Faithless

My friends, I feel that I have left a part of myself in my past, to be remembered fondly but to be a part of me no more. It is here that I shall attempt to articulate what that means, perhaps in what may be a surprising manner to some. As always, I write to respectfully cause cognitive dissonance in myself and others, so please take any harsh language in such a context, and please disagree with me or come to me personally if you are concerned.

To those close to me that did not see this coming: I'm sorry. I do not mean to cause you any sort of surprise or distress, and I want to talk about this if you are those things. Please accept that some things go better in writing than they do in spoken words for me, and that this could no longer stay inside, bottled up, without making me burst from the pressure. I must be who I am. I know you understand.

It is not often that I use media to make a point on this blog. I, in fact, try to avoid it whenever possible. It is precisely because of this trend that I beg your indulgence today. I will attempt to describe what I need to, but the visuals and music in this video make it much simpler.

If that doesn't load very well for you or you didn't feel like watching it, here is how I must describe things.

I was alone in the desert, left behind, and I was offered a reprieve from my loneliness. All I had to do was truly embrace the life of faith. The price for that was my hope, dreams, and intellect. I fought hard against this price for a very long time.

"Hope is truly found in this life," said I, "just look at the cool glass of water that's been poured for me! I shall never go thirsty for the hope of a bright future." And yet, what kind of a future was I offered? There was the promise that all things would be reconciled, that the ideal of a world without war would exist, but those of faith differ wildly on such things, and church history is replete with war, ostracization, and excommunication. How could these things possibly add up to the kind of Love that Bell wrote about in "Love Wins" or Manning wrote about in "The Ragamuffin Gospel"? That furious love, that unstoppable grace that even the traditional conception of hell could not stand against. And yet, I was told, hell does exist, enemies do exist, and the hope I was offered came with a price...us vs them. Or perhaps more eloquently...us trying to save them. Why then, have I never felt a need to save anyone? Why have I never met a "them"? All of the hope I found was found in people, and eventually in myself. The hope I was offered was nihilism wrapped up in theism.

I dreamed of being something special. In fact, I was told I would be so from a very young age. I was told I would change the world, that I would be one of the people that made faith sensical and rational and compassionate. Why does it need to be made these things if God's work was complete? The answer, of course, was that we are in process. "Dreams," I said, "are sourced from God, for from Him all good things come." So I kept looking up, kept looking outward, kept exploring. What I've found is a universe where life is not static, but dynamic. Love is not a binary, but a journey. Our race is not the center of the universe, but a part of it that we create the meaning of. More and more evidence mounts every day that life on this planet is expressed in many forms rather than species after their own kind, and that active respect is necessary for all of it if we as a race are to even survive. I was never taught this, and so it seems odd to even say. My dreams of being some kind of religious revolutionary began to seem extremely small compared to what the universe is and what humanity is in it. From this, I realized that I am special, and I am so because I choose to be who I am, every day.

My intellect, or perhaps my thoughts, have been what's guided me through so much in life. Every situation thoughtfully analyzed, every concept making sense, and every experience noted. "True philosophy," I said, "comes about naturally from the correct presuppositions and correct ways of thinking. If God is the source of this, then it is ordered in an understandable way, and it is how to understand the mind of God." So I continued to read, I continued to theorize and understand, and I have only begun to see the way logic runs in circles, presuppositions seem to come out of thin air and are deconstructed just as easily, and philosophies are like waves in the ocean. Why does one wave matter when you have the entirety of the ocean to see? Enjoy that wave, ride it or go through it, and move forward. You may be going through it while another person is riding it, but your positions will be switched around before you know it, when the next wave comes. It can't be taken so seriously that you can't play at points or enjoy yourself.

So it all began to feel wrong. If faith truly was a reprieve from loneliness, then why was I living like a reject in darkness, and why were my pursuits so adamantly rejected by most of those I spoke with? Even the "Christian philosophers" I spoke to seemed to disagree with and reject me when it was needed. The agenda began to become apparent to me, and I began to change as a result.

