Ruining My Life at the Age of Fourteen (Discretion Advised!)

What I am about to refer to as one of the most heinous sins that men commit has been widely accepted and even applauded by our modern culture. In fact, it is not only acceptable but even commendable for our young teenage boys and girls to be exposed to it. Most parents and adults in our country would be quick to say that what I am about  to address is not that big of a deal. In fact, with all this build-up they would probably respond, "That's it? I thought you were going to talk about murder or something like it." I challenge you, reader, to search your own heart and think about how you view the problem that I found myself in at the age of 14. I know that my story is all too similar to millions and millions of other teenage boys, but sadly, their stories don't have the same gracious ending mine does. I want to challenge you to revisit how you view this problem, what priority you have placed preventing a similar problem from occurring in your home, and consider how my story will change how you think about how saturated our current culture (70% of which claims to be Christian) is with sex.

I'm not a victim. There are much worse stories about sexual immorality than mine. I was never abused. I did not grow up in an environment that overtly exposed me to pornography and sexual promiscuity. I was not a victim of bad parenting, I was not a victim of a lack of security, and I was not a victim of peer pressure. In no way was my addiction to pornography forced upon me, either physically or emotionally. The humiliating beginnings of this entire problem in my life started quickly by my own free will.

As I related in the first part of this story, I was now home alone all day long, every day of the week. I would wake up in the morning, cheat on my schoolwork, and have almost five hours to kill before everyone got home. I would play the piano. I would watch TV. I would watch movies. I would listen to music. Apart from playing the piano, I couldn't escape the sex that completely enveloped me. It was on every channel, in every movie, and even the songs that I enjoyed the most (Top 40 on the radio) were all about sex.

I was 14, and I had watched a lot of TV and more movies than I could count. The kids in the TV shows I watched were kissing and making out with each other. Their parents would catch them and then they would be in big trouble, but the show always portrayed mom and dad as prunes that just need to catch up with the 2000s. The teenagers in the movies were always talking about sex and "doing it."

I felt a lot of tension. I felt a lot of curiosity. What was the big deal? It was all a big mystery to me. Why was the world completely infatuated with sex to the point where it was all the adult world and now the teen world could talk about? At 14, the one thing that seemed to be separating me as a teenager from the rest of the adult world was sex. Movies like American Pie, Not Another Teen Movie, and She's All That portrayed sexuality as normal in high school settings. Not only was it normal, but it was applauded. The television shows and movies always portrayed the virgin as the geeky dork who was out of tune with his fellow man. The virgin was always the skinniest, palest, white kid with no posture, huge glasses, and an inhaler in his pocket. All of the "good looking" teens knew about sex and had ceased to be virgins many years ago (quite shocking considering they're all in high school). The message was clear and articulate: wanna be cool? Have sex, then. Don't be the geeky virgin. All of these movies came out when I was just starting to go to high school, and although my parents would never let me watch them, I found a way.

"Suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?" (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

The world says that sex is just a part of being human. It's just another appetite that your body craves, and there is nothing wrong with feeding that appetite. It's as human and as acceptable as eating food. When your body craves food, then you eat a meal. When your body matures and you begin to crave sex, then have sex (but be safe). There's nothing wrong with feeding your human appetites. But as C.S. Lewis points out, although this may be the way the world excuses their sinful behavior, anyone who thinks through the analogy quickly sees that sex in our modern culture cannot easily be compared to having an appetite for food.

At 14, the world around me was obsessed with sex, and despite the best-efforts of my parents, this obsession was beginning to take a toll on me. For the longest time growing up, I could think of a million uses for a computer, and viewing pornography was not one of them. By the time I was 14, viewing pornography became the most tempting option because it was all I could seem to think about. I knew where the mystery would be solved, and I did not even have to leave my own house.

Remember, my heart was becoming more and more deceitful and I was beginning to enjoy listening to its deception more and more. The curiosity was about all I could bear. No one was home. The world-wide-web was at my fingertips, and all of my questions could be answered in one, single click of a mouse button. My conscience butts in:

Wait! What are you doing?
Don't worry, I know what I am doing. I'm just going to peek at what I am missing, that's all.
You don't want to do that.
Yes I do. Why wouldn't I?
Because, you know that it is a sin.
But nobody is here, conscience. There's not a soul to know what I am doing right now. I'll take a peek and nobody will be any more the wiser.
What about God?
What about God?
You call yourself a Christian. You know Christians do not look at pornography. It is a sin!
God will forgive me, I'm sure.

And then, my worst enemy chimed in, as if I wasn't ignoring the warning of my conscience enough:

Hey Matt, it's your heart here. I don't know what your conscience is all worried about. You should look at pornography. It's only one click away. Take a peek. You're only human. Sex is only human. God created man and woman in the nude and said it was good. What is it going to hurt? What's the worst thing that can happen? You take a look, clear the viewing history, delete the temporary files, and nobody will ever know what you did. You will feel so much better, knowing everything that you don't know right now.
Whose side are you on, anyways?
What's that supposed to mean?
That doesn't sound like a Christian heart to me.
I'm a Christian. Besides, David did much worse than I am about to. He looked upon a woman bathing, had a child with her, and then murdered her husband. God forgave David, so I'm sure he'll forgive me too.
Atta boy!
What about the rest of the story about David? What about the part where Nathan confronted him on God's behalf? David thought he was sinning in private too, but God knew what he did and he hated it and cursed David and his lineage for his sin.
Conscience, I know you mean well, but I have already made my decision. I'm going to take a peek, see what I am missing, and leave it at that.

More or less, that's what I was thinking as I sat at my computer that terrible day, hell-bent on removing all the mystery from my life. At that moment, you could not give me a million dollars to keep me from sinning. I was already living rebelliously against God, but my rebellion was about to get much worse. At this single moment, I removed all doubt in my heart that I was not a child of God but a child of Satan. I had tried to follow the rules. I had tried to be the good boy that my parents raised me to be. But where had that gotten me?

Like Adam and Eve, I had a garden full of every fruit imaginable, every flavor possibility staring me in the face, but the only fruit I wanted to sink my teeth in was the forbidden fruit. I felt entitled to know what sex was. I felt I was unrightfully deprived of the knowledge of human sexuality. What could be wrong with viewing the human body as God created it? What problems could it cause? If only I knew. However, if I traveled back in time, told that foolish 14 year-old me what a terrible mistake he was about to make, I am sure that I would not be able to change the past. I was completely fixated on sinning that day, and there was nothing and nobody that could stop me.

