The Time To Speak Out Is Now.
Like Them I am Broken And Rebuilt
Cold. Hard. Truth.
In 1981, I was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in the nearby community of Floresville. My early life was a fairly common conservative leaning Southern Baptist upbringing. We attended the First Baptist Church and I admittedly didn’t understand much of it other than if I wanted to live forever I had to do certain things and avoid doing certain other things. To a kid that is pretty basic.
At around 10 I was “saved” and baptized. The family was pretty proud if it and I guess something inside of my heart told me that there must be some sort of truth to what I was being fed. I don’t think anyone ever has all the answers, and certainly a kid doesn’t. I tried the best I could to do everything that was commanded and instructed. I tried to believe what I was seeing.
But then life happened.
Truth reveals grit.
Grit uncovers truth.
Back To Center
Life wasn’t easy for me and it is not easy for many of us. Throughout my teenage years I began to notice and feel the impacts of things like poverty, addiction, mental health, and the general realities of life for what I started calling “Non-Privileged Christians.” I began to question things like the very western prosperity doctrine and the mass media appeal of Christianity. It had to be somewhere around the year 2000 that I really began to question everything I was ever taught. The church was becoming more about emotions than action. It was more about building individual kingdoms and institutions than it was about Christ himself. In the West, we had become “Capitalized Christians.” It never made sense to me.
Millions have seen my work, but I don’t measure impact in clicks or retweets. I measure it in the quiet moments: a reader who finally feels seen, a subject who says, “You got it right,” or a town that starts talking to itself again. The Gospel of Jesus Christ isn't dead — it’s just stuck in traffic. I'm taking the backroads and doing what I can along the way.
I ended up finding my way to become a freelance journalist and it was a career that has served me pretty well. I learned how to write, read, and think. I taught myself basic skills along the way, I talked with people from different cultures, faiths, and backgrounds as if there was not a God in Heaven, while trying to inwardly live as if there was. I discovered that Christ himself lived this same way. He was by far not a teacher of the law or commandments—He was the vehicle that made everything happen. That was the man I wanted to know.
I could care less about the latest pop culture centered preacher, conference, or contemporary worship song. I had no use for “church campuses” or rock band style worship that was far more self-help and far less didactic. But my own demons would soon slap me in the face.
In Our Despair We Find
Reality.
I spent my early 30s locked up for 36 month in federal prison camp for a white collar crime stemming from a big misunderstanding between myself and a friend from church. In addition to that I did another 18 months inside a Texas State jail for a related charge. This was one of the darkest periods of my life, but in many ways I am glad that it happened.
During this time had the chance to meet people, listen to them, and come to really understand the human condition in the United States. As you can imagine, it left me with some deeply rooted questions and concerns about society, humanity, and Christianity as a whole as it was being presented.
It made me question everything I ever knew to be true.
Finding The Real Connection
Prison and poverty stripped me down to the studs. They tore away the easy veneers of “church clothes” and polite faith. What I learned wasn’t theory — it was survival, betrayal, and grace at its most raw form.
God doesn’t live in the gap between heaven and earth — He lives in the gap between what His children say and what they actually do. And I have seen both sides: the hypocrisy of conditional love, and the holy beauty of strangers who live it without fanfare.
I believe faith is not proven in books, pulpits, or prosperity promises — it is proven in the grit of prison cells, the silence of poverty, and the scars of those the world forgets.
I reject a faith that has become performance on the Right — waving Bibles while ignoring the broken — and paranoia on the Left — convinced that compassion is a trap. The truth is simpler, harder, and holier: God is with the least, the lost, and the lonely.
As both a scholar and a survivor, my mission is to translate the wisdom of tradition and social behaviors into tools for real people, in the real world. No self-help slogans. No false hope. Just truth, presence, and practices that heal.
I guess you could say that I am called to be a missionary in the digital wilderness — standing between the noise of culture and the silence of God, offering clarity, courage, and fire to those still searching.
Get in touch.
Do you have questions or want to schedule a talk with your congregation or group? Just drop me a line.