Unlearning religion without losing faith: Tim Storey, Rob Bell and Paul

The Short Version

Many people reach a point where the religion they inherited no longer fits, yet the hunger that brought them to it hasn't gone away. Tim Storey, raised in church from age four and trained at a Christian college and seminary, describes unlearning the idea that only one way is the right way, and dropping the habit of treating every mistake as a mark of sin, while keeping his relationship with Jesus [1]. Rob Bell, a former pastor, argues that the usual question "Is there a God?" is framed badly, because any God you could prove or disprove would be just one more thing inside the categories. His answer is "Is there a God? Yes, just not the one in that question." [2]. From inside the Christian scriptures, Paul's letter to the Colossians warns against "philosophy and empty deceit" and against religious add-ons that overshadow Christ [3], and Galatians defends the freedom of believers against anyone who adds rules to grace [4]. Put side by side, the four sources suggest a pattern: you can let go of the scaffolding (the rules, the tribal certainty, the fear of mistakes) without letting go of what the scaffolding was built around. They do not agree on how much you may let go of, and on that point Paul is much stricter than Bell.

Table of contents

What They Said

Tim Storey: unlearning the one right way without abandoning faith

Tim Storey is an author, speaker and life coach who has spoken in 75 countries [1]. His religious credentials run deep. In his own words, "I was raised in church since I was four years of age and in my life, I got this relationship with Jesus Christ," and he went on to "like a Christian college seminary" [1]. He became a famous preacher almost by accident. NFL great Reggie White saw him speaking at inner-city schools and brought him into NFL team chapels in his early twenties. That led to invitations from churches and big ministry figures, and by 29 he was running his own conference of 8,000 people [1]. He describes having been at "the biggest churches in the world," with crowds he puts at "you know 20 000 people" [1].

Asked by Lewis Howes what he has had to unlearn recently, Storey answers without hesitation:

"I feel like there was a lot of things the last few years that I decided to unlearn and that that is that this way is the way and that way is this way and that way is that way is that because I've met too many people that me and you know that are living amazing lives and they didn't go to the same churches as us." [1]

His reason matters. Storey did not reason his way out of exclusivity with an argument. He ran into people. He met too many people living good lives outside his tradition, and the evidence of those lives wore down the belief that only one path counts [1]. He also saw where the conversation would go next and named the objection himself: "And so people may say, well, does that mean you've abandoned your faith?" [1]. The summary frames the section as Unlearning rigid religious ideas while keeping his faith [1]. What he unlearned was a posture, not the relationship at its center.

The second thing he unlearned concerns mistakes. Storey says he no longer sees mistakes as marks of sin. He compares the church culture he grew up in to obsessing over a scuff on a new pair of white Converse [1]. Against that fussiness he cites Psalm 103: God does not treat you as your mistakes deserve [1]. Unlearning also cost him socially. He says he has grown away from people who still think the old way [1].

A third piece of unlearning concerns money and humility. Storey says the church culture of his youth taught a false humility that equated spirituality with a meager life [1]. When a multi-level marketing company paid him $5,000 to speak at 24, he tried to give the check back [1]. What changed him was meeting a humble, spiritual man outside his own faith who drove a big Mercedes. The man later asked permission to challenge him, told him his constant deflecting of praise was borderline false humility, and asked why life could not bless him [1]. Storey now believes abundance lets you give not only from sacrifice but from surplus [1]. Once again the correction came from outside his tradition. Someone who didn't share his church background showed him a blind spot in it.

Storey is candid that early religious success didn't settle his inner life. He calls his younger self a "boy wonder" who was "still vacant," because he did not yet know who he was [1]. That links to the emotional center of the episode: at 12 he learned that the man he grew up calling his father was not his biological father, and he later rebuilt his identity through education, conversation and observation [1]. His line on why this matters: "when you find out where you came from, who you are, and what your purpose is, you cannot be stopped." [1]. His religious unlearning belongs to the same larger project, rebuilding an identity that had been built partly on things that weren't true.

A small moment shows what that unlearning felt like from the inside. At Howes' conference, Howes pulled him onstage to dance. Storey recalls coming "from this ministry background in which you know i was at the biggest churches in the world," and says: "freedom came to me oh like so such freedom because if the religious people were watching that move they'd be like what's he up to because the song had a lot of f words in it" [1]. For a former megachurch preacher, being free of other people's religious judgment registered as a physical release [1].

