My childhood was saturated with religion. I was raised in church, and I mean that literally! My mother was not a religious person at all, but my father was a Pentecostal. So, mom would stay home and dad would take me to church. I loved it! On those rare occasions when I was ill and unable to attend, I would cry and cry until my father would return and tell me all about the service.
Dad and mom divorced when I was seven and my father took me and moved in with his parents. My grandparents were very devout Pentecostals as well, so I continued to attend a Pentecostal church and loved it during my entire adolescence and subsequent teenage years. It was within this context that my first ideas of God and church and faith developed. My exposure to Christianity outside of this context was extremely limited.
Pentecostal faith is a very active and tangible faith. Worship within these communities is vibrant and lively; singing, clapping of hands, and jubilant exclamation are all hallmarks of the charismatic experience. There is a direct appeal to the emotions and the perception of God is very interactive. Adherents “feel” God’s presence; ecstatic behavior often ensues as the spirit of God “falls” upon an individual or congregation. Mystical phenomenon such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and hearing the voice of God are typical among these groups.
Adherence to the more established creeds of Protestantism is common. Pentecostals are usually evangelical, fundamentalist, and politically conservative. The group I was raised in was highly conservative and placed a great amount of emphasis on the outward appearance. Dress and adornment was simple and extravagance in most things was discouraged. Personal holiness was to be sought after and practiced in all things. As a result, there was allot pressure placed upon practitioners and failure could often bring condemnation and cause one to be ostracized by the group at large.
Looking back over my youth, I can say that my experiences with God were powerful and very tangible to me. I can still remember times when I felt mentally and physical rapture, enveloped in what I perceived to be the very presence of God. Yet, at the same time, I recall much debasement and condemnation, feelings of shame and the inability to live up to expectations levied upon me by my family and church. Fear was a constant companion, afraid I had or would fail to live up to what God and others expected of me. Hell loomed over me in an ominous fashion, never fully being able to make the grade or hit the mark. Consequently, I became disillusioned and bitter; eventually leaving the church to live my life without such constraints, but also, without the vivid spiritual experiences I had grown accustomed too.
During this time of exodus, I sought an alternative world view. I looked for a way of looking at the world that did not include God, or at least not the same portrait of God as I had come to know Him. I read books about different religions, seeking an substitute for the faith that had been such a great part of my life. I looked to philosophy, new age thought, paganism, looking for something to fill the void that was left in my life after leaving the church. During this time, I was introduced to many ideas that would leave doubts and ideas in my mind and heart that I would wrestle with for many many years to come.
As a young adult, I teetered between faith as I had known it, and faith as I was growing to see it. Information is a powerful thing, and once one is made aware of alternative ideas, it becomes difficult to simply dimiss them. While there were times that I tried to emulate the faith of my youth, I would never fully achieve the same simple belief in God and the nice concise set of beliefs, do’s and don’t do’s of my childhood. My entire twenties and early thirties were marked by struggle. It was not all bad though, and I am grateful today for it has brought to who I am now.
Much time has elapsed since that first decision to leave the church, some twenty plus years ago. I am a much different person today, with different values and perspectives. In many ways, I am way more secular today than I was many years ago, more humanistic and liberal. I am okay with being a man; I feel comfortable in my own skin. I am not ashamed or afraid of my humanity, if that makes sense. I make mistakes and fail and get back up and live, not overwhelmed with a sense of futility.
My feelings about God, scripture, and church, have greatly evolved, sustaining multiple revisions over the years. More than likely, they will be revised again and again. In fact, as a matter of values, I hope they do change! I mean, who says I have to know it all today?
Fact is, God is such a large and all encompassing subject that my finite mind must work hard to grasp. I think its naive to think that we can define God with creeds and delineate his essence with dogma. It is assuming for man or theologians to think they can explain or define God in any real and conclusive way. My ideas of God have become fluid and inclusive, rather than the closed and narrow focus of my youth.