"Just go back to sleep," they said, as the rag was placed over my mouth. The abuse was real, as I was silenced in every way possible, and I felt that it was warranted. Truly, my mind was bent and my heart was twisted in such a real sense that I am still recovering from it. "I deserve this," said I, "for I have failed. I am human, and I just don't understand something." However, the haunting truth was that I really believed that they were the ones that were wrong, and that their religion was not representative of my own faith, despite the realization I would only come to later that what they represented was so connected to what I did that a true revolution was impossible. The presuppositions were too rigid. This is why those in religions that are out to cause real change are always referred to as "radical," meaning back to the roots, or "reforming," similarly meaning returning to the true nature of that religion.

Some say that a sufficiently disciplined mind can compartmentalize contradictory pieces of information. I believed, truly, that I was correct because I was called to be special by God, and that I was also worthless, useless, and alone. For some reason, these things went together into a martyrdom I can only describe as capture-bonding. This is more well-known as Stockholm Syndrome.

What happens when a person endures this for long enough? They break. They either become a complete shell of who they were, accepting the continual abuse of their soul placidly, or they develop a problem with the authority so casually invading their very person, and they decide they've had enough. My study of church history took this to a whole new level, as I realized that Christianity, the faith I was raised to believe in, came about from some incredibly violent historical circumstances, and that this abuse of people had been taking place since the very beginning. My study of the hero archetype of Jesus was the last piece of this puzzle, and it made the claim that the story of Christ was more important than the historical reality of his existence (or non-existence) make a lot of sense. If I may borrow from one of my favorite shows, "all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again." If the story of Christ was not unique, and the story of the church is a power struggle like many others, with the occasional idealistic and great figure emerging to make it about good things, then what is unique to the faith I was raised in, morally, historically, theologically, philosophically, politically, or in any other way?

It all comes down to a question: who do you trust?

Once again, we are back to people. The people I trust are of all different faiths, all different backgrounds, and they are all so uniquely human.

So the last great lie I was sold that I had to reject, "the smile when you tore me apart," was that I am, and am meant to be, alone. I am not meant to be alone. I do not know if God exists or if he does not, but every religious experience I have had so far I can soundly attribute to people. Whether that is authority, friendship, love, public experiences of "worship," or family, I can attribute the things that move my soul to people, and to people alone.

My friends, I must confess that I am tired of imposing loneliness on myself, and I refuse to do it anymore. I love people, and they frustrate me so much sometimes because I believe that we can be better. No one thing can cause this, but I wish to become better by listening, by being open with people, by learning, by arguing, by discussing and philosophizing and enjoying music and art and literature and absurdity and laughter and beauty. I wish to grieve with others, to be a conduit for comfort to the hurt and the downtrodden, and to be a voice of realism to those that feel they must continue to hurt themselves to be acceptable. It is so unnecessary.

I can no longer say I have faith in the supernatural God that I was raised to believe in. What does this make me? I have no idea at the moment, other than to say that I am still the same person I have always been. I am still a critical thinker, I am still absurd and awkward and hilarious, and I am still something of an idealist. I still respect the possibility of a god, but I also deeply respect agnosticism, pantheism, atheism, polytheism, monotheism, and those who don't want to bother with any definition or framework to represent their thoughts. This is because they represent something to the people who believe in them, and that fascinates me.

So faithless I may be, but that does not mean I am different or have lost my ideals. If a god does exist that I will meet one day, it is the person I am that he will see, and judge, if that is even what will happen. However, I choose to live like I have one life, and I wish to make it count in real ways.

On Sin, or True Dissonance

I don't even know what to write right now. This may make no sense, but I have some things to process.

How does a person deal with all intellectual structures around them falling out from under them? How do you deal with your reservoir of faith running totally dry? What do you do when all of the answers of spiritualists, mystics, religious figures, and those you've grown up listening to sound like nothing more than abuse? What do you do when you realize you've been psychologically abused for a good portion of your life?