Tim Storey: feeding the soul outside the church walls

Storey doesn't stop at subtraction. He argues that inner health starts in the spirit. Asked whether mental health depends on spiritual health, he says: "I think it starts in the spirit," and explains that when a person is truly present somewhere beautiful, "something's happening to your soul. Your soul is being fed. And your soul is the center of your being being. Because out of your soul comes the goodness of your heart." [1]. From a fed soul come goodness, forgiveness and gratitude. Without it, he says, even a strong mind will be in conflict, and he cites the Bible's line that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways [1].

That makes him a practical guide for people who have left religion but not their spiritual hunger. He says most of his audience is in exactly that position: "I would say like 75% of my followers are not religious people. They're just like people that want to live a better life." [1]. His advice to them doesn't depend on doctrine:

"go to somewhere where there's not a lot of concrete and where the earth is breathing and watch how soulful you feel and how fed you start to feel." [1]

He names the desert, the mountains and the ocean [1]. He also frames hard times with Ecclesiastes 3, the passage behind The Byrds' Turn! Turn! Turn!: the pandemic was a long winter, and winter has lessons [1]. "Pain has been my library," he says, meaning both his own pain and the pain he has watched others go through [1].

His general stance toward growth fits the same pattern. "Some things in life you decide and some things in life you discover," he says [1]. Renewing your mind, for him, means unlearning ideas that no longer serve you, such as the superstition that bad things come in threes [1]. Talking with Howes, he describes refusing to be frozen by past errors: "i'm not going to sit there and nurse it curse it and rehearse it i'm i'm going to move on," and adds "remember we're still unfolding" [1]. On labels: "we refuse to to live with those labels we just take them off" [1]. His closing lines carry the same idea: "So don't fold while you're still unfolding." and "you may not be what you want to be but thank god you're not what you used to be." [1].

Rob Bell: the God question is usually asked wrong

Rob Bell, a former pastor and bestselling author named by Time as one of the world's most influential people, comes at the same territory from a more philosophical angle [2]. When Howes asks the question he says spiritual leaders dislike, "Is there a God? What is God?", Bell reframes it: "The question is what is the nature of this experience we're having?" [2]. He explains the problem with the question as usually posed. Traditionally, "God was the name for the depth and ultimate source of that experience. Any God you could prove or disprove would be just another thing inside the categories, while a true source would transcend them [2]. Hence his answer: Is there a God? Yes, just not the one in that question." [2].

Elsewhere in the conversation, Bell recalls someone who was looking at "even like the word God, which essentially means ultimate reality," and says "oftentimes people think of the word God as like a religious term" when "it's much more helpful to think about it. Like, what is the nature of this universe that we call home? Like, what's the thing behind the thing, behind the thing? Right. What's the source? Because people are always talking about God. They just use different words for it." [2]. The questions that follow are the ones he treats as the real God questions: "Is it a place of love, generosity, hope? Are we going to be okay? Or is it a cold, dark, lonely place where you might as well just throw some elbows and fight for your peace and see what happens." [2].

That moves the God question from a debate over a proposition to a choice about how to live. The better God questions, Bell says, are about which story you live: forgiving or holding onto bitterness, stockpiling or believing there is enough for everybody [2]. For images of God, he gives God's answer to Moses, "I am, read as less a noun than a verb; the theologian Paul Tillich's ground of our being; and a rabbi friend's definition of God as living presence [2]. In the transcript he puts the rabbi's view as The sense that you're here, that you're not alone, that there's something that binds us together," and "That there's something sustaining us and inviting us into new futures." [2]. He warns against over-defining with an image: pin a butterfly down to study it and that is the moment it can't fly [2].

Rob Bell: letting some gods die

Bell's most provocative claim for people outgrowing inherited religion is that some gods should die. He says the idea of a God somewhere else, who may or may not intervene, has for many people died, for instance in the Holocaust, and it's healthy to let some gods die when a framework can't sustain reality [2]. In the transcript the conversation connects this to a wider pattern: "things need to die and things need to be created in order for it to grow," followed by "Death and rebirth." [2].

That links to what Bell calls the ancient pattern of orientation, disorientation and reorientation [2]. We are handed a way of navigating the world by our tribe, family, sport or subculture. Then we go out into life and find that some of it works and some doesn't, and the pattern repeats in every season [2]. On this view, outgrowing the religion you inherited isn't a failure. It's the disorientation stage of a cycle that ends in reorientation.

