Are We Following Jesus or Following Christian Culture?

We sit down with Christian leader, speaker and author Kendall Mariah to talk about how doubt, discomfort, and “soul friction” can strengthen real faith instead of destroying it. We name the pain of performative Christian culture and come back to Jesus as the clearest measure of what belief should look like. 
• Kendall’s background in church and why asking questions builds trust 
• “Soul friction” as discernment and a doorway to sanctification 
• Why comfort-driven Christianity can block transformation 
• What it feels like when Christians online act unlike Christ 
• How 2020 intensified questions about racism, empathy, and hypocrisy 
• Deconstruction as rebuilding belief through better questions 
• How culture and context shape theology and church expectations 
• Fruit of the Spirit as a better measure than rulekeeping 
• Practical hope for people tired of pretending and ready for honest faith 

One of the best gifts you can give yourself is to get Kendall Mariah's book, "This Little Fire of Mine: How Flickers of Doubt Can Spark a Bolder, Brighter Faith."  

Connect with and follow Kendall on many social media platforms and get her book wherever you buy your books.

Kendall's website: https://kendallmariah.com/

Instagram, Tik Tok: @kendallmariah

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Transcript

Welcome And Why The Book Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I would like to welcome Kendall Mariah to the Pivotal People podcast. I know I say this all the time, but I am really excited to have her because I read her book, which is called This Little Fire of Mine, How Flickers of Doubt Can Spark a Bolder, Brighter Faith. And I said to her before we started recording, I felt like she wrote this book just for me. It is so raw and honest and authentic. And you're going to love it because she talks about things that we don't think we're allowed to talk about. And we really should be allowed to talk about it. So to tell you a little bit about the book, so you know what we're getting into, a summary from her press release is this book is for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in their own faith community, who has been told their questions are dangerous, or who is tired of pretending to have it all together. Drawing from her own experiences of being a high-achieving, rule-following kid to navigating an ADHD diagnosis, infertility, and the complex legacy of purity culture, Mariah creates a safe space for those who feel their insides don't quite match their outsides. She bravely dismantles the idea of a polished hobby-lobby faith. I so love that, arguing that a genuine connection with God is often forged in the heat of our most challenging moments. This book is a much-needed conversation starter, engaging directly with the cultural tensions between authentic belief and a performative Christian culture, including church hurt, legalism, and hypocrisy. Wow, she doesn't sugarcoat it, but I hope I have your attention. But let me tell you a little bit about Kendall. She is an adoptive mom, she's a military spouse, she's a content creator, and I'll tell you, she's not going to tell you, so I'm going to tell you. She has a million followers on social media. And you're going to find out why. Because she's talking about some things that I think people really want to talk about and they want to feel safe talking about that. So, Kendall, long introduction, but thank you for being here. I appreciate you being willing to tell us more about the book and your story.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Thank you so much, Stephanie. I'm thrilled to be here. And I get so excited to be able to talk to other women that kind of were feeling those same things or had similar experiences and that you've created a space where we can do that because you still there's so many people that are eager to tiptoe around these conversations too, or want to kind of point to it, but don't want to dive in. So anytime I get the chance to go all the way in, I'm thrilled and honored.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Well, let's talk about your story, and I'm going to kick it off because what I found interesting about Kendall's story was that she, first of all, super strong faith in God. We're not questioning that, a real faith. But she talks about, you know, as a child growing up, growing up in the church, you know, multiple times a week, loved it, loved it, loved it. It was her home. She did not have a bad church experience as a child. This is not a you know sour grapes kind of a conversation. Correct. So having said that, tell