I felt like I was missing out on something that was going to fill that void in my soul that seemed to grow bigger and bigger every day. That void (it may sound cliché) was my separation from my Creator because of sin. I longed for love, but my deceitful heart steered me awry as often as it could. My heart clung to every evil it could get its hands on. As I matured, my sins matured with me. Instead of loving my friend's toys and wishing they were mine, I was beginning to love my body and pleasing its carnal desires. I was now completely enlisted in the ranks of the worldly rebellion against man's Holy Creator. I did not just look at porn at that most disgraceful moment. The real sins was deeply embedded in my heart. I knew what I was doing was sinful, I knew that God hated it, I knew that such sin required the just wrath of God, and I really did not care. At that moment, the pleasure that sin brought became my new god, it became my new love, it became my new passion, and I began the long, depressing, and bitter betrayal, trying to turn my back of my God while still clinging to some sort of happiness. Such efforts are futile, and as my story continues, you will see why.

Nevertheless, at the time, I was completely oblivious to the pit of despair I had plunged myself into at that moment. I knew I had sinned terribly, but I didn't feel terrible about it at all. In fact, I actually felt quite good about it. It was, sadly, a pleasant experience. A peek lasted for several hours as I immersed myself in another world. At the time, I thought this new world was rather nice. It was lovely. It was enticing. It caused a drug-like trance while traveling through it. I ventured deeper and deeper into this new land than I ever intended, and I knew that I would have to visit again soon after hours of sight-seeing. I didn't feel sinful. I didn't feel unclean. I felt enlightened. I knew what I did not know before. A feeling, I'm willing to guess, Adam and Eve experienced right after eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Evil tastes the sweetest and most pungent tasting its nectur for the first time, but as time goes on, the taste begins to dull and weaken until you climb higher for the more evil fruit. The higher you go, the farther you fall. I began my ascent to the higher limbs of my tree of the knowledge of evil, and I believed that I was sure-footed enough to prevent any fall. I would eventually fall, and I would fall from some of the highest limbs of that tree. You'll never believe who was waiting at the bottom to catch me, though.

Challenge and Reflections:
"They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess. Modern people are always saying, 'Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.' They may mean two things. They may mean 'There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the that fact that it gives pleasure.' If they mean that, they are right...But, of course, when people say, 'Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,' they may mean 'the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of'.

If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

When was the last time your pastor preached about sexual immorality? When was the last time you talked about sexual immorality during family worship?

Sadly, although sex is not hushed up in the world it is hushed up in many churches and in many Christian households. The world is loud and obnoxiously clear about how they feel about sex. I was walking through the mall the other day with my wife to get our wedding rings cleaned. A small choo-choo train chugged along the walkways with its tiny passengers elated with the scenic tour of the mall. Mothers walked around pushing their little children in strollers. One mother frantically dashed to catch her young son before he pushed the stroller down the escalator. There were many teeny-boppers around, talking on their cell phones (probably with each other), hopping from shop to shop, and looking at all the clothes they couldn't afford to buy but they loved the idea of dreaming.

From the time we entered JC Penneys to the time we reached the jewelry store (probably a distance of 1000 feet at most), I was bombarded with dozens of pictures of women in their unmentionables. We don't call them that anymore, though. They're not unmentionable, today. In fact, not only does our society mention them all the time but they flaunt them around everywhere.

Have you noticed that you cannot watch TV anymore without having more women in unmentionables filling your new 52" LCD screen during every commercial break? It's so big and the colors are so vivid that it's almost as if you have a half-naked woman in your living room! If you don't think your children notice, I assure you that they do. They're not as "innocent" as you think.

Sexuality and sexual immorality are never preached on in many churches. Sitting under the preaching of God's Word, we think that it would be inappropriate to speak about such a subject with children in the room. However, the world does not care what is appropriate or inappropriate. You can try as you might to shield your children from the world's sex 101 lessons, but you are only trying in vain. There's just too much sex in this world to keep it hush hush. Think about those little children riding the choo-choo train around the mall. I saw dozens of pornographic advertisements and I only saw a quarter of the mall. Their tour covers the whole mall.

Parents, if you keep quiet about sexuality and sexual immorality, you're not doing your children a service but a dis-service. You're not guarding them from a mature subject, but rather, you're allowing the world to teach them and define what sexuality looks like, feels like, and how they should participate with it. The world will not teach your children about sexual immorality. The world will not define pornography. The world will not teach your children why God created man male and female. The world will blank on what it means for a man to leave his father and mother, to hold fast to his wife, and to become one flesh with her. The world will give them other lessons. They will teach them loud and clear. You need to be willing to speak up, to shout louder than the world, and to stop thinking about how uncomfortable it makes you feel to speak to your teenagers about sex. You think they're too young, but the world does not care.

Pastors, if you do not preach about sexuality and sexual immorality, you're not protecting your flock. You are ignorant to think that every man, woman, and child sitting under your preaching is not struggling with sexual immorality. You are foolish to think that every married couple seated in the pews is not struggling with sexual perversions. There is a reason that the Apostles mentioned sexual immorality over and over again in their epistles. It was a big problem in the early church and it's a big problem in the church today. The only difference is that the Apostles were not afraid to preach on it, to call out the sexual perverts, and point them to Christ. There are men sitting under your preaching every week, and your sermons are the only time during the week when they know they will not be bombarded by sex. That's not a good thing. There are men in your church who are going home afterwards, plopping down on the computer, and viewing pornography. They know what the scriptures teach about sexual immorality, but they don't care. They don't have someone putting the Word of God before their eyes, putting their sin in the correct context before their Holy God, and taking their sin and their eternal punishment in hell more serious than they are.

The Apostles' epistles almost always contain warnings to their recipients (Christians and Christian churches) to flee sexual immorality. In Romans 13:13, Paul writes to the saints in Rome not to participate in drunken orgies, sexual immorality, and sensuality, but rather, to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." Paul wrote that because there were saints in Rome participating in drunken orgies, sexual immorality, and sensuality. Paul wrote that because there would always be Christians participating in drunken orgies, sexual immorality, and sensuality who need to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

We know that every passage of Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16), and to neglect those passages of Scripture that teach, reproof, correct, and train in righteousness the sexual immoral is to neglect those men and women's souls to continue on their path to destruction, to continue disobeying God, and to continue to believe they are doing just fine in their walk with the Lord. You will never feel comfortable standing before a congregation full of men, women, and children while speaking on the subject of sex, but you must, nonetheless. You cannot neglect this problem in the church anymore. You cannot keep quiet, fearing that mothers and fathers will be offended if your preach about holy sexuality and sexual immorality while their children are present. You were called by God to preach His Word. If they find God's Word offensive, then let them take their quarrel to Him. You must preach about this subject even if people start leaving your church. You must preach about this subject because if you do not, then people like me will never know that God's grace is sufficient, even for the sexually immoral!


