies. You are not a bad person.”

She stared at me. She listened. But I knew she didn’t believe me yet.

A year later, I finally left that organisation. It had succeeded in breaking me. I was a shell of a human. I didn’t know how to write or paint or breathe anymore. But I cried on the phone when I told Rachael the news because for all the things I couldn’t wait to leave behind, she was not one of them. Our story wasn’t done, and I felt a tie to her, a deep need to see her through this labyrinth until she had broken free.

And something else, too, that I couldn’t shake — I knew, somehow, that I needed to go back to Holy Island. And I knew that Rachael needed to come with me.

Read Rachael’s Part 1 here, and check back soon for Part 2.

All my love,

I’ve gone viral or semi-viral 3-ish times this year, but never as intensely as when I posted about my impending studies at Oxford which began 2 weeks ago.

Here I was thinking that my regular readers might see it and share in my joy; but lo’ and behold, my little corner of the internet exploded. And boy was it loud. And wonderful. And hard.

Because when the “internet gods” smile upon you, it leaves you vulnerable to every person and their cat’s opinion about your life. You become a specimen upon which people feel entitled to hurl their thoughts. Your humanity disappears as your story is diluted by the screen on the other end — a screen that actually becomes a mirror, reflecting the person’s deepest wounds back to them in the comment section.

95% of the strangers who read my Oxford story have been so beautifully supportive. People who don’t even know me keep saying that they’re proud of me — that my story made them tear up.

A few people even shared how the work that God has done in my life gave them renewed hope and faith from their hospital beds.

I could cry.

What a gift. What an honour. What a privilege to be a part of this shared, beautiful tapestry of humanity. Let my life, my story, be a battle cry of worship to a good and present God.

But there was another 5%, and they were loud. And honestly? It broke me a little.

I’ve been on Substack for nearly 2 years, and the platform has changed a lot in that time. Sharing my writing here used to feel like I was walking into a safe, cosy writer’s room of fellow creatives. Now it feels like standing naked in a shopping mall — I’ve become more aware of how cruel people can be.

That comes with the territory, though, right? Being a public writer requires a thick skin. And I could shrug off the people who were throwing ridiculous accusations at me because, well, they were so ridiculous.

One person suggested that I was either a spoiled rich kid to be attending Oxford or that I must be working in England “under the table” in order to afford my studies as an American immigrant — I’m a British Citizen, and by no means do I come from a wealthy family (you can read more about that here if you’re curious). Another person assumed that I was a single woman who was choosing an education over a happy marriage and children, and they advised that I abandon my studies to become a wife and a mother — I’m a happily married woman, and my story of fertility is complicated.

Needless to say, people tell themselves a lot of stories about things that they don’t understand. And I could roll my eyes at the silly ones. But there was one sentiment that I kept getting from folks which I couldn’t dismiss as easily: the people who said that they were “sorry” for me because I was about to be “indoctrinated” by my education at Oxford.

Ooof. Man. Those comments worry me far more than people who are telling themselves made-up stories about who I am and what I’m about. Because it’s a window into a deeper cultural problem that is only going to get worse unless we call it out for what it is.

I’m calling it the “Ignorance Epidemic” — a fear of education which one thinks is rooted in shrewdness and critical thinking but which is actually rooted in the same lack of humility that some academic elites possess, too. In short, the “Ignorance Epidemic” cares not who you are or where you’ve gone to school. It cares only about the posture of your heart. Let me explain…

Firstly, I want to just acknowledge that people are right to be weary and critical of educational institutions, especially here in the West where universities are businesses. We don’t have to look far to find corruption. We hear stories in the news of celebrities bribing universities to get their kids accepted. We see thousands of young people graduating from what can feel like ideological conveyor belts. Universities, particularly in the U.S., are defined as either “conservative” or “liberal.” An agenda is established before one even enrols. It forces us to contend with the fact that education — when defined as the exchange of knowledge and information — is a form of power.

And power is probably the easiest thing for humans to abuse.

I’ve seen it myself. Heck, I’ve experienced it. As a wide-eyed 20-year-old, I read my way through my BA & MA in English Lit & Creative Writing, and I was swept away in the grandeur of ideas and philosophies that seemed so beautiful and open and new compared to the narrow view I once held in my teenage ignorance. Indeed, my faith in God was stretched to near breaking point under the tension of literary theories fighting each other for prime real estate in my mind.

