Our world is built with stories.

Sometimes these stories cause suffering by pulling us apart from ourselves and each other.

The liturgist podcast helps people love more and suffer less by pulling apart the stories that pull us apart.

Today's story, dissidents should be avoided.

So I had this roommate in college named Jared and he was a Catholic guy and I was an evangelical

fervent missionary of all who were not evangelicals.

And he was my roommate and he was my first kind of close relationship really with anybody who wasn't an evangelical Christian.

And we would talk about God and I was always at the beginning especially I was kind of like always a little like.

But you know you're a Catholic you're like worshiping idols right you pray to Mary and you don't fully get the thing.

But then the more we talked I would find out he really loved Jesus and I was like oh man I guess maybe he's a Christian you know and I had these experiences with the Christian.

Experiences with the talking with him and starting to open me up.

But then it came to a head at this one point because he was telling me about his family who were all Christian except for his dad.

And he had told me enough about his dad and knew his dad was a really loving great guy.

He was like a rocket scientist.

Brilliant mind, good heart, loved the family but he just wasn't interested in religion he was an atheist.

And I had this feeling I remember like these two incredibly strong impulses and beliefs internally one was I knew that God was good and fair and kind and loving and loved all of his children.

And but then on the other hand I knew that the word of God was true and that salvation could only come to those who believe had these two very strong complete beliefs.

And then in this moment where he's talking to me about his dad and he goes you don't think my dad's going to go to hell right I mean he's a loving man he.

He serves us as in that what God is asking us to do and so whatever this thing kind of came to a head in me were these two very strong energies and beliefs were completely in contradiction.

And it was kind of this watershed like moment for me as I look back of really what am I going which one of these am I going to lean into well how can these co exist how can these two separate contradictory pieces of dissonance exist in the same space in my mind in my body.

And as I think back of that's just one story that came to my mind is I was beginning to think about this idea of living with dissonance and and not rejecting dissonance as something that is necessarily barely bad or needing to be avoided.

But it made me wonder like what do we do with dissonance when we recognize it in ourselves how do we think about it how do we approach it because I know for me those moments that have created dissonance where I find these apparently contradictory things either within myself or within community.

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