You are worthless. You are a sinful, horrible monster. You are broken. You've missed the mark. Your best intentions are filthy rags. You don't know what you're doing. You're horrible. You suck. You must constantly repent, constantly be sorry, and constantly deny yourself any happiness. You need our answers. We know God, and the only way we can be sure you do is if you gain the same understanding that we deem spiritual. You better not be wrong, though your nature is to be wrong constantly. You must doubt yourself constantly, never have confidence, never be correct, always be self-deprecating. You are a fool, but you mustn't call your neighbor a fool. Your neighbor is anyone else. They must be allowed to run you over constantly, because you are worse than dirt. You deserve to be persecuted. You deserve death. You deserve eternal torment forever. You are worthless. Your sex drive makes you sinful. Your questions make you arrogant. Your humanity makes you useless. Your ideas make you heretical. Your creativity makes you threatening. Your compassion is empty, your grace hollow, your beauty pointless, your mind broken, your heart evil, your soul monstrous. God loves you anyway, because we say so. You should be grateful.

It hurts. Beyond any thoughts, any reason, any movement or investigation or research or experience, I must admit to the fact that I have been abused by those who claim to be in authority. I have never been sexually abused, and I've never been hit in my life. My family is wonderful, and I've had good friends for most periods of my life. But I have learned the mantra of self-hatred, and it is attached to growing up as a Christian. I learned in Christian school that when one is angry at the church, the first question one must ask is "who is it?"

There is no one person. It doesn't matter which theology, which church, which sect, which movement I deal with, this mantra is always a part of it. Even those centered on grace cling to the doctrine of sin. Whether it is phrased that we accept salvation so God does not allow or cause our eternal torture, or that we live in salvation to participate in who God is, and any other way to live is hell, Christians still speak of hell constantly, whenever salvation is spoken of. Because we are so free that we can choose whatever we want, even though God's way is the only real way to live.

The question is...who has articulated God's way correctly? Has the Roman Catholic Church? Has the Protestant Reformation? Has Islam? Has Judaism? Has the Orthodox Church? Has the Pentecostal Church? Has the liberal sections of Christianity? The UMC? The Baptists? The Anglicans? Are there actually multiple gods? Who is God? El? Allah? Jesus? Yahweh? Which way is the correct way?

"We shape our god, and our god shapes us." This is from the only man that has ever portrayed religion to me as anything but abusive. The movement itself, which has emerged from the Postmodern world's religious sentiments, is a complex form of psychology, rooted in the historic orthodox Christian faith. An acknowledgment and apology for the history of religion, and a willingness to be progressive, to move forward, to narrow one's focus to only who Jesus is, reinterpreting the ancient scriptures through that person. Incarnational, compassionate, and focused on a God that simply wants to reunite with humanity. In this framework, sin is us, however it actually happened, losing a relationship with our creator. His desire to reunite with us is what drives his actions. We were made to create as well, and we do it through relationships, art, science, philosophy, religion, history, literature, and culture.

The question is...how much of the historic, orthodox Christian faith is kept in this movement? It is ecumenical in focus, often including other religions. The notion is that God has been after humanity for a while, but we must choose Him as well. Religions are the byproduct of us sensing the spiritual world.

Ancient Christianity is not progressive in nature, and is concerned with continuing the traditions of the religion itself. Church history has been fraught with power struggles, war, death, movements and reformations, and all of the things that we've come to expect of humans through study of history and our nature. The thing is...if empirical science proves something wrong, then religion has no choice but to change it.

So, we are left with two questions. Firstly, given how little we know about the universe and existence, how can we be sure that our scientific conclusions are, in fact, correct? Secondly, how can a God, whose nature is unprovable, exist at all?

1. Science, by its' nature, is a method of progress. The more we study, the more we understand through research and observation, the better science becomes at portraying the universe. That said, the more we study science the more questions we have, and that is the beauty of it. Will we ever understand all of existence? I simply do not know. We constantly revise our picture of reality, and it could be uprooted at its' core by some discoveries. How can we be sure we are correct about anything? This is why philosophy is necessary. We are now progressing into Epistemology and questioning empirical sources.

2. God's every move avoids giving irrefutable proof of his existence. We are given the gift of faith, which is to say, the hope for things unseen. At some point, all of humanity has some sort of faith. Philosophically, these are more accurately termed to be presuppositions. For example, I have faith that what I am looking at and interacting with is, in fact, reality.