Bell's own history follows that arc. As a 19-year-old singer in a college band he felt, for the first time, something that tossed out ranking altogether. When the band broke up, the big questions took him to divinity school [2]. Those questions, as he recounts them, were: "How do you forgive people who have wronged you? What kind of universe is this? Is this whole thing headed somewhere? Or is it just a series of random events that you sort of ductate together your own version of." [2]. Formal study didn't close them: "you learn stuff and it just creates new questions. So that's how it works now." [2]. What he believes differently now is that he no longer offers guarantees. Uncertainty is baked into everything, down to particles appearing and disappearing in empty space, and the only certainty is the present moment [2].

Rob Bell: doubt, mystery and the heart

For people afraid that questioning means losing faith, Bell treats doubt as part of the territory. Howes recalls Bell once saying doubt is essential for faith. Bell answers: "Of course you have questions," and "Doubt is all part of it because it's all part of the full spectrum of the human experience." [2]. He opens the conversation with his view of mystery: "Mystery isn't something you can't know. Mystery is something you can know endlessly." [2]. He tells how, on stage with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, he watched the Dalai Lama take a long time over a question and then say simply "I don't know," with no disclaimer. It hit Bell "like a bolt of lightning" [2]. The mind, he says, is "a wonderful servant, but not the best master," and why-questions can keep you stuck in your head [2].

He tells people who feel stuck to "drop into the heart": soul knows, heart knows, mind chatters [2]. Many of the people he coaches later admit they knew all along but went along with what everyone around them said [2]. He notes that many family systems train children away from their hearts, so a rebellious kid may be responding in a healthy way [2]. That applies directly to inherited religion: the part of you that pushes back against what you were handed may not be rebellion against God. It may be the heart refusing a script. "Calling is overrated, curiosity is underrated," he says, and "Curiosity is the engine." [2].

Bell also offers a Hebrew reading that makes inner stagnation a spiritual matter. When the divine sets life and death before Moses, these can be read as two ways of being right now, so ignoring whatever keeps tugging at your sleeve can mean something in you is dying [2].

Rob Bell: what can't be said runs the show

Bell's teaching on unspoken things fits people who have quietly outgrown their faith and don't dare say so. In any family, business or partnership, he says, there are two columns, things we can talk about and things we can't, and "the things in the column that we can't talk about that can't be said are running the show." [2]. Unnamed things "haunt the house," and "You develop a shadow." [2]. He admits the risk of speaking them: "The truth might get spoken and the current structure and arrangement might be blasted to pieces. But at least you'd be free. You'd be free." [2]. More broadly: "You can't have new creation without a disruption of the current creation." [2].

His advice on facing loss applies to losing a religious framework. In disruption you either dig in your heels and idealize what was lost, or "you let the pain and disruption break you open" and find the seeds of imagination to build something new [2]. He says grief and imagination have a long relationship: wherever something is passing away, the seeds of imagination are hiding [2]. In the end, he says, it's a posture of the heart: "Are you open or are you closed?" [2].

Rob Bell: the whole of life as sacred

Bell's alternative to church-bound religion isn't an absence of practice. It's practice spread across ordinary life. The whole of life is a temple, and a conversation is as sacred as any church [2]. He uses the fine wedding plates every day because "today we're celebrating because it's today." [2]. He quotes his friend Dan Klein: "how you do anything, is how you do everything." [2]. On morning dog walks he repeats a mantra: everything he needs for today, he'll have when he needs it [2]. His core message to people who lack joy is you are enough. You are enough exactly as you are, loved the whole time, with belonging never the issue [2]. He says every ancient tradition that helped people taught this, the opposite of the billions spent online to convince us there's a better version of us somewhere else [2].

Colossians: Christ is enough, so beware empty religion

Colossians, as summarized, is Paul's letter to a church he had never met, written to exalt the supremacy of Christ and refute false teachings that threatened to dilute the gospel [3]. The false teachers were introducing legalism, mysticism and asceticism [3]. Paul's warning is the one this insight turns on: "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit…" [3].

