Encountering the Wall
Asian American Spiritual Formation and the Critical Journey of Faith
By Sharon Wada, Co-Director of Sustainable Faith and Dr. David Chao, Director of the Center for Asian American Christianity.
In the landscape of Christian spirituality, few metaphors capture the complexity of faith formation as vividly as the image of the “Wall.” In the vernacular, we may exclaim, “I’ve hit the wall!” when we feel we can’t go on with our intentions or demands of life. Spiritually, the Wall emerges when familiar patterns of belief and spiritual practice no longer sustain us. It marks a threshold that cannot be bypassed or minimized, a liminal space where our assumptions about God and ourselves are tested, refined, and sometimes undone. Although the Wall is a universal dimension of the Christian spiritual journey, for Asian American Christians, it has a particular texture and gravity. Our journeys unfold not in isolation, but amid intergenerational family narratives shaped by transpacific migration, the pressures of adaptation and assimilation, and the often-unspoken wounds of racialization and systemic injustice. Our faith is entangled within these contexts, and thus encountering the Wall requires us to face not only our interior spiritual struggles but also the histories, migrations, and social structures that have formed us.
Over the past several decades, research and reflection on spiritual formation have yielded frameworks that help guide us as we move through the stages of faith development. One such framework, drawn from books like The Critical Journey by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich, outlines a movement through six stages of faith, with the Wall situated as the boundary between the first half (external) and second half (internal) of the journey. Yet these models are often presented in relatively culture-neutral terms. For Asian American Christians, deepening our spiritual formation requires contextualizing the Wall and seeing how it intersects with our personal and communal stories. To do this, we must attend carefully to three key narrative strands. These can be envisioned as three concentric circles: the innermost circle of the intergenerational family story, the middle circle of Asian Americans’ social histories of migration and racialization, and the outermost circle of God’s divine economy—God’s ongoing work of creation, redemption, and sanctification that enfolds all human stories.
The Wall and the Critical Journey of Faith
The Critical Journey posits that faith formation is not a linear progression of successively “better” stages, but rather a fluid process through which believers may move back and forth. Still, a general pattern emerges. Movement through the first three stages rely heavily on external community and recognized leaders for learning and serving. These stages often align with early faith experiences: the initial awareness of God and personal conversion, intentional learning about faith through scripture study and community, and active service to others—what might be considered a productive, outwardly focused stage.
This early trajectory can be incredibly meaningful. Many Asian American Christians, shaped by church communities and parachurch ministries, draw strength from external mentors, Bible studies, and the affirmation of hard work and evangelistic zeal. Yet as life unfolds, we inevitably encounter personal and doctrinal crises that existing practices cannot fully address. We come face to face with our own human limits, weaknesses, or hidden wounds. For many, this is the Wall: a place of spiritual disorientation, upheaval, and profound questioning. It can be triggered by heartbreak, family breakdown, vocational disappointments, failed expectations, mental health struggles, or the recognition that long-held theologies do not match lived realities. Or it can be as simple and subtle as a gnawing sense of having “outgrown” prior directives for a life of faith. The Wall reveals the inadequacy of a faith grounded solely in external validation and intellectual certainty. It beckons us toward inner transformation, inviting lament, vulnerability, and the integration of neglected parts of our humanity. It results in a deeper personal sense of knowing God and discerning guidance.
Asian American Contexts: Intergenerational Stories and Social Histories
All Christians face walls in their journeys. But for Asian American believers, the Wall is often inextricably bound up with our particular social and familial contexts. The innermost circle of Asian American Christian formation is the intergenerational family story. Most of us grow up hearing fragments of ancestral narratives told around dinner tables or hinted at in the silence of things left unsaid. We inherit unarticulated wounds: the aftershocks of wars, displacement, internment, or political upheaval in ancestral homelands; the unrelenting drive to succeed academically and financially as a form of survival and social legitimacy; the subtle shames and suppressed angers transmitted from parents who, amid sacrifices and alienation, found few outlets for emotional honesty. These deeply patterned family dynamics shape who we are and how we approach God.
The second circle, our social history as Asians in the U.S., expands the lens. Asian Americans live in a nation with its own racial scripts. We grow up under the perpetual foreigner trope or the model minority myth, simultaneously praised for academic and professional achievements and yet subtly diminished, excluded from full belonging. The pressures to “prove” ourselves worthy—through performance, obedience, and relentless productivity—can inadvertently infiltrate our theological frameworks. If our early faith formation emphasizes work, achievement, and moral accomplishment as signs of spiritual health, we reinforce patterns of spiritual performance that resonate eerily with racial stereotypes and family obligations. Over time, these demands become spiritually suffocating. The Wall may present itself not only as a moment of existential crisis but as a reckoning with these inherited cultural burdens. The weight of unredeemed family cultural norms and unquestioned societal biases become soul crushing and demands attention.
