Discipleship – Scribbling Theology

A minimalist photograph of a vintage black typewriter with a blank sheet of paper inserted, centred against a clean white background, evoking reflection, writing, and the quiet act of putting words to page.

The soft rustle of pages turning, the faint smell of ink on paper, and the gentle glow of a lamp late at night frame this reflection. In these quiet moments, I discovered that this year’s writing is not a “best of” list, but a meditation on how it revealed the quiet, patient ways faith grows when I linger with attention and presence. It is a confession of where my attention lingered, and what that lingering did to my faith.

Looking back over my writing, I see a pattern I never planned. Certain themes kept circling back, like the sun lingering at the edge of morning. This single metaphor captures the persistence and gentle growth of my reflections, allowing the essence of faith’s slow, patient unfolding to shine through.

These are the pieces I enjoyed most. Not for their performance, but their honesty. In writing them, something in me grows.

Following the Winter Sun

Writing “Following the Winter Sun” slowed my pace in a way that theology rarely does. It made me honour the Southern Hemisphere, letting winter, darkness, and diminished light shape my imagination instead of borrowing someone else’s spirituality.

What I valued was resisting the pull of urgency, letting theology breathe with the seasons, and sensing God nearer to decline than to growth.

The winter sun does not conquer the darkness. It traces it faithfully.

That piece taught me faith does not always surge ahead. Sometimes it simply turns, just enough to catch whatever light is offered, without demanding more.

Faith and Mental Health: Part I (and 2)

This was among the most vulnerable things I wrote all year, and I could feel that vulnerability in every keystroke.

Here, I was unflinchingly honest, naming spiritual struggle as exhaustion, trauma, or simply a nervous system doing its best to survive.

Writing this clarified something essential for me:
God is not disappointed by wounded faith.

This piece loosened my hold on language that moralises suffering. It let me speak of faith not as pressure, but as permission—permission to heal, to name pain, to stop pretending obedience can skip over the inner world. It offered a holy act of self-compassion, bridging the gap between theology and psychological care. This is where the language of self-kindness finds its sacred place, encouraging readers to apply it to themselves and embrace their healing journey.

Why Christians Should Celebrate Halloween

I was surprised by how much joy I found in writing this one.

I reclaimed imagination from fear, pushing back against the idea that darkness is only dangerous. I reminded myself, and others, that Christianity knows resurrection and twilight both.

Writing about Halloween became a way to name something larger: the Church’s forgotten gift for sitting with death, mystery, and the in-between. We hurry toward light, rarely learning how to walk through dusk.

This piece reminded me that faith, stripped of imagination, grows anxious. Christ’s victory does not ask us to deny death, but to walk through it unafraid.

Healing Before Obedience

If any piece captured the heart of my year, it was this one.

I loved writing Healing Before Obedience because it finally named what I have seen quietly wound people for years: the belief that God wants compliance more than wholeness.

This was the piece where theology and pastoral concern fully met.

Writing it clarified my conviction: obedience without healing breeds distortion, not holiness. Jesus did not demand alignment first, but restored dignity. Transformation flows from love received, not pressure applied.

This post reframed discipleship for me, not as behaviour to be managed, but as the slow mending of a fragmented inner world in God’s presence.

Advent: Maybe Christ Is Waiting for Us

I loved writing this because it turned the usual script upside down.

Instead of us waiting anxiously for God, Advent became a season where God waits patiently for us—to notice, to arrive, to finally stop outrunning grace.

This piece wove the year together: slowness, attention, presence. God is not a void to be filled, but a presence waiting to be recognized. What if Christ has been waiting all along?

Writing it reminded me that Advent is not suspense, but hospitality.

And that Christ is not late.

What These Pieces Taught Me

Looking back, I see what I was really circling all year:

God is not in a hurry.
Healing is holy work.
Fear is not wisdom.
Imagination matters.
Faith matures through honesty, not performance.

I enjoyed writing these because they let me breathe, felt like careful truth-telling, and helped me resist the urge to hurry toward answers.

Writing did not tidy up my faith this year.
It made my faith gentler.

For the first time, that gentleness feels like real progress.

Probably a political one…

When news spread that Charlie Kirk had died, the internet lit up. Some people grieved, others rejoiced, and many quickly called him a martyr for the faith. Within hours his name was being spoken with reverence, as though he had fallen in defence of Christianity itself.