 

A Greedy Thief Never Caught Cheating

"Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:9b-11)

I love these verses. The whole entire Bible is full of wonderful, profound, glorious verses, but we all have our favorites. For example, Psalm 116:15 holds a very near and dear place in my heart. One of the events in my life that God used to kick me to my knees, test my reliance upon him, and shake up the comfort I took for granted was the death of my grandmother rather suddenly due to lung cancer. The whole story deserves its own addition, so I will not share it this time. However, I will tell you that I was sitting in the same room as my dying grandmother, realizing that this was her last night with her family, I randomly opened up my Bible, and my eyes instantly landed upon these words, "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." I learned a lot about providence and God's sovereignty through that event, and it was the first time in my life where I recognized the comfort of the Holy Spirit. It was as if God was telling me, "It's okay, Matthew. She must die so that she can truly live as my precious daughter."

I am getting ahead of myself, however. That story shall come in time, but unfortunately, the story at present is not as lovely and precious. 1 Corinthians 6:9b-11 is a passage of Scripture that I keep coming back to, over and over again, whenever I cannot contemplate how a holy God could love such a sinful man as myself. Sexually immoral, idolatrous, adulterous, homosexual, thief, greedy, drunkard, reviler, swindler, etc. Such was I. Through and through. Although I was a sinful man long before 2001, my sinfulness took an all-time plunge into the depths of Sheol soon after I turned 14.

As I explained in my last addition, there were a lot of changes that took place in 2000-2001. My family moved out of the suburbs and moved into the rural country. My parents decided to homeschool my brother and me when I was in sixth grade, and in 2001, I was about to start my freshman year of high school. In 2000, my parents decided to leave the evangelical free church that we had been attending for over seven years, and at the beginning of 2001, we began to regularly attend Springs Reformed Church in downtown Colorado Springs.

However, much more than that was changing as well. My dad, who quit his full-time job of over 20 years to homeschool my brother and me, decided to start working part-time tuning pianos and reconditioning antique player pianos (the kinds of pianos that kids love because they play themselves). His part-time job had nearly full-time hours some weeks, and my brother and I spent many days all by ourselves at the home on the windy prairie. In 2001, my brother practically begged my parents to return to public school. To this day, I am thankful that one of the hardest parts for him about going back to public school was missing me. We had formed a rather close brotherhood during our years homeschooling, and he and I became the closest of friends. The Proverb that speaks about a friend that sticks closer than a brother confused me for the longest time, because my closest friend was my brother.

After some discussion, my parents decided that it was probably best for my brother to return to public school. They thought it might be good for me to go back to public school too, considering that with Ryan (my brother) out of the house too, I would be home alone all day, every day. However, I insisted, unlike my brother, that I had absolutely no desire to go back to public school. I got what I wanted. The beginning of my freshman year marked the beginning of a downward spiral that I would not recover from until God graciously intervened seven years down the road (not to imply that God did not intervene many times long before, though).

At first, it was really nice having the home all to myself all day long. Mom was working at the health department. Dad was working at the shop refurbishing millions of tiny pieces of player pianos. My brother  was away at school, loving the social interaction with other people his age who were far more interesting and interactive than me.

My homeschool schedule was rather pathetic. So I thought, at least (you'll see why). Every week, my dad would create a scheduled syllabus for each subject that I had to work through day by day. I would wake up at six o'clock in the morning every day, and I would have my work done by one in the afternoon, typically. Although dad always scheduled work for Monday through Friday, I would always work a longer day on Thursday so that I could have Friday off. However, hitting the books rigorously was not as difficult as it may seem.

You see, ever since 7th grade, I found that I did not possess the willpower to overcome the temptation to cheat. My entire 6th grade experience was very difficult, I struggled to keep an A and B average, and I hated studying for tests only to get low grades on them. In our old house in the suburb, I did all of my work in the study. Conveniently, all of the answer books were kept in the study too. However, my brother and my dad were always home, so I would have to choose what I wanted to cheat on that day between six and seven in the morning. I knew my dad would know I was cheating if I started to ace every test and quiz, so I made sure to give myself B's and C's here and there. My overall grades didn't improve, but I saved a lot of time studying.

Well, someone who cheats on all of his homework would be appalled to find out that his parents were thinking about sending him back to public school. The gig would be up! Ever since we moved out to the country, it was harder to cheat because all of the answer books were kept in my parents' room. My dad typically left early to go to work, and my brother would often sleep in until noon. I actually had more time to cheat, and therefore, more opportunities to cheat. It got even better when I was home alone all day long! I would never have to study for a test again!

There was, however, one thing that I could never cheat on: research papers. However, that didn't stop me from trying. My dad assigned a research paper on any subject of my choice, and I decided to write about the battle of Midway in WWII. I didn't know how to research, I didn't know what I was writing about, and honestly, I knew there had to be an easier way to get this assignment finished. I came across an article online about the battle of Midway, and I loved how well researched it was. I didn't know how to start my paper, so I just started with the same first sentence as the article. The second sentence was good too, so I used that one as well. Then the third, fourth, fifth, and so on and so forth. I never copied and pasted the article into my paper because that would be cheating! Instead, I painstakingly re-typed word for word, and instead of saying that my report was "by" me, I wrote "written by" as if it were more truthful.

I tell you this because I find it peculiar that I had spent almost three years in school cheating on every test, quiz, and assignment, but my moral compass felt it would be wrong to cheat on a paper by copying someone else's work and taking credit for it. I was a cheater, but I was not a thief. However, cheaters are always thieves, stealing something that they have not worked for. In my case, I was stealing grades, free-time, and my parent's admiration. Not only was my cheating dishonest, but it was thievery. Looking back, I can see that my heart was beginning to look more and more like a white-washed tomb. I prided myself by the fact that I had never knowingly stolen something my whole life. I was more than happy to admit to this to others during Sunday School. I was a good boy, and I kept the eighth Commandment. I was righteous in my own eyes. I committed little sins, but never any big ones. I was grossly deceived, and it only got worse as I grew up.

My dad caught me. He sat me down after he googled my paper, and discussed the sin of plagiarism with me. I acted like I felt awful, but the most awful part of the whole situation was that I was probably going to get a zero for the assignment. I was quite accustomed to fixing my grades and giving myself whatever I wanted. However, I couldn't give myself an A for this paper. I felt so powerless, and it was annoying. It was distressful. Dad, however, graciously allowed me to redo the assignment for at least a C+ grade. By the time I finished the paper, I wished that Dad had just given me the zero.

If only cheating my way through middle school and my freshman year of high school was as bad as it got. However, I had much bigger problems and temptations that I dealt with that year, staying home alone all day long almost every day of the week. The temptation to cheat was small potatoes compared to another temptation that nudged me constantly, persistently plaguing my every thought.