However, religious faith, particularly theistic faith, is entirely different. You see, the nature of Jesus is relational, by a matter of course. He is a proof of God's existence, God in flesh, but only if you believe the miracles reported by ancient sources, uncorrelated by any other historical sources outside of the Christian religion. What then? Is this merely an anti-faith bias I am spouting, or is it possible that historians had a religious agenda around the founding of Christianity? Does not every religion believe that it only exists because it is true? Is this not believed by any devout believer of any religion?

So there is a God, who is all powerful and all knowing and compassionate and loves humanity, but there is a marked lack of evidence of such things in our chaotic world. The answer, of course, comes from the fall. We are totally free, we are the ones destroying, and we are the ones that can create and come back to God. In this sense, God is a moral standard. All good things happen because of God, and all evil happens because of humanity, or if you wish, the devil.

We have once again circled around to sin, and its' meaning as us being evil, us being separated from God, and us being uncertain about everything, necessitating faith. The empirical gap presented by science and philosophy and human understanding of the universe is used as an epistemic wedge that drives us toward faith. In this sense, the conflict between science and religion is very true indeed.

So the real question is simple. Is religion worth trusting? At the end of the day, it always seems to come down to that. Religious claims can only be made in ignorance or by trusting in a historic source. Before a movement is a religion, it is simply a spiritual proposition. The problem is, things like hell and judgment cause humans to panic, and do what they can to avoid horrible things. The instinct of self preservation is at work.

I have severe problems trusting authority, and the simple reason is because I am entirely sick of being told, implicitly and explicitly, how horrible of a person I am. The religious would say this is self-centered and arrogant of me, but they must also acknowledge their own self-centered nature by attempting to avoid hell and judgment, and their own arrogance at claiming to know all of the answers.

Religion always boils down to what humanity is saying about the spiritual world. I have no doubt that the spiritual world exists, because of my own experiences with it. There is definitely something more to our existence than being animals that have evolved on a planet in one universe of millions that barely understand reality. However, I must also acknowledge that part of the reason I believe in spirituality and in the idea of God is because there are people I trust and admire that also do. I must also acknowledge that I am not the most objective person right now, and that I have trust issues, systemic of things I probably do not even understand about myself yet.

What I do know is that I love understanding psychology, religion, philosophy, and this thing called spirituality. I believe this is an art, and I will probably spend my life studying and creating in it. For me to do this, I must leave behind this notion that I am inadequate. It has been toxic to me for my entire life, and I am sick of it. Even if the notion of sin is true, I learned when I was very young that sin means I must berate myself, and it has always held me back.

I also know that I cannot sacrifice my intellectual honesty just because I am uncomfortable questioning something that has been part of my identity for a long time. No matter the consequences, I must move forward. I simply have no more faith left to give to this destructive culture I have grown up in. What does this make me? I have absolutely no idea, but it's pretty interesting.

Mystification

Sometimes, we have to stop and ask ourselves questions. When it comes to my situation, I've had to stop because life is intensely and in my face unfair, frustrating, and dangerous. I've realized I've been angry a lot because I thought I was owed something by life. I thought my prayers, my sincerity, my attempts to do the right thing, and my hard work would bring some kind of reward. Or, at the very least, I would stop struggling so much. The truth is, the more I've struggled, the more I've tried to make sense out of everything, the less I know and the less I feel I can do. In a real sense, I totally understand why people give up. I want to, almost every day.

What's damning about this is my ideals are probably the cause of most of these problems.

I grew up expecting to change the world, to be some kind of visionary and create something new that will change everything. A pretty egotistical way of living, I'd say. "Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

I've come to understand that progress only happens when humanity stops being idiotic and thinks for a second, or when a drastic example is put in front of them and forces them out of their apathy. On one hand, this is kind of how people function in our society. On the other hand, it is infuriatingly unfair when we look at people like Nikola Tesla. Someone who was legitimately a genius, but was screwed over by people constantly. This is a man who died alone after making huge contributions to the world, while businessmen and greedy men profited by stealing from him. He also did not care. If you don't know who Tesla is, that's exactly my point. Look him up.

I'm certainly no Tesla, and a lot of people are not. However, it's important to remember that we are owed nothing and indeed, we will be given nothing if we merely work our way forward in a straightforward way. That is a recipe for being stomped on, and I've had more than enough of that. I could descend into a bitchfest about a multitude of things at this point, but that would be pointless.

