It happens slowly.
That’s the part no one tells you. There’s no dramatic moment, no slammed door, no announcement over dinner. Just a gradual shift you can’t quite name. One week they’re asking thoughtful questions about faith. The next they’re using words like “energy” and “resonance” and “what feels true to me.”
You notice the vocabulary before you notice the beliefs. And by the time the beliefs become obvious, the vocabulary has been doing its quiet work for months.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably experienced it. That strange sensation of talking to someone you love and realizing you’re no longer speaking the same language. Same words. Completely different meanings.
You’re not imagining it. And you’re not failing.
Something real is happening. And before I try to explain what I’ve learned about it, I need you to hear something first.
Why This Happens
I want to start here. Because I know you may already be carrying guilt you don’t need to carry.
The construction of what I and other scholars call the “sovereign self” doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. And while it would be convenient to blame social media or cultural forces (and they do play a role), the truth is more complicated. Sometimes the groundwork for self-sovereignty gets laid as a response to real experiences of pain. Moments where questions weren’t welcome. Experiences of judgment rather than grace.
Thirty-six percent of young Christians say they cannot ask their hardest questions in church. More than a third. They experience the place that should be safest for spiritual inquiry as unsafe for honest doubt.
When questions get shut down, they don’t disappear. They get answered elsewhere.
I’m sharing this not to blame anyone, but because I understand how this works from the inside. I grew up in the faith. I knew the stories, understood Christian doctrine, had a worldview for understanding the spiritual realm. But somewhere along the way, that foundation became something I took for granted rather than something I actively built upon. I had knowledge about Christianity, but I wasn’t living in humble dependence on Christ.
And then life didn’t go the way I thought it should. I watched people I considered less qualified succeed while I kept getting passed over. It struck me as profoundly unfair. That rejection did something to me. I cursed at God. I yelled at Him. I was done being faithful and getting nothing in return.
That’s when spiritual entitlement opened the door to other paths. If God wasn’t going to recognize my worth and bless my efforts, I would find spiritual practices that empowered me to take control of my own destiny.
I tell you this because the person you’re worried about isn’t necessarily rejecting God. They might be rejecting what seemed like God’s silence. Or what seemed like the church’s inability to handle their real questions. Or what seemed like judgment when they needed compassion.
This doesn’t mean anyone failed on purpose. It means we’re all navigating something profoundly difficult.
What Searching Actually Looks Like
What I’ve learned from years of studying this shift: what looks like walking away is usually searching.
I know that might be hard to hear. Because from where you’re standing, it looks like rejection. Like everything you tried to pass on just didn’t stick. But the person you’re worried about isn’t rejecting spirituality. They’re often more spiritually hungry than ever.
They’re building something new. A whole system for understanding spiritual reality, with its own logic, its own vocabulary, its own source of authority.
And that source of authority? It’s themselves.
The “sovereign self” is the operating principle underneath the whole spiritual-but-not-religious movement. The numbers are striking: 91.2% of people in these communities believe that one’s spiritual path is something they “must find on their own.” Not can find. Must.
When asked how they know they’re spiritual, the leading answer is “an intuitive feeling.” When asked about the Holy Spirit, 60% directly equate it with their own intuition.
Let that sit for a second.
The self hasn’t just become the center of the spiritual universe. It’s become the only compass for navigating it. Which means by the time someone says “I’ve found something more spiritual,” they’ve already done significant construction. They’ve built the architecture that makes their new beliefs ring true. Brick by brick. Often without anyone noticing.
The Language Shift You’re Probably Missing
Maybe you’ve had this experience: a conversation that should have connected but somehow didn’t. You said the same words. You meant completely different things. And you walked away with the sense you’d just had two separate conversations in the same room.
That disorientation is real. And there’s a reason for it.
When they say “truth,” they likely mean “what speaks to me personally.” When they say “spiritual growth,” they’re probably describing self-improvement with transcendent overtones. When they talk about “connection with God,” they may be referencing an internal sense of alignment rather than relationship with a personal being.
The language shift happens before the belief shift. That’s why it’s so easy to miss.