Perhaps cheating my way through middle school and my freshman year of high school does not seem like a terrible problem to you. If you know me personally, then you know that I eventually overcame my addiction to cheating. In fact, when I returned to public school the following year, I got much better grades than I ever stole with cheating. I learned to work hard, study, finish all of my homework assignments (which was never hard for someone who was used to doing all work at home), and applying myself to my studies. Ironically, had I not cheated my way through the 9th grade, I would have more than likely earned a 4.0 GPA. However, it was more important for me at the time to steal a grade, be lazy, and through a C or low B in every once in a while to through my dad off while he graded my papers.

For anyone that has read Augustine's Confessions, this was my stealing-from-the-pear-tree experience. They are undoubtedly sins, but nothing that would cause many adults to even shrug their shoulders. My sinful thievery in the form of cheating does not seem like a heinous crime to many, but like the radiant sun during noon, it all begins with a little light at sunrise. Augustine wrote, "These same sins grow worse as we grow older: first it is offenses against pedagogues and teachers, or cheating over nuts and balls and sparrows; then later it is crimes against prefects and kings, and fraud in gold and estates and slaves, just as a schoolboy's canings are succeeded by heavier punishments" (Boulding, 1997). It all starts with the small things. I disregarded the small sins in my life as if they were not even worth counting. I still considered myself a Christian, even though I was a Christian that didn't honor his parents, cheated on his school-work, lied about it often, and lived as if nothing was remotely wrong with the picture he was painting of himself.

Cheating on schoolwork was the spark that ignited an inferno of debauchery, licentiousness, and sinful destruction in my life. You see, sins that seemed terrible, the ones I abhorred as a child, the ones that my parents really guarded me from, started to seem less and less big. There was a condition occurring in my heart. I was starting to enjoy letting myself be deceived. It's really not that big of a deal was my heart's deceitful comfort, and I had shut-up my conscience so that I could truly believe my heart. A little white lie, a really big lie; it made no difference. I was beginning to enjoy being sinful. I was beginning to enjoy experiencing the things this world has to offer those who are just willing to reach up and taste the nectar of the forbidden fruit. Better yet, I was beginning to think that I was getting away with everything! If I sin in secret, then everyone will be none the wiser, I thought. I ate and I ate and I ate again. I'll never put myself on a pedestal above Adam and Eve, thinking that if I were in their shoes, I would have done so much better. They only ate one bite. I consumed the whole tree.

You might be wondering, what could a 14 year-old experience that is so bad? I hope you are not, however. But sadly, too many are ignorant of the ticking time-bombs of sinful addiction laying all throughout their house. When I was 14, we had two computers with dial-up internet. One was in my parent's bedroom and the other one was downstairs in our unfinished basement. Today, it seems everything is connected to the internet. They even sell appliances that connect to the internet, and they do so at lightning-fast speeds. Any parent that prides themselves with having the most sophisticated, fail-safe internet security software should read on. My childhood was about to be stripped from me handedly, and at the age of 14 I was about to jump head-first into a pool that I would continue drowning in years later. You know what's coming, and I am going to tell you just how bad it is and how easy it is to get addicted to a sin that will alter everything in your life.







 

Introduction to "Challenge and Reflections" segments

It's my hope that these confessional blogs serve a much greater purpose than to just reveal who I am, who I was, and what made me that way. This blog is much more than just a story about me. My intentions are not to be an open book to everyone that reads this, but rather, to encourage my peers, the children, and the teens in the church to open a book, namely the Bible. It's my hope that my stories and my confessions will inspire and motivate you to think about what it means to be a Christian. My story, I know all too well, is not a story about a Christian growing up. It was not until I went to college, moved out of the house, and started to mature that I was challenged to face a dilemma in my life: I called myself a Christian for as long as I could remember, but I did not know exactly what that meant.

After each segment of my story, I hope to challenge you (and myself) to think about the definition of the word "Christian." I aim to reflect on the Christian church, to reflect on Christians, and to examine biblical principles that might challenge all of us to re-think what has become mainstream Christianity today. Many things that I despise about the Christian church today are results of the story of my life in the church that I will slowly unveil piece by piece. I don't, in the least bit, claim to have it all figured out. In no way do I believe that I know all of the answers to the myriad of problems that are plaguing the Christian church today. However, I do believe that I have learned a few things from my past involvement with the church and how I hope to encourage God's people to prevent another boy from reliving my childhood.

I look upon my past as a young adult in the church, and I always have mixed emotions. Part of me hates, detests, and is deeply ashamed that such a story is my own. I look back with pity on all those that surrounded me and thought that I was a representative of Christ and His Kingdom. I look back with disdain on the boy and man that I once was, unable to grasp now exactly how much I was hurting my precious Lord and Savior with my hypocrisy. Much like Paul, I too persecuted Christ. However, I was not hunting Christ's followers down and seeking to destroy them. I was placing Christ's name upon myself, living a life of sin, despising the gospel, and perverting the truth in such a way that enabled me to label myself a righteous man. I saw the splinters in everyone else's eyes but missed the forest in my own, I was a young Pharisee, I was a legalist through and through, and I was only in my teens.

For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. (Galatians 1:13-17)

Why exactly do these words of Paul resonate with me so much? I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age, however, the churches that I attended called it Christianity. I was being raised in Sunday School and youth groups to be a Pharisee. I was raised to be a good person, to do good things, and all because Jesus became a man to show me how to be a good person and we killed him for it. That was the gospel I grew up with, and oh how much of it is truly and distressingly missing from it!

Sadly, it is my greatest conviction that the Christian church today is a Pharisee factory, and those that attend are more prone to become self-righteous, do-gooders than the faithful people of God. We, as the church, are raising our children to be moralists, able to discern between the right and wrong thing to do and the only reason we give them for doing so is because Jesus loves them. Indeed, for a while, they will surprise us with their moral and ethical compasses when it comes to small, childish matters. However, as time passes and the problems they face, the ethical decisions they must make are a little less black and white, then they will begin to doubt the whole notion that Jesus loves them and their ethical compasses will begin to point south.

The mantra of youth groups everywhere when I was in them was WWJD: what would Jesus do? It did not take me long to hate that question with a passion. It presupposed an ability of my own to somehow do everything that Jesus did and make moral decisions out of the goodness of my heart. Faced with a moral dilemma, I knew what the perfect Son of God would do, but I hated the idea of following in His footsteps. I knew what the right thing to do was, but I never wanted to do it. I began to think that I was probably the only one that this WWJD thing wasn't working for. Everyone had their WWJD bracelets on, but I never wore mine because it didn't seem to work. It didn't make it easier to do the right thing, it just made me feel all the more guilty every time I did the wrong thing and knew that I was sinning. In my heart, I was crucifying Christ and His righteousness. What would Jesus do? He would call me a sinner, he would accuse me of being a white-washed tomb, he would say "Woe is Matt," and He would demand repentance. I was trying my best, I was trying to be a good person, but even as a young man, I came to the realization that there was nothing good about me except a false façade.

