The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

This one's a bit longer than usual, but it's also the most personal thing I've written in a while. If you've ever struggled with belief, identity, or finding your way after leaving a high-control environment, I think you'll find something in here worth staying for.

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Before I was an online shamus chasing leads through the digital fog, I wore a very different hat. I was a Fundamentalist Baptist pastor. No, really. Stop smirking. I believed it. I preached it. I lived it like it was the only script that mattered. And I wanted everyone else to read their lines too.

But long before I ever stepped into a pulpit, I was just a kid growing up under the canopy. That’s what Fundamentalism was: An enormous painted ceiling posing as the sky. It gave you boundaries. Gave you meaning. Made you feel safe. I gave my heart to Christ when I was five. And just like that, the ending was guaranteed. Heaven was locked in. The sun always rose where it was supposed to. The stars never wandered. The rules were clear, and everything had an answer. I thought that was freedom.

Then the pandemic came. And with it, a kind of awakening. The canopy didn’t crack. It lifted. And for the first time, I saw what was really up there. The stars weren’t arranged by anyone I recognised. The sky wasn’t predictable. It was wild. Uncharted. Beautiful. And terrifying in its freedom.

What followed wasn’t a conversion. It was a disorientation. A slow, stumbling, sacred unraveling. I didn’t land in another story. Not right away. I just stood blinking under a new sky, wondering how I’d lived so long believing the ceiling was the cosmos.

And maybe you’ve been there too. Maybe you’re still there. That’s the case I’m working this week. What do we do when the story we’ve been handed no longer fits the sky we now see?

Let’s follow the clues.

Clue #1: Embracing the Sky as It Is

The Tao Te Ching doesn’t read like a rulebook. It reads like a whisper in a hallway. Half warning, half invitation. Chapter 3 is no different. It’s not a list of commandments. It’s a sketch of how life works when you stop trying to orchestrate the stars.

Let’s look at the first few lines:

At first glance, it almost feels anti-merit. But Lao-Tzu isn’t saying we should ignore talent. He’s pointing to what happens when a society builds itself around comparison. When we exalt the gifted, we create hierarchies. And where there are hierarchies, there’s striving. Quarreling. Insecurity. When we glorify brilliance, we accidentally breed resentment. You hand someone a pedestal, and you hand everyone else a ladder.

Under the Fundamentalist canopy, giftedness had its own glow. Pastors, preachers, missionaries, always painted in gold leaf. Those of us who weren’t called to lead were expected to submit. And that may not start as quarreling, but it sure ends there. The Tao, by contrast, suggests: What if we stopped handing out crowns altogether?

Now here’s one that could sound like it’s promoting asceticism. Maybe even poverty. But that misses the current. It’s not a prohibition. It’s an observation. When society doesn’t glorify wealth, there’s less impulse to take what isn’t yours. This isn’t about having nothing. It’s about not placing treasure at the centre of things. If gold is just metal, no one kills to get it.

Under the canopy, we were told to “lay up treasures in heaven,” and often there was an unspoken reverence for lack. Riches were treated with suspicion, as if poverty itself was proof of trusting Jesus. But then you’d hear of pastors of large mega-churches who died with millions. The story was murky, muddled. Lao-Tzu cuts through that confusion. He’s not demonising treasure. He’s just asking—what kind of world do we create when treasure becomes our North Star?

Desire isn’t bad, but it can blur your vision. The painted sky of consumerism and religious performance fills your gaze with glitter. And when all you see is glitter, your heart starts chasing things it doesn’t even understand.

Lao-Tzu's offering a different kind of seeing. Not blindness. Clarity. When you stop fixating on what dazzles, your heart quiets. Not out of boredom. Out of freedom.

Now the next section shifts a bit. It takes these observations and builds a response:

Yes, it’s directed at rulers. Lao-Tzu's laying out the model of wise governance. And it does sound strange to modern ears. Empty hearts? Weaken ambition? Isn’t that just asking for a passive population?

But it’s not a call to manipulate people. It’s a call to remove the causes of social disorder. Emptying hearts means calming emotional turmoil, not making people dull. Stuffing bellies means making sure people’s basic needs are met. It’s about balance. You give people what they need. You don’t whip them into frenzy with false needs. You strengthen bones by making sure life is simple, grounded, lived close to the earth.

Think of it like this. Under the painted sky, leaders stoke ambition, sell vision, manufacture desire. But under the real sky, the Tao says, feed people well and leave their souls alone.

