Tag: transparency

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Ashley’s Truth

by Ashley McBride-Braswell

I love Jesus. 

As long as I can remember, church has been a part of my life, from my mother’s womb (so churchy, I know-LOL), I have been surrounded and steeped in the Black church. 

And I loved it. The friends, the lessons, the warmth. The after service dinners and second service repass. Vacation Bible School during the summers and Sunday morning school with the snacks. I loved the kids choir and our annual Easter/Christmas plays. I loved it all and I have fond memories but somewhere along the way, I became disenchanted. 

It started slowly when I really began to read the Bible for myself and learn the original translations, much of what I thought I knew as “Bible” as the saints say, was nothing more than doctrine. 

And then I struggled. I struggled with my sexuality and being a 20 year old woman who just couldn’t stop sinning and having sex. I couldn’t stop going out and partying, living my best young adult life, and I couldn’t escape the condemnation I felt on Sunday and how I just needed to be holy and pure in God’s eyes. I couldn’t reconcile the rhetoric of the church where almost everything and every feeling is a sin. The constant threat of hell and it all became so arduous. Would I ever make it in?

I really tried. I followed Heather Lindsey and all the women in her purity movement. I committed myself to purity and giving up worldly things, and being the chaste, Godly woman so that God could reward me with a Godly husband, except all the church guys I dated where the worst.

So I stopped and I just started praying. I wrote my heart’s desires on sticky notes and pasted them to my wall. All my prayers for myself, family, friends, and issues in the world. I opened myself up to learning about different religions and stopped seeing people through Christian lenses instead as seeing them as people. 

And I slowly started to let all of it go. I didn’t care about someone’s faults or sins, I stopped caring about who others sleep with or their gender. I stopped requiring the world to hold on to my square box of beliefs and standards. I embraced people for who they are and what they are and I learned that the same grace God has given them to figure it out, He has given to me.

Do I still struggle with the indoctrination of church still? Absolutely. But I remind myself that I don’t know and I don’t have all the answers, and what I do know, is I’m still learning. And so I give others the grace I want to receive and treat them how I would treat myself. After all the two greatest commandments are 1) to love God with all your heart and 2) to love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:36-40

Ashley McBride-Braswell

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A Manifesto on Transparency

By Kara M. Young

I’ve been doing a lot of contemplating recently, and one of the biggest revelations has been that I have been tailoring my social media presence to people who are not my audience. I’ve been afraid to say certain things or post certain things because I’ve been afraid of being judged as “unworthy” or too flawed. I’ve been afraid of the sentiment being “You have a church, so how can you be doing x,y, and z?” But that’s a flawed way of thinking, for a number of reasons.


1. I live my life in alignment with my beliefs. I am very intentional about that. And the truth is that my beliefs do not fully coincide with those of Adventists, nor those of mainstream Christians. Further, I do not identify as either, because I believe both are irredeemably flawed and, to be perfectly clear, I do not believe that either entity is “the truth,” nor do I believe either entity has a monopoly on truth. I am an Agapist. A Christocentric Agapist, but an Agapist just the same. As such, I can’t be held to a standard that I don’t agree with, don’t believe in, and refuse to hold myself to because I genuinely and firmly believe that it facilitates an inaccurate and damaging depiction of the character of God.


2. I can’t preach unconditional love and acceptance while maintaining an unrealistic portrayal of my life. I can’t tell someone else to “be who you are” while simultaneously being afraid to publicly own ALL of who I am, especially when I am not ashamed of me. In fact, I’m really proud of the growth I’ve achieved thus far and the person I am continuing to become. I like me, and that’s something I have fought long and hard for.


3. I am aware that I am probably not “qualified” by many people’s standards to do what I’m doing, but I believe I’ve been called to it because I can’t be anything other than what I am. Life literally isn’t worth living to me if it means spending even one more second trying to fit myself into other people’s boxes. I have tried. My entire life, I have tried. And I’ve finally come to accept the fact that I can’t. That acceptance has opened my eyes to the fact that there are plenty of people out there who have had a similar experience and have ultimately opted to just be alone spiritually rather than compromise their liberty of conscience and liberty of thought for the sake of community. But those people…my people…need community, too.


4. Church as it stands isn’t designed for people who don’t “fit”. It’s not meant to accommodate people who want the benefit of community without the pressure to conform. So many people feel like you’re being disingenuous if you say you believe something and then don’t adhere to its tenets, and in a lot of ways, that’s not entirely untrue. If being a Christian means living my life like ________, and I don’t believe in that, am I really a Christian? And if I’m not, is that such a bad thing? I would call myself a Christian if doing so meant that the only thing anyone assumed about me was that I believed that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died to be the propitiation for sin itself. But realistically, saying you’re a Christian comes with a ton of other premises that MUST be relied on, otherwise your spirituality gets called into question, i.e. “How can you say you’re a Christian if you ________?”

The establishments that currently exist can only change or evolve so much before they become something they are not. And I realized some time ago that there’s no amount of change that could occur that would ultimately make room for me and all the other people that organized religion has either pushed to the fringes or excluded completely. So many of us wanted to belong, but even after the church began to say “come as you are,” it added, “once you get here, you’re supposed to change, and this is what your journey should look like, your questions should look like, your conclusions should look like….this is what you will look like. And if you don’t, something is seriously wrong.” There’s an underlying acceptance of certain fundamental “truths” that you are required to internalize and you literally cannot belong the the community if you don’t accept them. Some may call that “godly”. Some may call that “accountability.” Some may call that “the truth.” Personally, I call it presumptive, limiting, and unreflective of the God I have come to know and love. I want community that doesn’t require me to limit who God can be for me, doesn’t ask me to draw the same conclusions as everyone else, and gives me room to journey on God’s terms, not anyone else’s.