Kendall’s Story And Early Questions

SPEAKER_00 3:33

us a little bit about your story and how you came to write this book while you felt like this book was necessary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Well, just like you said, if the doors are open, we're there. You know, I I was raised that way. I still serve as a deacon right now in the church that I talk about in the book, you know, to give some people some context that I still believe and worship and serve in the same place where I had these questions and some of these experiences because of that, because of what I now know is a little bit more of a unique church experience, where I was allowed to ask questions as a child, where I was allowed to sit at the adult table as a child and kind of poke holes in things, or what some people would like to say, play the devil's advocate, but really I was just trying to ask questions and figure things out. It created a true sanctuary for me. I was safe there. What I know now about myself being neurodivergent, being ADHD, and now knowing that I'm autistic, I didn't realize that those places are few and far between in the world, much less in a small town or within a faith community. And so I grew up in kind of an anomaly culture in church. And I have parents that have been faithful to God and grew up in different denominations themselves. My mom was raised Presbyterian, my dad was raised Advent Christian, and then I was raised in a Baptist church. And so, you know, all of these things coming together have led me to never question whether God existed or not. I'm thankful that I have had enough evidence since I was a child that God existed. I have never questioned whether or not there was some entity out there bigger than us, orchestrating, creating, divinely inspiring. That has all been there for me. But now everything else I've had questions about. That is my nature, that is who I am. And so born and raised here in North Carolina, in the South, that plays a big contextual role, I think, in faith, because so much of faith in the South is more habitual, ritualistic than it is even religion. And it wasn't until I moved into the West Coast and realized, whoa, we are having completely different experiences when it comes to faith or religion here, you know, just south of Seattle, than you are, you know, here in small town eastern North Carolina. So all of that to say, being a military spouse, going through transracial adoption while my husband's deployed and there's a radical justice movement happening really blew the top off for me in 2020. And it was the probably the culmination of all of my life's work and events. And, you know, I've been teaching online Bible study for a decade now. I have always felt the call to ministry, but vocationally, that just didn't, it didn't make sense to me. I know I was married and my husband, we're military, it's just different. And I'm not sure if that's totally the answer you were looking for, but my life has been everything leading up to this. The book started, people think, oh, you got a pitch, you got a book deal, did you come up with it with your agent or did you come up with your publisher? Stephanie, I started writing the outline for this book in 2017. Before I was a content creator, before I had 5,000 followers. This is the work of my heart that God has been pointing me through every season. You know, when I was leading Bible study as a high schooler before school started, this concept of soul friction has been the most evident work of God's sanctification in my life. And so it has been the gift to now have the platform, as you mentioned before, to give me the chance to work with a dream publisher like Thomas Nelson, my first go-around. But this work started long before anybody really knew who I was online. And I think that has been the encouragement that God has been in it with me for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Oh, and I have read the whole book, you know, I have, and that is evident in your book. I didn't know the sequence of things. I'm really glad to know that God blessed you with this great following. And as I said, the following is sincere because people really must need to hear what you're talking about. I have read lots and lots and lots of books, and I said already, I felt like she wrote this book for me. You talk about, oh gosh, cultural Christianity, performative faith. I wrote down a whole bunch of quotes when I was reading the book, and then I got a list of quotes that her publisher had pulled out, and I am proud to say many of them were the same. So it's asking questions. I can remember asking a question in a Bible study about 20 years ago. I was questioning an old testament story, and the Bible study leader a man said, Stephanie, that is a slippery slope if you start questioning. That is a slippery slope. Where you say, maybe doubt isn't the opposite of faith. Maybe for some of us, it's just part of how we get to a faith that actually feels real instead of some kind of inherited religion that is more dogmatic than practical. You talk in your book about how at a certain point, you know, you teach Bible studies now, but there was a point where you were taking Bible studies and we have Sunday school, and some wise person is interpreting what the Bible is saying. You know, when I started going directly to the Bible, like you said, you did. I want to read what it says. I don't want someone else to tell me what it says because that's the telephone game. I'm not discounting the value of leaders or teachers for sure. But it is amazing to me when people say, now at least, when people say, Well, Christianity says this. Okay, Jesus, what did Jesus say? Did he talk about that? I'll say this. I'll say, Well, I haven't read that. Where did you read that? Oh, I just anyway. So if we're going to have a stake in this, I think we all need to read what the actual words were to the extent that we can understand it and have a foundation of our own, our own faith. So I did too much talking, you can tell I'm excited about your book. I love this. So you said you kind of had this shakeup in 2020. Tell us about that. Well, oh, first you referred to your term throughout the book, which is soul friction.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

So explain soul friction to us because we're going to be talking throughout every chapter about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, for sure. So let's look at the word friction to begin with. So, you know, friction, my first thought is yeah, before we got on, we were talking about our trip to Disney World. And, you know, the friction