The letter's remedy isn't more religion but less: in Christ dwells the fullness of God bodily, and believers are complete in Him [3]. We don't need to add religious rituals, mystical experiences, or legalistic rules to the gospel, the summary says [3]. Paul declares: "God made you alive with Christ… He forgave all our sins… nailing them to the cross." [3]. So no one should judge believers by religious rules about Sabbaths, festivals or food laws. These are shadows, and Christ is the substance [3]. The summary names the error "Jesus + ___" thinking: whether it's mystical visions, rigid rule-keeping or self-denial, if it overshadows Christ it must be rejected [3].

Colossians is also about who you are. The Christian life isn't about behavior modification—it's about putting on a new identity [3]. Believers put off the old self (sexual immorality, anger, malice, slander) and put on compassion, kindness, humility, patience and love [3]. The letter's reorientation is inward and upward: "Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things." and "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts… and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." [3]. At its center is a mystery now revealed: "Christ in you, the hope of glory." [3].

Galatians: freedom from added rules

Galatians, as summarized, is Paul's fierce, passionate defense of the gospel of grace against teaching that salvation comes through faith in Jesus plus obedience to the law, especially circumcision and Jewish customs [4]. Paul opens with alarm: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel…" [4]. Later: "O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?" They began with faith, so why turn back to human effort? [4].

His argument runs through history and identity. Abraham was justified by faith, not the law. The law came later, not to save but to expose sin and prepare for Christ, and it acted like a temporary guardian until Christ came [4]. In Christ believers are sons and daughters, not slaves, and there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female [4]. Paul contrasts Hagar, the slave woman, with Sarah, the free woman, and asks why anyone would go back to slavery when they were born for freedom [4]. The key line: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free… do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." [4]. Circumcision has no value in Christ. What matters is faith working through love [4].

Galatians also limits that freedom. Paul warns against using freedom to indulge the flesh. He lists the works of the flesh (sexual immorality, jealousy, fits of anger, divisions and envy) and the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) [4]. "Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." [4]. Believers should bear one another's burdens and not grow weary in doing good [4]. The summary puts the whole letter in one formula, Jesus + nothing = everything, and warns that The moment we add requirements to grace, we lose the gospel. [4]. Paul's own story is one of radical change: once a persecutor of the church, now a preacher of grace, who says "I have been crucified with Christ… the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God." [4]. He was also willing to confront religious authority head-on, publicly challenging Peter for withdrawing from Gentile believers [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Where they agree

Religion can crowd out the thing it was meant to serve. All four sources see a danger in religious systems that pile rules, rituals or social conformity on top of the core. Storey unlearned a church culture that fussed over every scuff on the white Converse and equated spirituality with a meager life [1]. Colossians rejects "Jesus + ___" thinking and calls Sabbath and food rules "shadows [3]. Galatians calls added requirements a yoke of slavery [4]. Bell describes inherited frameworks from our tribe, family, sport or subculture" that we eventually find only partly work [2].

Mistakes and guilt shouldn't define you. Storey cites Psalm 103, that God does not treat you as your mistakes deserve, and no longer treats mistakes as marks of sin [1]. Colossians says God "forgave all our sins… nailing them to the cross." [3]. Galatians says we are saved by grace through faith, not by what we do [4]. Bell tells people "you are enough," loved the whole time [2], and treats regrets and mistakes, the "dark matter" of a life, as the engine of growth [2].

Identity is the deep issue. Storey says finding out who you are makes you unstoppable, and calls his younger self a "boy wonder" who was "still vacant" [1]. Colossians is about putting on a new identity [3], Galatians about being adopted children rather than spiritual slaves [4]. Bell reads Jacob's wrestling match as a story about becoming comfortable in your own skin [2].

Growth involves something old passing away. Storey speaks of unlearning and of "still unfolding" [1]. Bell speaks of death and rebirth and of letting some gods die [2]. Colossians speaks of putting off the old self [3], and Galatians of crucifying the flesh and of Paul's own crucifixion "with Christ" [4].

Freedom is the goal. Storey felt "such freedom" dancing without worrying about religious onlookers [1]. Bell says that if you speak what can't be said, "at least you'd be free" [2]. Galatians is built around the line "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free" [4].

