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- #129. Bad Christianity
#129. Bad Christianity
Shem Opolot
July 11, 2025
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Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 While working on an assignment the other day, a tiny spider lowered itself from my ceiling on its longest silk thread, stopping at my eye level. Its many legs motionless, the spider paused between my forehead and my desktop monitor like a museum burglar evading security lasers.
Have you ever wondered why, for the most part, you don’t see spiders often unless you open an old box or walk into a deserted room?
Spiders hired a PR agent who convinced many people, including me, that they are kind and considerate. The word was that spiders can track human schedules and effectively make themselves scarce when we are most active. The word was that if you see a spider, your regular schedule is probably off. It’s you—not the spider.
But the truth is that spiders are pathological introverts, hypersensitive to vibrations caused by noise and movement, which causes them to seek refuge in areas or during times when vibrations are at a minimum.
Yeah, I prefer the PR spin, too.
LIFE.
Bad Christianity
While I lived in Ohio, I had a Mormon friend named Bill (the one responsible for this), and I resisted the urge to crack the stereotypical jokes I’d heard about his religion until my last day in Ohio.
On my last day in Ohio, I gave away all my surplus belongings and reduced my life to two suitcases. As part of that purge, I gave Bill the $10,000 Cannondale bike my landlord bequeathed to me on the first day I moved into the 15,000-square-foot mansion I’d stay in for close to a year.
The story of the mansion is lengthy, but here’s the abridged version.
Bill and I couldn’t meet physically for the bike transfer because it was a logistical nightmare for me to have just any visitors at that estate. So I left the bike at an agreed-upon location and left him a note saying, “Because for you and your people, evangelism is a ride-or-die situation.”
If you don’t get it, Mormons are famous for spreading the gospel on two wheels.
Bill’s aversion to technology—another feature, not a bug, of his faith—meant I never knew if he laughed or scoffed at the note.
And I questioned many things about Bill, but I never questioned his devotion. Bill was a good Christian.
I’m not a good Christian. Mostly because sometimes I’m not sure what being a good one means. Burdened by this uncertainty, which can resemble humility, which in turn can then feel perversely virtuous, I bury my faith in the dirt like a nuke—afraid that in the wrong hands, it could flatten everything around me.
Some Christians might say evangelism—what Bill and other Mormons do when they dress up like high school boys at assembly, mount bikes, and accost strangers for Jesus’ sake—is the calling of every Christian. And they might be right. Damn it, they’re probably right.
But for me, evangelism contravenes two personal tenets: 1) There are no absolutes and 2) Always read the room. Absolute certainty can be dangerous, evidenced by a U.S. senator who, when pressed on America’s foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine, said he supports “Israel” because the Bible commands him to. And radical evangelism doesn’t always read the room. I refuse to be someone who doesn’t read the room.
For example, there were 241 passengers on the India Air flight that crashed recently, killing all but one passenger. Even now, your first reaction might be to marvel at this, and you’d be right—that one person’s survival was incredible. Miraculous, even. And I’m sure Netflix writers are scribbling so hard that the poor man is hearing tudums in his sleep. But shortly after such a tragedy, that moment hardly seemed like the right time to say, “God must’ve had a great plan for that one man.” And yet—that was one of the first comments I read.
So, torn between evangelical trepidation and biblical beckonings, I split the difference by looking for love in every place. I try to lead with warmth in every room, in every conversation. And then, if it comes up, if someone asks me why I am the way I am…
Then, and only then—I ask them if they have a minute or two to talk about our savior, Lord Jesus Christ.
THINGS.
A quote.
If you pay attention to how you feel before you create, while you create and after you create, you gain greater control over your creative process.
Creativity becomes less a desperate attempt to catch lightning in a bottle and more an act of paying attention to the sensations going on in your body.
A picture.
After taking a trip to Eastern Uganda, near our ancestral home, my brother posted this picture of himself in the family group chat a while back, and I had to double-take because I thought that was me. So now I miss my brother a lot.
WORK.
Break it down, now 🥁
Sometimes you need help breaking down complex issues into smaller bits, and this website helps with that.
FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ If you’re good with colors, this is for you
✅ How the animal on a wine bottle can predict the price of the bottle
✅ The largest online photo archive of in-flight meals
✅ If you have time, here’s an analysis of title drops in movies
✅ Try this NY Times word game
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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