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.

Why I am not a Western Christian: Rome, Nietzsche, and Protestantism

I've written over the past month about my history with religious institutions and movements, and where all of that has led me. I think it's fair to say that at this point I am a mix of conflicted sentiments, beliefs, logical claims, and emotions for that matter. It's difficult for me to sort through all of these things when I'm trying to talk to others about these things, and it becomes even more difficult when they have strong claims. Most of the time when an atheist tells me they can't take Christianity seriously for almost any reason, I agree. Usually there is some kind of straw man involved, as usually when people oppose something, it is because they are hurt. For me there is no escape from that. However, I believe that it's beneficial to call out one straw man in particular, even while agreeing with the reactions I often hear in the same breath.

What this means is that when someone tells me that Christianity has been responsible for a lot of killing, hurting, and obscuring of the truth, and that there are a lot of ignorant people spouting Christianity, my response tends to be two-fold. First of all, and this is usually the only response I have time to give, I agree and can only say I'm sorry. My particular convictions lead me toward the term Christian, and so I am truly sorry for all of the people doing stupid things and forcing inane beliefs on others that use the same term. It aggravates me that I'm even associated with some of them, and it's hard to see the ones that are reasonable and good people when you've been hurt by the unreasonable ones taking cheap shots and being generally dishonorable and destructive.

Secondly, I believe that this portrayal of Christianity requires nuance, at the very least. I don't blame anyone for thinking that Christianity is only its' Western expression, because I live in the west and most of the Christianity that people have experienced has been western in nature. What this means is that the Christianity people react against is at once influenced by the modernist, Enlightenment era thought, and it is usually reacting to it. A good example of this is how the Catholic Church often makes claims and takes stances on contemporary issues like abortion, the political conflict surrounding homosexuality, contraceptives, and generally will makes its' voice known coming from their "faith centered" perspective. For the devout Catholics, their faith runs through every bit of their lives through various expressed opinions and actions, and their politics and social activism are greatly affected by their theology and spread through their church's power.

Another good example of Western Christianity is the "Moral Majority." I shudder to even bring this group up because of how offensive they are. To put it simply, this movement served to take Conservative Christianity into the political realm and bring about change by outlawing abortion in all cases, oppose any governmental acceptance of homosexuals, promote a "traditional" view of family life, and target non-Christians for conversion (Evangelical activism). The Moral Majority was nearly a theocratic movement, seeking to make the US Government Christian (or return it to its' Christian roots if you ask them).

It is on this second point I wish to focus. How can I call myself a Christian and be revolted and enraged by much of contemporary Christianity?

The movements mentioned are only examples of the way Christianity has evolved in the past few centuries. Indeed, this extends far beyond Evangelical Christian Conservatives and Roman Catholics. This sort of wide sweeping agenda has been happening for centuries. Rome has been this way since the schism from the East a millenium ago, and they've evolved ever since, constantly adapting to culture and being a voice on relevant issues, reasoning from their core theology and often speculating. The Pope's "Ex Cathedra" (infallible while speaking on matters of Doctrine) has assisted with their development. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century reacted to the abuses of Rome and demanded a reform of the church to do away with malpractice and corrupt theology. This eventually lead to another schism of the church, and many more to follow.

Protestantism came about around this time, and they distinguished themselves from Rome with doctrines like the Solas and several different fundamental summations of beliefs. In general, the way Protestantism has come to distinguish itself is by the reliance on the Bible as its' sole source of authority, justification by faith alone, and the priesthood (some would say papacy) of all believers. What this means is that a Protestant believes that the Bible is the authoritative source of truth, salvation and justification from Original Sin (I'll get to this in a minute) comes by faith in Christ alone, and the responsibility of all Christians to act in a governing manner in the church from their reading of Scripture.

Protestantism distinguished itself from Rome by moving away from the apostolic succession of the priesthood, probably because of a denial of Papal authority in all matters of doctrine. In other words, since the Bible was now seen as the ultimate source of authority as opposed to Rome's traditions and the authority of the pope, the Bible was theoretically the Pope's replacement. In addition, priests in a Protestant Church were now every member, with a preacher in a loose leadership role. Some protestant churches use deacons, and some use elders, but this is purely for loose ecclesiastical use, as opposed to Rome's authoritative priesthood and ultimately authoritative pope. The protestant is solely responsible for their own faith, and though "good works" are seen as beneficial, they are not seen as necessary in Protestantism. "You will know a tree by its' fruit" has come to mean that you will probably see some sign that a person is saved, but Protestantism sharply reacts against Rome's "works based" Salvation. The Protestant generally shuns the Sacraments as means of Grace, usually preferring to call them ordinances or specific things like the Lord's Supper/Communion or Baptism.