Defining Soul Friction

SPEAKER_01 10:13

that's been most relevant for me has been, you know, my legs touching each other when I'm walking 20,000 steps. So, you know, friction is usually has this negative connotation. You know, we're thinking about it when it's the rub between two things. Uncomfortable a lot of times, friction, you know, brings forth good things though, too, like fire. Fire can do two things warm something, it can be positive heat, it can light away, light, warmth, heat, or it can burn things down. You know, friction can lead to kind of those two things. And soul friction is just this feeling, this internal friction that I've had during moments like split hair moments in my life where it's just all of a sudden I feel it. It's like this tingly feeling that comes up the back of my neck, might get warm, or I just know that my discernment kind of bells are going off, red flags, whatever you want to call it. Or it can be seasons of friction where I'm having to hold two things that are very different at the same time. You know, the book opens up with my husband is leaving for a deployment while I'm figuring out life with a newborn. You know, my daughter's five weeks old. Our adoption process that we were told would take two years took less than 90 days. And she was born the day after my husband was supposed to deploy. Thankfully, they gave him a few extra weeks off before he he left. But the friction of I'm carrying grief and fear and anxiety about being a new mom and walking into motherhood as an adoptive mom because that's different than biologically just the process different because you're having to honor different things, while also having a lot of joy. And this is the manifestation of prayer and the greatest blessing of our life as well. And so, you know, that's a long-term friction, you know, is a season versus again, those just kind of moments. I think we can all look at our life and think of times where there has been this internal rattling that we have felt, this just internal discomfort that we can't quite put our finger on. Where now, you know, our 2020 vision, we can look back and say, oh, God or the Holy Spirit was trying to warn me about something. They're trying to draw my attention to something, use that friction to illuminate. But a lot of times it's hard. It is difficult. You know, we don't we don't want to have to go through those seasons. And so much of Christianity that has been pitched to us in the last 20, 30 years is a very surface level, it's about comfort, about what do I like? It's about me. You know, we're very, we want to attend a church that preaches the way we like, that has the kind of music we like, that serves coffee at the right way, you know, like all these things that are very much about our own comfort. When if we really think about it, the process of sanctification that we're called to, once we've accepted Christ in our heart and we become Christians, is not going to be a comfortable process. You know, we we have to take away those layers of our life that don't look like Christ. And I don't know about you, but I've never gone through a transformative process, whether it was losing weight or even education, that didn't bring forth a lot of toil. You know, that there wasn't a lot of deep work that was necessary. But for whatever reason, we have lost that concept when it comes to faith. We have lost how to see comfort as sometimes a way to numb ourselves and to ignore the transformation process God is calling us to, and a way to even blame just the devil for everything that the devil's attacking me, you know, and that we just kind of want to shove it into the corner and act like it doesn't exist. I'm not sure because it's where you're you're at, but in the South, we have this thing where we like to act like hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. And if I can push it into a closet or swoop it under the rug, then I really don't have to address it. And we've done that with a lot of things and and we're not equipping and discipling our brothers and sisters and faith to know how to handle those seasons. So in my book, I'm trying to show you how I've walked through many different seasons and things that nobody in the church wants to talk about and say, look, I walked through, you know, losing my husband's mother to suicide. I walked through sexual assault when I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing correctly. You know, I walked through having to learn how to deal with racism, how to deal with, you know, hurt and disappointment and diagnosis, and not at like everything's rainbows and sunshines and butterflies. Because I think that's very popular in Christian culture. It's like, well, just pray about it more. And, you know, there's joy in all things and there's a season for all things. And and I'm like, that is not helping me right now when it feels like everything is on fire.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

You talk about hobby, lobby, faith. And by the way, I'm in Atlanta, and I am just nodding my head like crazy. We're not doing video here, but I'm nodding my head like crazy. We've been in a couple of different churches, so different experiences. But I hear what you're saying about 2020 kind of rocked my world too. Yeah. With, you know, one of the topics you raise is the whole topic of what to do when Christians don't act like Christ. And let me just put it out there. I'm a Christian, and there's plenty of times I don't act like Christ. I am not saying I'm perfect, I've got all kinds of things, but I think I feel like 2020 or perhaps a little earlier, we started seeing a lot