5. I’m not perfect, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be. I think that’s the point of real transparency…it’s the only way God’s strength can truly be made perfect in my weakness. If I’m too afraid to own that, how can I inspire anyone else to own it for themselves? How can I tell people that God is with them when they aren’t struggling, when they’re not wrestling, when they don’t feel the need to “repent,” when they’re asking questions other people don’t have answers for and drawing conclusions that other people condemn….and then be unwilling to transparent about how God does that for me every day? I know and believe in the depths of my heart that I am loved unconditionally and I know that because that love has been tested….tried with fire….and it hasn’t failed me yet. People think that they have to believe a certain way or live a certain way to experience God’s presence fully and I’m here to say that that simply isn’t true. Nothing can separate me from God’s love and my experience has been that God will always give as much of the Spirit as I am open to receiving. It’s in my darkest moments that God has shown up for me in the most profound ways and if God has done that for me, I have no doubt it can be done for you, too.

All of that being said, I am committed to doing my best to be more vulnerable and to live transparently. My target audience isn’t the people who think they have the truth. My target audience is anyone who is seeking truth, those who believe that truth-seeking is the journey of a lifetime. My goal is to be a part of a community that prioritizes love in a way that heals rather than does harm. And I just want to be myself. I want others to know that they really can be who they are and not be treated differently because of it. I don’t care who you are or what you believe. Boundaries are drawn based on how we treat each other. Do your best not to do harm. If you mess up (as we all inevitably do), acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, and try to do better moving forward, understanding that the love doesn’t change and grace is sufficient.

My hope and prayer is that we can all find freedom in the journey, and thus a greater sense of compassion, patience, kindness, self-awareness and acceptance, personal accountability, and unconditional love. -ky<3

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Kara’s Truth

By Kara M. Young

Hi. My name is Kara. I was raised to be a Christian, but about 10 years ago, I made the decision to embark on a journey of spiritual and self-discovery. I started questioning the things I’d been conditioned to believe and I started learning to look at the world beyond what I’d been able to see through my own rose-tinted lenses. However, the more I grew, the less I fit in….anywhere, really. I knew there were people who were asking the same questions I was asking and who were on similar journeys, but I was never able to find an established religion or group or label that didn’t try to box me in. I didn’t want a millennial-friendly, repackaged version of the same things I’d been told my whole life, either. I had valid questions and real-life problems I was dealing with, but I couldn’t find a place where I was free to believe and grow as I saw fit and where I could actually do more than just talk about the pain and suffering in the world. I always hoped that one day I could create a space for people like me to be free, and it’s honestly crazy that my dream is becoming a reality.

The One Rule Church is a movement rooted in the belief that unconditional love is the highest moral imperative, and that imperative transcends time, culture, and religion. In other words, this isn’t your normal “church.” We call ourselves a “church” because we are a spiritual community, and we think it’s important to reclaim that word from all of the negative things it has come to mean for so many. For us, the difference is that we don’t pretend to have it all together. We don’t have one set belief system that everyone has to conform to. We don’t have a bunch of rules that everyone has to follow. We don’t believe that any one person or group has “the truth.” We’re just a group of people who are trying to make sense of the world and our places in it. We know we’re no better or “more enlightened” than anyone else and that we need to surround ourselves with people who are different from us because that is the only way we can continue to challenge ourselves to grow and become better. We believe that love, in its purest form, can be revolutionary.

Unconditional love is transformative. It brings healing to so much of the pain life has caused all of us, and healing those wounds allows us to view each other more clearly. Being able to see our humanity reflected in the next person despite our differences helps to dispell the fears associated with those we formerly couldn’t understand. And then love calls each of us to the highest level of personal accountability. It’s not about trying to change other people or looking to other people to confirm or deny what our responsibilities to each other are. It’s about each of us choosing to be the change we want to see in the world around us and setting the standard for ourselves rather than merely falling in line with what someone else has decided is “good”. It’s easy to believe that our responsibility on this planet begins and ends with not doing the “wrong” things. It’s harder to learn to live with the awareness that being your “brother’s keeper” means doing what’s actually best for someone else rather than getting caught up in our own presumptive opinions and agendas.

But don’t get me wrong lol I can’t paint a “picture perfect image” of myself and I have no desire to. I don’t always love the way I know I’m supposed to and some people may look at my life and say it’s too flawed to be starting something like this. I’ve only been married for about 2 months, but I have a son who is almost 14 months old (you do the math lol). I lived with my husband before we got married. I dress how I feel and it’s not always “modest” lol I like to go out with my friends when I can and I don’t always say the right things and I’m super sensitive and you know what? I’m not ashamed of any of it. It’s me. It’s real. It’s my life and I’m beyond proud of the person I am today and of the fact that I’m even still here because that means I didn’t give up, even on the days I wasn’t sure I could keep going. And if you’re reading this, I’m proud of you, too, because it means that you haven’t given up, either. It means I have the opportunity to tell you that you matter and you’re good enough and you deserve to be loved unconditionally because we’re all imperfect. We all mess up. None of us do everything right and you don’t have to be more than what you are to be seen and cared for. And I’m not just saying that because it sounds good. I’m saying it because I get it. I needed someone to say it to me. And that’s why it means so much for me to be present and give that to as many people as I can.

So that’s me. That’s why I’m doing this. I’m here because I need it as much as anyone else might need it and I’m just hoping that all the love-minded people can band together, support each other, and share our hearts with whoever needs that. If that’s not for you, no hard feelings lol I still love you. But if it is for you, I’m excited to move forward together in making love the solution 🙂

xoxo -ky