Chapter 1 from Allegory of the Cross
We were not born afraid of the light.
We learned to be.
From the flickering flames of ancient ritual to the fluorescent glow of modern pulpits, humanity has long mistaken imitation for illumination. In our longing for certainty, we accepted shadows as truth, obedience as holiness, and fear as faith. But the real tragedy is not that we lived in caves—it’s that we were told the cave was sacred.
This chapter begins where so many of our stories do: in childhood faith, in inherited fear, in the moment we were handed a God who watched more than He loved. Through personal memory, philosophical reflection, and theological critique, we return to the cave—not to dwell, but to expose its illusion. Here, we examine how institutional religion can dim the light it claims to reveal, and how, for many of us, the journey toward divine wisdom begins with unlearning what we were taught to believe.
We are a species both terrified and fascinated by the light.
When Fear Becomes Faith
Since the beginning of time, humanity has sought meaning in shadow and flame—building temples to hold the divine, laws to restrain chaos, and institutions to deliver salvation. But in doing so, we often mistake the flicker of torchlight for the sun itself.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave offers a mirror to this human condition. Imagine: prisoners born into darkness, chained so they can only see shadows cast upon a wall. These shadows become their reality. When one breaks free and stumbles into the light, he discovers a world beyond his imagining—color, depth, truth. But upon returning to liberate the others, he is mocked, rejected, even attacked. They do not want freedom; they want familiarity.
This image is not merely a philosophical fable. It is the story of religion—particularly institutional Christianity—as it has unfolded over two millennia. The cave is the church. The fire is dogma. And the shadows? They are the stories we’ve been told about God, about Jesus, about ourselves—edited, politicized, and weaponized in the name of salvation.
I write this not as a skeptic, but as a believer. Not in institutionalized religion, but in mystery. Not in hierarchy, but in the indwelling light. I believe Jesus was a mystic, not a monarch. A radical teacher of inner transformation, not an enforcer of doctrine. Yet the institution that rose in his name has often done the opposite of what he taught—binding people to guilt, fear, and unquestioned authority.
The cross, once a symbol of subversion and spiritual liberation, was claimed by empire and recast as an emblem of obedience. We wore it around our necks, etched it into our flags, and used it to bless wars, colonize nations, and legislate morality. The fire burned hotter. And the shadows became holy.
But what if the cross was never meant to represent submission to religious power? What if it is, instead, the exit from the cave—a doorway through death into light, not in the afterlife, but here, now?
This isn’t just theory for me. I’ve lived in that cave.
I was raised by parents who didn’t speak much of God. My early spiritual formation came instead from my grandmother—a nature-loving woman whose quiet wisdom imprinted something sacred in me. My world was filled with wind through trees, the rhythm of crickets, the hush of morning light on soil. There was no fear in that world—just presence. Just peace.
That changed when I was eight.
My mother fell gravely ill, and a neighbor family offered to take me to church. It felt like a safe gesture, a kindness in a hard time. But instead of comfort, I was introduced to a God of wrath—a divine authority figure who watched closely, judged silently, and demanded obedience. Doubt was dangerous. Curiosity, suspect. Questions, sinful. A child who once felt spiritual belonging in the whisper of leaves was now told that even thoughts could damn her.
At age eleven, with my entire church and Sunday school class, I watched A Thief in the Night—an evangelical horror film about the Rapture. I still remember the movie to this day. In the sequel, A Distant Thunder, those who refused the “Mark of the Beast” were publicly executed. My blank, quiet response to the final scene unsettled the adults around me. I was pulled aside and warned that my calm, detached reaction wasn’t just inappropriate—it was dangerous. I was told that the devil delights in questions and distractions, that my lack of visible fear was a sign of spiritual rebellion. The message was clear: obedience was godly; curiosity was demonic.
From that point forward, fear became my faith. Not awe. Not reverence. Not wonder. But fear.
When my mother’s health continued to decline, I was told—directly and without gentleness—that unless she received full-submersion baptism before she died, she would go to hell. Imagine what that does to a child’s understanding of love. Of God. Of salvation. That image haunted me: not just my mother’s fragile body in a hospital bed, but the idea that the divine—supposedly all-knowing and all-loving—could be so legalistic, so unforgiving.
I began to pull away. Not from God, but from the version of God I had been handed.
Years later, I found myself in a classroom studying metaphysics and anthropology, reading Jung and Eliade, learning about Gnostic gospels and feminist theology. Something stirred. Something ancient and familiar. I began to remember what I knew before I was taught to fear: that the divine is within. That truth cannot be threatened by questions. That wisdom wears a woman’s voice.
I met Sophia.
Not in a sermon. Not in a church. But in the pages of forgotten gospels, in dreams, in synchronicities, in my own intuition. Sophia—the divine feminine wisdom the early church suppressed—was already there, waiting. She had always been whispering from beyond the cave, urging me toward the light.
That’s why this book begins here: in the cave. In the church pew. In the fear-soaked altar calls. In the pages of mistranslated texts. Before we can walk into Sophia’s light, we must understand the shadows that have kept us from her.
This is my story. But it is also yours—if you have ever questioned, ever doubted, ever wondered why love needed to come with conditions.
Let us begin by naming what we were taught to fear: doubt, autonomy, and wisdom itself.
Because sometimes, liberation begins not in the light—but in the courage to question the shadows.
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