Where they don't

How exclusive the path is. This is the sharpest split. Storey unlearned "this way is the way" because he met good people who "didn't go to the same churches as us" [1]. Bell says "people are always talking about God. They just use different words for it" [2], and draws on a rabbi, Tillich and the Dalai Lama [2]. The Galatians summary says the opposite about the message itself: there is no other gospel, and anyone preaching a message other than grace through Christ is accursed—even if it's an angel [4]. Colossians insists Christ is not just part of the Christian life—He is the center of it [3]. Paul's letters attack added rules, but they do so to make the center clearer and more exclusive, not to widen it. Storey sits between the two. He keeps "this relationship with Jesus Christ" [1] while dropping the idea that people in other churches are outside the good life. A reader should see that Paul's "freedom" is freedom inside one gospel, while Bell's reframing moves beyond any single tradition's God language.

Certainty versus uncertainty. Bell no longer offers guarantees and treats uncertainty as built into everything [2], and he admires an unqualified "I don't know" [2]. Paul, in both letters, writes with urgency and certainty. The Galatians summary calls it a rallying cry to stand firm in gospel truth [4], and Colossians urges readers to stay rooted in the One who holds all things together [3]. Each side has its reasons. For Bell, a God you could pin down would be a butterfly that can no longer fly [2]. For Paul, the danger is being "taken captive" or "bewitched" by other teachings, and firmness is the protection [3][4].

What "letting go" allows. Bell's framework lets whole conceptions of God die when they can't sustain reality [2]. Paul's framework drops rules but not the person of Christ, whom he calls "the image of the invisible God" [3]. Galatians also warns against using freedom to indulge the flesh [4]. Storey's onstage dance to a song with a lot of f words in it [1] is a small example where a stricter reader might invoke that warning, while Storey experienced it as release. The sources don't settle this. They show that "freedom" means different things to a life coach, a mystic-minded former pastor and an apostle.

What replaces the old structure. Storey points to nature, scripture, therapy, coaches and timeouts [1]. Bell points to presence, curiosity, the heart and treating everyday life as sacred [2]. Colossians and Galatians point to Christ and life in the Spirit: prayer, love, the fruit of the Spirit and bearing one another's burdens [3][4]. These can go together, but they aren't the same thing, and a reader leaving inherited religion will have to decide which center to build around.

Why It Works

The sources give several reasons why shedding inherited religion can deepen spiritual hunger rather than end it.

Encounter corrects doctrine. Storey's unlearning came from meeting people who were "living amazing lives" outside his churches [1] and from a spiritual man outside his faith who challenged his false humility [1]. In Storey's account, direct experience of other people's goodness is what loosened rigid categories. He rebuilt his racial identity the same way, through education, conversation and observation [1].

The soul needs feeding, not just rules. Storey's claim that mental health "starts in the spirit," and that "out of your soul comes the goodness of your heart" [1], explains why dropping religion doesn't remove the hunger. The need was never really for the institution. It was for soul nourishment, which he says can come from places "where the earth is breathing" [1].

Unspoken things keep their power. Bell's two columns explain why people quietly outgrowing their faith often feel stuck: whatever "can't be said" is "running the show" and creates a shadow [2]. Naming it takes that hidden power away, at the risk of disrupting the current arrangement [2].

Disorientation is a stage, not an ending. Bell's orientation, disorientation and reorientation cycle [2], and his observation from years of pastoring that most grieving people were taken to new, expansive places rather than becoming bitter [2], suggest that losing an old framework often comes before a larger one. Grief and imagination are linked, he says, because wherever something is passing away, something new has to be cooked up [2].

Additions displace the center. Paul's mechanism is theological. Adding requirements to grace turns the gospel into bondage [4], and add-ons that overshadow Christ must be rejected [3]. If the core is already complete (Believers are complete in Him [3]), extra rules don't add holiness. They compete with the core. Galatians describes the alternative as transformation that flows from the inside out through the Spirit, rather than self-effort [4].

Guilt and fear block growth. Storey's refusal to "nurse it curse it and rehearse it" [1], Bell's "you are enough" [2] and Paul's assurance of forgiveness [3] all point to the same mechanism: people grow more freely when they aren't defined by their failures. Galatians frames it as joyful obedience, not fearful striving [4].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It applies to people raised in a tradition that stressed conformity, one "right church, or fear of mistakes, and who now find that framework too small, as Storey did [1]. It applies to the large group Storey says makes up most of his audience, people who are not religious" but "want to live a better life" [1]. It applies to anyone whose honest doubts have gone underground in a family or community, where Bell's point about unspoken things fits closely [2]. And it applies to believers inside Christianity who feel weighed down by extra rules and rituals, the exact audience of Colossians and Galatians [3][4].

It applies less cleanly to anyone hoping these sources endorse leaving Christ behind. Colossians and Galatians offer freedom from added rules, not from the gospel. Galatians calls a different gospel accursed [4], and Colossians centers everything on Christ [3]. Storey, too, describes keeping his relationship with Jesus [1]. Bell goes furthest, speaking of letting some gods die [2], but even he answers "Is there a God?" with "Yes" [2].

It doesn't mean abandoning all structure or restraint. Galatians warns explicitly against using freedom to indulge the flesh [4], and Colossians lists attitudes and behaviors to put off [3]. Bell's answer to hostile relatives is boundaries and curiosity, not contempt [2], and he warns against the kind of judgment that means personal righteousness at someone else's expense [2]. Unlearning, in Storey's hands, also isn't a one-time event. You "fall back into an old mindset" and have to relearn "again and again" [1].

A caution on mental health. Storey links spiritual and mental health [1], but he also worked with a therapist, Dr. Helen Mendez, to process his childhood [1], and Howes credits therapy and daily reflection with keeping the mess from piling up [1]. If leaving a religious framework brings real distress, a licensed counselor or therapist is worth consulting alongside any spiritual practice.

Social costs are real. Storey says he has grown away from associations with people who still think the old way [1]. Bell admits that speaking the unspeakable may blow the current arrangement "to pieces" [2]. Neither pretends this path is free.

What To Do With It

1. Name what you've actually outgrown. Storey could say exactly what he unlearned: the idea that "this way is the way," and treating mistakes as marks of sin [1]. Write down the specific beliefs, rules or attitudes that no longer fit, separately from what you still hunger for.

2. Separate the add-ons from the center. Use the test Colossians and Galatians give: is this a core conviction, or a "Jesus + ___" rule, a "shadow" like special days or food laws, that has crowded out the substance [3][4]? Let go of the additions first.

3. Ask a better God question. Instead of arguing whether a provable God exists, try Bell's questions: what is the nature of the experience we're having, is this universe "a place of love, generosity, hope," and which story will you live, forgiveness or bitterness, stockpiling or enough for everybody [2]?

4. Say the unsayable to someone safe. Bell says what can't be said is "running the show" [2]. Storey says the pandemic "timeout" was when he finally told his hidden story, which brought him peace and joy [1]. Choose one trusted person and name your doubts out loud.

5. Feed your soul outside the building. Follow Storey's prescription: go to the desert, the mountains or the ocean, "somewhere where there's not a lot of concrete," and notice how fed you feel [1]. Add Bell's daily practices: a mantra on a walk, using the "fine plates" on an ordinary day, treating a conversation as sacred [2].

6. Let people outside your tradition teach you. Storey's views changed through people who "didn't go to the same churches" and a mentor outside his faith who challenged his false humility [1]. Look for coaches who will challenge you, or, as Storey jokes, you stay "Tim the mundane" [1].

7. Treat doubt as part of faith, not its enemy. Bell: "Doubt is all part of it" [2]. Practice saying "I don't know" without a disclaimer, as he saw the Dalai Lama do [2], and follow curiosity rather than a script: "Calling is overrated, curiosity is underrated." [2].

8. Drop the guilt without dropping the goodness. Take Psalm 103's point that God does not treat you as your mistakes deserve [1], and Colossians' "He forgave all our sins" [3]. Then keep Galatians' fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) as the test of whether your new freedom is healthy [4].

9. Set boundaries with people who insist on the old way. When relatives or critics push back, ask Bell's question: "How does filling your head with that help you do what you're here to do?" [2]. Remember, as he says, that you don't have to go to the ninth awkward Thanksgiving [2]. When you're genuinely curious, ask them to help you understand [2].

10. Give yourself time. Storey: "some things in life you decide and some things in life you discover" [1], and "don't fold while you're still unfolding" [1]. Bell: orientation, disorientation and reorientation repeat in every season [2]. Outgrowing a religion you inherited is one of those seasons, not the end of your search.

Sources

1. Finding Spiritual Truth, Understanding Identity & Managing Your Inner Mess with Tim Storey · The School of Greatness
2. The Spiritual Guide to Inner Peace, Mastering Grief & Understanding God with Rob Bell · The School of Greatness
3. Colossians ·
4. Galatians ·