This one’s the trickiest. It’s easy to misread as “keep people ignorant,” but that’s a Western lens. Knowledge here refers not to wisdom, but to cleverness—the kind that schemes, manipulates, strategises for personal gain.

Same with desire—not healthy longing, but the endless itch to get more. The more people chase and plot, the more society fractures. But if you quiet the collective thirst for control and craving, the manipulators lose their audience. The false teachers pack up. The demagogues lose the microphone.

That’s a line that hits close to home if you’ve spent time under high-control religion. Fundamentalism thrives on clever people interfering—with your beliefs, your thoughts, even your private desires. The Tao’s vision is the opposite. No control, no scheming, just peace.

That’s the closing whisper. A summation of wu wei, the Taoist idea of “non-doing,” or more accurately, not forcing. It’s not laziness. It’s alignment. The Tao isn’t about sitting on your hands. It’s about moving with the current instead of against it.

Under the painted canopy, the story was: do more, be more, earn your place. But the real sky asks a different question: what if you stopped trying so hard to be worthy, and just let yourself be?

Application

So what does Chapter 3 offer us, standing here under the exposed sky?

It offers relief. From pressure. From performance. From the endless climb.

It suggests that maybe the painted sky of ambition, hierarchy, and spiritual striving was never freedom. It was just a beautifully convincing cage.

Lao-Tzu doesn’t invite us to a new system. He doesn’t hand us a new religion. He just says, “Put the ladder down. Walk away from the pedestal. Eat well. Breathe deep. Watch the stars move.”

And maybe...just maybe, that’s the real story.

Clue #2: Deconstruction — When the Canopy Comes Down

Ask yourself this: is Fundamentalism a cult, or just a very tight script?

Not every high-control group hands you a robe and a poison packet. Sometimes all it takes is a story. A sacred, airtight story. One that tells you who you are, what the world is, and what happens if you ever dare to ask too many questions.

The signs of a cult are easy to spot in hindsight. Total loyalty to a charismatic leader. Isolation from the outside world. Fear-based control. Punishment for dissent. But what about the softer signs? The invisible ones? The ones that wrap around your childhood like a warm blanket, only to become a noose the moment you tug?

A high-control group, on the other hand, doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it tells you that you’re chosen, special, separate. That everyone outside the group is lost or dangerous. That your doubts are sins. That your instincts are fallen. That your curiosity is rebellion. That your heart is deceitful above all things.

In Fundamentalism, the canopy above your head is painted in painstaking detail. Every doctrine, every rule, every answer accounted for. You don’t need to explore the stars when someone has already mapped them for you. You don’t need to look at the horizon when the backdrop is painted with heavenly light.

It doesn’t feel like a cage. It feels like clarity.

And that’s the trick, isn’t it? It doesn’t feel like control when the story tells you you’re free. It doesn’t seem like fear when the threat is dressed in love. “We’re only warning you because we care.” “We’re only separating because we must be holy.” “We’re only silencing you because the truth must be protected.”

The difference between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism might be nothing more than artistic style. Fundamentalism gives you a black-and-white etching. Evangelicalism offers a colourful mural. But the message is the same. Stay inside. Trust the painter. Don’t ask who hung the sky.

And here’s the part they don’t tell you:

Even when the paint starts to peel, even when the seams of the canvas come into view, even when you catch a glimpse of the vast world beyond...it’s still easier to stay. Especially if you have a spouse under the canopy. Especially if your children are still asleep beneath it. You tell yourself that freedom can wait. That questions can wait. That honesty can wait.

Because stepping outside feels like betrayal. And staying inside feels like love.

But the truth? It takes real bravery to leave. To face the cold wind and the unfamiliar stars. To realise that certainty was never the point. To discover that the unknown doesn’t mean unsafe. It just means undiscovered.

The canopy isn’t made of steel. It’s made of certainty. And it’s easier to stay under it than to admit you’ve never seen the real stars.

But once you do, once you step out and see that sky for yourself...there’s no going back.

And strangely enough, you won’t want to.

Because in that wild unknown, where nothing is painted and nothing is scripted, you start to feel something new. You start to feel alive.

Clue #3: What Happens in the Dark

If Fundamentalism gave us a painted sky, then noir is what happens when the paint wears off and the stars still don’t show. Noir begins where certainty ends. In these stories, there’s no guarantee of justice, no divine retribution, no clean resolution at the end of the chapter. The world is cracked and crooked, and yet, somehow, the characters keep walking.