A better point is also a simple one. I have decided I know nothing. I have more of an education than over 90% of the world, and that's enough to know I have more questions than answers. I still don't know much about the nature of our existence, and I look to scientists and philosophers to understand that better. I've begun to look to practical examples to learn skills to survive in every day life, and I look to spirituality for self-improvement. In all of these areas, I have more questions than answers. Indeed, in the area of my own spirituality, I seem to have nothing but questions anymore.

If we evolved over billions of years from abiogenesis, if our universe is gigantic and we are microscopic and our universe is only one of many, then what significance does one person writing on one blog even have? Indeed, is this a waste of time, or is there something more to my existence than just another sentient life form on a remote planet complaining because he has to deal with other insignificant lifeforms in a mob that run him over every single day (and more ironically, is often part of that mob just to get even)? If there is a god that cares about us that much, where is he when there are millions of people less fortunate than I who die of hunger and thirst? Does he not care? Does he not care about me? Does he not care about the insane amount of people less fortunate than I? If I'm supposed to put myself aside (sick of hearing that shit whenever I have a problem by the way) and go help other people, then is that not just man helping his fellow man? Why is the significance of community about something other than people helping each other?

The big question, of course, is why are we "murdering each other over tribal god images," as Q so aptly put it? Given our advancing understanding of the universe, we are left with more and more disturbing implications and more questions, and the religion I've grown up interacting with has exactly one current public figure that even comes close to interacting with legitimate questions, and with helping those who are actually unfortunate, as opposed to a disillusioned college graduate with some minor emotional problems. That public figure is routinely reviled and harassed by the majority of his own religion. Let that sink in for a moment.

A religion, based on Jesus, who came and turned a persecuted religion that was looking for the messiah on its' head. He said that money and power are pointless, and that there are more important things to life. He was then killed by the predominant religious and political powers of the day. Two millenia later, we're left with a violent church history full of power struggle and bloodshed, and an institution that acts like any other does with money. When does the majority simply overpower the minority? When does the religion itself become illegitimate because the abuse is found to be the natural outcome of the theology itself? Can we really afford to continue to talk about how we live in a fallen world with sinful people, or should we simply accept who we are and get over ourselves and our power structures that will cause our own destruction?

These questions aren't about me, they're simply a product of a mind that can't seem to stop asking questions like these. I can't afford to continue doing business as usual and being the same person I always have been. Not anymore.

If there is one thing I've learned since I've graduated college, it's that those in power are going to abuse those not in power 99% of the time. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm the same way. I want to have so much money that I don't need to put effort into anything anymore. I want to have so much control that I don't have to deal with the uncertainty of life anymore. These are the actions of someone who is afraid, and I am done with it. Life is to be lived now, and all one can do is their best. The ideals I've grown up with no longer function for me, so it's time to start over again, as one knowing nothing.

Moving Beyond Good and Evil: College, Universal Truth, and my Rejection of Evangelicalism

If there is one time in my life so far that has been key for shaping the person I was into the person I am, it would have to be my time at college. I've talked to a lot of people about this, but I think this is the first time I've actually come to have some perspective on all of those happenings.

Disclaimer: I don't portray my college or most of the religion I grew up with very well. This is by no means intended to be defamatory, it is simply what happened. You have been warned. Don't take it personally if you're involved in any of this.

Before I went to college, I had become good friends with the person I met in the 10th grade of high school. I'd go so far as to call him a mentor, which is a little odd, since he was about my age. Regardless, after my foray into public college, I decided to get a Counseling degree and to go to a Christian school. My friend decided similarly, but he'd be going for a more pastoral/theological path. So we looked at schools together, and we both decided to go to one particular Bible college in northeast Georgia. We went to their visitors session and it seemed to be a good fit, considering that we had begun to explore differing religious thoughts. This school seemed to be a cross-denominational institution that allowed for people with questions and freely exploring thought. So we decided to go there.

My first year at this school showed me how wrong my initial preconceptions of the place were. I don't know how much of my initial belief came from being lied to by the institution and how much was me needing to believe I could go somewhere and figure out who I am and what I believe, but I quickly found out that questions and exploration of religious thought was scary to most of the people at this school. I suppose I can't blame them, since I also quickly found out that they were definitely a conservative Evangelical institution. More on that later in this post.

