Which hills should you die on?

Thoughts from a Christian writer mid-crisis.

It’s fair to say that this last month of my writing career has been pretty wild. I wrote about my immediate response to my viral Enneagram essay a few days after everything exploded, and it’s only gotten crazier from there.

I can’t over-state what a head melt the days and weeks have been since I hit “publish” on that article. As God crystallises our understanding of His future plans for my husband and I (spoiler alert: it looks like I’m going back into academia), I’ve also found myself transfixed in the whirlwind of a psychological Pandora’s Box.

I felt a very clear conviction to write that Enneagram essay. Following that essay, though, I received pushback from Christians who told me that I’d “gotten the history” of the Enneagram wrong, and I panicked because I’m absolutely committed to accuracy in my research.

So I went down a deeper rabbit hole and started researching the history even more – down to reading first-hand accounts from some of the Enneagram’s founders like Oscar Ichazo. None of what I’ve read has changed my original stance, but it has opened up more questions that I have for the Church, and it’s ignited my passion for engaging with the nuance because I grieve when we, as Christians, shame the curious intellect for asking those questions in the first place.

Jesus did not look away from Thomas. He invited him to touch his scars.

So as I read those accounts, and as I read the ways in which Christians were utilising those accounts (and Scripture) for their own arguments, I felt my brain go into hyperdrive. When this happens, my natural instinct is to process my thoughts through writing, but unlike with that Enneagram essay, I felt the gentle whisper of the Spirit say Be still.

“But God, what if I got this all wrong?” I asked – and make no mistake, there was pride and fear in the question. I don’t like looking ill-educated or ill-informed, but even more so, I am terrified of misinforming others in a way which could harm their relationship with their Saviour (there’s pride even in that fear, of course, for while leaders do carry responsibility, my powers of ignorant deception do not strip the Almighty His powers of sovereign love and mercy).

But again, I felt that gentle reassurance: Be still. I am the Lord.

So to clarify, this essay is not an essay unpacking the new things I’ve learned about the Enneagram’s history as my research has continued (I keep referring to myself as the NOT-Enneagram girl, and please, by God’s grace, let that be true); rather, this essay is about the process, as writers and believers, that we sometimes find ourselves in when this whirlwind of what I call a “curiosity crisis” takes our breath away – and where, exactly, we can turn when that wind picks up speed and knocks us off our feet.

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Sometimes my brain starts formulating responses at such a fast rate that I have to consciously “slow my words” down before speaking out loud or my sentences literally get jumbled. My sweet husband just looks at me like “Would you like to try saying that again, dear?”

As someone who suffered with severe OCD as a child and young teenager, my mind – though recovered from OCD’s crippling effects – still mimics those obsessive compulsive patterns when I find myself in uncharted territory.

And writing about such a controversial topic in the Christian community, followed by an influx of pushback and praise, is uncharted territory indeed. Since then, I’ve been listening to podcasts, jumping on phone calls with ex-New Agers, reading articles for and against these issues, and committing to reading my Bible more and spending more time in prayer.

As I’ve continued in my due diligence, I’ve found myself with more questions than answers, one question setting off another, and then another, like a series of explosions in a mine field:

“Should Christians avoid any tools or concepts with its origins in the Occult?” was the first question.

My instinct was immediately yes, but then I asked “Okay, but why? Defend that.”

“What does Scripture actually say about using things associated with Occult practices?” was the next question.

Then “How far should Christians be looking outside of Scripture for the Truth?”

Then “How do we balance ‘not putting God in a box’ with ‘not being a heretic’?”

Then “How do we know, when we’re applying Scripture to answer these questions, that we are doing it accurately and in good faith?”

Then “What are the non-negotiables in my theology? And what am I willing to class as ‘secondary’ or ‘tertiary’ theology?”

Then “Where have I been deceived, and how do I identify this kind of deception in the future?”

Then “Why doesn’t God make these deceptions more clear to us all in the beginning?”

Then “How do I interact with (and love) my fellow believers really well, even when we disagree on things which I would class as spiritual warfare issues?”

Then “How am I accurately meant to even engage with spiritual warfare? What does the Bible actually say?”

Then I started going down a rabbit hole of Deliverance Ministry because the way in which I was taught about deliverance left me with a lot of confusion regarding where these practices can be found in Scripture. And it all felt connected, somehow, to the weird New-Age-Christianity-Spiritual-Warfare-Demonic soup I’d been cooking up in my research. I wanted to know how to discern the truth from the over-spiritualised lies.

I told my husband that as I unpack the weird “through-lines” that seem to reveal where New Agism is being cloaked in Christian language, where spiritual warfare looks different than I thought it did, and where the Church seems more capable of being a vessel for deception and “additional gospels,” I find myself deeply overwhelmed, like all the various parts of me are fractured:

My mind, in a state of high alert, started fixating on the demonic world while constantly challenging an overly-spiritualised view of everything.