When Christians Don’t Look Like Jesus

SPEAKER_00 15:42

more stuff in the news. Recently, a very close friend of mine who is, I would describe her, she would describe herself as an agnostic. And she knows I identify as a Christian. And we were having a really honest conversation, and she shared a video with me of a preacher on Instagram saying really horrible, awful things about wanting to, you know, if he had the opportunity, he would kill a certain person. And she said, Stephanie, what do you think of that? And you know, what do you think of that? And I said, you know, he calls himself a Christian, but we all just have to keep looking at Jesus and look at his behavior. And he had every opportunity to use violence and he never did. So that's what you we just have to keep looking at Jesus. I know lots of us go around saying we're Christians, but if you really want to know what the basis is, get to know Jesus because even when we do our best, we're still just cheap imitations. But I will say it bothers me deeply when I see people in a public forum waving the Christian flag at the same time that they are saying hateful things. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Being online a lot over the last six years, and I've been somebody online for a long time, even before it became my job, I have witnessed, of course, plenty of hate. I've seen the vitriol that people can spew, but it's totally different when you experience it for yourself or like, you know, as a mom, you know, someone using the most hateful, heinous words or phrases to refer to your family. And without giving a V every time, Stephanie, if I was a betting woman and I'm not, I could bet you money and win. That that person that is saying a horrific thing in my comment section, or you know, just something that you wouldn't dare think to say. If I clicked on their profile right under their name, the first thing it's either going to say is Jesus follower or have a Bible verse. Every single time, without fail. I have never once, and I kid you not, in all my time, and I'm talking tens of thousands of comments. I'm not talking about one, two, twelve or fifty. Never once has it come from someone who practiced Islam. Was it someone who had agnostic in their bio? Was someone that said atheist or Satanist? No, every single time it was someone who claimed to profess the same faith that I do, which to me is like double hurtful. And it also in in a weird way is like gaslighting is like, are we not reading the same book? Like, am I missing something? Because I just can't, I can't imagine believing that way. But that really cracked things completely wide open for me in 2020 kids. You know, here I am with a three, four, five month old as things are kind of progressing, and you had the Almer Aubrey incident happen, and I talk about that whole experience in the book, you know, George Floyd is going on. And for the first time in my life, I have an empathy and a sympathy that I could have never channeled before, because obviously, to the as the mother of a dark-skinned child, it hits me differently than it would three or four years before because you you simply cannot comprehend it until you've been in the grocery store and asked someone asks me, Why would you want an N-word baby? Like, you know, she's got a keychain that I can see what church she goes to and she's wearing a cross. And I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like the normalcy of some of these prejudices or you know thought processes in some Christian subcultures is so normal, they don't know how wrong it is. You know, like it is just such a bizarre reality. And so when I started speaking out against it, like, hey, don't y'all think that this is also wrong? Like this is this is a problem. And and instead of people joining me, like some of my Facebook friends, you know, from you know, our hometown or people that I knew growing up, instead of them like saying, Yes, this is crazy, and I I did get some of those, but I also am always shocked at the amount of people that come to the defense of these other people. Well, you don't know the setting of that incidence, you know, with Ahmed Arbor. We don't know everything. We've got to wait and see. You've not seen everything with George Floyd. And I'm like, from my own experience that I know racism is still a very real thing. Like I experience that on the daily, but there's still this weird reflex to defend someone. But I think it's because they're not willing to sit in the friction and say, Whoa, how would I responded? How would I feel? Like it's easier to deflect or defend than it's to sit in that soul friction. And so that's why in my book I pose so many questions because I really truly think that our ability to handle questions, our ability to think through things critically and from different angles is the remedy to empathy. It is the remedy for this shallow hobby lobby effect. And I use that phrase because in southern culture, and I think it's everywhere now too. But when as I was going through like my deconstruction period, I noticed some of these people that would say the most awful things that, you know, have the Bible verses on their profile, or they would say something terrible. And then meanwhile, their profile preacher would have this pretty Hobby Lobby sign that says, As for me and my house, we serve the Lord. Like it is such a shallow representation of faith. Like, and I'm not saying thing against Hobby Lobby. Listen, I love a craft more than Peter love the Lord. You know, I I have spent my fair share of time at Hobby Lobby, but it's just representative of how there's so many people that have accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior, but in accepting that, they have not really given themselves over to the transformative process. They instead put on a jersey like they have joined a team. Like it's a brand. That's what you talked about. Yes, it is a brand. It it is like cheering for, you know, Carolina Hurricanes just won. It is, it is saying that you've picked a team. Right. And it should go so much deeper than that.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

