Belief as a Whole

When we no longer split—when the person we are in the daylight matches the one who wakes up at 3 a.m. and remembers the things we didn’t say, or didn’t do—that is when we come closest to something that resembles peace. Not the shiny kind, not the kind you pin to a corkboard and frame in a kitchen, but the kind that hums low in the chest. The kind that knows it’s not truth until your hands have touched it, planted it, pulled it up by the roots if need be.

Most people are living in pieces. That’s not a judgment. It’s just how it is. We’re told from a young age to put on different faces depending on the room we’re in, the paycheck we need, the story someone else needs us to tell. We learn how to be pleasant instead of honest. We learn how to wear faith like a garment instead of digging down to where it’s sewn into our skin. We tell ourselves that what we believe is a private matter, a personal vow we carry somewhere deep inside. But what we do—that's the real giveaway. That’s what blooms. That’s what people pick from. That’s what feeds or poisons the world around us.

I’ve seen it—how a person’s choices speak louder than their prayers. How the way they treat the waitress, or the dog with a limp, or the daughter who never quite did things right, will tell you more than any testimony. And I’ve learned to believe in that. Because if belief lives only in the mouth, it dries out. But if it lives in the marrow, it moves the body.

Christ, as an archetype, never split. That’s what strikes me most. Not just as a historical figure or deity, but as a symbol. A map. An ancient idea etched into human consciousness about what wholeness could look like if we let it. In the stories told, he is always rooted, always integrated. His words and his actions match. He stands in the gap. He tends to the wound. He becomes the bridge. This is not about a man in a robe—this is about what it means to walk through the world as a force for restoration, a living contradiction to empire, ego, and separation.

As an archetype, Christ is the one who doesn’t flinch at grief. Who doesn’t back away from filth or failure. Who loves in ways that aren't theatrical but transformational. When he says, “Follow me,” it’s not an invitation to imitate a person. It’s an invitation to embody a path. A way of being so whole it unsettles everything that thrives on division.

So when that same archetype speaks and says, “I never knew you,” it isn’t accusation. It is the sound of a mirror cracking. It is what happens when someone has spoken all the right phrases but never walked the road. The Christ archetype is recognition. You know it when you meet it in someone’s presence. It is felt. It is carried. It cannot be faked. And so when we split ourselves—speak one thing and live another—we fall out of resonance with that archetype. It cannot know us, because we have become unknowable.

What you cannot do is be whole and use belief as a performance. You tell on yourself. The split is always visible, even if people pretend not to see it. Performance may buy you time or applause, but it cannot buy you knowing. It cannot buy you the peace of being integrated. It cannot bring you into alignment with the archetype that lives beyond performance—the one that moves mountains not with spectacle, but with rootedness, presence, and unshakable care.

The world we live in is built to reward the split. It calls it professionalism, detachment, even wisdom. But there is no wisdom in watching someone suffer and saying, “I believe you,” if all you do next is walk away. There is no wisdom in saying, “I stand for justice,” and still profiting from silence. Belief that doesn’t put its hands in the dirt is just pageantry. And sooner or later, the reckoning comes. Sometimes it shows up in the mirror. Sometimes it arrives in the voice of a child asking why you didn’t stay. Sometimes it comes in the long ache of knowing the moment passed, and you weren’t brave enough to carry it.

But the good news—the beautiful, stubborn, seed-splitting truth—is that it’s not too late. Things come back. The fractured parts. The stories we thought we buried. The people we meant to love better than we did. They circle back, like seeds riding the wind. They find the soil of who we are now, and they try again. They want to root, to become something. They’re not here to shame us. They’re here to ask: Are you ready to live whole?

Because when we no longer split, belief stops needing to be spoken aloud. It becomes visible in how we carry ourselves. In how we choose inconvenience over indifference. In how we show up. In how we stay. In how we make room, even when it costs something. Especially when it costs something.

When we no longer split, we don’t just say we follow Christ. We walk in the archetype’s footsteps, wherever they lead. We begin to see the faces others look away from. We begin to feel the weight of someone else’s pain and recognize it as part of our own. We begin to act in ways that cannot be explained by self-interest or comfort. And we find, to our great surprise, that we are known. Not for what we claimed to believe, but for what we became.

And in that wholeness—not perfection, just wholeness—we are finally real. Faults and all. Finally rooted. Finally telling the truth.

It’s not an easy truth, either. It has mud on it. It interrupts our errands. It asks us to say, "I’m sorry" with no defense. It requires self reflection and giving benefit when possible. It asks us to believe someone whose story breaks something inside us. It demands we love people we can’t fix and stay with people who are not always easy to love. It calls us to return when we’d rather disappear.

Sometimes goodbyes grace then, come back with different faces. Sometimes they don’t come back at all. And the burned bridge, the boundary. The world will tell you forgiveness means reunion, that to be whole you must stay. But Christ walked away. He wept over what could not be saved and still moved forward. Wholeness does not mean we gather every thread. It means we stop lying to ourselves about which ones we need to hold.

You can believe in someone and still walk away. You can honor a story and still say, "This cannot continue." You can love what you release. Sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do is put down what you never should have been carrying. All the steps a projection of what you believe.

The truth has never been easy. It was nailed to a cross, after all. And still, it rose again. Not with vengeance, but with open hands.

So let us live that way. With belief that can be touched. With faith that leaves footprints. With lives so undivided, they heal things just by standing in a room. Not because we’re holy. But because we’re whole.