The Backstory:
Nobody asked for this but I thought I would share a bit about my testimony which will lead to other topics, and give some foundation and background to what I believe or how my understanding of scripture and the Godhead changed based on my past experiences. There are so many topics I want to get in to but also that require thoughtfulness and time to get my words out right and into these short blog posts. I don’t like to make posts too long because I want my visitors to actually read them and not get bogged down or bored. Anyway, the post today is I am going to briefly share my background.
When I was in 1st grade going into 2nd grade, my parents had made the decision to pull us (my older brother and my younger sister and myself) out of public school and start at a Christian school. The school was on a church property which we also attended as a family. This was a Baptist church. I attended from 2nd grade to 12th grade. There were some really hard financial times and personal family things through those years but God is faithful and my Dad always came up with the money to keep us there because he just felt it was so important to do so.
The school taught from a Christian worldview in every subject. It never really seemed odd to me. However, this was a very strict and semi-legalistic environment. I didn’t fully understand that until my teen years. There were a lot of really dumb rules and we had to sign a covenant that we would follow these rules. We had a very strict dress code and they even tried to place rules on us for when we were not even on school property, how we were to conduct ourselves outside of school. For example, we had to agree to never go to a movie theater. That is one rule we often broke.
While I was there I felt torn about how I felt about what it was like going to school there. By the time I reached 7th grade I was definitely more aware about some of the rules and things being taught supposedly from the Bible that didn’t seem right. I’m sure they were well meaning. I was baptized there, at the church, around age 11. I also remember the day I went forward in the youth church “alter call”, before that, and prayed with one of the Sunday school teachers. Some would say that was the day I was “saved” and at the time I would have probably said that too. But I know better now what salvation is and it’s not a prayer you prayed.
What did I learn?:
Of course I shortened the backstory quite a bit but I want to jump ahead. Before doing so let me add that when I was in 7th grade my parents split up. I would have been about 12 and it was a really hard year for me even prior to my mom leaving us. When she moved out she also took my 3 year old sister with her. My older brother and my other younger sister stayed with me at my dad’s. It was a tough time for my family. This did not deter me from my faith though. I felt like I was strong in my beliefs, even if I didn’t fully understand everything or was even being taught correctly.
I came to realize later that my church, my school, taught salvation by fear. They also more or less taught salvation by works. This is not the approach that should be taken in my opinion and works based salvation is never correct. I don’t remember ever being taught salvation is by grace alone. There were restrictions put on us in how to conduct our lives in how to dress, who we could marry (and I’m not referring to only not marrying an unbeliever), what we could watch or what music we were allowed to listen to (even what instruments: drums were of the devil they would say) and those sorts of thing they claimed were foundations in the Bible and if we didn’t obey those things we were sinning and in danger of hell. The way salvation was taught wasn’t hope and joy in Christ or for what he had done, it was teaching fear of going to hell do you must be saved. Honestly, I think they talked more about hell than they did of grace.
Still, even as a 16+ year old teen, I never questioned the spiritual things I was told or even moral standards about modest dress, or abortion, or other social issues. I did question some things like who we could and could not marry (again, I am not referring to marry unbelievers, but ethnicities). I went to the Bible and knew I was being misled on some things. It did feel like an awful lot of things were called sin and it was an impossible standard to live up to. Yes we are all sinners, and no we are never perfect, but what I didn’t seem to grasp at the time was the difference between what church organizations call sin and what God calls sin. Nor did I fully understand, if at all, that when you trust in Jesus you are made righteous through him and he restores you to the Father. I don’t think I was ever taught that. Therefore you basically live your life afraid of doing anything because it may be a sin that may prevent you from going to heaven. That’s probably how I felt most of my young life.
What was the result of that? :
In one sentence I can tell you what the strict rules placed on us and the fear of hell messaging did. Though I didn’t reject Christ in any way, I did reject continuing going to church. Once I graduated high school I never stepped foot back there on the church property. Was it a mistake? Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t have enough understanding or equipped enough to be strong enough to know that not all churches were like that and I should have found another church to attend. However, I didn’t. From 1995 until May of 2014 I never attended church and rarely ever read my Bible. Did I pray? Yes, but they were not what I would call correct prayers.
I am not blaming anyone else for the choices I made. I am pointing out that this was my foundation and it did affect some of the choices I made. I went on than in those years just living my life, “having fun”. Was it really fun? No, not really. My early 20s especially were not fun. I was depressed all the time. I didn’t think I was worthwhile for anyone and pretty much felt like nothing I did mattered and everything I did I just messed up. I never felt “good enough” or valued but I was looking in the wrong place. I wasn’t looking at how Jesus saw me, I was looking at how every day people saw me, or what I thought they saw. I made bad decisions because of it. Thing of it is, I knew they were bad choices, or most of them anyway. Others I maybe was not sure, or torn about, or I didn’t know how it could have affected my relationships with people or with Jesus. I was lost and stumbling around like many people and especially young adults.
In that time frame of being lost, I met a man who I later decided I would live with, unmarried. He was probably more lost than I was. He told me he believed in God and I took that as, okay, this is good. Eventually, we got married and later had 2 children. By the time I guess my first child was born I was thinking more about going back to church. This didn’t actually happen until 2014 though when my children were 7 and 9. In retrospect I think I was being called but I was ignoring it, or rather I was afraid to go back, or didn’t know where to go. I knew I’d be going with just my children, which isn’t what I really wanted, but I wanted my kids to have a foundation and I wanted to change my life and reconnect with my savoir and I guess I didn’t really know how to do that.
