Since when did speaking the Truth feel like betrayal?
The paradox of performing holiness, even when our faith quietly falls apart
For most of my conscious adult years, I’ve walked around carrying a strange tension. I’ve often wondered when exactly I lost my child-like wonder, and what made me tiptoe through my exchanges as if they were tightropes stretched across shaking cliffs.
It’s taken a long time, but I think I finally understand what this rumbling beneath the heart is, somewhere between the ribs and the stomach. It’s not anxiety. It’s something closer to quiet despair. A weariness that shows up after conversations about our spiritual journeys that should feel sacred but instead leave me hollow.
I’ve been in those moments, sitting across from someone I care about, hearing beautifully strung-together words about God or life or purpose. Words that sound right, that sound important. But they don’t land. As if something is missing. The words are polished, yes, but where’s the pulse? Where’s the truth? Why is this conversation so performative?
I feel it, because I’ve worn that same mask too. I know what it’s like to speak fluently in the language of certainty. I’m pretty good at dressing up sentences in spiritual phrasing, sounding grounded even when I’m not. I’ve done it to protect myself so I can belong, but mostly to avoid being judged by people who are also afraid to be real.
Even now, I still feel the immense pressure to sound right so I can appear confident in God and the universe. I know what it’s like to put on the cosplay of a curated spiritual believer and walk boldly into prayer meetings, churches, coffee meetups. I’ve tried hiding my doubts by speaking in a way that sounds like I have spiritual fire, hoping that if I fake it long enough, faith will eventually catch up and miracles will follow.
But I know exactly what it feels like when those words taste like cardboard in my own mouth. And I flinch even more when I hear them echoed back at me... those hollow, flimsy spiritual phrases that sound important but carry no weight. That’s when the ache sharpens. Because when you’re on the receiving end, it’s not just noise... it’s a mirror. A reminder of how often we all perform.
That spiritual dissonance echoes painfully, while unveiling the battered beating of souls trapped somewhere beneath the surface, hoping to be heard.
And maybe what’s more tragic is this: most of us don’t even realise how much we’ve silenced ourselves, not out of rebellion, but because we were trained to, conditioned by generations of inherited scripts. Scripts that taught us how to speak about God, how to sound faithful, how to stay acceptable. Just enough to stay in the circle, but not enough to be fully known.
Many of us who finally leave the church, exhausted from the pretending, declare we’re done with dogma. We abandon one spiritual system and jump into another that feels fresher, freer, thinking we’ve found purpose. But if we look closely, we’ll see it. Many of us aren’t walking into freedom. We’re just trading one script for another. Still performing. Still posturing. Just swapping out the language to match a new crowd.
And that’s fair. It’s human to want resonance. But when we get too attached to our resonance, we start thinking it’s revelation. And then we go around shoving our version of truth down people’s throats, believing it’s our sacred duty to save them.
But maybe it’s not revelation.
Maybe it just sounds familiar to us.
…
So many of us tend to hold our personal experience of God as if it’s the gold standard. We want others to echo our beliefs so we can relax, so we can trust them. And before we realise it, we’re not having a conversation anymore... we’re testing for sameness.
What could have been an honest exchange becomes a subtle test. Do you speak my language? Do you align with my version of truth? We start building connection around shared vocabulary instead of real presence.
But if we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever speak for God?
What happened to our voice? The one that was supposed to carry the weight and resonance of the Word? When did we cover it in polite scripts and spiritual theatre?
We keep trying to hold the peace, but the peace we’re holding isn’t real. It’s a surface peace, held together by hollow niceties and words we drop like petals with no fragrance.
The cracks don’t show up in the blueprint. They show up in the build. In the lived day-to-day moments where we try to put these truths into practice. When we try to make a home with people and realise we’re still hiding in plain sight.
I supposed that’s the comfort I’ve landed on: realising that the blueprint was never flawed. I just forgot that real homes are built with honest hands, not perfect ones.
So maybe the invitation this Lent isn’t to speak some polished version of the truth, or to get louder, or to sound more sure.
Maybe the invitation is to be real enough to say, "God, I don’t know if I believe like I used to."
Maybe we get to ask, "Is it still faith if what I feel most days is broken?"
And maybe, just maybe, that’s a more honest place to begin again.
(I’m on my sixth piece in this 2025 Lent series inspired by a more intentional season of reading the Word, and experiencing the world around me. And Easter is still 2 weeks away! I will probably write one or two more pieces after this.)