It is hard to look back at this past and find some comfort in it. However, when I look past my own heart and look at the hearts of the people that God surrounded me with as a young man, I find great comfort. Like Augustine, I had parents who were constantly praying for me, that I might crumble as clay before my almighty God, falling to my knees, weeping bitterly, not because my sins were great but because His grace was sufficient to cover my sins. I had a grandmother who bore with my stubbornness and bitterness towards her kindness and generosity, and loved me despite knowing more about the true person I was than she probably cared to. Romans 5:8 tells us that God loves us while we are still sinners. I made God my mortal enemy as a young man, and yet Christ died for my sins centuries before. Although I was not yet born, although my existence was millennia away, my every sin was nailed to the cross with Christ.

I look back upon my past, and although I see the life of a sinner in need of a savior, I also see the love of my savior in every aspect of my past. I see the life of a young Pharisee that despised God because he could not keep His Law, and I see the Lord speaking to me by His Word, revealing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Covenant of Grace. I see a boy who was lost in the church, able to fool everyone else except for himself that he was a Christian, and I see a boy who was seeking truth because the Holy Spirit dwelt within him and was drawing him to the way, the truth, and the life in Christ Jesus. I see the hatred and rebellion of a sinner and the love and grace of God.

I now recognize that the same church that led me astray from the Gospel also preached the Gospel to me. I now recognize that the same church that made love god, also taught me that God is love. I now recognize that the same church that taught me that God loves me because I am righteous also taught that I am righteous because God loves me. The same church that led me astray set me straight. The same church that taught me to be a Pharisee also taught me to rest by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ for my salvation.

If nothing else, my story reveals that young people in the church today have every reason to be confused about what Christianity is and what it means to be a Christian. If nothing else, it reveals why the world claims to love Jesus but hate His followers. It reveals to me why many of my "Christian" childhood friends have since abandoned the church, have embraced homosexuality, drugs, fornication, pornography, hatred, drunkenness, and everything worldly as adults.

It also challenges me, as a Christian, to revisit my past and think about how it has shaped me. The potter has only just begun to shape this jar of clay. The shaping of the clay determines its purpose. God, as the potter, shapes all of us as vessels for honorable or dishonorable use. Nevertheless, the shape we possess determines our purpose and mission as His vessels. Some of us are shaped as pots for carrying water over long distances, some are shaped as jars to hold and keep the salt pure, some are shaped as pitchers for pouring wine to kings, and some of us are shaped as chamber pots to carry the refuse of the world.

My purpose is to tell my story and challenge Christians to know what they believe and why they believe it. My purpose is to tell my story and challenge the world to stop letting every church that calls itself Christian define what you believe Christianity is. My purpose in writing this blog is tell you a story of a man that didn't know what he believed, why he believed it, and allowed other Christians to define what it meant for him to be a Christian. My purpose in writing this blog is to steer you clear of making the same mistakes I did, jumping to the same conclusions I did, and to show you that if you are in the same boat as me that God's grace is sufficient to cover a multitude of sins.

The next part of my story is written, but before I can post it, I had to provide these words of caution. I caution you as a reader to read this blog carefully and circumspectly. I would not be writing this blog if I did not believe that it will be all too familiar territory for many who read it and useful in encouraging them to seek first the Kingdom of God. I would not write this blog if I did not believe that God can use it to convict those in and out of the church of sins and to draw them to Christ for the forgiveness of sins. I would not write my life's story for my own gain, because honestly, the fewer people that know my story the better for me. I have nothing in my past worthy of salutation but my past is fully the story of a boy and young man in great and terrible need for a savior.

Read carefully and tread carefully. I hope that my story is one that you cannot relate to in any way, but I am altogether aware that statistically my story is one synonymous to many other Christians. You're not reading fiction. You're not reading some revivalist testimony. You're not reading Christian propaganda. You're not reading just a blog. You're reading my life. You're reading my thoughts. You're reading my past like a book. You're reading my heart on a page. You're reading about real-life events, real people, real feelings, real heartbreak, real fear, and real joy. This is not just a blog for me, these are the pages of my life.

Read carefully and read cautiously. I fear that my story might be a stone of stumbling for some because of some of the sins that I was caught up in as a teen. I assure you, this will be a censored recollection of my rebellion against God, but I will talk about adult subjects nevertheless. However, I will address these subjects in a very biblical manner. Knowing from my own experiences, talking about certain subjects can cause us to recollect past events and images that can cause us to stumble. I implore you, reader, if you cannot handle reading my story without stumbling then stop. I do not want to cause my brothers and sisters in Christ to stumble because I stir up their pasts in a painful way. If this warning seems completely unnecessary to you, then thank the Lord that you do not understand what I am talking about. However, I know that there are many who will read this warning and know exactly what I am talking about.

Finally, read carefully and read wisely. I am hoping to organize my blog in such a manner that I provide an episode of my life and then provide personal reflections and challenges to my readers regarding that episode. I don't want readers to just know my story. I want you to know my story and to think about it. I want you to think about how you would counsel someone that comes to you with a similar story. I want you to think about how your church would address and treat someone with my story. I want you to think about what the Bible says concerning subjects that I touch on. I want to challenge you to consider whether my thoughts are outlandish or if I reached a similar conclusion that you did. I want to challenge you to interact with this blog, share your thoughts, don't be afraid to disagree with my reflections and thoughts, and don't be afraid to challenge me to consider something that I did not address.

I thank you for reading, and I hope you continue to read.

My late childhood and early teenage years

I guess the beginning is as good a place to start as any, right? I suppose the majority of people that share their testimonies start where it all began, but for someone like me, that's easier typed than done. It is very hard for me to pinpoint a specific time in my life where I went from the valley of dry bones to being a child of God. You see, I have always been a white-washed tomb. I have always professed Jesus with my lips, followed the Ten Commandments in public when it suited me, attended church, participated in youth groups, prayer groups, Bible studies, and so on and so forth. I always confessed that I believed that Jesus died for my sins on the cross, but it wasn't until just before I turned 21 that I began to believe that Jesus was my savior.

I grew up in God-fearing household, in a white suburban neighborhood, in the "Christian" part of town. I grew up in one of those neighborhoods that lied dormant Sunday mornings because everyone was attending their favorite churches around town. My two best friends in elementary school attended the same church, but my family and I attended an Evangelical Free Church after my parents grew tired of the mega-church New Life for reasons still unknown to me.

Our church met in a new school building up the street, and I enjoyed watching the church grow. Because we were meeting in a school, we would always have to set up and tear down. At least, the grown-ups did. My only brother and I would help set up a bit, but we were usually too busy shooting hoops in the gym where we held our services to notice what a nuisance we were to everyone's endeavors to put everything away.