Studying the humanities shaped my thinking. Seeing the world through the lens of Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Marx, Kathy Acker, Margaret Atwood, Claudia Rankine… it taught me to observe people and systems and cultures differently. It taught me to ask questions of things that I’d never thought to question before. And yes, sometimes, it steered me in what (and how) I should think.

It would be ridiculous for me to defend education by pretending that it isn’t the powerful machine that it oh-so-clearly is. Universities possess one of the world’s most precious assets: the young, unshaped minds of the coming generation. Like clay, those minds can be moulded and formed in preparation for when their turn comes to build the cultural landscape of society.

I know. I’ve seen it.

The philosophies that I studied in the lecture hall 15 years ago have become the common ideologies of the Gen Z YouTuber today. Ideas are currency, and currency is usually traded with an agenda, whether it be good or bad.

So if all of this is true, why do I still believe in education? Why have I stepped back into a formal institution — indeed, one of the most famous institutions in the Western world?

It’s been 8 years since I graduated with my MA, and I can still say with certainty that my world view has been shaped by what I studied during my first degree. But that doesn’t mean that I believe all of the same things that I believed at 24-years-old.

One of the anti-education comments that I received on my Oxford note contained words to the effect of “I’m so sorry that this happening to you.” And I found that really telling.

People who demonise formal education often think that they are assuming a posture of control over their own minds. “I won’t let myself be brainwashed!” they say with confidence. But the reality is that when we believe that formal education is something that happens to us, we assume the role of victims — not victors. And furthermore, when we believe that formal education is the only arena in which we can be brainwashed, we embrace not just victimhood but delusion.

Whether we go to a university or attend a church or watch particular news channels or scroll on social media, we are ALL allowing SOMETHING to shape our worldview. We are always being educated. And the “Ignorance Epidemic” isn’t just about being anti-intellectual or anti-education; it’s about being ignorant to the fact that we all have a choice to be active or passive participants in the shaping of our own minds.

Make no mistake, my friends: those who believe that I am stepping onto a brainwashing conveyor belt by attending Oxford University are just as subject to brainwashing as I am. We all have a choice. And I would like to suggest that it starts by redefining what education actually means.

Earlier in this essay, I operated under the working definition that “education” meant an exchange of knowledge and ideas. And that’s part of it. But I actually think that it’s a little more interesting than that.

I would like to propose that actually, education is simply the act of engaging with stories. Which is something we all do. Every day. We all tell stories, and we all consume stories. Stories are the bedrock of our understanding. Let me give you an example…

Growing up in America, I was taught a particular narrative of the American Revolutionary War. My teachers used words like “freedom” and “independence.” I was raised to believe that my ancestors bucked against a system of oppression and unfair taxation.

But my friend in Belgium heard a very different version of events in her school. Her teachers defined the same war as an act of treason from the colonies against their king. And technically speaking, both stories are factual. The colonies did buck against taxation. And it was classed as an act of treason.

All of this raw historical information was simply shaped into two different narratives, and those narratives then hold power to shape how and what we infer about the world.

The version of U.S. history that I was taught in school was designed to tell me a story about the nation to which I belonged: a nation built on the values of freedom; a nation which bucked against the tyranny of unfair taxes.

So naturally, I found myself shocked when this narrative contradicted my lived experience as an adult — when I discovered that today’s United States is one of only two nations in the world that tax its people based on citizenship and not residency, resulting in thousands of people being taxed by a country that they may have never even stepped foot in. Unfair overseas taxation didn’t fit my high school history narrative. One story came into conflict with another story, so I was forced to decide which story would have the greater influence on what I believe.

And I hate to be overly philosophical about it, but this tension of navigating conflicting stories is kind of what it means to be human. To tell a story, we have no choice but to highlight some things to the exclusion of other things. We have to decide, on a daily basis, how we are going to engage with the stories around us.

Right now, I’m learning about numerous ways in which Biblical scholars have approached the question “Who wrote the Old Testament?” and it is fascinating to see how some of the smartest people in the world are looking at the original Hebrew scrolls and coming up with different theories about those scrolls’ origin stories. There is no clear consensus. Everyone is just speculating — with the best use of logic and evidence available to them.

And yes, all of them will be coming to that task with their own biases and world views. Biases are unavoidable.