In the first few months at this school, my friend and I became involved in the Philosophy club/department, and he ended up changing his major to Philosophy, while I stuck with Counseling. In many ways though, I interacted with the philosophy section of my school more than the counseling/psychology section. I signed up and became active on a forum for several years, declared a minor in Philosophy, and most of the people that heard of me at the school assumed my major was Philosophy.

I say that people heard of me because one of the first things my friend and I participated in was a formal debate hosted by the Philosophy Club. I reference this a lot as one of the key events of my College experience, for very good reason. The topic was the inerrancy of the original autographs of the new testament, and the club hosted this topic because we did not believe in Biblical inerrancy. I would come to term myself liberal around this time due to my religious leanings, which was a dirty word at my college, as were other things that I'd find out about later. However, for now, a definition.

Inerrancy. The belief that a book, usually religious, is without error in some way. The way my college and some conservative Evangelicals mean this term is that every word (plenary verbal) of the Bible (biblical) is inspired by God and without error (inerrancy). This runs into some problems when we consider the contradictory accounts of the gospels and the differing tones in the collection of books that is now called the Bible, not to mention the fact that the Bible did not exist until well after the death of the Apostles in the first Century.

Plenary Verbal Biblical Inerrancy rests on some references in the New Testament to "all scripture" being "God breathed," which is taken to mean inspired and inerrant. We argued against this on the grounds that the original manuscripts were no longer in existence, the contradictory accounts of the gospels, our understanding of church history and the canonization of scripture's time frame, and the simple fact that it cannot be proven. We won a pyrrhic and meaningless victory. Perhaps it would have been better if we had lost. Being freshman at a college, you can imagine our nervousness at being up in front of a lot of people at the school, including professors and board members and students and various others associated with the school, and debating against upper-classmen on a topic that 99% of the room disagreed with us about. That said, we obviously did very well bringing forward our argument to win the debate. We won on the grounds that we called out the circularity of the positive side in their reasoning and on the presentation of our argument in a logical and consistent manner.

We then spoke to the moderator of the debate in front of the audience about why we really believe our position and the implications for it, and then were presented with the results. The judge presenting our win corrected the positive team's error in reasoning to show that we were wrong by asserting that they did not escape circularity by claiming apostolic authority, and then a week later in the school paper there was a two part article by two of the judges about why our position is wrong, sub-Christian, and borderline heretical.

If you know me, you know that this caused me to do the exact opposite of falling in line with what I was supposed to believe. This also gave me a reputation that would stick with me for the entirety of my time at the school, as my friend left Christianity and the school shortly after to explore other options in life and religion. I never did renounce Christianity, though I did come very close following these events.

What followed was me trying to figure out some things, being told to have faith by a lot of people (apparently meaning to believe something despite reason), and generally stumbling around reading things and having conversations with people. I made some very good friends in college, and there was the standard social drama that came along with having a group of friends and with the college you attend being much closer to a small Christian high school experience than an academic institution.

We were required to go to chapel every week, 3 times a week and to attend a small group every Thursday at my school. I did this begrudgingly, and often I was put on "chapel probation" due to not attending chapel enough, which I had to work off by doing chapel summaries (watching a video of the chapel message and summarizing it to turn in) and by adequately attending chapel the next semester of school. I attended a few small groups, and ended up attending a really excellent one with some great people in charge of it. We'd go through some material and talk about it, then most of the time end up talking about our lives and praying for each other. Regardless of religious conviction, I find this small group to be one of the best things that happened to me at that school, as it was often then only time during the week besides hanging out with friends that I felt like people cared.

The administration of my school changed several times as well, and this was connected to a movement in evangelical Christianity called the Emerging Church. This movement is hard to define, but I got into it for several years in college. Basically, the Emerging Church as a movement has no set theology, and is a movement that embraces Postmodern culture. It is friendly to questions (which I desperately needed at the time), and loosely embraced Christianity as a very good story. Postmodernism, at its' core, is skeptical of metanarratives, which are stories that explain life. The Emerging Church is part of this, but in general seeks conversational change and community minded thought as opposed to a strict theological adherence and foundational epistemology. Confused yet? So was everyone else.