I grew up attending Sunday school and despising it. I only marginally enjoyed it when the rich kids' mom taught the class and brought Fruit by the Foot snacks instead of the animal crackers that the poor kids' mom brought. I was only six or seven, so snacks were an important part of my life at the time. I remember hating Sunday school from the get-go. We would read the Bible marginally, we would do all kinds of artsy-fartsy crafts, we would enjoy scrumptious snacks (sometimes), and then we were expected to parade out of Sunday school with our artsy-fartsy craft and tell our parents about some Christian meaning that it was supposed to convey to us. I know, I sound like a very cynical seven-year-old, but I'm trying my best to describe my very first feelings about going to church.

My brother and I attended Awanas, and I am not ashamed to admit that I only came for the games and the food. There was only one boy in our group that was interested in memorizing the order of the books of the Bible and memorizing verses for Awana points, while the rest of us just goofed off. Every once in  a while, we would all have our memorization done for the week and we would be rewarded with a pizza party. I loved the pizza, but I found no use for the memorization whatsoever.

The church we attended constantly moved. We left the elementary school gym and moved into a vacant space in a strip mall next to a busy road in the city. My brother got involved with the worship band and started to play the drums during the morning worship service. Many of the members of the worship band attended the church, but every once in a while, young people who really knew how to play an instrument filled in. Most of them were members of heavy-metal rock bands. Even at my very young teenage years I was beginning to find it odd that our worship revolved more around sounding good to our ears then being pleasing to God's.

I actively participated and enjoyed participating in numerous outreach events that our church sponsored. My favorite was the free car wash and soda give away. A group would stay up at the church and wash cars while another group (usually the youth) would take several coolers full of caffeinated beverages down to the busy street and pass them out to cars while they were all stopped at the red light. That is, until the police would stop by and tell us that we needed to stop interfering with traffic and endangering our lives. At which point, we would stop. I suppose we were trying to get the word out that our church was there, but I think that most of people that we washed cars for and handed out drinks to just wanted a free car wash and a free soda.

As I approached my teenage years, I began to bring my magic card tricks to Sunday school with me in order to take the edge off of hearing the same ol' story with the same ol' moral. I got tired of hearing about David and Goliath, and I was beginning to wish there was a bean-stalk thrown in for some added adventure. Then the class got worse as the teacher whipped out his pre-programmed Yamaha keyboard and started singing Bible songs for us. I was probably only ten years old, but I felt like I was being treated like a new-born.

We would play "who's the better Christian games" by seeing who could find a Bible passage fastest. I seriously doubt that the teachers ever conveyed this exercise as a means to find out who the better Christian was, but since I was the fastest in my class (by far), I wasn't afraid to make it into a who's the better Christian competition. I was the better Christian.

In the middle of the class, I whipped out my card tricks and started performing for others in the class. Ironically, the person I remember being the most fascinated by the card tricks was the teacher. I'm not exactly sure, but I think that I spent the rest of the class amazing my Sunday school teacher with my mad, card-trick skills. After I performed a trick for him, he asked me to perform one for the whole class. Finally! Sunday school was getting interesting.

Once a year (or perhaps twice), the church would participate in mass baptisms. Everyone that wanted to be baptized had to attend a baptism class. Following the class, those who confessed their faith in Christ were invited to be baptized. The first couple of years, we attended the baptisms at a hot-tub in an apartment building complex. After that, all the baptisms took place in an extremely large horse trough filled to the brim with ice-cold tap water. I remember watching my brother get baptized, changing into dry clothes, and then being thrown back into the horse-trough again after teasing a group of guys (including the pastor).

I eventually "graduated" to the youth group, leaving Sunday school far behind me. Every Sunday, everyone would stay in the main room for worship. After a few songs, Sunday school and the youth group were dismissed, and only the adults sat under the preaching of the Word. I already told you about Sunday school, but the youth group was very different. I did not have to bring my card-tricks in order to stay amused.

Every Sunday, after the worship band did their thing, the youth would be dismissed, we would walk down to a nearby Wendy's, order frostys for everyone, fries for those who could afford it, and then we would huddle together and go through "A Tale of Three Kings." I never read the book, never paid any attention to what the youth "pastor" was saying, and I tuned out and enjoyed my frosty most of the time.

As a youth group, we did many different fun activities. We went camping once, and I quickly learned that nobody wanted to hang out with the 12 year-old that brought his beanie baby with him to camp. I'm sure we were supposed to learn something at camp, but all I remember is gaseous boys tents, hiking up a hill and almost killing someone when I unlodged a large rock, getting sick everytime we pilled into the van, thinking mom would not approve as we went cliff jumping, and participating in an epic spit-wad war on the drive home.

I didn't relate to the youth at my church's youth group very much. There wasn't really anyone my age except for a couple of girls that didn't want to have anything to do with me. One Sunday, a writer for a Christian magazine visited our youth group and asked us what we thought about Hell-houses (haunted houses that grotesquely reenact horrifying life events seeking to scare attendees to accept Jesus into their hearts). I was not surprised to find out that I was the only person in our entire youth group who thought this was a bad idea (to include my youth "pastor"). I said, "You can't use evil to do good things. People aren't getting saved there because they love Jesus; they're just scared of hell" (you can read the entire article here).

I spent a lot of time and actually enjoyed my two best-friends' youth group that met every Wednesday at their house. The lessons were the same mush they had always been, but I didn't attend for the material but for who else attended. My friends were there, and that was great. But better than that, there was a pretty girl that came and she loved to chase me around. We both went to the same elementary school down the road, I once professed my love for her best friend on the playground, and as a home-schooled teen, I was enjoying every bit of female attention I could muster.

Every once in a while, I would attend my friends' youth group at their church on Friday nights at an event they called Surge. At the time, Surge was the happening drink because it had the most caffeine in it (even more than Mountain Dew). I distinctly remember thinking that this Christian youth group event lacked anything remotely Christian. There were silly party games, lots of caffeinated beverages (that mom said I couldn't drink), pool tables, big screen TVs, video games everywhere, pool tables, air hockey, and really loud, obnoxious music. I felt like I was in a bar for teens rather than a Christian youth outreach event.

Not long after I disagreed with my entire youth group and youth pastor about using Hell-houses as an evangelism tool (although I had no idea what evangelism was), my parents decided to move out of our white, Christian, suburban neighborhood and move into the wide-open, windy, rural hoods (where you don't have neighbors and that's the point). We also stopped attending the evangelical free church that I had grown up in. For a while, we didn't go to church on Sundays. Then we attended a little cowboy church that met in the equestrian center down the street. That didn't last long either. Finally, my parents settled on a small (but larger than the cowboy church), Reformed Presbyterian church in downtown Colorado Springs.

