0. Decoupling a Literalist Framework
The exploration of how a rigid evangelical worldview fused with a childhood trauma survival system, and the journey of rebuilding meaning after the collapse.
For the past 13 years, my professional life has been defined by structure, execution, and high-stakes performance. As the VP of Operations for a real estate development firm, my day-to-day existence was dedicated to a single, hyper-focused objective. I looked at complex, chaotic systems and built efficient frameworks to maximize predictability and profitability. I managed multi-million dollar portfolios, ran cross-country operations, and projected complex financial outcomes.
To the outside world, it looked like standard corporate ambition. Under the surface, my career was the ultimate expression of a nervous system that had been calibrated to run hot since childhood. I was utilizing the exact same machinery that kept me alive in a volatile childhood house. The hyper-vigilant scanning, the reading of micro nuances, and the obsessive need for control were all being applied directly to these real estate asset portfolios.
I poured all of my energy into optimizing these external frameworks for the sake of a clear, transactional mission. The goal was generating as much profit as possible to fund the spread of a conservative, literal evangelical message to the world. Our company was pouring millions into this cause, and I was essential to that mission. It was the ultimate utilization of my childhood survival systems for a dual purpose. I was simultaneously protecting the literal message that had scaffolded my emotional health, while aggressively pursuing the external success and peer approval I had been denied by an absent father. I was so consumed by executing this blueprint that I uprooted my family, moving them across state lines to be at the corporate headquarters. If I could just control enough variables, outperform enough metrics, and prove my value through achievements, I could guarantee a permanent baseline of safety for my psyche.
But while I was climbing into increasingly higher-level positions, the internal architecture that had sustained me since childhood was fracturing under the weight of the software it was running, a rigid, literalist Christian worldview. The machinery was quietly breaking from the inside out, threatening to destabilize every single area of my life.
An Existential Safety Net
Growing up in an unstable environment dominated by parental addiction, I lacked basic emotional safety and predictability. For a child surviving that kind of domestic chaos, being introduced to a literalist Christian belief system wasn’t just an intellectual choice. It was what saved my life.
Converting as a teenager provided a rigid structure, a moral order, and an existential safety net that allowed me to escape the volatility. It kept me from making the kind of destructive choices that would have led to my demise. It was a functional blueprint that kept my hot-running nervous system grounded.
But in October of 2023, that grounding faith collapsed. It was a multi-year process leading up to that date, driven by factors that chipped away at the foundation until the final implosion.
When you experience a deconversion out of a rigid, literalist framework, it doesn't just feel like changing your mind. It feels like a physical threat to your survival. Over the past 3 years, I began to realize that this process extends far beyond leaving the boundaries of Christian theology. It is a slow, agonizing deconversion from certainty. It is a deconversion from an inherited metaphysical safety that once kept the void at bay. Ultimately, it requires a deconversion from absolutism and from the deeply encoded need for a closed system just to feel okay.
Rejecting the Sledgehammer
I looked around the internet for spaces to help me process this wreckage, and I found plenty of demolition crews. There is an entire corner of the digital world dedicated to angry deconstruction, cynical atheism, and ideological reaction. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life holding a sledgehammer. I had already seen what a lack of meaning and direction can do to a psyche when I was nine years old. I knew I couldn’t survive in the obscurity of purpose.
I needed to build a new value structure if I was going to prevent myself from falling into a nihilistic black hole, which is something that very nearly happened to me. I refuse to settle for nihilism or cynicism.
My goal now is to look at the wreckage of my dogmatic past, salvage the deep archetypal truths that still hold value, and embody them through raw, intentional action. I am no longer looking to construct a flawless, purely intellectual system of universal truth. Instead, I want to build a worldview anchored in a physically embodied, visceral responsibility that allows for a quieted nervous system.
Simultaneously, I want to mine for the gold still left within the faith. This space is for those who are post-Christian but want to look back at the parts of the tradition that were deeply good and sustaining, as well as for Christians who want to legitimately understand the challenges that those who deconvert face.
Calibrating a New Value Hierarchy
I know this reconstruction is possible because I am living proof of it. I have by no means mastered this, and the journey will continue for the rest of my life. But applying these psychological and existential frameworks to my own wreckage is quite literally what pulled me back from the brink.
Paradoxically, I feel more secure today than I did when I held a literal belief that I knew all the answers. Even while acknowledging how much I do not know, I have come out of that black hole stronger and more grounded than before. It gave me the tools to stabilize my internal world, which ultimately saved my marriage and allowed my wife and me to navigate this massive shift together rather than tearing each other apart.
Most importantly, it kept me around as a present, anchored father for my four daughters, providing a new, coherent aim to strive for. It gave me a way to carry responsibility and lead my family with honor, grounded in tested truths that align with the real world. That is what the reconstruction of meaning looks like in practice.
The Fellow Traveler
I have no desire to lead an anti Christian campaign nor am I an academic expert waving credentials. I am not positioning myself as a guru handing down answers from above. Instead I am a fellow traveler who spent his adult life analyzing complex operational systems. Now I am applying that same rigorous mindset to the human psyche and the search for meaning. While I no longer believe Christianity is literally true, I still appreciate how it protected me as a vulnerable child. To an evangelical I look like an agnostic, while to an atheist I look like a theist.
This is a space for reconstruction after a collapse. I invite thoughtful professionals, high functioning existential strugglers, parents, individuals navigating mixed faith marriages, and Christians to join me.
My own rebuilding process was heavily influenced by Jordan Peterson’s work on psychological archetypes. Initially I resisted his ideas because I feared biblical themes would trigger my residual religious wounds. However, listening to his 2018 debates with Sam Harris changed my perspective. While Harris correctly exposed the dangers of religious dogma, Peterson’s lectures on Genesis provided a practical framework. They allowed me to strip away the literal claims of my past while unlocking the deeper existential power of these stories. That toolset ultimately helped pull me out of a nihilistic black hole.
Operational Clarity
Because my brain is wired toward operational clarity, here is exactly what you can expect from this space.
The core of this Substack consists of focused dives into my childhood and trauma. Rather than an exhaustive history, this is an intentional curation of the events that set the stage for my conversion, my deep entrenchment in a literalist worldview, and the eventual collapse that forced me to rebuild. These pieces examine the intersection of psychological structures, including value hierarchies and behavioral baselines, and the raw reality of navigating meaning after the framework vanishes. They are written as a sequence designed to build upon one another.
If you are up for the work of wrestling with these deeper ideas, and you want to reject nihilism, cynicism, and the pressure to have it all figured out, I invite you to join me. Let’s look at the wreckage, find the pieces that are true, and rebuild an architecture based on tested, psychological realities.
The first essay is below…