Reimagining Spiritual Formation and Theological Frameworks
The integration of the inner and middle circles—our family and social contexts—within the broader story of God’s grace and redemption forms the largest circle. This outermost circle is the divine economy: God’s narrative of creating, sustaining, and redeeming the world. The Scriptures affirm that God cares for particular peoples and particular stories. The incarnation of Christ in Jewish flesh, the formation of a covenant people from a specific historical lineage, and the Spirit’s ongoing work of sanctification in the church—these all remind us that our cultural particularities and social embodiments matter deeply.
For Asian American Christians, recovering doctrines like creation, providence, and sanctification through a contextual lens is transformative. Leaning on salvation by grace alone—so central to the Protestant tradition—becomes a balm in a context where worth and belonging often feel contingent on achievement. Understanding and embracing providence, God’s loving governance of creation, helps us see that the mundane aspects of our lives—vocation, family structures, socioeconomic conditions—are not merely secular concerns. They form the very stage upon which divine grace unfolds. Likewise, sanctification, often imagined as purely inward and individual, can expand to encompass communal healing, systemic justice, and the restoration of broken family legacies. Just as God redeems individuals, God also works through and within communities, histories, and social transformations.
Navigating the Wall: Toward Authentic Wholeness
To engage the Wall is to move from the first half of our spiritual life into deeper stages of inward reflection, trust, and integration and to emerge with greater spiritual maturity and wisdom. Rather than relying solely on external authorities and communal affirmation, we learn to discern the Spirit’s voice within. In this second half of the journey, the Wall catalyzes a more authentic faith, one that can hold ambivalence, lament, and mystery without collapsing. Passing through the Wall does not necessarily erase the wounds we carry, but it allows us to name them, grieve them, and find new meaning. It enables us to respond to intergenerational trauma with compassion rather than denial, to acknowledge systemic injustices rather than internalize blame or shame.
Practically, this work of integration might involve seeking soul care through spiritual direction, therapy, or trusted mentors who understand both our faith and cultural contexts. It might mean learning the language of lament found in the Psalms, discovering that anger, disappointment, and sadness are not signs of faithlessness but invitations to deeper honesty with God. It might also mean drawing on Asian American studies or family systems theory to understand how our longings, anxieties, and relational patterns did not emerge in a vacuum, but are part of a larger tapestry of migration, resilience, and survival. These insights become part of our spiritual formation, teaching us that the Holy Spirit’s work extends to our collective histories and identities.
A Vision for the Road Ahead
As we make our way through the Wall, we emerge into a space of greater authenticity and spiritual freedom. Our faith is no longer confined to doctrinal formulas or external achievements; it resonates in our bones and breathes through our cultural memories. We bring all of ourselves to God—our heartbreaks, our generational scars, and our fervent hopes for justice and belonging. Our vocations, whether in the church or the marketplace, whether in caregiving or creative work, become arenas for bearing witness to God’s grace. Our relationships—parenting, mentoring, neighborliness—reflect an ongoing sanctification that involves learning how to love wisely, fully, and mercifully.
Asian American Christian spiritual formation is not a path from which we must strip away our cultural and social particularities in pursuit of a “pure” faith. Instead, our stories, struggles, and communal contexts are vital pathways through which God reveals divine love and purpose. The three concentric circles—intergenerational family narratives, broader social histories, and God’s divine economy—form a framework that honors the fullness of who we are as embodied, situated believers.
Encountering the Wall is demanding, often painful, and sometimes disorienting. Yet it is also an invitation into deeper life. Passing through it with open eyes and open hearts leads us to a more holistic spirituality: a life marked by grace rather than performance, by honest lament rather than silent suffering, by critical reflection rather than passive acceptance, and by the healing presence of God working in and through our Asian American stories. By pressing through the Wall, we emerge with a fullness of grace that comes from knowing God and ourselves more deeply. We are refueled and reinspired for fruitful service. In this way, the Wall becomes not an impassable barrier, but a holy threshold—one that transforms not only our individual souls, but the communities and generations that follow after us.1
Sharon Wada is co-director of Sustainable Faith, a non-profit dedicated to fostering a culture of healthy spirituality among leaders and their communities. She is actively involved in training spiritual directors, providing resources for new expressions of Christian community, and creating spaces for leaders to develop regular practices of well-being. Sharon has a masters degree in intercultural studies from Fuller Seminary. She has a particular concern for the complexities and needed contextualization inherent to the journey of leaders of color.
Dr. David C. Chao is director of the Center for Asian American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He teaches courses related to Asian American theology and organizes programs in Asian American theology and ministry. His research and writing focus on the faith and practice of ordinary Asian Christians in diasporic context as well as the uses of Christian doctrine for liberation, the convergence and divergence of Protestant and Catholic dogmatics, and the theology of Karl Barth. His research on Asian American religious life and politics is funded by The Henry Luce Foundation, the Louisville Institute, and APARRI.
Read more about the director of the CAAC here.
This piece was adapted from a talk delivered by Sharon Wada and Dr. David Chao during the CAAC’s 2024 Mental Health Conference. A link to the talk can be found here: