Untamed Grace | Christian Deconstruction, Universalism, & Faith Beyond Fear

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What if the Bible is far more playful, hopeful, and grace-soaked than we were ever told?

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson sits down with R.A. Sweeney (Reed), a Hebrew scholar and author whose deep immersion in the original biblical languages reveals a God overflowing with love, humor, and relentless grace. Reed shares how learning Hebrew and Greek cracked open the text, uncovering layers of meaning, wordplay, and divine character that often get flattened in English translation.

Together, they explore free will, the Kingdom of God, judgment, and the afterlife, gently but boldly challenging fear-based interpretations of Scripture. Reed reframes hell, exile, and judgment not as God walking away, but as part of a larger story of restoration, healing, and universal reconciliation. At the heart of it all is a God who refuses to abandon creation and who invites us to experience the life of the Kingdom here and now, not just someday after death.

This conversation is for anyone navigating deconstruction, wrestling with hell theology, or longing for a faith rooted in grace over fear, relationship over rules, and hope over condemnation. It’s biblical scholarship without the threats. Theology with a sense of humor. And a vision of God that’s far bigger—and far kinder—than the one many of us inherited.

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_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

Most of us picture God as balanced—a careful blend of wrath and mercy, justice and love. That’s the God we think we can live with: predictable, measured, safe. But the God Jesus revealed wasn’t safe or predictable at all. He was excessive, extreme, even unreasonable in the ways he poured out love and forgiveness. A father who ran wild to embrace a son who’d squandered everything. A shepherd who abandoned ninety-nine sheep just to chase one. A king who canceled debts so massive they could never be repaid. None of it was balanced. None of it was fair. And yet all of it was love.

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson explores the radical, boundary-breaking nature of God’s reckless love. What happens when we realize God is not the careful moderator of our moral categories, but a parent who lavishes grace beyond measure? And if that’s true—what does it mean not just for us, but for the people we’d rather exclude?

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

What if the most damaging lie we inherited from religion was that we don’t deserve love?

In this episode, Jeromy and Religious Trauma Coach Kristi Williams unravel how shame-based theology shaped us, and how grace tells a different story.

First, Jeromy unravels the theology that taught us we were born depraved, unworthy, and in need of fixing before love could find us. Through the lens of grace, Jesus’ encounters with the “undeserving,” and the wounds left by shame-based religion, this episode reframes our worth from the ground up. This episode unpacks how shame-based Christianity, original sin theology, and fear-based definitions of grace shape our identity, attachment, and mental health.

Then, Religious Trauma Coach Kristi Williams joins Jeromy for a raw, off-the-cuff reaction to the episode, sharing her own experience growing up Seventh-day Adventist, how doctrines of sin and judgment shaped her attachment style, and why trauma, neurobiology, and faith deconstruction often collide in powerful ways. She explores how beliefs like “you don’t deserve love” fracture the psyche, activate the amygdala, and disconnect us from intuition, compassion, and connection.

If you’ve ever wrestled with religious trauma, Christian deconstruction, or the question of whether you are worthy of love—this episode offers a new, healing story.

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

What if the scariest doctrine in Christianity was never true in the first place?

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson sits down with Benji McNair Scott—theologian, author of Hope in Hell, and one of the most compelling voices challenging the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment. Benji’s journey takes us from his evangelical roots through academic study, historical theology, early-church perspectives, and the breathtaking possibility that God’s love truly has no limits.

Together, Jeromy and Benji explore the real origins of hell theology, how fear became a tool of control, the psychological and spiritual damage caused by eternal-torment preaching, and why the earliest Christians held a shockingly different view. They talk universal reconciliation, restorative justice, the character of God, and what it means to believe in a love that doesn’t quit—even beyond death.

Whether you’re a deconstructing Christian, a curious skeptic, a burned-out evangelical, or someone quietly wondering, “Could God actually save everyone?”—this conversation offers depth, honesty, and a fierce kind of hope…all in a British accent. 

This is the gospel before fear got added. This is hope without a countdown clock. This is grace wide enough to hold the whole human story.

Benji's Book: A Hope In Hell

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

Leslie Nease, a former evangelical and Survivor China contestant, opens up about the moment her fear-based faith cracked and the grace that finally brought her home.

From Survivor to Heretic is Leslie’s raw, courageous story of what happens when a lifetime of evangelical certainty begins to crack. Her journey didn’t unravel because of scandal—or fame—but because she finally slowed down enough to listen. To Buddhists. To Mormons. To gay flight attendants. To the very people her fear-based faith had warned her about.

Their kindness undid something in her.
Their humanity sparked questions she had never been allowed to ask.
And the God she discovered as a result didn’t match the God she had been taught to fear.

In this episode, Jeromy Johnson and Leslie walk through the tender terrain of deconstruction, religious trauma, evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, and the long, slow unlearning that leads toward spiritual healing and progressive Christianity. This isn’t a story about losing faith, it’s the story of coming home to a God who was never threatened by doubt, curiosity, or a widening circle of love.