Protestantism kept to their Roman roots in some other ways, however. They kept the doctrine of Original Sin as taught by Augustine, which teaches that all of humanity sinned in Adam, and so we are all guilty and subject to judgment from birth. This has lead to Calvin's emphasis and eventual teaching of predestined Election of the saved, as well as to some odd teachings like the "Age of Accountability," which teaches that before someone can make the intellectual decision to be saved, they are essential saved by their own "innocence." In Rome's case, Original Sin lead to the dogma of Immaculate Conception, which taught that Mary was born free of Original Sin, which allowed for Christ's birth of Mary, a Virgin, without it. More on Original Sin in a moment.

In a way, Protestantism has also largely held onto the legalistic views of Rome by way of their Salvation narrative. In general, Salvation is seen as an intellectual acknowledgment of one's broken and unsaved state to God, and an acceptance of Christ's death as the payment for their sin. From that point, the Protestant is now legally justified in the sight of God, saved by faith alone. Some say they can fall away from this faith given an adequate rejection of Salvation, and some say they never can. Still others say that if the Christian's salvation is rejected, they were never saved in the first place, as the predestined will persevere to death and the end of time.

What I hope you are noticing in what I'm saying here is that Western Christianity has come to be what people generally think about when you say the word "Christian." When I started at college, I made a Facebook group called "Catholics are Christians too!" I made this group after noting the large amount of prejudice against Roman Catholics on my college campus. It was common for someone to state that Catholics believe in dead religion and works based salvation, usually in a tone like they're cursing or about to spit on the people. I created this group because I believed that Catholics had just as much of a claim to the term "Christian" as any Protestant. I bring this up because often people would ask me if I am Catholic. When I said no, they'd be confused, and ask if I was Protestant. Only two options were present for them, Catholic and Protestant, with Protestant usually meaning "Christian." Obviously, not all Protestants are this way. However, it is important to note that the movement of Protestantism itself started from dissatisfaction from Rome that lead to a schism and pointed reactions against Rome's theology.

Roman Catholicism originally schismed from the Eastern Orthodox Church around 1054 AD. They schismed over several matters of theology and practice, but the deciding factor of the schism, in addition to Rome's assertion of the Pope (Bishop of Rome) as the prime authority of the church, was the addition of the filioque to the Nicene Creed.

Filioque. "And the Son." This was a phrase added to the Nicene Creed to make it state that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, rather than simply the Father.

If you weren't raised in Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism you may be asking yourself "who cares?" I know I did for a long time. The East saw this as an addition that brought undue imbalance to the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is a Tri-une God composed of the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The balance of the Trinity was due to each person of the Trinity having specific roles as seen in history and due to all of them sharing the essence and nature of being God.

If you wonder why you never hear about the Holy Spirit unless you're talking to a pentecostal or someone involved in a charismatic movement, this would be the reason. The Protestant Church inherited the filioque from Rome (though they're generally not as rigorous in theology on this point, obviously), as well as the legalism inherent in the institution that can ultimately be traced to Original Sin.

"Original Sin" as a term, has been used throughout Christian history. It initially referred to the original catastrophic act that caused the brokenness of humanity. If we go back to Genesis, this act was disobeying God by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was largely caused by Lucifer's corruption and subsequent deception of Adam and Eve into committing this act, which destroyed their innocence and introduced Death into the world. Original Sin came to mean that all of humanity sinned in this act, and we genetically inherit the guilt. I'm going over this again because this is important.

Fast forward to Christ (most Protestants do), and we have a righting of this wrong. One can be wiped free of this curse by accepting the sacrifice which Christ took on himself on the cross, and be resurrected from death in the same way Christ was literally resurrected. Legally, we are justified in God's sight by the Father allowing Christ to bear the entire punishment of Original Sin (the Calvinist at this point would say the punishment for only the chosen Elects' original sin).

Salvation has come to be a "get out of hell" card. People often refer to this as "fire insurance."

No, I am not kidding.

So, to come back to my original point. I think Christianity needs nuance. I agree with Nietzsche's reaction to Christianity, and I agree with the atheist's objections. Indeed, God is dead in our culture, and we have killed him. The Western religions of Christianity have the common threads of being legalistic, reductionistic, impractical, and omnidirectional/contradictory in reasoning in political, theological, and philosophical areas. God kills God to satisfy God's wrath so we can all go to paradise in the clouds or a city paved with gold. All you have to do is believe.