I found a church and we did start going. We went there for 6 years. It was familiar and comfortable and though much of what I heard was the same I did learn things. I was growing. It was a good place to be, I thought. I became involved in a lot of the children’s ministries and I attended women’s Bible study. My life did change and it was a good thing. I become in love with Jesus again and the scripture. But, there were problems. This church was similar in a lot of ways to the Baptist church I grew up in. They weren’t legalistic per say or as strict on how to dress and who makes a good spouse (outside of not marrying an unbeliever). I was an adult now and I saw other issues. As I was studying my Bible more and realizing how the sermons were proof texting scriptures to make them applicable to us in our daily lives today, as if a written rule book for us, I started to see more things I that I didn’t like. I started realizing how they were sharing the gospel, in particular, to children and it all sounded too familiar. This mattered because my children were attending and young at the time. Then there was financial focus and what I call shaming from the pulpit for not meeting the budget goal each week. I wanted to find another church.
What’s happening now?:
Before I say where I am at today, in 2017 after a calling I could not ignore, I made the decision to pull my kids from public school to homeschool them. It was the best decision I made in agreement with the holy spirit. Of course God knows best. Homeschooling my kids not only helped them it helped me in so many ways. I grew so close the Lord because I needed to study in order to teach my kids. I chose the model I grew up with, to integrate a Christian worldview in every subject. They had mandatory Bible class every morning with me. Studying the Bible is how we started our day, every day, for 8 years. My son started in 7th grade and my daughter in 5th grade. I graduated both of them and this blog recorded our journey. You can find a lot of that still here in the homeschool area.
So, my children’s homeschool curriculum and my own study has really grown my faith and knowledge of scripture. I’m not going to get into anything specific here but the church we were at, we are no longer with, but did switch to another. I am thankful for the time I had there, and it was a helpful stepping stone in my faith journey. It gave my children a foundation and hopefully my growing process did the same. God knew exactly where I needed to be and what I needed to do and led me on that path. He is faithful, praise him!
I am continuing in my study of scripture to undo a lot of the things I was taught the Bible said, but it doesn’t. I began reading the Bible through a Christ-centered lens which believe it or not, most churches don’t actually do. They may mention Jesus, teach you about him, preach the gospel, but they make the Bible to be about YOU, about us today, about life application or about “end times”. The entire Bible is about Christ. There are humans in the Bible of course but God is showing us something in the Bible. The Bible is about God redeeming people through Christ. It is His story, not ours and not any of the people who are mentioned in scripture either. There are reasons for those stories, those situations, but you need to see what the text is saying about Christ. What does it reveal about God? Don’t try to find yourself in it. Can you apply what read? Of course, but I would say be careful about making the Bible a self help guidebook.
Wrapping this up:
Even though I made that decision to follow Jesus back in the 80s and though I didn’t understand everything or taught biblical truth always, and I put Jesus on a shelf for my young adult life…God did not forget me. I am not deserving of Jesus, or forgiveness, but neither are you. None of us are. I don’t know where in your journey you are, but know that God is not far away. There’s nothing you could have done that can keep you from the gift of grace that is offered to all of us. That gift is Jesus. He laid down his life to restore you to the Father. He lived a perfect, sinless life and he defeated death by his resurrection. He poured out his blood for you to redeem you to the Father in heaven. What does it take to be restored? What does it take to “get to heaven”, or have eternal life? Jesus says believe in him. John 3:16 is one such place this statement is made. Is it that simple? Yes.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. — John 3:16-19 (CSB)
I know a lot of pastors and Christians try to attach works to salvation and that includes, “repenting of sins”. Repentance of sin is a work, it is not what salvation is. Salvation should also not be taught as if it’s a choice between heaven and hell. This way of teaching doesn’t actually tell you about Christ. It tells you the YOU have to do something. Yes, what you need to do is believe in Christ as God’s son. What he accomplished on the cross should bring gratefulness, joy, and hope. When you understand it you will want to spend your life trying to serve him, and in humility, knowing that you can do nothing to earn your salvation. This would be from gratitude; from love.
Other Christians will try to explain what belief looks like. I made posts already and may make more digging into these topics at a later time, but I would encourage you to read the scripture in context without proof-texting. What is proof-texting? That’s when you already know the answer to a question and you’re looking to support it by taking a verse here or there out of a complete passage thereby changing the context and meaning of what it says, what the author was conveying, why and to whom. Friends, we don’t read anything else that way, why would we read the Bible that way? Just because you were taught something one way your whole life does not make it correct. Be open-minded and read the Bible without your presuppositions, the things you were taught it said, and find out what it says about the Godhead.
Spend some time on my blog here and read posts I’ve already made, I have shared a couple at the bottom of this post. I try to stay active here but I do have life commitments that monopolize my time to write often. This blog has been sharing a lot of my exploration through what the Bible actually says. You may not agree, and that’s okay.
What I believe
Jesus really does love you. He proved this by putting himself on the cross in complete submission and obedience to the the Father. He promises that those who place their humble faith…their belief…in him that they would receive eternal life and that means being restored to the Father. Where sin separated, Christ restores. He promised a helper, a counselor, to those that do so. He left the Holy Spirit to reside in believers while they remain alive here on earth. And Christ has promised to come back again one day, and he will. Friends, believing in Jesus is joy, is hope and it should not be about what you can get out of it, it should be with a humble spirit of gratitude knowing you don’t deserve it, you’re not owed it, and you can do nothing to earn your salvation or better wording, your eternal restoration. Jesus paid for it. That’s how much God loves us. Yes, it is really that simple.