Faith for me has become more contemplative, interior; communion with God is found in reflection and meditation. In stark contrast from my childhood experiences, I find that experiencing God for me today is more potent in quiet, rather than waiting for or seeking some force or power to overtake me. While it may sound like liberal platitudes, I really do find God in nature and in my neighbors. Learning to see God in my fellow man and fighting for the social justice all people, sowing seeds of peace amid the strife and contention of life is where I find my greatest spiritual fulfillment. Learning to be compassionate and inclusive, following the man Jesus rather than the icon of dogmatic evolution has proven most challenging, and most rewarding.
Things really are very different for me now. There is little resemblance between my idea of faith and relationship with God today compared to my experiences as a child. God is not less real by any means. And while some would argue that I have compromised or left my faith, I would disagree. I think my faith is greater today and I see the divine in all aspects of my life, refining me and making me a different person, a better person. Religion is a big part of who I am today, and has always been. I am greateful for that, in so many ways.
This process of growth has been a very introspective one. People who know me, or knew me as a child, friends and family who still hold to the same beliefs that I have grown apart from, often challenge my newfound position. If one’s position of faith can not stand up to personal scrutiny, then it is not a well thought out position. I certainly am not beyond rethinking who I am today, and consequently, I have considered the idea that perhaps I have lost something between those times of rapture and spiritual ecstasy in the presence of God when I perceived Him in such real and tangibly powerful ways, compared to the ways I relate to Him today. Have I missed the boat? Is something missing within me that render me incapable of experiencing God in the vivid ways that I did as a child?
I don’t think that I am alone in these queries. In reality, I think that a religious person is fundamentally an introspective person, and one must be willing and circumspect to examine who you are and what you believe at any giving juncture of life. And the fact is that oftentimes, by rejecting certain aspects of things we dislike or no longer can believe in, we loose things that we value. I rejected the fundamentalism and narrow mindset of my religious upbringing. In the process, I broke ties with the “Pentecostal” church and in turn, no longer relate to God in vivid and tangible ways that were prominent aspects of that faith. This has necessitated that I learn to relate to God in ways that are just as legitimate, to me. I do not believe that a change in religious status means that one has to reject all facets one’s former religious understanding.
Life changes us. That is a simple but very real fact. We come into this world dependent upon our parents and others for sustenance and protection, training and upbringing. Our parents are entrusted with the ominous task of helping us relate to the world. Sociology tells us that much of who we are, our race, family, heredity, eye color, etc, is ascribed. I think much of our early religious understandings are ascribed as well. I was raised in a Pentecostal family with a certain disposition toward God and religious things. There is nothing wrong with this, and I certainly am not ashamed of it in any way.
Through life, however, I have achieved an understanding of God that is so much more personal. My faith is realized today; the faith of my youth was emulated from what I had seen and been exposed too. I related to God in the way I was taught to relate to him. And in many ways, this is random. I mean, I could have as easily been a Muslim or a Catholic, a Buddhist or raised in a myriad or different religions, or without religion at all. Nonetheless, I believed what I was told and thus lived and acted accordingly. Marcus Borg, the renowned and often controversial Jesus scholar, calls this “naive belief.” I did not have to work at it or think about it; it was easy for me to believe. It simply was the way things were.
As an adult, and through the experiences of my life, I have searched for God in many places. In so doing, much of those early ideas about God, right and wrong, and church, have been challenged. Many people get lost here; when they realize that there may be another way or that what they thought was right may be wrong or incomplete, they lose heart. But God gave me an inquisitive mind that was okay with searching and even now, is okay with not knowing everything. I think we do a great disservice to the potential of the vast mind God has given man by the formation of rigid dogma. God is infinite, beyond the ability of canons and all the writings and thoughts of the world to contain. To claim that one idea, set of doctrines, or picture of the divine is all there is too God, is simply too limiting and a great injustice. Man should be free, I should be free—you should be free—to search for and experience God wherever He may be found.
