Christianity Unraveled

October 29th, 2019 (later that evening)

I was raised in the Baptist church. I grew up only knowing that Jesus loved me, that belief in him granted me eternal life in heaven, that all other religions were false and learning about them could lead me astray, that the gays were bad, that baptism is an outward expression of an inward faith, that modest is hottest, that sex is only good in marriage, that the Bible is infallible, that hell is where people go if they don't believe in Jesus, that unbelievers don't have real joy or true love, that evolution is a scam, climate change isn't real, democrats are Satan incarnate, and week-long mission trips don't hurt anyone. I was also told to protect myself and get fully involved in a Christian community so that I don't become polluted by the secular world.

In my first semester of college, I learned that I could either be 100% assured I was going to heaven or 0% assured, that Jesus commanded us to go to everyone and tell them the good news that they probably were going to hell for eternity if they didn't believe all the right things (which can be talked about in a four-point booklet or bracelet,) and that if I don't want to walk up to random people and share the gospel with them, then something is wrong in my heart and that we aren't called to base faith on feeling. I learned that week-long mission trips aren't actually good, but summer-long ones are, so you should go on summer mission, because God calls us to go and not because they need more money and numbers. I also learned that my new catholic friends believed in evolution, and I thought that they were bonkers since only true Christians believed the literal seven-day creation story that God spoke everything into being from absolutely nothing.

In my second semester of college, I learned that learning about other religions is fascinating, and that Christianity is very similar to a few of them. I learned more about evangelism, and learned that relational evangelism is the best because then you make the person feel cared for before sharing the gospel, unlike the bad types of Christianity who just hand people Bibles and tell them that they will go to hell if they don't repent and believe. I also learned that males were the head of everything, and that I am supposed to submit to the authority of males since I am a female.

In my third semester of college, I learned that the Holy Spirit can give people prophetic words, that he still shows visions, and that he is also a person (which means I could stop calling the Holy Spirit an 'it'). I learned that I had a gift with my musical abilities, and that God called me to be a worship leader. I learned how to discern when the voice in my head was me or the Holy Spirit, and I learned that the Bible as I knew it wasn't always as such, and that the order and the content of the Bible was decided upon by a ton of old dead men at different councils. I also learned that I couldn't bring myself to "hate the sin" of my GSRM identifying friends because that would mean hating who they are, but that I still should since the Bible is against it and clearly calls it a sin.

In my fourth semester of college, I learned that a lot of spiritual experiences that I thought were unique to Christianity occur cross-religionally. I learned that the Bible can be interpreted in many different ways, and that maybe we got the whole "women aren't equal in ability for role" thing wrong. I learned that the Bible isn't actually as clear as I was told about the GSRM community, and that it was getting much harder to read anything in the new testament except for Mark, since that is the earliest written manuscript and probably the least messed-up.

In my fifth semester of college, I learned that evolution and the Bible aren't inherently against each other, that I could still be in allyship with my friends who were "living in sexual sin" while being a Christian, that salvation is sticky, and that I quite literally have no idea what is real and true. I also talked about maybe attending Bethel college for graduate school, and I learned that I need to be careful because Bethel has a reputation of pushing the liberal agenda, being accepting of the GSRM community, having females lead over males, trusting science over faith, and having more corrupt doctrinal teachings.

I wonder how well that warning worked the first time.