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I started listening to Pirate Christian Radio (PCR), and networked with Christians on the internet in order to maintain fellowship. During this time, understanding the Bible became of critical importance to me. My Christian walk was marked by 3 "goals":
1. To know God, as He has revealed Himself, and not as I wish Him to be. This was not to be achieved through my limited human experience, knowledge, or emotions, but through what He has revealed of Himself in the Bible.
2. To be more like Christ, walking in sanctification, knowing that "it is finished."
3. To reach the lost while in fellowship with other believers.
I had never truly been part of a community of Christian friends. Of course, I went to church when I was a child, but I did not have a single Christian friend who shared my passion and zeal.
I decided to join Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) when I returned to college in the Fall. I quickly became established and made a few close friends and many other acquaintances. During that school year, I went on the Fall retreat, participated in the Boston Winter Conference, and went on Big Break in Florida. The later two of these conferences were evangelistic in nature. We went out into the community, the streets, and beaches and shared our faith with others.
I attended CRU regularly my Sophomore year, and started going to Vita Nova church. During my Junior year, I stopped attending CRU, and attended church more often.
It was also during my Junior year that I started calling myself a Calvinist. There are several reasons why I landed here. But again, I do not wish to bore you. When I was a Christian, I created a blog which can be viewed here. I created a post about my journey into Calvinism, for those interested. You can also listen here:
Why is this important? I started calling myself a Calvinist because the Bible changed my perception of God. In this way, I discovered that my beliefs had largely fallen in line with Calvinism, or "Reformed Theology." In summary, I came to understand that faith is an act of God's will and purpose. God is sovereign and I am not. My salvation was an act of God, and not my own choosing. It is God who predestines, justifies, and glorifies, and no act of man can change this. (Rom 8:28-30)
I inundated myself in this theology, loving God's sovereign grace and the 5 solae of the Reformation. I was discerning, reading and re-reading my Bible. And then reading it again. I could see Christ, the themes, the context. I was zealous for the Gospel. I loved it. I loved Christ. He was my hope and freedom from sin and death!
I began listening to The Dividing Line, and loved the new insights I received from James White and other reformed speakers. I looked up to him. He is a brilliant theologian. He has done countless debates, several of which I have listened to. I enjoyed these types of programs, mostly from what I was learning from them. It allowed me to feel connected to other Christians. I also appreciated the way James White, and others like him, would hold Christians to a high standard of consistency, correcting the mistakes and errors of others, and warning us of deception in the church. I would download his Podcast and listen to it every day; walking to work at 4am, while I was around the campus, eating lunch, or just relaxing with a game of Mahjong. I learned a lot about Reformed theology, God, and many contemporary issues in the church.
But the most important thing I learned while listening to this program was to ask questions, questions of my self and my own beliefs.
I learned that double-standards are the tell-tale sign of a failed argument. I learned that I should be consistent, that consistency is honest. This is part of why I started calling myself a Calvinist. I believed the Bible to be consistent. And it should be, if God is its author.
I started criticizing Christianity, and holding it to the same degree of scrutiny I used to judge other beliefs, religions, and faiths. I started allowing myself to ask certain questions that I had been suppressing. And I knew there would be answers, adequate answers, consistent answers, because Christianity is the truth.
So really, I should be able to ask any questions. And ask I did.
I entered my senior year of college, and my faith was under a lot of stress. I was having some difficulty with a family member, and suffering from certain sins. My conscience was plagued by the idea of my own sinfulness and my inadequacy before God. I felt like a failure, impure and abhorrent. I knew that Jesus saved me, that He did all the work, but I felt like I was in the gutter, alone again.
I remember praying constantly, on my knees after my room mate had gone to sleep. And if I needed to pray and had no where to go, I would find a quiet spot to kneel and pray; by the campus center, in the library, beneath the Student Union, beside the green houses, at night, during the winter...
I joined a group at church called Redemption Group, for those who suffer from addictions or trauma. This group was not a place to be "fixed," but a place where we could share our brokenness and remind each other to look to the cross. We met weekly, and I was part of this group for a semester, where we read through the book Redemption.
In this group, my faith was challenged. I listened to horror stories from girls who had suffered from unspeakable kinds of abuse. Consequently, we were struggling with the idea of God, and desperately trying to hang on to anything we could in order to keep going. We kept little journals of our thoughts, notes, and prayers. We tried to build up one another.
I ended up leaving. I graduated and returned home. Still, I tried to hold on to my faith. I studied my Bible, listened to Podcasts. I wanted to fellowship with other Christians, but I did not have a car. I was walking to work at this point. I had many Christian friends on Facebook who shared my convictions. I also joined a chat channel that Alpha and Omega ministries facilitates. I was active in the channel for about a month in the summer of 2012.
This was about the time I really had questions, questions that needed answering. Issues that I had allowed myself to skim over began to reemerge. Questions such as,
"Why does God allow multiple wives and concubines in the Old Testament, but says that marriage is between one man and one woman in the New Testament?"
The answer was essentially, "God can do whatever He wants. God can change things however He wants according to His purposes."
This did not seem like an adequate answer. It wasn't an unsatisfying answer. It just didn't stack up. It seemed as though the only reason this change occurred was because the culture changed. Did morality change? Can morality change with context? Is morality absolute?
More questions arise.
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