Talk about a complete culture shock. I went from suburbia to the land of roving tumbleweeds. I went from loud, obnoxious praise bands singing "Jesus is my boyfriend..." to acapella singing of the book of Psalms. I went from a youth group that consisted of frostys, book studies that allowed us to keep our Bibles at home, and girls chasing me to sitting with the pastor and four older teens reading this thing called a catechism. The scariest part about the whole thing was that my parents acted like they finally found what they were looking for. We got home after our first visit, and my brother and I were thinking, "We thought the small cowboy church was strange. That was quite the experience. Time to put it behind us. I wonder what church we'll visit next week." We were floored when my dad said something to the effect of, "That was a breath of fresh air."

I was thirteen at the time, and I remember thinking that that experience was worse than visiting my aunt and uncle's Lutheran church. What in the world could he possibly mean breath of fresh air? I found the whole experience nauseating. I admit, I never cared much for our old church, but this new church was a bit extreme for me. I wasn't very fond of the worship band and all the rock guitars, drums, and synthesizer sounds, but just singing? Are these people crazy? No piano? No organ? No nothing? Just singing? I didn't care much for the Jesus is my boyfriend songs at our old church, but this new church didn't even sing hymns! They only sang the Psalms. I didn't even know you could sing the Psalms! And if you could, who would ever want to?! I wasn't a huge fan of the Super Bowl parties that our old church threw, but this new church didn't ever watch football! They didn't do a lot of things on Sunday! No more Sunday night movies, football games, afternoon lunches at the restaurant, and what's worse, we went back to church on Sunday night!

I was terrified of the new "youth" group. I was the youngest person in the class. Technically, I should have been in a different class, but they made an exception for me because I was terrified by the notion of being separated from my brother around these people. I was thirteen, there was a fifteen year-old, my brother (16), a girl just about to graduate high-school, and her boyfriend who was already in college. We sat in a small room with the pastor, and we would read through this book with stick figures named Shorty that was about something called the Shorter Catechism. I remember thinking many times, I would hate to take a class covering the longer catechism. I still didn't know that the longer catechism existed and that it was actually called the larger catechism.

Oh, how I began to desperately miss the old Who's the better Christian games from my old Sunday school classes. I never felt so stupid. I was a Christian. I had been one my whole entire life. I was not only a Christian, but a more conservative one at that. And yet, here I sat in a room with others who seemed to know this catechism forwards and backwards, and I couldn't answer a single discussion question correctly. I quickly missed the "What does Jesus mean to you?" questions. Now I was faced with questions like, "What do dispensationalists teach about such doctrines as the birth of Christ?" and "Must a sinner have Christ in all three offices to be saved? Why?" However, despite my inability to get a single answer correct, the pastor, Paul McCracken, was always very gracious in correcting me. I never felt like a loser, and my fellow classmates were almost always encouraging. In fact, I was actually learning something about what I should believe and know about the Scriptures.

Several Sundays passed, and my entire family was meeting with the session about joining the church as members. I didn't really know what the session was, but it sounded a bit too official for me. I was afraid we were going to be on trial or something. We arrived at the meeting, and I was relieved to find that the session consisted of all the nice, older men that I had met at the church (to include my Sunday School teacher, Pastor Paul McCracken). They asked each of us who Jesus was and why He was important to us. I don't remember exactly what I said but I do remember it was something to the effect of, "He's my best friend!" They received my whole family into membership...except for me. I was told I would first have to be baptized before I could become a communicant member and partake in the Lord's Supper. WHAT?!

I was furious. I had partaken in the Lord's Supper numerous times before in the past at our old church. How dare they tell me that I couldn't partake in communion! Who did this session think they were? I felt like a second-rate Christian. I had to sit there and watch while my whole partook of the elements without me. On several occasions, before we left for the evening service for the Lord's Supper, I would eat a cracker and a drink a cup of grape juice. That will show this session what I think about their decision! I was probably 14 at the time, and sadly, that's all the Lord's Supper was to me: a cracker and a glass of grape juice. I knew what it signified, but the elements held no special meaning to me. The wise members of the session rightly bared me from the table so that I would not eat and drink judgment upon myself, but they were not going to stop me that easily!

All that stood in my way from partaking in the Lord's Supper with the rest of my family was my baptism. I remember watching my brother get baptized...twice. I was not a big fan of water to begin with, and I didn't like the idea of getting dunked in a small pool in front of everyone. Thankfully, this new church only sprinkled, and they would even baptize little infants (couldn't dunk an infant in a small pool of water). I wasn't to keen on standing in front of everyone and having water poured on my head, either, but if it meant that I could eat the cracker and drink the juice with the rest of my family, than I was ready to do what I had to do. Once again, I sat before the session and they interviewed me about my profession of faith. This time, I steered clear of the "Jesus is my best friend" answer and went more along the lines of "Jesus is my savior." I didn't know exactly what I was saying at the time, but those were the words that the session wanted to hear. I was accepted into communicant membership, I was baptized along another young lady, and I could finally eat and drink judgment upon myself!

Little did I know that what I sought to gain by selfish means would be used by the Lord for His glory and my ultimate downfall six years down the road. I didn't know what I was doing when I got baptized, but God placed His name upon me that day, nevertheless. I had no intention of changing after my baptism because I did not sense that there was anything wrong with my self-righteous beliefs. In my mind, I was a Christian, by golly, and I wasn't going to sit around and merely watch the Lord's Supper when I had partaken of it my whole life prior. I was a very proud, arrogant, young man at the age of 14. I was a good Christian. I attended church regularly, I knew where most of the books of the Bible were located, I knew that the red-letters held greater significance than the rest of the Bible, I only listened to Christian music, I was homeschooled and prided myself in my Christian education, I didn't use the Lord's name in vain or cuss, and I believed in Jesus. However, I did not have saving faith in Jesus as Christ yet, and I had no place seating myself at the Lord's table. However, that is a lesson I would learn later on after my teenage life fell to shambles and everything I thought I knew about the Christian faith turned out to be completely wrong. I would know the Gospel of Jesus Christ six years down the road, but it would take that long even though I sat under the preaching of the Gospel every Sunday for those six years.

Although I didn't take my baptism seriously, God held me to it. What I viewed as a sprinkling of water, God effectually placed His name upon me and held me accountable as member of His covenant people, the church. I was a member of the covenant of grace, and I didn't even know what the covenant of grace was. Unknowingly, I intended to bear the Lord's name in vain, but God had other plans. He was not about to let some punk, fourteen year-old who feels entitled to a place at His table bear His holy name in vain. I had no intention of changing who I was as a Christian or what I believed about God, but God began to perfect my baptism by fully initiating me into the covenant of grace through the baptism of His Spirit. That baptism held no meaning to me whatsoever apart from feeding my selfish pride, but God has allowed me to look back at that baptism and know that it truly symbolizes God pouring His Spirit upon me. Whether or not I was filled with the Spirit that day, my baptism marks the beginning of my walk with the Lord and I had no idea.

