My Experience With the Church, Revised

INTRODUCTION

I always went to the church. My family was staying at a Residence Inn in Birmingham (I think) when I was about five years old for some reason for a couple of days. Taylor was probably just a baby but Jordan and I were exploring the hotel room and probably just causing trouble. We come across the Gideon's Bible. You can always find them at hotels in America. We couldn't even read yet. We asked our father what the title of the book was and he told us that it was the Bible. I very distinctly remember that Jordan started laughing first. He thought it was such an odd name. He started changing the letters, saying "Pible," etc. I laughed mainly because I thought Jordan laughing at it was funny enough. I didn't realize this until many years later but I think shortly after that, my family started going to church regularly. My parents had noticed from this incident of me and my brother making fun of how the word "Bible" sounds, that we needed to start going. My first church was a Methodist church in Tallassee, Alabama. When I was first introduced to the church I kind of liked it for the first week or so because it was kind of new. They then started talking God being able to see everything and do everything. I think I started to fear going to church. Just the atmosphere and the way people acted there was so different and weird to me that I just couldn't take it. I remember crying on my mother's shoulder asking if God was going to kill me. I remember she said, "God doesn't just go around killing people." After that, I was pretty much fine for years. 

PUBERTY

Around the time I was twelve or so and puberty started to kick in, I was really doubting God and  the church then too. I read a few things about evolution and I thought it was interesting but I don't suppose I could have ever commited myself to that at that time. I didn't understand enough. I suppose you could call it a true questioning period, the first of many. I never really cared one way or the other. It's hard to think seriously about science or religion at that age anyway. 

GRACE

We moved to Griffin, GA when I was about 14. My brothers and I had been doing private school for one year to help transition the move. I was going absolutely crazy due to my surroundings at school in Alabama and due to plain old hormones. We started going to this private Christian school called "Grace Academy" in town. It seemed to be mainly Pentecostal but I think officially it was just Christian. I would say "Non-demoninational" but that sadly turned into a denomination of its own as well. Before we moved, the only strain of Christianity I had ever seen was that of Methodism. Pentecostals were different. It was much more energetic and I remember liking that part more. One of the main things was Salvation. Pentecostals believed that if you pray it and mean, you will be saved by Jesus. Maybe my brothers and I had our minds fixed too much on Mortal Kombat to ever really hear anything about it at First Methodist in Eclectic but I never really knew that Christians thought this way until I moved to Griffin. Of course, Methodists believed in Heaven, Hell, and Jesus, etc but this way,...this emphasis was different. At any rate, you could consider my time at Grace and my first year of college my "most Christian days." At the time, it felt like I was just giving it a shot. I gave it a shot.

NOW
I am not against people getting together and helping each other. I am not against any group of people that tries to get people off drug addictions or helps them to get jobs. I am not against any group that gives others hope.

I am against pseudo-science being taught in the schools. I am against wars raging on today that are still going on because of some stupid event that probably never happened 700 years ago (Islam) or 2000 years ago (Christianity). I am against homophobia. I am for women's rights. I am against pseudo-history. I am against people against certain works of art or literature because of that work being sacrireligious.

I am sort of with Bill Maher on this one. We don't know what's going to happen after we die. I would not DEFINITELY call myself an atheist. What people are referring to when they talk about something that allows for existence probably has some sort of correctness to it. I still have to think about it more.