I am not a Western Christian because I think there is far, far more to life than this, and that we cannot rely on myth and storytelling to give us a literal picture of the future or of reality. Salvation has to mean more than this, and Christ's story has to be accepted fully rather than a grand total of 4 days of it. The Bible did not come from a vacuum or float down from the clouds in all its' perfection, and a book cannot possibly be the ultimate source of truth or the ultimate authority on life. I do not believe in Original Sin as taught in Western Christianity because I do not think people are born guilty, and do not think that this esoteric "imputed sin" is passed down through any genetic means. I do not accept the legalism that's been taught to me by the west because of this, and I do not accept the imbalanced version of the trinity that I've also been taught, where the Holy Spirit is either elaborate magic or does not exist, and Christ has primacy over other aspects of God. The question here, however, is why do I believe these things? Who cares what I accept and don't accept? Why does what I believe matter at all, in comparison to the true reality of the universe, if there is one?

Well, that's a story for another day my friends. That day will be next week, or perhaps Friday if I can swing it. Be well, and thanks for reading.

The Beginning: Fear, Hell, and Deterministic Philosophy

Disclaimer: Writing about this section of my life has brought back a lot of memories and emotions. Indeed, I contemplated deleting this entire post and creating a summary of it for my upcoming college experiences post. However, I think this part of the story is beneficial, and I stand by it, despite being not proud of a lot of the person I was.

Like all stories, this one has a beginning. This is the closest thing my fragile memory can deliver to that beginning.

I was raised in Conservative Evangelical Christian subculture. I said the Sinner's Prayer at age 7 because I was afraid of burning in hell because of a sermon from the Fundamental Independent Baptist Church I went to at the time. For those not aware, the Sinner's Prayer is a fundamental admission of guilt to God and accepting of Salvation in a prayer. Some believe God hears no prayers of anyone until the Sinner's Prayer. My understanding of reality at that time was that I was probably going to die at any moment, and if I didn't say this prayer, I would suffer for eternity, and there would be no way to stop it.

I vaguely remember having a few thoughts after that experience, such as wondering why God would do such a thing, what made me such a terrible person, and wondering what hell was like and why it existed. I even had a dream about hell once. I thought I was in heaven, and then I discovered that this beautiful celestial (stereotypical) heaven was not what I thought it was and that I was actually in hell, at which point I was thrown into a void and ceased to exist.

The thoughts of a child are powerful, illogical, and often-times they shape who they are. For me though, this was only the beginning.

Besides this underlying fear, I don't remember a huge amount of my life before age 15. I remember having friends in elementary school, moving schools in the 7th grade, and then moving states from North Carolina to Georgia in the 9th grade. Note that all of these schools were Private Christian Institutions, and I'd moved from a more Fundamentalist institution to a standard Southern Baptist one in the 7th grade. I then went to a standard Evangelical high school. I figured I'd be the popular and happy person I was in my new school.

I was totally wrong. I could not have been more wrong. I spent the first week of high school being made fun of and made to feel like an outsider. I didn't dress correctly, I didn't fit in, most of the teachers were angry about one thing or another, and I generally came to believe I was scum and no one liked me. I came home after the first week crying saying I hated it, but for one reason or another I stuck it out. I had one good friend in the 9th grade (who is still one of my best friends to this day), and the rest were either acquaintances, tormentors, or didn't care that I existed. The only other exception to this is someone I met in the 10th grade who strongly influenced me, who I will get to in a moment.

We were required to go to Chapel every Wednesday at this school. One Wednesday after my 15th birthday a guest speaker came and gave a message about hell and encouraged fear. He called himself prophetic, and was accusatory and derogatory in every sense of the word. I was once again seized by fear, thinking my decision was not genuine enough when I was 7 years old, that I didn't understand enough and didn't know enough to really be saved. So he gave an altar call and I performed. I gave an emotional display and prayed to be saved. People were happy for me. He came back when I was in the 12th grade and gave the exact same message and I thought he was an emotionally manipulative jerk. But I digress.

Nothing really changed for me that first year. I hung out with my one friend a lot, and he eventually left the school, along with a lot of others. I made another friend in the 10th grade, and he challenged me over the next several years in every possible way. The rest of my high school experience was basically meaningless, as it was an endless attempt to deal with not fitting in. I became involved in a few music scenes, got very angry, and expressed that a lot by acting out, as a teenage boy who doesn't know his place is prone to do. My parents are incredible for putting up with me, especially the "I will listen to hate-filled angry music all the time and be a jerk to everyone" stage.

