There are plenty of trends I wouldn’t mind seeing disappear from history. Bell-bottoms. Avocado-colored appliances. Eight-track tapes that always seemed to eat themselves at the worst possible moment. Those make for fun conversations.
But if I’m honest, there is only one trend I would truly erase.
I would erase humanity’s habit of deciding that some people are less worthy of love than others.
I don’t know exactly when that began. Maybe it has always been with us. Maybe it began the first time one tribe looked across a river at another tribe and decided they were enemies instead of neighbors. Whatever its origin, it has left a scar across every century.
You can trace it through slavery. Through segregation. Through the Holocaust. Through the persecution of religious minorities. Through the fear of immigrants. Through the treatment of people with disabilities. Through the church’s long struggle to accept LGBTQ people. History changes its costumes, but prejudice always seems to memorize its lines.
For most of my life, I didn’t think about this trend in the abstract.
I lived inside it.
Growing up, I learned there were parts of me that were safe to reveal and parts that needed to stay hidden. No one handed me a rulebook. I simply learned by watching. I watched what happened to people who were different. I listened to jokes that made everyone laugh except the person they were about. I heard sermons that made it clear there were people God loved less—or so it seemed. I learned that acceptance often came with conditions.
So I became very good at pretending.
From the outside, my life looked successful. I built a career in finance. I married. We raised three wonderful children. Eventually, I answered God’s call into ministry, something I never imagined doing. I preached grace every Sunday. I talked about God’s unconditional love with complete sincerity because I believed every word of it.
I just wasn’t convinced those words applied to me.
That’s the strange thing about conditional love. Even when no one is actively withholding it, you begin withholding it from yourself.
You become your own jailer.
For decades I carried a secret so heavy that I almost forgot what it felt like to live without it. I smiled when people expected me to smile. I filled roles that made everyone comfortable. I became the dependable husband, the father, the pastor, the leader. None of those roles were lies. I loved my family deeply. I loved my churches. I loved serving Christ.
But underneath all of it was someone who wondered if being fully known would mean being completely abandoned.
That question followed me for years.
When I finally came out later in life, I wasn’t looking for applause. I wasn’t trying to make a statement. I was simply exhausted from hiding.
People sometimes imagine coming out as one dramatic moment, but it isn’t. It’s a thousand small moments.
The first time you say your truth out loud.
The first person who walks away.
The first person who unexpectedly stays.
The first morning you wake up and realize you don’t have to remember which version of yourself you’re pretending to be.
Freedom arrives quietly.
So does grief.
Some relationships changed forever. Some people loved me exactly as before. Others loved the version of me they wished still existed. Those are not the same thing.
It taught me something I wish every parent, every church, every teacher, and every politician understood.
Conditional love doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it sounds like, “We’ll love you if…”
We’ll love you if you stay the same.
We’ll love you if you don’t embarrass us.
We’ll love you if you fit our expectations.
We’ll love you if your life makes us comfortable.
Real love never finishes that sentence.
Real love simply says, “We’ll love you.”
As a pastor, I have spent years reading the Gospels. What strikes me more now than ever is how often Jesus ignored the categories everyone else thought mattered.
He touched people others wouldn’t touch.
He ate with people others wouldn’t eat with.
He welcomed people others wanted removed.
The religious leaders kept asking who belonged.
Jesus kept widening the circle.
That image has become one of the guiding pictures of my faith.
Every time humanity draws another line, Christ seems to erase it.
Every time we decide someone is outside God’s love, Jesus pulls up another chair at the table.
Perhaps that’s why prejudice has always troubled me so deeply. It isn’t simply socially destructive. It is spiritually exhausting.
Imagine how different history might look if people had spent less time deciding who was worthy and more time discovering who people actually were.
How many gifted artists never painted because they feared rejection?
How many musicians silenced their songs?
How many scientists hid brilliant minds behind ordinary lives?
How many pastors never answered God’s call because they believed there was no room for someone like them?
How many children learned to disappear before they even understood why?
We’ll never know.
That may be history’s greatest tragedy—not only the suffering prejudice created, but the beauty it prevented.
Today, at this stage of my life, I find myself less interested in being right and more interested in helping people feel safe enough to tell the truth about themselves.
Everyone is carrying something.
Some carry grief.
Some carry addiction.
Some carry loneliness.
Some carry fear.
Some carry identities they’ve hidden for decades because they aren’t sure love will survive the truth.
I know what that weight feels like.
That’s why, if I could erase one trend from history, I wouldn’t erase a hairstyle or a political movement.
I would erase every whisper that teaches another human being they must become someone else to deserve love.
Because I have lived long enough to know this:
The greatest gift we can offer one another isn’t agreement.
It isn’t approval.
It isn’t even understanding.
It is the freedom to be fully known without fearing that love will disappear.
That is the kind of love God has never stopped offering me.
It is the kind of love I hope to spend the rest of my life offering others.
And if history ever bends toward something better, I believe it will begin there—not when we finally agree with one another, but when we finally decide that no one has to earn the right to belong.
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