But as I watched the commentaries roll across my feed, something in me felt unsettled. It was not about politics or even about Charlie Kirk as a person. It was about the word people kept using. Martyr.

That word means something sacred. And when it is used to crown someone who lived and died for political ideals, something in the heart of our faith begins to thin out.

—

What a Christian Martyr Really Is

In the earliest days of the Church, a martyr, from the Greek word martys, was not someone who died for an idea. A martyr was a witness. Someone who refused to stop proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord, even when it cost them their life.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death because he would not renounce the gospel. His last words were not words of rage. They were words of forgiveness. “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

The early Christians understood that martyrdom was not about defending a system or a worldview. It was about bearing witness to a love that even death could not silence.

Tertullian once wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” He did not mean that violence or victory would build the kingdom. He meant that forgiveness and mercy would.

True martyrdom looks like Jesus. It is not about conquering. It is about giving. It is not about being right. It is about being faithful. When we call someone a Christian martyr, we are saying that their death revealed Christ’s love, that somehow in their dying, heaven’s light broke through the world’s darkness.

When Politics Demands What Religion Once Did

Modern politics is a jealous god. It borrows the language of faith such as devotion, sacrifice and loyalty, and twists them into tools for power.

And like all gods, it demands offerings. It demands martyrs.

When we drape the cross in the flag, we start to confuse the kingdom of God with the ambitions of nations. We start to name enemies where Christ has called us to name neighbours. We turn a symbol of love into a banner for war.

Charlie Kirk’s voice was bold. He stood for what he believed, and many saw that as courage. But faithfulness is not measured by volume or defiance. It is measured by love.

Jesus never told us to take up our rights and follow him. He said, “Take up your cross.”

The gospel does not spread through outrage or dominance. It moves quietly through mercy. The Church does not grow through victory. It grows through love that refuses to die.

A Political Martyr

If Charlie Kirk was a martyr, then he was a political one, a man who gave himself fully to a cause he believed in. There is something deeply human in that. We all long to stand for something bigger than ourselves.

But dying for a cause is not the same as dying for Christ.

To die for a cause is to defend an idea of what is good. To die for Christ is to surrender to the One who is good.

The difference might sound small, but it changes everything.

A political martyr dies fighting enemies. A Christian martyr dies loving them.

A political martyr defends power. A Christian martyr lays it down.

A political martyr hopes their death proves they were right. A Christian martyr hopes it proves that love is real.

When the language of politics takes over the Church, these differences fade. The gospel starts to sound like another campaign, another tribe trying to win. But the story of Jesus is not about winning. It is about dying and rising again. It is about the power of love that does not need to win to transform the world.

And that is what troubles me most. Not that Charlie Kirk died, but that so many Christians can no longer tell the difference between his death and Stephen’s.

The Hunger for Heroes

Maybe it is because we are desperate for heroes.

We scroll through chaos and want someone to believe in. Politicians turn into saviours. Preachers turn into politicians. And people crave clarity in a world that feels uncertain and divided.

It is easier to anoint a martyr for our side than to become a witness of Christ’s love.

But the call of Christ has never been about winning the culture war. It is about loving the world that crucifies us. It is about carrying the cross through the noise and trusting that resurrection still happens in small, hidden ways.

When we forget that, we turn the gospel into a slogan. We trade the mystery of grace for the certainty of outrage.

And maybe that is the deeper sorrow behind Charlie Kirk’s story. Not that one man lived or died in vain, but that so many have mistaken zeal for discipleship and anger for faithfulness.

A Better Witness

To say Charlie Kirk was not a Christian martyr is not to dishonour him. It is to remember what martyrdom truly means. It is to keep sacred what belongs to God and not give it to Caesar.

I grieve his death. I grieve the confusion that made it so easy to sanctify politics in the language of faith. I grieve that we have forgotten how to die without hating those who stand against us.

Perhaps his story can still lead us somewhere better, not toward more division but toward deeper reflection.

Because the world does not need more martyrs for movements. It needs witnesses to love.

It needs people who, when faced with darkness, choose forgiveness instead of fury. People who refuse to mistake power for holiness. People who, like the martyrs of old, live and die bearing the likeness of Christ.

The only martyrdom worth claiming is the one that looks like Jesus, the one that whispers mercy even as it bleeds.

If we can remember that, maybe we will stop crowning our politicians as saints and start learning again what holiness really looks like.

Tag: Discipleship

What I Enjoyed Writing This Year (And What It Did to My Faith)