What this practically meant at my school was that people became opposed to each other. Some would hold fast to "true Christianity" and be conservative Evangelicals and call the "postmodern" section of the students liberal and heretical. The Emerging Church people would respond by saying they are shutting down conversation and would ask for definition. What this meant for me is that I generally sided with the Emerging Church movement, and I came to become very sensitive to the repeated accusation directed at me of "heretic."

I was told by many students and professors that I was a "false teacher" and that I was destroying other peoples' faiths, and somehow I was never kicked out of the school. To this day, I still don't know why I wasn't, and I can only conclude that the administration change (which caused a lot of people to get fired) may have been part of it. When the administration changed to a more "postmodern friendly" group of people, we were all required to sign a community covenant based on accountability and conversation with others. A lot of punishment for breaking school rules was abolished (including having to do some work on campus for free for most offenses, including failing room check), and in general, either you were talking to someone in administration or were kicked out of the school if you were in trouble. A lot of people were kicked out for things like drinking or clear violations of school rules. One of my friends was kicked out for repeated violation of the chapel policy. Somehow, I was still not kicked out, though I was now very frequently on "chapel accountability."

As often happens with movements like this, the administration went the other way after the chaos of the initial change and chose to follow a more moderate path. This was after 3 years. My experience at this time was being called heretical, fighting with people over things, having a few experiences with dating, having some good friends I could talk to, being basically infamous at the school, having to do a lot of the "free work" policy, and generally chaos around my beliefs. My friend who'd left the school wanted me to leave Christianity to explore some other religious movements more in line with gnosticism (which is ironic since a lot of American Evangelicalism is basically gnostic in practice), my friends were every which way, and the administration basically considered me unsaved, as did most of the rest of the school that didn't know me personally. Having a reputation is annoying.

I did not even try to figure out anything from all of this chaos. It was simply impossible. I made my beliefs a personal thing and stopped talking to anyone but close friends about philosophy, theology or my religious beliefs. Of course, this was hard at a school where you're basically supposed to talk about these things constantly, so I started to simply say what I needed to say to get through my classes and chapel. I began repeating to myself that no one cares what I have to say when someone's theology pissed me off or made me want to say something, and the only place I regularly went to debate topics was the Philosophy board, which I was still a part of for a time. I did that until a Professor told everyone I didn't care about the Truth, then I left. The board was hacked and taken down a while after that, and a new board was put up on the school's website for Philosophy discussion. I joined that and made a few topics. Half of my posts were deleted and I was basically told to stop talking, so I left that as well.

As the reader, you may now have one of two opinions that I can think of. You may be asking yourself why I even put up with Christianity anymore at this point and why I didn't just leave the school and say to hell with it. Good question. You may also think I should've just fallen in line with people that have more experience than me, people that were older, the majority, and wonder why I didn't just conform and learn from people. Also a good question. In either case, I think the core question is "why did you put yourself through so much of this unreasonable insanity?" I asked myself this question frequently. Here is my answer.

When I first started having some difficulty with the religion I'd been brought up with, I considered leaving it. I thought it was a fable that a lot of people believe because of culture. However, something was really bothering me about that assertion. I'm not sure if it was because of the way I was brought up or some other feeling, but I did know a few things. My family and some really really close friends have always contrasted with my terrible experiences I've had with religious institutions. They were not uniform in belief by any means. My father is Reformed, my mother has a lot of the same thoughts I do about religion, my sister is in the process of asking her own brilliant set of questions, and a lot of the people I respect have religious beliefs entirely different from mine. Some are conservative Evangelicals, some are postmodern Emerging Church, some are atheists, some don't care about movements and have their own beliefs. The common thread is that they respect every person around them. Their beliefs and claims do not take away from that respect, they don't take cheap shots at people, they don't take advantage, they're self-aware and generally respectful and well-intentioned people.

I learned from this that my religious convictions needed to align with how I treat people. I believe very deeply that every person is worthy of basic respect. They are a person, and they should not be manipulated, taken advantage of, stepped on in any way, or disregarded. This does not mean you allow yourself to be taken advantage of, it means that you do the correct thing when no one else does.