The communities I’ve studied have developed a whole vocabulary for this. “Religion” gets coded as kindergarten (primitive, controlling, for people who need rules). “Spirituality” gets coded as graduation (evolved, intuitive, for those who’ve outgrown external authority). The explicit language is: “Religion is a kindergarten. The university is spirituality.”
That framing is appealing, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to be the graduate rather than the kindergartener?
This is why arguing “the church is good” rarely lands. You’re not just disagreeing about institutions. You’re disagreeing about the entire way of evaluating institutions. They’ve already accepted starting assumptions that make your conclusions seem impossible.
(I know. You want a quicker path. So do I.)
The “Unbundling” of Jesus
This is where it gets complicated.
For many who leave, Jesus isn’t the problem. They often retain deep affection for him. What they reject is what they perceive as the religion built around him.
One respondent captured it perfectly: “Jesus is a good guy. It’s his fanbase that sucks.”
That phrase shows up again and again in different forms. They want Jesus without the church. The teacher without the institution. The wisdom without the structure.
In this worldview, Jesus gets recast as a “great spiritual teacher,” an “ascended master,” someone who “taught against religion” and “hated hypocrisy.” He gets placed alongside Buddha and Krishna as one of many enlightened guides.
The exclusivity of Christ? Gone. The claims about His unique identity? Reinterpreted as later additions by a controlling institution.
This unbundling serves a real purpose: it resolves the inner tension of feeling connected to Jesus while rejecting the church. They get to keep the parts that appeal (love, compassion, insight) while discarding what seems problematic (doctrine, authority, exclusivity).
The principle guiding this selection is always “what rings true to me.”
(And yes, I can already hear the objection: “Don’t Christians also pick and choose what to follow?” It’s a fair question. The difference isn’t that Christians don’t interpret. We all do. The difference is where the final authority lies when our interpretation conflicts with the source. For the sovereign self, personal preference always wins. For historic Christianity, Scripture gets the final word even when it’s uncomfortable. That’s a fundamentally different relationship with the text.)
Which means if you respond by defending the institution they’ve already rejected, you’re missing the actual conversation. The question isn’t whether church is good. The question is whether Jesus can be authentically known apart from the community He established and the scriptures that reveal Him.
That’s a different conversation entirely. And a more interesting one.
Why Church Doesn’t Feel Safe for Questions
That 36% statistic deserves more attention. Because ministry leaders often don’t realize their churches come across this way. And parents may not realize their responses at home mirror this dynamic.
What makes a space seem “unsafe” for doubt? It’s often not explicit hostility. It’s subtler than that. Dismissive responses to questions. Platitudes instead of honest wrestling. Discomfort when the easy answers don’t land. The sense that doubting out loud will change how people see you.
This applies not just to churches but to dinner table conversations. The living room can seem just as unsafe as the sanctuary.
The paradox is painful: faith should be the safest space for questions. Christianity has such a rich tradition of lament, doubt, and wrestling with God. Job argued with God for chapters. David cried out “How long will you forget me? Forever?” (Psalm 13:1, NLT). Thomas demanded proof. And none of them were rejected for it.
When questioning seems forbidden, people don’t stop questioning. They just stop questioning in front of you.
The Trajectory Worth Understanding
My research reveals something important about where this leads.
The sovereign self sounds liberating in the construction phase. Personal authority. No external rules. Truth defined by what appeals to you. It has the texture of freedom.
But there’s a fundamental instability built into it. When intuition becomes the ultimate authority, but your intuition is compromised by anxiety, trauma, or simply being human, what then? When you’re told to trust yourself, but you can’t distinguish your real insight from your fear responses, where do you turn?
This is what I call the “crisis of discernment.” In the communities I’ve studied, people express deep frustration over their inability to distinguish “the still, small voice” from their “own inner monologue.”
One person put it painfully: “My own thoughts, that are out of my control, deceive me.”
The sovereign self, which promised freedom and clarity, reveals itself as an unreliable guide.
The irony is painful to watch. They rejected external authority because it seemed controlling. But the internal authority that replaced it often proves harder to live with: anxious, inconsistent, never fully trustworthy.
The journey from “I must find my own truth” to “I can’t trust my own thoughts” is shorter than anyone anticipates.