If you’re navigating your own journey out of fear and into freedom, this conversation offers companionship, compassion, and a reminder that you’re not alone. There are more of us out here than you think.

Jim Carrey Rhino Birth

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

Sometimes the ones who preached grace the loudest are the ones who have to learn it the hardest.

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson talks with Steve White, a former pastor and seminary-trained worship leader who lost everything, including his ministry, but found grace waiting in the wreckage. Steve’s story is one of failure, exile, and redemption—proof that God’s love doesn’t stop where religion does.

Together they talk about what happens when you’re too human for church, when your brokenness gets you cast out, and how grace keeps showing up in the very places you were told it wouldn’t. It’s the story of the long road toward self-forgiveness, and the discovery that grace doesn’t just forgive, it rebuilds.

If you’ve ever wondered whether deconstruction, forgiveness, and unconditional love can coexist, this conversation might just restore your faith in grace itself.

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

We love our sides. Teams, tribes, doctrines, denominations—lines in the sand that give us a sense of belonging, but also someone to fight against. From childhood football games of shirts versus skins to the way churches police communion tables, we learn to divide the world into “us” and “them.”

But here’s the scandal of grace: God doesn’t play for our team. In Jesus, God kept crossing the lines we defend—eating with sinners, healing enemies, and telling stories where outsiders were the heroes. Grace, by her very nature, is disloyal to our factions. She crawls under fences, sneaks into enemy camps, and embraces those we’d rather exclude.

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy wrestles with his own history of drawing hard lines and the freedom that comes when those lines dissolve. What if God has already taken everyone’s side? What if grace insists on showing up at both tables—ours, and theirs?

If you’ve ever been wearied by division, or longed for a love bigger than sides, this conversation is for you.

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

Sometimes losing your religion is how you finally find your soul.

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson sits down with Michael Camp—former missionary, Bible teacher, and author of Faith Funk: How to Break Free from Toxic Religion and Reboot a Healthy Spirituality.

Michael’s story is a roadmap for anyone leaving fear-based faith behind. Together they talk about deconstruction as discovery—what it means to question the beliefs that broke you, to heal from the shame that shaped you, and to rebuild a spirituality grounded in love instead of control.

This episode explores how losing your religion doesn’t mean losing your soul—it’s how you find it again. From rethinking hell and unlearning fear to rediscovering compassion, this conversation invites you to trade certainty for curiosity, and fear for freedom.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your doubts could be holy, or if God could survive your questions, this one’s for you.

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

From war zones to church pews, Bob found one truth: grace never stops reaching.

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson sits down with Bob Hildreth—a pastor, storyteller, and spiritual wanderer who’s walked with both the holy and the hurting. Bob shares his story of religious trauma, healing, and the surprising discovery that grace is far bigger—and far messier—than he was ever told.

Together they talk about the difference between a transactional God and a transformative one, how fear-based religion taught us to wear masks, and what happens when we finally stop trying to earn divine love and let ourselves be embraced by it. From psych wards to war zones, from theology to therapy, Bob’s story reminds us that grace is not polite, clean, or predictable—it’s relentless.

If you’ve ever wrestled with deconstruction, church hurt, or the fear of being “too far gone,” this conversation will meet you where you are. Because maybe the real tragedy isn’t loving God—it’s refusing to believe He could love everyone else just as much.

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send Jeromy a Message or Voicemail

What if hell isn’t God’s punishment—but our protest?

In this episode of Slutty Grace, Jeromy Johnson asks whether hell might simply be the porch outside the party—the place where the “good” and the religious stand, too offended by mercy to step into grace.

Through the story of the prodigal son’s older brother, and other moments when Jesus flipped religious expectations, Jeromy explores what happens when divine love feels too inclusive.

It’s a raw reflection on Christian deconstruction, faith reconstruction, and the scandal of universalism—the belief that God’s love is for everyone, even those we’d rather keep out.

After the monologue, Jeromy is joined by  Jonathan Brink for an honest, heart-level conversation about heaven, hell, forgiveness, resentment, and theology—and what it means to follow a God whose grace doesn’t play favorites.

If you’ve ever wrestled with faith, questioned religion’s gatekeeping, or wondered whether grace could really be that wild, this episode invites you to open the door and walk inside.

Support the show

_______________________________________________________

Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening. 

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.  
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.  

Slutty Grace Facebook Group

Episode written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson. 

Once grace is tamed, it ceases to be grace. Grace doesn’t hold back. She breaks the rules, softens hearts, and loves without apology. The open, universal, unapologetic love of God. Together we’re building a braver, more honest space. Thanks for your support and for listening.

1. Got a story, question, guest suggestions, or topic idea? Email me.
2. Please share if you believe this show and its message of grace is important in our time—keep it spreading!
3. Be sure to follow on whichever podcast platform you use.

Untamed Grace Facebook Group

Episode partnered with QuoirCast, and written, hosted, edited and produced by Jeromy Johnson.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.