Strong Beliefs, Loosely Held: Unmasking Ourselves for True Consultation and a Future Worth Building
Dear Friends,
Each installment of “Created in the Image of God” is meant as a shared step forward—sometimes into agreement, often into honest tension, but always toward deeper unity. This week, the path has brought me into rich (and at times, deliciously unpredictable) dialogue with philosopher, educator, and founder of Middle Tree, Dr. Joseph Atman.
Joe, whose personal odyssey took him from “almost not graduating high school” to earning a PhD in philosophy of religion, could easily have become a cautionary tale or a study in solitary genius. Instead, he has emerged as an advocate of radical openness—a living example of what it means to combine strong convictions with the humility to let go, pivot, and go deeper. In an age of performative certainty and escalating culture war, his story—and the model of our partnership—feels not just refreshing, but essential.
Strong Beliefs, Loosely Held: The Antidote for Our Age
We’re living through an era where “dialogue” often means debate, and where holding a position loosely is mistakenly read as weakness. We come equipped with our narratives. We sharpen our biases. And then we’re shocked when polarization intensifies, when communities fracture, when honest discovery becomes nearly impossible.
Joe’s story, like mine, is a witness to another way. In our recent conversation, he shared how a single teacher, Dr. Griffith, told him “You have a very powerful mind. I think you should use it.” This was not hollow flattery, but an invitation to reject the limiting narratives Joe had absorbed—from systems, grades, even his own self-doubt. That encounter set him on a journey—from academic near-miss to the rare air of doctoral scholarship—precisely because someone believed in not just his mind, but its capacity for growth, surprise, and unplanned depth.
That humility, that freedom to journey without needing all the answers up front, now serves as both the foundation of Middle Tree’s learner-empowering model and the spirit animating our joint work at SOOP and Planksip. It is, I believe, the secret sauce for renewal—spiritual and societal.
Taking Off the Mask: What Are We Really Defending?
One theme Joseph is exploring in his trilogy, A Philosophical War, is the mask—how we build, defend, and eventually suffocate under the conceptual frameworks we inherit or invent. The first mask is the system’s: “You are your grades. You fit in this slot. You’re this kind of learner, or that kind of failure.” But even in liberation, a second mask looms: “Here are my new beliefs, now I must defend them at all costs.”
Joe’s career is a testament to the beauty of peeling back each mask—not for the sake of deconstruction or self-doubt, but for the relentless search for frameworks and practices that are more freeing, more just, and more real.
This is not theoretical. It’s at the heart of the art of consultation—the process both SOOP and Middle Tree are dedicated to advancing. True consultation means entering a conversation with all your conviction, but with your hands open; to want the truth more than to be right, and to discover—in dialogue, even “debate”—what you could never have come to alone.
It’s the spirit behind the Bahá’í tablet, “Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can alone cause it to reveal its treasures…”—and the Jewish tradition of hevruta, paired study, where even argument is a vessel for revelation.
From the Academy to the Real World: Why This Matters Now
These aren’t just the musings of philosophers in their towers. Practically everywhere, we see systems—educational, media, political—that have become calcified, serving their self-preservation rather than the flourishing of people. As I shared live, when academic frameworks become too rigid, or churches become only comfortable echo chambers, real learning and genuine dialogue cannot survive.
The consequences are all around us: institutional inertia, brittle doctrine, shallow partisanship, a loss of curiosity and hope. As headlines shout and narratives polarize, there’s a gnawing sense that our very capacity to consult, cooperate, and build together is under siege.
But here’s the hope: if people like Joe, and movements like Middle Tree, can re-empower individuals to take ownership of learning (and unlearning); if we can come together not to score points but to hash out, argue, and slowly—sometimes painfully—arrive at new syntheses… then real healing, and forward motion, are possible.
The Praxis of Open Inquiry: Our Joint Project
This is why Joe and I, through SOOP, Planksip, and this Substack, are doubling down on the art of consultation—forging spaces where strong perspectives enter the circle, but no one clings so tightly to their “mask” that discovery becomes impossible.
- In Middle Tree: Children who believed themselves “bad at math” find joy, mastery, and confidence—not because the subject changed, but because the atmosphere did.
- In publishing & podcasting: We are convening writers, thinkers, and seekers to treat conversation itself as sacred—not debate for the sake of ego, but dialogue for the sake of community.
- In faith and philosophy: We openly acknowledge the risk: letting go of your favorite story, or your conceptual mask, isn’t easy. But what is faith worth if it can’t be refined—or even replaced—by a deeper, living truth?
Our shared aim is not an easy consensus, but a dynamic unity—the kind that can only come from loosely held strength: a willingness to arrive changed, to “unmask” ourselves in the presence of one another, so that our best ideas and best hopes can meet, collide, and bear fruit.
A Call to Practice Together: Peeling Back the Next Mask
What do we do, when we sense our frameworks hardening, our curiosity flagging, or our community fracturing under the weight of slogans?
We risk the next consultation. We hold our beliefs powerfully, but with humility enough to “let the mask fall” when discovery or love require it. We honor the journey—Joe’s, mine, yours—knowing the next solution won’t look like the last, and that’s precisely our best hope.
In practical terms, that might mean:
- Saying “I don’t know—yet.”
- Welcoming the “other side” not as a threat, but as a potential partner in discovery.
- Creating spaces—at work, in worship, in family—where beliefs are tested, not merely recited.
- Practicing the art of asking real questions (“What else might we be missing?”) rather than loading up rhetorical ammunition.
And most of all: remembering we are, together, created in the image of a God whose own story is always more surprising, more open, and more life-giving than even our best dogmas.
What mask are you ready to loosen this week? Where could “strong beliefs, loosely held” invite new possibility in your community or family? And who, like Dr. Griffith for Joe, could you pour fresh belief into today?
Both Joe and I would love to hear your stories—of open dialogue, of unmasking, of strong-but-soft-hearted consultation. Share them in the comments, reply, or restack, and—if this series adds value to your own path—consider a paid subscription to support the continued evolution of this lively, living conversation.
We’re building this in the open, step by step. May your journey feel richer for it.
With hope, humility, and ever-looser hands,
—Wade Fransson
“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures…”
—Bahá’u’lláh, and our invitation to consult—forever forward.
P.S. Next episode: We go even deeper on the practice of real consultation—and the surprising places it leads. Stay tuned.