Understanding this trajectory matters. Not because it gives you ammunition for arguments. But because it helps you see where your loved one might be heading. And it might help you hold space for them when the sovereign self starts showing cracks.
What Actually Helps (And What Doesn’t)
I wish I could give you a formula. I can’t. Every person’s journey is different, and you know your loved one better than any research can.
But I can tell you what seems to create walls versus what creates openings.
What doesn’t help: Forwarding apologetics articles before acknowledging pain. Correcting vocabulary before understanding experience (“It’s not energy, it’s the Holy Spirit” tends to end conversations, not open them). Having “the talk” when you notice changes, rather than building ongoing relational capital. Treating questions as threats rather than invitations. Assuming more information will solve what’s fundamentally a trust problem.
What creates openings: Asking questions with real curiosity (not questions that seem like traps). Acknowledging legitimate concerns without defensiveness (“Yeah, I’ve struggled with that too” goes further than you’d think). Being honest about your own questions and doubts. Staying in relationship when beliefs diverge (which means continuing to invite them, not making every conversation about faith, being sincerely interested in their life beyond their spiritual journey).
The hardest one: representing Christ’s heart with consistency. Not defending Christ’s institution. His heart.
The sovereign self is ultimately unsatisfying because it’s too small to bear the weight of ultimate authority. But that realization usually comes through lived experience, not argument. Your job isn’t to convince them it will fail. Your job is to remain present and loving when it does.
The Father Who Didn’t Chase
I find myself returning to the prodigal son. Not the part about the son leaving. The part about the father staying.
The father in Jesus’ story didn’t chase his son down with better arguments about why the family business was a good deal. He didn’t send messengers with information packets about the dangers of the far country. He didn’t defend himself against whatever grievances drove the son away in the first place.
He let him go.
And then he waited. With the door open. Watching the road.
When the son finally came to his senses (after the sovereign self failed him, after being his own authority left him hungry and broken), he turned toward home fully expecting rejection. He had a speech prepared. He was ready to negotiate for servant status.
But the father saw him while he was still far off.
And he ran.
He didn’t wait for the full apology. Didn’t require a theological examination to verify the son’s beliefs had properly reformed. Didn’t say “let me see if you’re serious this time.”
He ran toward his son while the son was still covered in the consequences of his choices.
Scripture tells us: “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20, NLT).
That’s the posture. Not fixing. Not rescuing. Not convincing. Remaining. Steady. Present. Ready to run toward them the moment they turn.
The prodigal didn’t return because his father chased him down with better arguments. He returned because he remembered a love that was still waiting.
What It Means to Love Someone Building a Worldview That Will Disappoint Them
I’ve been sitting with what it means to love someone who’s building a worldview that will eventually disappoint them. There’s real grief in that. You’re mourning something before it’s fully lost.
The hunger underneath the sovereign self is real. They want connection with something transcendent. They want meaning that holds. They want truth they can trust.
The structure they’ve built is ultimately inadequate. But the desires driving it are profoundly human.
Which means there’s always an opening. Not for arguments or corrections. But for presence. For patience. For love that stays consistent even when everything seems uncertain.
There’s a whole section in Romans about God’s patience with those who wander. Something about His kindness leading to repentance rather than His arguments winning the debate. I’m still sitting with what that looks like practically. How to be kind without being permissive. How to stay close without enabling. How to hold the door open without pretending everything’s fine.
Maybe that’s the next thing to explore.
But for now, what I know is this: the same God who pursues the lost isn’t surprised by any of this. He’s not wringing His hands over cultural shifts or despairing about the sovereign self. He’s still running toward anyone who turns, no matter how far they’ve wandered or how long they’ve been gone.
That’s not nothing.
In fact, it might be everything.
And maybe our job is simply to be the kind of presence that makes home worth returning to.
If You Want to Try Something
If you’re not sure where to start, try this: the next time you’re with them, ask one question about their life that has nothing to do with faith. Don’t steer it back to spiritual things. Don’t use it as a bridge to what you really want to talk about. Just be curious about who they’re becoming.
That’s it. That’s enough for today.
You don’t have to have this figured out. Neither do I.
We’re all just learning to keep the door open and watch the road.
