Blogging about Jesus and the Bible has been an enriching and even a life-changing experience for me.

But I’m done now. Here’s why.

About a decade ago, I set out to become an evangelical man-hero answer robot. My expectation was to master the scriptures so I could become a shepherd and keep other Christians safe, “orthodox,” and free of doubt.

The critical thinking skills I acquired and everything I discovered about the authentic nature and context of the bible set me on an unexpected path. I began to rethink and reconfigure everything I thought I knew about faith, God, and tradition.

This blog represented a late stage in this journey where I was very honestly and publicly enunciating the things I had learned and wrestling with the things that still didn’t (and don’t) make sense.

Now I find myself entering a new phase. I don’t know everything, I never will, and I think that’s just fine. But I’ve arrived at new place where I don’t feel the need to publicly ruminate and bloviate about faith anymore.

In the last year I had some real “success” with my blog: prestigious endorsements, viral posts, floods of traffic, general accolades. At first it was exciting, but very quickly it’s become a sort of bummer. The right things started happening, but for some reason it felt like it was going all wrong.

The last thing I want to do is become a “Christian blogger” or a minor “progressive Christian” Internet celebrity. I enjoy lots of Christian blogs and podcasts and I admire the individuals who generate that content on a regular basis. But that job’s not for me. It was fun and even liberating to think these weird thoughts in public with you, but I don’t want to wind up spinning my wheels, repeating myself, and defending the prog xtian party line against the fundies and Calvinists. God save me from becoming another sort of gatekeeper.

So anyway, that’s it. I’m not saying I won’t write about religion anymore, and I still owe all of you a book, but this blog will be pretty quiet from now on. I will remain active on Twitter, on my personal account @JoshWay and my Christian account @Godsplainer. I continue to create donor-supported comedy videos at https://patreon.com/joshway and I’m already busy cooking up another podcast project. You’ll see me around.

Thanks for reading!