My heart started grieving all the ways in which I simply don’t feel that I can accurately understand what Scripture is saying to me.

My soul became weary as I began to second-guess everything, feeling the weight of responsibility in my writing against the weight of my Biblical ignorance.

My body has physically felt heavier, borderline disassociated from the world around me and suspicious of everything I read.

I started feeling like I could only exist in two camps: “legalism” or “open-mindedness.”

And I don’t even feel like I can resort to my old language to describe this chaos with phrases like “this is demonic” or “this feels like spiritual oppression.”

Because is it? How do I know? How much has my theology been based on appropriations of Scripture that actually derive from very poor hermeneutics?

I’ve found myself consumed by information, feeling both isolated and swallowed whole. The more I know, the more I realise I don’t know. I’ve been going down this thought spiral for weeks, and I haven’t even been able to sit and explain it all to the closest people in my life because I lack the words to articulate it.

But here’s the thing: I’m sharing this with you from a really messy place not because I want anyone to jump in the comments and answer these questions for me (in fact, I’d really appreciate it if you don’t do that) but because I think there’s something really powerful about the Church being transparent in the midst of their most confusing seasons of faith.

When we get stuck in these kind of “curiosity crisis,” I think it’s important that we don’t assume a position of knowledge that we don’t have. It’s okay to not have all the answers. It’s okay to say, from our public platform, “I don’t know.”

Because in the midst of all the things we don’t know, there are some things, as Christians, that we do know. And that is the difference between a crisis of curiosity and a crisis of faith.

I’ve been a Christian all my life. I’ve experienced deep doubt before. I read my Bible a LOT and commit to being challenged a LOT. But you never know when a season of doubt and confusion might sneak up on you again.

You might call what I’ve been going through these last few weeks a mini-deconstruction – not of my entire belief system but of one particular area of my world view. I’m tearing down and building things up again; and I’m experiencing the vulnerability hangover that comes when the way that you relate to your own life changes.

For me, the challenge has been to understand how to identify the schemes of the enemy, how to exist in the tension of wisdom and ignorance (because I simply can’t understand everything), and ultimately, how God wants me to act in response to whatever truths He does choose to reveal to me.

That all feels heavy as I exist in this very weird world where I write online. I have zero answers, and you might think that because I have zero answers, the natural conclusion would be for me to stop writing.

And I do, when God tells me things like: Be still. I am the Lord.

But I don’t think that means stop writing in general. Let me explain:

Sometimes, He knows when our curiosity crisis will leave us in no fit state to write with authority on a topic. He knows when, for the sake of our own health, we need to be still. Because the more I obsess over how to identify the devil’s schemes, the less I’m looking to Jesus. That’s just the plain and simple truth. You can’t look in two different directions at once. And that’s not a healthy place to write from.

The temptation, then, is to shut it all down. To not speak. To retreat into ourselves until we have all the answers.

But guess what? We’ll never have all the answers. And if we waited to have all the answers, we’d never write, never speak, never talk about our faith. So the key becomes not a well-packaged answer but a humble, open heart – and a keen ear to listen to the prompting of the Spirit.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t ask questions. I’m not saying to dismiss our curiosity. But I am saying that sometimes, we have to decide which hills we’ll choose to die on and which ones we can walk away from.

See, one thing I do know about spiritual warfare which I think CAN be defended in Scripture is that it creates chaos. And chaos leads to confusion, which leads to doubt, which can often lead to despair.

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been a little despaired the last few weeks.

But the more I find chaos in the questions, the more I find peace as I identify all of the hills on which God has not asked me to die:

Like the hill of the Enneagram. Like the hill of Deliverance Ministry. Like the hill of my relationships with beloved Christians with whom I disagree. I refuse to die on any hill but this: Christ alone.

In the words of Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 2, “I [decide] to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified… so that your faith may not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.”

Because while the chaos of my questions is swirling on around me, I know that yielding to them is bondage, but Christ is freedom. While writing through my curiosity and sharing my thoughts online, only one thing is certain to me: Scripture is true, and whether I understand every little piece of it properly in this moment, the most important things are crystal clear and beautifully simple:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:1-5

In His Word, I find rest for my soul. In His Word, all the chaos quiets.

Be still, He says to me, I am the Lord.

Can that be enough for us finite beings who are invariably going to get things wrong? Can that be enough for us intellects and artists who so desperately attach our value and identity to worthless things?

I see in my mind’s eye the image of my Saviour literally hanging from a cross, and I think “Yes, O my Jesus, yes you are enough.”

When my strength and mind and spirit fail, you can rest assured that Christ will be my battle cry. And in his mercy, I know that my broken attempts at praising him with my words will find their home in the hearts of my readers, not by my accuracy, my intellect, or even my faith, but simply because in the midst of a big, confusing, evil world, his work of love on the cross has conquered all.

Indeed, I think that can be enough.

All my love,

P.S. If you enjoyed this essay and want more free Biblical encouragement in your writing journey, consider joining my Writer’s List.