In my beginning - part 2

I believe I wasn't intentionly encouraged or pushed to think about some of the questions that I would, in fact, have to address later on in my life, on my own, without guidance. All that I knew or was exposed to was was basically the Bible and Baptist Sunday School Board (BSSB) literature or BSSB-endorsed literature. I may have been better off with just the former. In the absence of exposure to the variety of at least extant mainline protestant ideologies, I feel that early on in my life I was at some level robbed of opportunities for sincere reflection on scripture and the ideas of other sincere hearts seeking after God's truth. Even when thes ideas of others were addressed, it was usually tendentious in nature, without fair representation and often times associated with the risk of hell and damnation if entertained even briefly. I still feel this at some level in many conversations that I have.

In college, I basically reached a point during my Junior year at which I logically snuffed out my belief in God, in much the same way C.S. Lewis does the opposite in Mere Christianity. I won't say that I reached the point of atheism, but I was pretty close. Something kept me in the game, though, and I continued--out of tradition, ritual, or "just-in-case I am wrong, I suppose--to attend churches ranging from Menonite to Nazarene to the Presbyterian Church of America. It wasn't until I met a man who focused on the idea of God's grace that Christianity began to finally make some sense to me. This idea reconciled a lot of disceprancies for me.

This moment of enlightenment helped me to continue on in my faith. I continued on in the Presbyterian Church of America with more sincerity this time although highly skeptical of any person telling me they knew and understood the exact intended doctrine of the Bible. This is what led me to question the truth of God in the first place (the truth is, I believe, I was questioning the conventions of man not God, and I just didn't realize it).

I believe my skepticism was justified because in the church I was attending--even as an individual holding to the teachings of Christ--as someone who accepted the theory of evolution, I was referred to by some as the 'bug man'. In jest, yes, but within that jest is a sense of, "you are off-base, man". Not to mention quiet unspoken or spoken behind the back words that describe me as a case to worry about concerning my beliefs. This is an example of how I have felt over the past 13 years or so. The feeling that people take my ideas lightly as if I have not really thought about them. As if I haven't taken the time to read about it, when the truth is that I have read and studied a lot through many objective, subjective, Christian, and secular lenses more about this issue than anybody I knew of in my church.