In noir, the canopy never existed to begin with. There is no promise that truth will prevail, only the flicker of a cigarette and the echo of footsteps down a rain-slick alley. The detective doesn’t trust the system. He doesn’t expect miracles. What he’s after is evidence. Something that holds up. Something that makes sense in a senseless world.

That’s what drew me to noir fiction in the first place. And it’s why I wrote Nick Grayson: The Truth in the Lies. Nick’s pain didn’t come from a chaotic world. It came from the very institution that claimed to give him order. The church didn’t just fail him. It helped create the very darkness he now wanders through. His story is personal. It’s not about solving a mystery for someone else. It’s about untangling his own.

Nick doesn’t believe in happy endings. He believes in evidence. And he’s not afraid to look where others won’t.

My second Nick Grayson novel, Pure Evil, is currently on track for release around Thanksgiving. This one goes even deeper. It doesn’t just peel back the paint. It asks who did the painting in the first place, and why.

Noir doesn’t offer the safety of the painted sky. But it offers something else. A kind of raw honesty. A willingness to face the dark without flinching. It teaches us to live without guarantees, and still press forward.

Because even without the canopy, there’s still a path. And sometimes, it’s in the shadows where we learn to see.

Clue #4: Illusions by Richard Bach: Freedom Beyond the Script

Sometimes, the painted canopy isn’t imposed on you.
Sometimes, you paint it yourself.

In Illusions, Richard Bach introduces us to a reluctant messiah who walks away from the role. Not because he isn’t powerful, but because he realises the whole thing is a performance. A myth. A story people want to believe. And he refuses to be the star of someone else’s show.

The book gently, and hilariously, mocks our need for gurus, teachers, even sacred scripts. Don Shimoda knows people don’t want truth. They want certainty, and if you’re the one handing it out, they’ll call you a saviour, chain you to a rock, and then blame you for bleeding.

Real freedom, Illusions whispers, isn’t found in playing the part. It’s in dropping the act altogether.

There’s a scene early in the book, one that’s tattooed on my heart, about creatures who live at the bottom of a river, clinging desperately to rocks while the current flows above them. One brave soul lets go. At first, he’s battered and bruised by the current. But eventually, the river lifts him, and he begins to fly. The others see him soaring and call him a messiah.

But he says simply: The river delights to lift those who dare to let go.

That, my friend, is the gospel of Illusions.

This book flies, quite literally. Bach was a pilot, and his descriptions of the biplanes, those two tiny, beautiful machines gliding through the sky, are like scripture for the soul. The wind, the wings, the freedom of just lifting off. You feel it as you read. Like you could unstrap yourself from your own illusions and float, just for a moment.

One of my favourite moments is when Don brings Richard into a movie theatre. They watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And Don asks him to imagine, what if that’s what life is? A story we entered so fully, we forgot we were actors. We got caught in the action and the emotion, and forgot it was just a movie.

And the moment you remember…
That’s when you wake up.

The painted canopy is comforting.
It tells us where the sky ends and the gods begin.
But Illusions asks: what if the canopy was the illusion?
What if the whole sky was yours, and you’d just forgotten how to fly?

Mystery Solved: The Canopy Is Coming Down

It was always a story.

The painted canopy. The myths we inherit. The scripts we’re handed before we’re old enough to question the role we’ve been cast in. Whether it was a God who watched your every move, a version of success with a mortgage and a white picket fence, or a morality that punished curiosity and called it rebellion.

These stories shaped us. Protected us. Sometimes, they inspired us. But they also confined us. They built ceilings over our heads and told us that was the sky.

But here's the truth: the moment you realise it's a story, you're not doomed. You're free.

You are not betraying your past when you question the script. You're honouring your own evolution. You're not cursed for seeing the cracks in the stained glass. You're blessed with the courage to look through them.

You were never trapped. Not by the Bible. Not by your parents. Not by your trauma. Not even by your faith. The only real prison was the story that said you couldn't leave.

And now, under this vast and holy expanse of unpainted sky, you get to write something new.

It doesn’t need a title yet. It doesn’t need approval. It doesn’t even need to make sense to anyone else.

It only needs to be true.
To you.
Right now.

So go on. Step out.
The canopy is coming down.
And the sky was always yours.