Meet the Author Behind Love Saves All
My name is Steven Daniel. My first clear memory is a needle in my spine — a spinal tap when I was three, after I nearly died of meningitis and scarlet fever. That shock into life set the tone.
My life after that has been a long string of emergencies: at four my uncle tried to kill himself and went into a coma; at fifteen, eleven days shy of my sixteenth birthday, my brother-in-law killed himself; at twenty-two I found the body of my best friend who had done the same. I’ve walked with suicidal lovers and watched people I loved choose death. I’ve been a victim of domestic violence, and have been generally rejected and bullied by others my entire childhood. I have witnessed war, poverty, and depravity up close as a combat vet — and came home with a dramatic brain injury and a lifelong seizure disorder as a token to remember it by.
I carry diagnoses like badges and scars: autism, ADHD, generalized anxiety, bipolar disorder, major depression, and chronic PTSD. I’ve suffered chronic insomnia since I can remember. I’ve fought addiction to cope with the blowback of trauma and the steady hum of pain. Suicide, grief, relapse, and loss have been my curriculum in life.
I don’t tell you this for pity. I tell you this because it proves a point: I have been broken more times than I can count, and yet I am still here. The truth I built Love Saves around is simple and terrible and freeing all at the same time — that loving action is the only force capable of transforming pain into meaning and, eventually, joy.
I was raised on a god of vengeance, and was taught I was filthy and worthless for the offense of merely being born. That theology nearly destroyed me. Churches taught shame as salvation; preachers told me I was going to hell more times than I can count. But my life — the people I loved, the suffering I survived — taught me another truth: no loving God would consign beloved children to eternal torture. If God is love, then His love saves. Period.
So today I’m here to flip the script. Love Saves is an exposé of the ways religion can corrupt, shame, and drive people away from God — and it is the workshop where God helped me rebuild a faith in Him that heals rather than harms. We did it with hard honesty, rigorous thinking, and relentless compassion. In my writing I borrow from science, scripture, philosophy, and lived experience, and I weave all of that material into one coherent picture of an existence governed by a God of unconditional love.
Love Saves is not a soft sentiment. This is a call to action for the burned, the skeptical, the broken, and the righteously indignant. If you are tired of the use of shame and tired of platitudes as tools of religious oppression, you’re in the right place. This movement does not intend to “fix” you. Rather, it is intended to empower you and to fight alongside you. Here, love is utilized in a way that is practical, messy, and powerful enough to save.
Love saves. And so must we.
— Steven Daniel
