I Wrote the Damned Receipts Myself

06 Aug, 2026

Came across an old post I tucked away a while back. I don't feel like writing anything new today, so I figured reading through this might give me enough motivation to fix the entry and add notes.

I came into ministry to repay a debt of grace. Hindsight is 20/20 now: grace, or perhaps the idea of it, was never a debt — and even if it was, by the principles of the Bible it could NEVER be settled by any human effort or repayment I could conceptualize. Thing is, according to that same Bible (to my limited understanding), God never asked for repayment. I wrote the damned receipts myself.

I could call that dishonest, disingenuous on my part. I'd be wrong. It was just an overly devout young man moved to tears by Calvary, reaching for the biggest thank-you he could find. Sincerity working with an incomplete idea of the being he served.

The call came through a man. He told me God had told him. I don't blame him for saying it.¹ But I said yes for the wrong reasons. I didn't say yes because the pastorate is a place of influence, power, and clout, as most would — for all my flaws, that was never one of them.² I said yes out of a sense of debt, which I now realize was a mask for fear: the fear of becoming a Jonah, a "failure," if I said no. But Jonah ran from a call he heard himself. Elijah was worn down by persecution and grew tired of his calling. This may have been a call that should never have been mine in the first place, which got me thinking:

Wouldn't the greater failure be pursuing something you know you do not wish to pursue?

I never wanted the position, the clout, the promotion in the kingdom. I wanted to be a church member and a musician. I wanted God. That's it.³

But it would be hypocritical of me to claim I'm the victim here, that I had no sins of my own. I have plenty: masturbation, fornication in my younger years, cursing, wearing shorts (immodest apparel, apparently), being judgmental.⁴ It was all a form of getting back at a system that answered every honest attempt at goodness with more manipulation, more squeezing of resources, and — with a very, very few exceptions — less and less of God. Holy apparel became a contest over who wore the better and more expensive dress. Modesty became a beacon for attention online, as if seeking validation offline wasn't bad enough; it turned into a nice-off for all the wrong reasons. I got sick of it, so I became the person they said God hated.

I just wanted to be their mirror. But there are things even a mirror doesn't have the decency to reflect back.

What I'm taking back: my free will, which I surrendered to fear — to the requirement of people-pleasing — the day I said yes. My belief that grace is a gift, not a mortgage. My weekdays, my energy, my family. The leading of myself and my household before I ever consider leading anyone else again. The whole arrangement made me a worse person, and perhaps an even worse believer.

What I'm not doing: running. I'll stay in the body and change my post. I'll keep attending, keep facing what I ought to face — not out of shame, but because I believe in consequences. Maybe someday I'll be like the good ones who stay good inside the church. Or at least come to do good no longer out of fear of reprisal, or consequence, or karma, but for goodness' sake.

Why should God, hellfire, fear, or manipulation have to goad me into doing something that is essentially Good? The definition of Good may shift from time to time, but I'd rather pursue it through lenses that extend past blind faith and a moral high horse. I've never been able to form the words for this, but the logic of obeying because you fear reprisal has always sat wrong with me. It's like saying you don't steal because you're afraid your hands will be chopped off, or that you give to the king only because you fear his wrath if you don't. It feels incomplete — right in some places, uncomfortable in the places that should matter most, in the mind and in the heart.

The whole experience whittled me down to a husk of myself. But erosion isn't only destruction; it's also how a stone gets tumbled into a new shape. I don't know yet which one is happening to me. That's the honest ending for tonight.

Update

I know what it is now. It's an opportunity to be reforged, rebuilt, hopefully better this time, having learned from the lessons.

Those last two paragraphs have an answer now, too. I've decided to walk away — to check myself out of this community mentally, since I can't do it physically. Their judgment and their opinions of me no longer land. Reading and writing have fortified what I could fortify. I'm going to be just a member.

I still carry some angst, some wish that karma comes back around to bite them. But revenge is the poison you expect your enemy to drink and end up drinking yourself, and some bad people simply get away with it. I'd rather spend the effort building a good life for me and my wife, living as well as we can with what we have. That is worth every struggle it costs. As for them — who needs God, if their life will be punishment enough?

In life, trying to make things right — or turn them back to what they once were — we move in pendulums: out to an extreme, then slowly settling into the middle. Doormat, then people-pleaser, then a friendly, collaborative person with boundaries. The same holds on the other side: asshole, then self-serving and afraid of consequence, then actually kind, but again with boundaries.

I hate that we don't immediately get it. It takes time, circumstances, winning something, losing something or someone, to learn the lesson. I hate that part of the human experience. It's like being one letter off on a spelling test, except it hurts more because it's your life. I wish there were a way to redo the answers. But that's the essence of it: life is choices, and while not every choice matters in hindsight, we should at least have guidance — from other people, from books, from good company, from good philosophy — to know the difference.

We all just want to make the right choice at the right time. Sad to say, that's not how it goes. Even so, I'm not shutting myself in the box this time. Life is too short to be a fence-sitter. We should learn to touch grass with our decisions.

Notes