So much deeper than that. Well, you talk about deconstruction, and let's talk about that for a second, because deconstruction, and you acknowledge this in your book, you can say the word deconstruction to you know some Christians, and they would immediately interpret that as negative. Correct. Negative. Oh my gosh. I heard someone say, Oh my gosh, she's going through deconstruction. Can you believe it? Okay, here's how you define deconstruction,

Deconstruction As Rebuilding Belief

SPEAKER_00 22:21

which I actually define as construct. Right. Number one, what was I taught? You know, I grew up in church. What was I taught? Number two, what do I believe? That's a pretty good question. What do I believe? Number three, why do I believe? Because the Bible told me so, or because I believe because my pastor kind of pointed this to me years ago. You have to decide whether or not you truly believe the resurrection was true. That is the pin. Do you believe the resurrection was true? And I don't know, actually. So, okay, we'll dig into that. There's a whole lot of information about that. You can learn about that. But you got to decide. So, why do I believe? Well, because the Bible told me so. Who's the Bible? The Bible is 66 books written by different people. Okay, who are you talking about? Because Paul told you, because you know, John told you what, so why do I believe? And then the most important thing, okay, so what does my belief call me to do? I said to a friend once, I said, you know, the only thing he asked us to do, because we were talking about this. I was trying to say the political criticism, you know, people getting in the media and saying negative things and criticizing and objectifying and using the term they, who's they, you know, and and I said, you know, the only thing he, Jesus, asked us to do was to love him and to love everyone else. He made it super simple. And she said, to love and to correct. So people do have a different view of what a role as Christians are. Our role as Christians is to come into the world and call foul wherever we see out. And so in 2020, I actually do live in the South, I told you, and just conversation with friends, other women, and the George Floyd thing had happened, and I was heartbroken. I mean, who wasn't? It was just awful. I still can't think about it. And then the things that were said, and I was like, I couldn't believe it. I felt like I had stepped into an alternate universe. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I thought one woman said something, and I thought she was joking. And I repeated it back to her, and I said, I mean, this is nothing to joke about, by the way. And she looked at me and said, No, that's what we always said growing up. That's what, anyway. So I started to speak out and refute this stuff, which I think is a minimum. That's nothing noble. That is like a minimum of what we should do. And one of the women said, You know, Stephanie, you've gone liberal. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, now we got a new label. I said, I don't call it liberal, I call it Christian. And by the way, what's wrong with liberal? I mean, all these labels. I hate all these labels. You know, there's so many facets to who we are as human beings to think that any of us could be in one box called conservative or liberal or I don't know, whatever you want to say. We're more than that.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

And I think that just goes back to when you live a shallow life without a lot of death, you're gonna go back to, you know, some of those innate habits as a human. And one of those things is tribalism. And you want to claim domain with like-minded like people. So, you know, whether that is a ball team, and you see how people are drawn to that. Like there's camaraderie with it, and there's a lot of positives that come with it, but that trickles down into politics. And so, what team do you belong to? What label can I put on you? Because it's a quick, easy band-aid fix to trying to understand people because we are so gun shy to getting into real relationships because real relationships cost us something, it cost us vulnerability, it cost us inconvenience, it cost us, you know, having to be willing to be hurt. There's a lot of things that goes into being in deep relationship, in discipleship, into these, you know, iron sharpened iron relationships that we're called to that, and I think we have avoided it for so long. And social media has made us so complacent with not having those relationships because we have, you know, all these parasocial relationships, and we have, you know, all of these friends at arm's length, but and from a safe space behind a screen. I want to go back to, you know, kind of what you're talking about with 2020 and all of that going on and the questions that I pose in the book, it's not just what do you believe or why you believe, but it's what was the context around what you believe? Because as I've traveled and I've moved all over the country and you know, I've had the opportunity to go to other countries and experience Christianity

Culture, Context, And Church Formation

SPEAKER_01 27:06

in different cultures, you know, if the only people you have learned from about Christianity, and this is no offense to white men because I'm married to one and I have one as a father, but if a white man is the only person that in the only lens that you've been taught Christianity through, that perspective is vastly different than my friends that live in Africa who, you know, live in a completely different subtext. And and so the way that they interpret scripture, when they sometimes read verses like, you know, you do not have to worry about the food because as I take care of the birds, I take care of you. That is literal to them some days. You know, food is just going to appear in some ways. And for us, you know, we read the Bible in our Western Americanized way where it's more metaphorical or these are allegories. And it's just it's so different. And it's so it's not just what do I believe, but what is the context around what I believe? Because how I was raised, so my church is Baptist. We're like the first Baptist church of our little town, but we left the SBC years ago. I grew up in a Baptist church that has always had women in leadership. We've we've never had a woman as the lead pastor, but my whole life I've seen women in the pulpit, like as an interim or you know, one off speaking, like that. That was never a foreign concept to me. You know, I saw women as deacons. I myself am a deacon. I've served two terms as deacon chair. All that to say that is normal for me in my Baptist church. But I married my husband, who was raised Pentecostal free will Baptist. So if there was a Baptist spectrum, we're on very different ends of it, you know. And then as I've even done this media kind of bliss for the book, and I've talked to different people and they talk about me being Baptist, and again, I realized that my situation was more of an anomaly because of the way I was raised and the way my Baptist church kind of followed liturgy and a liturgical calendar, and we did Lent and we did Advent as a child, and you know, very different from a lot of other Baptist churches in the South. I have to send you a picture of Stephanie and it probably tickle you like it has other people. But in the children's choir, we wore long robes with white capes and 22-inch gold chains, and I was taught how to sing the doxology with two fingers in my mouth, so that as a southerner, I could for the first time in my life enunciate a word. And so our approach was just very different. But that framework of how I experienced church, the way I was allowed to ask questions, the way that I grew up in church, and when there were two men that served as deacons at the same time, but they and both worked at the house in North Carolina in politics on the different side of the aisles, but come Sunday and Wednesday, they were deacons together. That's normal for me. But in 2020, that's when I realized, oh my gosh, that is not normal for a lot of people. And in 2026, now, like I'm going to an event this weekend in Nashville that I'm helping host for a lot of younger creators and trying to show them that it should be normal for people on different political aisles, a part of different teams with all these different labels that the world wants to slap on us to be able to worship together. The what I believe, what I believe, should be based on the evidence of Christ's work in our life, the evidence of God. I mean, I was in Bible study just last night in my small group, Bible study from church, and we're going through the fruits of the spirit. I was telling them how recently, you know, at my daughter's six, so we're really at the age where the fundamentals of faith are coming in. You know, it's not just

Fruit Of The Spirit Over Rulekeeping

SPEAKER_01 30:54

the stories. And what where do we as parents and as leaders want to spend our energy? And it's been very convenient to me that I was raised and as many people were, where we learned the Ten Commandments early on as kids, and you know, on the felt boards in our Sunday school rooms or wherever is at the beginning of our Bibles. And I can just remember as a kid and even as a teenager thinking, well, I didn't kill anybody today, you know, didn't steal anything, I didn't commit adultery, whatever that meant to my son, you know, and being like, I'm a great Christian and check all those boxes. However, if instead of focusing on that at that age and as a teenager, if we had focused on the fruit of the spirit, it could have been very different. Because if I had been at night journaling or meditating on, was I patient today, was I kind today, you know, what was I faithful today, it would have been a very different checklist in my head. And for a child, I mean, even as Zadie was a baby, you know, I used the word gentle, gentle a lot as she would pick up things or hold things or, you know, trying to teach her not to whack things around. It is so much more natural to talk to her about these words than talking to her about those commandments. Yeah. Your approach to faith is fear-based. If your approach to faith is legalistic, if your approach is, I've got to fear you into heaven or into salvation, you're gonna start with the commandments. But if you have grown up in a white, middle class Christian nuclear family like I am, it's really easy to be a good Christian based on the Ten Commandments, do all the right things, do all the and not do all the wrong things. It's very easy for me. Like the world was set up for me to not do any of those things. I don't have to, I don't have to think about it. However, when life really did smack me in the face with real life things, as I talk about in the book, left with like, but I did it right. I followed the formula and I still can't get pregnant. I followed the formula and did what I was supposed to be doing, and I still was sexually assaulted. And so what happens is you have a lot of people in my generation, millennials, older Gen Zs who are having these same revelations, but they are walking away from faith because they're like, what's the point? Especially when you are getting online or in the media and you're seeing what terrible examples of Christians can be, and saying, I don't even want to be put in the subcategory with Christians, like just strip the title away altogether. And they're walking away because again, what is the point? There is not enough good example of why they should follow. And so that's why the questions are important is because when my daughter is grown and or when she's in college and she's having her own season of deconstruction or questions. My one job in prayer is that God, while I have her at home, while she's in my care, let there be enough evidence of your goodness, let there be enough evidence of your work in her life that she has seen. She can feel the way I have felt that I believe God exists. I don't know question that. I see that the way of Jesus is the way that I want to follow. It is a good path, it is a good way to live a life. But everything else I am willing to wrestle with you with. I'm really wrestle and question. Because I think if we hold on to those two things, if if we can see the truth of God and the evidence of Him, and we can read our scripture and pay attention to the characteristics and the quality of Christ, then everything else is semantics. You know, everything else is the reason you go down our small town street and there's eight different denominations. You know, and I that's why I get real worked up with sometimes in our deacons meetings, and I'm like, when we get to glory one day and we're getting we're gonna get checked in at the Pearl Gates, are they gonna ask us anything about this? Right. Or am I gonna have to report on what so-and-so else is doing? No. So why are we losing so much energy or giving it so much attention when this is really this is not a salvation question? This is not a question of whether or not they're gonna make it into heaven. We we are getting hunk up on the wrong things. And that's been something in my spirit thought my whole life, as you read about in the book, asking questions as an elementary student in a business meeting. But we can get worked up and worried about everybody else. But my mom would tell me, Keno, you need to worry about yourself. If I'm looking at the fruit of the spirit and I'm looking at what God is doing in my in my own life, I do not have time to be worried about anybody else. And and hopefully, the better job I'm doing of honing in on those fruit of the spirit and then being an example of Christ, I become the contrast. I be the opposite friction of those other Christians. And that's where I feel like you go through all this friction, you're like, oh, I've survived. Thank you, Lord. I have arrived. I'm to the other end. At some point, we'll experience it again. But then you realize, oh gosh, am I called to be part of the friction? And not in a disruptive way, not in a dismantling way, but in a contrasting way. Because that's all friction, is it? Is it can be two of the same thing that are going in different directions.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Yeah, I think about, you know, you were talking about this whole idea of looking at other Christians and feeling like it's so easy to say, oh, here's what the world is doing wrong, here's what these people are doing. We need to get involved, we need to legislate other people's lives, whatever. You know, I hear people say quite often, what the country needs is a revival. And my immediate thought is if each one of us focused on our personal relationship with God and tuned into God all the time, we would be transformed. And if we're transformed, then we are what you're talking about. We are an example for people. You might be the one who says, Hey Stephanie, what do you think about this video? Why would you trust my opinion? You know, I mean, okay, so maybe I have a friend who says, you know, once we're filled, you talk about the fruits of the Spirit, we've got to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which I think is like the connection to God. You plug into Him, now you've got the energy. She says, full people fill things. So if we're filled with our faith, if you have constructed your faith, if you have an authentic faith and you really do want to, you know, Lord, help me love people the way you want me to love people today. Lord, let me live your love today. That's what I say it in the morning. Let me live your love today, because that's what it calls us to do. It's not calling us to point at other people and say what they're doing wrong, and except I've done quite a bit of that today. So I'm sorry, but it's it is, you know, being a member of a faith. We have sisters and brothers, in our case, in Christ. And it's like anything when you're siblings and you're disagreeing on something, it's hurtful because you're in the same family. Well, and it's right exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

