demanding perfection is not justice.

Note: This is coming from the perspective of someone that follows Jesus and strives to fight for justice while giving grace and holding appropriate boundaries.

It's easy to be consumed by critiquing everything a person does in the name of justice, especially if we disagree with them, or they have done something wrong in the past. We pick apart every sentence, layering on charge after charge of wrongdoing, even if it's only the appearance of wrong doing. We condemn just as harshly for the impact of actions while claiming that intention is completely irrelevant.

But that's not justice.

For those of us coming from faith practices that emphasized moral perfection, it's easy for us to use the same moral mechanism but with different anchor points. We still demand perfection from others, but in different ways.

I think we're called to something higher. We can critique systems of oppression and hold people accountable while refusing to use perfection as a standard.

I'm opposed to any fundamentalism. I feel the same anxiety when I sense this fundamentalism in a conservative person as I do in a progressive person. It feels like the same claustrophobic vice grip, just with different rules.

Apologies are always negated by their inevitable flaws, hatred spewed at those who fail to use the just-right words, and graceless demands for others to be in the exact same part of the journey abound. And when you try to bring a more balanced view of a situation, you are accused of being just as guilty as the person being critiqued.

When Jinger Vuolo's book came out, it was highly criticized for not being enough. Even though she had renounced Gothard's teachings, she was the target of relentless criticism because she now believes in reformed theology and the teachings of John MacArthur. Many said she did not deserve any encouragement because she went from one harmful belief system for another. Yet myself — and many others who have been in her shoes — acknowledge that this is a step forward, and that renouncing the belief system of your childhood takes incredible bravery. To do that publicly, even more so.

It's rare for someone to leap from fundamentalism to full-blown deconstruction. In my story thus far, I went from fundamentalism, to conservative evangelicalism, to moderate evangelicalism, to where I am now — a place that is hard to define or label. At each of those previous steps, I thought I had finally landed in the right place. It wasn't until I was willing to question everything and hold it all with an open hand that I was able to see how little I knew. It took steps to get there. Sometimes those steps were imperceptible to those on the outside. But while it didn't happen overnight, each of those steps was important. If I had been confronted with being told I wasn't doing enough at those early stages, I would not have continued growing.

I see this same judgmental attitude when someone stays in contact with difficult family members; when a wife stays with her husband post-infidelity to work it out; when someone stays in their church that has problematic beliefs; when someone doesn't speak up about an issue or speaks up in the wrong way or asks the wrong questions.

Let me ask you something... has your journey involved leaping over every problematic hurdle? Have you not trusted the wrong people while trying to do what's right? Did you go from where you were before straight to perfection? Do you somehow know the right answer to everything now, just because you've deconstructed?

When I encounter this fundamentalism, I can feel my chest tighten in the same way it did when I learned I was sinful for trying to be compassionate, for being as good as I could possibly be only to be told how rotten I was, for never being happy enough. It's the same feeling that being human is not allowed. It's the same damn feeling of never being good enough.

People don't grow under scrutiny. They remain in fear of taking any steps. Celebrating the small wins won't encourage someone to stay stagnant. It will provide the security needed to keep making strides forward. Just like kids need the safety to make mistakes so that they can learn, so do grown ups.

Actions and words that inflict shame do not contribute to growth. 

And I'm done with it. I'm done pretending I'm okay associating with this fundamentalism just because the values look the same as mine.

The high horses are even higher than some of those in my fundamentalist circles. I'm not talking about calling out abuse and bringing abusers to light. I'm talking about when we label people who are earnestly trying to do the right thing as wholly sexist, homophobic, abusive — just because they don't fight these things exactly how one believes they should be fought, or because they haven't learned the things we've learned yet. How quickly we forget that for many of us, it took years to get to where we are now — and ten years in the future, we'll probably marvel at the problematic beliefs we hold now.

We can identify the impact of harmful rhetoric. We can link it to harmful ideologies of hate. We can confront a person about how their words or actions do not contribute to flourishing and health. But I can no longer pretend to be okay with making a person's entire identity the wrong things they do, especially if those wrong things are unknown to the person, or if they do not yet have the knowledge to understand why those things are wrong.

I don't think that all beliefs are equal. I believe that holding certain beliefs about sexuality, gender, and gender roles in particular are inherently harmful. But when I look at the people I know in real life that hold these beliefs, very rarely do I see a spirit of wanting to harm. They want to do the right thing. They want to truly love people. But, like me, they have been scared with hell into believing a certain way. It takes so much time and patience to chip away at those underlying beliefs before we can ever have a conversation about higher level matters of gender and sexuality. How quickly we forget that many of us were there for a long time, too.

Humility. There is a grave lack of humility, just as there was in my Gothard-like community.

There will always be ways each of us can live, believe, and act better. None of us are perfect. None of us hold the monopoly on correctness. None of us are better than another simply because they are at a different phase in their journey than us.

That weight is heavy. Just as I'm not going to carry the weight of fundamentalism, I'm not going to carry that weight either.

I'm going to mess up. I'm going to say the wrong words. I'm going to change my mind. But I'm not going to apologize for being human. I'm not going to apologize for what I don't know. I'm not going to feel bad about where I am — because where I am is better than where I was, and today, that's good enough. 

You are good enough.

I know many of us didn't hear that. We still think that nothing we do will ever be enough. We were told for our entire lives that even our best was disgusting to God. But that's not true. And as much as we might have deconstructed and changed our beliefs and actions, our bodies still remember feeling like nothing was ever good enough. So, just like that old fundamentalist way, we take every opportunity to call out the miniscule specks in the eyes of others to make ourselves feel better about our growth. We rationalize our treatment of others because we think this kind of fundamentalism is okay. But that is not growth.

We have to deal with our own hurt if we want to grow.

You are enough. Your best is the best you can do.

I'm doing my best to not look down on others who aren't perfect, because who am I to know what is perfect? I'm calling out this behavior for what it is: a sign that the underlying mechanisms of a previous belief system have yet to be fully addressed and dismantled. Not because I'm better than anyone, but because we need to name this stuff in order for us to deal with it. I've seen it in myself, and I'm working to heal those parts of me so that I stop acting like a new kind of fundamentalist.

We have to celebrate the little wins. Sometimes, that's all we have.

We have to let people be human, and express themselves that in a human way.

We have to question whether our own trauma, hurt, and biases are influencing us to project our hurts onto others, thinking if we fix the person, the hurt we feel about past experiences will go away. We have to question where our impulses to control rather than inspire come from, and if they are really encouraging health and flourishing for all people.

It's easier to be angry than to sit with the nuance. But nuance is the opposite of fundamentalism, and I hope we can remember that no matter where we are in our journey.