As you can imagine, with all of these circumstances and changes going on my theology and purely emotional religious convictions changed a good bit. I became Reformed and believed in 7 point Calvinism, having been inspired to do so by one of my teachers. For those who don't really understand what 7 point Calvinism, it is the TULIP anagram with two extra clarifications. Total Depravity - man is incapable of any moral or spiritual good and is completely broken. Unconditional Election - people are chosen by God according to His good pleasure to be part of the elect. Limited Atonement - Christ's sacrifice on the cross paid only for the elect's sins. Irresistible Grace - the elect will choose to be saved and cannot resist doing so. Perseverance of the Saints - once you are elect, you will persevere to the end and cannot possibly fall away. Double Predestination - God predestines all who are not elect for Hell, and they have no choice in the matter. Best of all Possible Worlds - God's absolute sovereignty over history is exercised to display his glory to the fullest, and he governs every detail to this end.

I believe the craziest moment of all of this was arguing in front of my class that babies go to hell if they die because of original sin, predestination, and their lack of saying the sinner's prayer. If you're not horrified by that, I can still feel plenty of horror over it for you. At the time, it made perfect sense because of God's sovereignty. I had a very deep problem with people in general at that time, so I did not care if anyone hated me for my beliefs or thought I was terrible, citing that "true Christians" are persecuted.

I was basically reformed until I graduated from high school. During this time, I'd had a falling out with the friend I met in the 10th grade, but we became friends again after I graduated. He had gotten into some things I could not agree with, and we kind of went opposite directions. However, once we began associating again, we started a Bible Study group about the fundamentals of Christian faith. Prooftexting the Bible, we talked about who God is and some of the core beliefs, seeking to educate people. I then went to my first college and discovered it was not what I wanted to do, and left after one semester.

At this point we restarted the Bible Study, but with an entirely different tone, one that I feel really changed my direction from where I had been religiously. I recall the exact moment of this change vividly, because my friend was the first person to ever tell me that the Bible is not inerrant.

As you can imagine, I argued with him immediately. My religious world not only had its' foundation kicked out from under it once I realized he was right, but everything else crashed down, got set on fire, and I was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what was going on. I was then even more angry and did a total 180 right before attending another Christian institution. Readers may be forced to ask at this point...do I ever learn? The hard way, always. My college time is a whole other post, and I will talk about the shift my personal philosophy and religion took in that post as well.

So, to sum this up. For the first 19 years or so of my life, I was intensely afraid and often felt alone, angry, or both. The exceptions to this were my family (always) and the one really good friend I met when I first went to high school. This time was full of thinking about hell and God's wrath and sovereignty over all things. I went from one church to another, but essentially the core of my beliefs was centered around these things. I don't see it as a coincidence that I was Reformed in high school, as it was a method of not only rebelling, but also of trying to hold onto something solid (God's sovereignty) in a time when I didn't know what to do and felt powerless. In retrospect, it didn't help that much.

Upon initially drafting this post, I began to talk about why I disagree with Reformed Theology and Determinism. I don't find that to be a helpful direction to go at this point (if you would like me to talk about this, please say so in the comments). I didn't make the decision to be Reformed for any logical reason. I did so out of a need to rebel because I was afraid. This tone of fear in my life would continue until it was addressed, but what I find interesting is that my philosophy became one that made everyone powerless. Just as I was powerless to stop the injustice I faced on a daily basis, I decided everyone else is powerless too. I clung to the God of vengeance and anger and when I was treated unfairly, I believed that God would get revenge on them for it and that they also could not stop it. One might accurately observe at this point that my God was really myself, and I was plotting deterministic vengeance, using theology as my grounds.

Determinism. The view that choices, actions, and events are a natural and inevitable result of an initial cause. Theologically, God is the initial cause, and all choices and all of history are illusionary and destined from the beginning of time. Psychologically, a person is who they are due to their first 3-5 years of their life, and can be no one else.

In contrast to this view, I believe that a person is shaped continually by their view of truth, just as much as they shape it. Our actions are not determined by our initial experiences, but by our continual interaction with life and the choices we make in it. One could probably argue that my high school experience made a lot of sense in light of my initial experiences with religion, but I would hope that you the reader do not think this as you continue to read this series. That's your call though.

Regardless, my view of truth in high school made me a very angry person, and I imagine that while a lot of my problems were due to ignorance and the atmosphere I was surrounded with, I believe that I caused just as many of them with my divisive beliefs and my hateful attitude. When my beliefs came crashing down after high school, it was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. I was free from needing to justify myself to anyone, and I was able to move beyond the foundational philosophical framework of Conservative Evangelicalism and explore some other beliefs.

I would come back to my origins as I moved onto college, but suffice it to say, it was apparent to me at this point that I had learned more in spite of my experience with religion than through it. If only I had known what would come next...