I also read a book early on in my questioning called Velvet Elvis. I was ready to leave Christianity, and a friend recommended this book by Rob Bell (who a lot of people have called a heretic for reasons that have nothing to do with reality). This book basically took things like a triune God and an inspired set of writings from the ancient near-east and interacted with them with skepticism and facts from history. It also was my introduction to narrative theology, treating something like the Trinity as a story, which I still assert is the only way it makes any sense whatsoever.

From this I learned that theology and religion have no context whatsoever outside of history, narration, and intuition. I also concluded that science and religion are two languages talking about the same thing: the universe. This would stick with me as I have interacted with the differing branches of the church, differing religions than what I grew up with, and especially different philosophies. It was very freeing because I'd been taught growing up that religion is an intellectual decision, and I absolutely refuse to ever believe that again. It interacts with logic and philosophy, but that is by no means all of what it is.

Why did I stick it out? For two reasons. First of all, I had a sense that I was in the right place at the right time. Even when my days were mostly terrible, I knew I was doing some good just by creating dissonance where uniformity is demanded. Secondly, once that time was done I wanted to finish what I started, so I put my head down and plowed through it. I graduated and promptly cut the institution out of my life completely, with the exception of the friends I made there. I believe I've visited once since then, and I never plan to again. While I enjoyed seeing some friends, I was very obviously not welcome at the institution, and I will not willingly be back there ever again. Some things belong in the past, regardless of forgiveness. It took me a long time to forgive what was done to me, but being able to do so has allowed me to see how I grew during that time and why I am who I am after going through those experiences.

From all of the chaos of transitioning from high school through my college experience, I have learned that the truth is what all people should give their allegiance to. Regardless of my particular religious beliefs, I want to know what the truth is.

All of this said, about halfway through my time at college, I basically rejected Evangelical Christianity completely.

Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is a movement originating in early fundamentalism that initially crossed denominational Protestant lines and came to stand for a certain set of focuses and practices. The "fundamentals" of Christianity are the inspiration/inerrancy of scripture, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the belief in the Atonement for Sin by Christ's death, the bodily Resurrection of Christ, and the historical reality of Christ's miracles. They also emphasize the need for personal conversion (being "born again"), biblical authority, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the active sharing of the gospel, which can be summed up in all of the previous emphases and an intellectual decision to accept guilt for sin and Christ as the sacrifice for salvation.

Over time, Evangelicalism has become a cultural, political, and religious institution that wields a unique kind of power. I rejected Evangelicalism due to its' wielding of power for its' own ends and mainly due to rejecting its' particular theological emphases as reductionistic and imbalanced. What this means is that I came to see Evangelicalism as another movement of people looking to have control over others, using fear-based proselytization and theology with disturbing implications about God. The Evangelical God is much the same as the movement: conditional love, manipulative and capricious, and more concerned with a person's legal standing than the person itself.

The overriding reason I began to disassociate from Evangelicalism, however, is because of its' activism. I do not believe it is my place to convert any person to my faith (mainly because I'm still figuring it out). The Emerging Church redefined evangelism as conversation, and I found that I resonated with that a lot more at the time, mainly because I learn just as much from speaking with people that don't share my beliefs as they learn from me, especially when the conversation can be respectful.

So in a nutshell, Evangelicalism is a separationist movement that created its' own culture and set of values, being generally concerned with who is "in" and who is "out." Through my experience with this subculture, I began to see less and less of any real distinction between the "in" and the "out," and in many cases, I shared more values with those that the Evangelical would be attempting to evangelize with fear based tactics. Separationists are those who believe that they should stand apart from liberal Christians, who do not take theology or the Bible as literally. So obviously, I became one of the "out" in college.

Being an outsider does give one a unique perspective however. I held onto my faith through my own choice, though it was never the same after college. That, however, is a story for another day. Please note that I have a lot of friends that are Evangelicals, and even though I criticize the movement itself, I do not believe it is my place to pass judgment on the intentions of others.

Indeed, I can write about this with a critical mind only because I forgive the institutions and persons involved for the pain I went through. It is the past, but the past is something good to learn from. I'll continue my story with the rest of my college experience next week. Please leave me a comment if you have any questions or comments.