Hi. Thanks for stopping by. No doubt you are probably also an exvangelical, deconstructing everything in your life that you had been taught from a young age. Perhaps you're a concerned parent, who is worried because your teen or young adult has shown interest in the movement. Whoever you are, I hope you find something in the blog that will help in some way on your journey.
As for me, I grew up a pastor's kid in Pennsylvania. My father was a Protestant minister, and my mother was (and still is) a social worker. I grew up an only child but spent a lot of my childhood amongst my two cousins, which made me feel as though I had a brother and sister. I remember at a young age asking about Jesus and wondering if he had "come into my heart". At the age of 6 I said the sinner's prayer, and was "saved." Or, so I thought. You see, I would go through many sinner's prayers after that, always doubting that I was actually a Christian because I would misbehave. If I did something wrong, in my mind at the time, it meant I wasn't really saved, so I had to pray the prayer again. Looking back, I treated it more like a magical formula than I did an actual prayer, but I was young and didn't really understand what I was doing.
By age 12, I was exposed to Brio Magazine, a magazine put out by Focus on the Family for teen girls. I was amazed at the stories I read about young people going on missions trips, and I was determined to go on one and tell the world about Jesus. I wanted to love Jesus and have a relationship with God, like the relationships I saw talked about in the magazine. I wanted to lift my hands, speak in tongues, lay hands on people and watch them be healed. I wanted God to use me to do amazing things. I went headfirst into the evangelical culture and didn't look back. Well, at least, not yet.
I remember my time as a teen attending youth group. In my youth groups, I learned about Calvinism, a doctrine taught by John Calvin that some people were predestined to hell. This traumatized my young self, as I was always afraid that God had decided to make me a "vessel fitted for destruction." Looking back, that is most likely where the doubt of me being "saved" or not came in. I was exposed to writings by Johnathan Edwards, who taught that not only did God hate certain people, but that in heaven, people would rejoice over seeing their enemies burn in hell. I knew deep down this was wrong. But I didn't yet know why or even how to communicate it. Frustrated, but still not ready to walk away from the faith of my family, I tried something new: Catholicism. My father, who had quit the ministry, started attending a Catholic church in town. My mother and I became curious, and so we started going as well. We even attended RCIA, or, Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, which was for people who were interested in joining the Catholic faith.
The Catholic bubble was much different from the Protestant one. I was learning about saints, Mary, feast days, and the catechism. Everything was very dogmatic, more so in some ways than the Protestant church from which I came. I couldn't miss holy days of obligation or eat meat on Fridays. I had to deal with, and accept, the writings of Sts. Aquinas and Jerome, who both wrote horrendous things about women, among other saints. I knew deep in my heart, this was wrong. I knew it's not what I stood for. But at the same time, I also was afraid to walk away from the faith, Christianity, that I had held since I was a child. What if I lost friends? What if people shunned me? What if I really was going to hell?
During this time, I began searching, in secret, in other places for meaning, such as neo-paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Baha'i faith. I even thought of myself as an atheist at one point, but I couldn't shake my theistic beliefs that there was a God. I believe to this day there is something out there. I just don't know what, or who, it is.
Present-day; I consider myself to be a Pantheist of some kind, with an interest in Buddhism. The two ways of looking at the world give me some form of peace, and yet I still admit that I don't have it all together. I don't have all the answers, and I won't pretend to. Because why would I want to pretend to have all the answers when the real answer could be something much greater than the human mind can comprehend? I am comfortable with wonder. I am okay with not knowing. Giving myself permission to question was one of the most liberating things I have ever done.
This blog was created as a way for me to "unlearn" everything. Everything I was ever taught; that my worth is found only in my so-called purity. That I was broken and needed to be fixed. That I was a depraved sinner worthy of God's wrath and hatred. That I deserved hell. I now know these things to be false, however. I am worthy because of the simple fact that I exist. I'm not broken; my trauma has left scars, but I'm not broken. I'm not a depraved sinner going to hell. I don't even believe in hell anymore. Not only have these realizations helped with my spiritual health, but with my mental health as well. I recognize that the culture of radical traditional Catholicism, evangelicalism, and fundamentalism, are all toxic. A big and scary step for sure. But, it was a necessary one for me.
If you are still struggling, please remember that to tell yourself that it's okay to not know. Give yourself permission to be unsure. And above all, remember that this is a process of learning to love yourself again. It will hurt, and it will take time. But healing will come.
Gassho <3
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