I know it might seem that my feelings about my experiences in an evangelical Sunday school, youth group, and church have been altered since I have spent the last twelve years in the RPCNA (Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America). However, I am able to recall so many memories about my experiences in the evangelical church only because my early thoughts and opinions were so negative. My bias against the evangelical church I grew up in comes as no bigger surprise than to me, considering that what I believed about Jesus and how I understood the Christian religion was perfectly attuned to what many evangelicals hold to today. I was raised in the midst of an evangelical church, my Christian beliefs were very much akin to the teachings of the broad evangelical church, and yet, I detested every moment of it. I grew up with the popular belief that I asked Jesus into my life, that He was going to help me when I needed it, and I was going to be a better person for having asked Him to be a part of who I was. And yet, every Sunday, although I was merely a young boy, I felt like I was getting it all wrong and that the people that surrounded me were only making my confusion worse.

I'd heard every story a million times, but it all did not make since. What did a guy escorting two of every kind of animal onto a giant boat have to do with Jesus being baptized and having the Holy Spirit descend upon Him like a dove? What did Moses splitting the Red Sea for Israel's safe passage across and watching Pharoah's army drown behind them have anything to do with Jesus' prayer in the upper room? What does David's defeat over Goliath have to do with Peter's denial of being a disciple of Christ three times? There was a huge disconnect, even in my mind as a pre-teen. These stories weren't adding up. Nothing is jiving. The rainbow after the deluge is great and all, and I know it makes for a really good Sunday school craft, but how is this all connected to Christ on the cross?

I knew that much. I knew the Christian religion was all about Jesus dying on the cross. That was a really big deal. That was what being a Christian was all about. I picked that up very early from my parents. If it's all about Jesus dying on the cross, then why are Noah, Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David,  Jonah, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul and all these confusing books after the story of Jesus important? Are they just moral filler? Are they just mythical stories that serve to portray how and how not to obey God's commandments? If it is all about Jesus dying on the cross, then why is the Bible longer than just the last few chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

Your child does not have to be a rocket science in order to know when a story has a beginning, middle, and end that don't seem to jive together. Rather than finding fault in the narrative itself like many of my peers who have since abandoned the faith, by the sheer grace of God, I found fault in those conveying the narrative stripped of the Gospel. I did not know why I found fault in the evangelical church we went to until after I turned twenty, but ever since I was eight or nine I felt like something was missing from all of these meaningless Bible stories. I knew the flood was much bigger than the rainbow, I knew the story of Joseph was much bigger than his colorful robe, I knew the story of Jacob and Esau was more profound than a bowl of soup, and I did not like the fact that we were eating frostys and reading a book about leadership rather than reading the Bible, where the answers to all of my questions probably lied. And yet, I had no will or intention of reading the Bible on my own. It was a closed book to me. I was just a kid. Surely, I couldn't just pick up the Bible and read it, expecting to understand what it taught.

I grew up in this atmosphere that taught me that I couldn't handle the truth. I grew up in a church that taught me that the Christian faith had to be cut into tiny little pieces, stuffed into a blender, ran through a juicer, pasteurized, and then placed in a baby bottle before it would be appropriate for me as a young person. I attended Sunday school classes that taught me that unless I get to color every color of the rainbow with crayons then a Bible story would hold no value for me. I attended a youth group that taught me that unless I'm fed fast-food and caffeinated beverages, then I really would not be all that interested in the message of the Bible. Unless there was loud music, video games, and pool tables, I would find nothing of interest in what the church had to offer. Ironically, I hated the crafts, the shallow lessons (and they must have been shallow for me to find them shallow as a nine year old), the loud music, the junk food, and the stupid book studies. This church gave me everything that I thought that I wanted and could handle, but they deprived me of the one thing that I truly wanted, the one thing that they thought I couldn't handle: the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

I'm a postmodern phenomenon, by the grace of God. I grew up evangelical, I knew the evangelical mantra, I cited it as my own beliefs all the time, but ever since I was attending Sunday school in an evangelical church I knew that that was not truth. I knew that the truth was still out there, and I only wished they would give it to me. Today, I recognize the reason why they never gave me truth. It's not because they didn't think I could handle it, entirely. It is because many of them did not even recognize or know it themselves.

After we left the evangelical free church we had attended for seven years, the whole thing began to fall apart (not because we left, though). In the last twelve years since we left that church, I have sadly watched many of its members abandon the faith they once held. The bass player for the worship band stopped going to church, and his wife divorced him and left him for her lesbian partner. My former youth pastor's wife, who was very involved with the youth-group, left him and her two children for another man. The pastor, thankfully, was convicted by many reformed doctrines, and completely altered the message he preached every Sunday. Almost everybody who was instrumental in starting the church from the very beginning abandoned the pastor and his new, radical ideas of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I have no doubt that had we stayed in the church, I too would have abandoned the church after graduating college and being emancipated from my parents. The whole thing lacked any reason or purpose to me. We sing, we pray, we eat frostys, we hand out sodas to strangers, we camp in the woods together, we sell dark-roast coffee, but why is any of that important? How can I say that any of that defines who I am when I don't even understand what it is I am supposed to be doing here?

My life as a fifteen year old wouldn't be characterized by Christian decisions and faith, but God graciously placed me in a new environment, surrounded by new people, new teachers, and a wonderful new truth that I would hear every Sunday unbeknownst. If I had remained in the evangelical church when I was fifteen, I know I wouldn't being sharing my testimony of faith with you. I would have had the fuel to feed the fire of my doubt that this church, or any church for that matter, knows what they're talking about. However, God placed me in the midst of His people (His people reside in the evangelical church too, but I was also surrounded by many who were not Christians). I had my doubts, and God placed me in a community of saints who knew my doubts because they had them too, and were able to address my doubts with answers. Lest you think that I became a Christian because I reasoned my way to Christ, you will soon find out that my perception of what it meant to be a Christian was completely false and that God would drag me, kicking and screaming, to the true narrow path. My experience of hearing the Gospel, knowing the Gospel, and believing the Gospel by faith was not a pleasant one. It only brings me immense joy to relive it because I see how God used immense sorrow and depression in my life to bring to nothing my "Christian" beliefs and replace them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

These were my late childhood and early teenage years. It's as close to a beginning as I can get. From here, we move onto a deeply troubled, depressed, white-washed tomb that must collapse completely before God can start a new work in my life.