Just the same, my lecturers will be guiding our reading lists. We will learn things to the exclusion of other things.

But I want to suggest that this fact need not make us skeptical. I want to suggest that there is a way to navigate the systems and stories that shape us, even whilst acknowledging that those systems and stories come with their own agendas.

Learning is not the same thing as being brainwashed, and if we believe that it is the same thing, we actually suffer the worst of the “Ignorance Epidemic”: we become the hypocrites we so despise. But there is a better way. A hope-filled way. A way that shapes our hearts and minds from a posture of courage, agency, and faith, not a posture of cynicism, victimhood, and fear.

Firstly, we must recognise that we can choose how stories shape us. We have agency. We’re not empty vessels who are destined to be brainwashed. We can listen to a perspective that challenges our world view without surrendering our world view to that new perspective. We can learn from new ideas without assuming that those ideas are entirely correct. We can grow in our beliefs without abandoning our values. We can engage philosophies that are vastly different from our own without allowing those philosophies to fundamentally redefine us.

Secondly, we must be humble. Humble enough to accept that we are easily deceived, whether we attend a university or not. Humble enough to recognise that our world view is limited. We don’t have it all right. But neither does anyone else. Curiosity thrives in humility. When we approach the world knowing that every person, by virtue of being human, has a limited understanding of the universe, we can learn from them without allowing our entire understanding of the world to be absorbed into theirs. We can also, hopefully, admit when we’ve gotten it wrong. This tension is where critical thinking thrives, but without humility, it dies.

And finally, we must remain shrewd. Jesus sent his disciples out with this advice, and I truly believe it applies to all of us whose thoughts are being shaped by university professors and Instagram influencers alike: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16). Avoiding or demonising academic institutions isn’t shrewd. All it does is allow anti-intellectualism to fester; and especially for those of us who believe that God is the source of all Truth, it surrenders battle ground to the enemy. Whether you believe in the academy or not, the fact of the matter is that society’s world views are shaped first in the lecture theatres before they make their way to the streets. If Christians take an anti-academic approach to learning and education, all we’re doing is sending a message that knowledge is to be feared and that our minds, guided by the Holy Spirit, are still too weak to discern the truth of one story from another. I believe this to be an insult to the God of the Heavens and the Earth and a rejection of the Great Commission.

Also, to those who are skeptics of academia, I do want to just finish by saying that there’s hope out here in the academy, friends. Within the first few days of my orientation at Oxford, one of our lecturers, when pressed by a student for his theological opinion, stood firm when he said: “It is not my job to tell you what to think.”

Not every lecturer is part of some oligarchical conspiracy. So many teachers are doing the work that they do because they long to preserve the gift of knowledge which leads us closer to the Divine.

I approach academia with my own biases. We all do. And we should be open about that. I believe that the Holy Spirit can guide me in discernment so that I can engage ideas without necessarily adopting every one of them. I believe that learning about the world around me will only serve to teach me more about the God who made it. I believe that knowledge and education are not to be feared because my God invites me not to ignorance but to intimacy.

Rather than teaching our young people to reject education, why not teach them to think critically, to pray for discernment, to understand how stories shape them, to ask questions, to hold firm to their convictions while walking humbly into their libraries and lecture halls? Why not take back surrendered ground with the shrewdness of a serpent and the innocence of a dove?

There’s a better option than the “Ignorance Epidemic.” One where curiosity leads us “further up and further in.” One where we can stand in awe of a God who reminds us that we’ll never understand it all, but under His perfect love, we need not fear the things that we do, over time, come to understand. One where we are not only shaped by stories but become the love-filled bards who tell them. In spirit, and in truth.

All my love,

P.S. I believe in the power of storytelling like I believe that my Goldendoodle cannot function without treats. And I want to see the publishing industry so flooded with stories told by Christians who declare the glory of God. Which is why I teach a writing course called Pick Up Your Sword. It’s designed for people who have felt God call them to write a book about their own story, but they don’t know where to start. You can learn about it and enrol here. And if you’re looking for more stories to inspire you in your faith and creativity, you’ll flippin love my free monthly newsletter, The Grammarian. You can get that right here.

P. P. S. My bestie Dusty and I did a Part 1 and Part 2 podcast episode about what it actually looks like to have discernment, which feels relevant to this post. So you can listen to that here if you want to continue exploring this idea.