It's hurtful because you love them, and it's hurtful because it's like we're on the same team. And that's something like I want to hold people when they're even upset with me because I know that you can live with differences of opinion on things. I've seen that modeled my whole life. It's the way we treat each other and approach each other that can be so difficult that it's so hard to sit with. And like you said, I think the reason you know you and I are talking as we're talking and feeling comfortable enough to say, like, okay, wait, I'm not crazy. I also was feeling that way. And that's the best response that I've gotten is is is in the messages from people that read the book and DM me, and they're like, I just want to say thank you for making me not feel so crazy because nobody's talking about how they were feeling through these seasons in culture and in life. I thought I was just the only one noticing, and I thought I think I was crazy because when we don't talk about it, we we don't think it exists. But you know, I'm the one that's like, I can't not say something like that. I have to say something or I will become physically ill. And it's been such an encouragement because it's like, okay, and then once we realize we're not crazy, it's like we release that part that was like in our spirit that was taking up capacity, it was harboring, you know, so much of that energy. We have more room for the Holy Spirit to come in. And then we're not so bothered by the people who are doing it incorrectly or are not being great representatives of Christ. And but I'm like, that is just a better opportunity or a reminder of how important the opportunity is to do right, you know, to make better choices or to show that things can just be done differently. It doesn't have to be the same. And that is one thing I just want younger kids to understand, and as I'm volunteering a lot with our youth right now at church, is Christianity is not a monolith. You know, we are not a monolithic experience, you know, the way we experience Christianity in our small town and our small church, it's very different than other people. So we cannot just apply our beliefs and framework to everyone in the way that we think we should be able to. Because you would think you could and should be able to, but you can't. And that's hard. And God is working in all of us differently, and you know, we we all have been brought to him through different ways and we're on different timelines and different parts of our journey. But if I had understood that maybe a little bit better as a teenager, then I wouldn't have been so tempted to wag my finger, being like, but you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, you know, or the Ten Commandments are right there. Why aren't you doing it? Or spent so much time angry in my 20s that I did do what I was supposed to do and I didn't get the results I wanted because I thought that that's how God worked. You know, it's a formulaic expression of faith that if I do this, then God's going to do that. And so now in my 30s, I want to be like, no, we have really just monked all this up and made a mess. You know, we are not called to worry about those things or get so stressed and worried about those things, you know, there will be no need for grace or mercy, you know, that wouldn't be such a big theme, you know, but really worry about those fruits and am I reflective of that and preach that to the other people, like these are the fruit of the spirit. And just know that if you see a Christian that is acting in a way that makes you feel yucky or like that doesn't feel like or angry, these are the fruit that if as an agnostic person you want to judge a Christian by, this is what you should judge them by and say, okay, if they're not exemplifying these things, then they're not exemplifying Christ. They don't look like Christ right now, versus they like to hold up rules or commandments. Right. That falls flat. But if even non-Christians understood that really it's the fruit we need to be judged against and not the rules, I think it could change a lot of conversations.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

That's how you can tell someone who I would say has really accepted Christ, has really said this is who, you know, Jesus follower. I love it when people describe themselves as a Jesus follower. You can tell people, I mean, I can never recite them all, but you know, it's like joy, peace, patience, kindness, you know, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things, there is no law. I'm sure I've forgotten one. But we can probably all think of someone like that who just makes us feel safe and loved and comfortable. And they're not making us feel judged or you know, wrong, or if we don't say or do these things, then we're really not part of their inner circle. You know, anyway, so we could go on all day. You're so nice to stay on with me longer. I told her I was gonna keep her much less than this, but we are so lucky to have you on this podcast. Thank you so much. I know we're gonna get questions or input. And I just want to tell people probably one of the best gifts you can give yourself is to get her book, Kendall Mariah, This Little Fire of Mine. You can find her on Instagram, TikTok. You have a lot of followers.

Where To Find Kendall And The Book

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Where else can people find you?

SPEAKER_01 43:06

I'm on Facebook, YouTube, anywhere. You can look me up as Kendall Mariah. My website is the same. So, and you can get the book anywhere Amazon, Barnes Noble, Target Online, all those fun places that we'd like to shop.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Well, thank you so much for your time. I have really appreciated it, and I know our listeners will too. Thank you so much, Stephanie.