I grew up in a fairly strong subculture of the Christian church. The kind of subculture that feels so normal, so right that you don’t ever think about anything being off until you graduate from college and take an internship out of state and are forced to interact with whatever sort of Christian you can find.
I have yet to graduate from college and I haven’t taken any out of state internships, but I know the feeling of gradually discovering that what I had been fed my whole life may not be as accurate or honest as I thought.
I’m not sure how old I was, but I distinctly remember a time when I found myself questioning some firmly held beliefs within my church tradition. It might have been when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I couldn’t help but hold certain questions about what if we did things differently, was it really as important as everyone made it to be, and so on.
What made these questions so provocative was that I had specific faces of people in mind as I thought about other kinds of Christians who did not hold these particular beliefs but resembled a far more consistent character with that of Jesus Himself.
The part vividly etched into my memory is the overwhelming feeling that if I actually went down the road of my questions, if I actually began to listen to these other Christians and embrace the faith they held so beautifully, it would completely unravel the life that had been created around the kind of faith I currently embraced. I felt I would lose everything. I would leave behind everything I had ever known and step into an open field of utter unfamiliarity.
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