My Religious Journey
Before diving too deep, let me first give a quick background of who I am and where I'm coming from. I'm in my early-30s. I work as an electrical engineer. I was born and baptized as a Catholic. My first memories of religion and church are of the Catholic church. I cannot tell you exactly when my family left the Catholic church, but I was not confirmed. I did have my first communion, which I believe happens in the 2nd grade. Of course, as at child, I do not remember what we were actually told about the first communion or any of the rituals associated with the Catholic church. My longest standing memory of my time as a Catholic is being told that if we missed church after our First Communion that is was a sin.
Sometime after that my family bounced to what I will call the non-denominational, Pentecostal church circuit in the area. We went to three of them for sure before settling in a Foursquare Gospel church in my hometown. Perhaps non-denominational is not the correct classification. It's Evangelical with peppy praise/worship music, hand-waving, and speaking in tongues. If you've been part of the circuit, you know exactly what kind of churches they were. I cannot say that I had any particularly negative experiences in church. I was baptized at the Foursquare church at some point, I met many great people. I had fun at summer church camps (except the church services, where I felt intense pressure to become "Baptized in the Holy Spirit"... aka speak in tongues). I believe that particular idea is from the book of Acts. In addition, I was "born again" or "saved" at one of these summer camps. Years before I could even make sense of what I was truly saying, let alone fully comprehend faith, God, and salvation.
Needless to say, I never spoke in tongues. I recall feeling a bit guilty... like I didn't get it. Or maybe I wasn't good enough. I still went to church with my family more-or-less weekly. My dad did not go particularly often and my brother and I were excused during October and November annually so that we could go bowhunting for deer with dad. Here's an interesting aside... during our church hopping days I remember at one point talking to a Sunday School teacher about deer hunting. She looked my brother and I straight in the face and told us something to the effect of... "You know, God gives man command over all the animals of the Earth." Wow... that's cool, I thought. I'll let you guess how many unfulfilled prayers for big bucks and copious deer that I made as a young, impressionable Christian.
I still went to summer camps. And when I became old enough, went back to summer camp as a "teen helper". We basically messed around, helped out in the kitchen, and otherwise had a pretty good time with other kids our age. I cannot say that I ever felt particularly spiritual, as a teen helper I still felt uncomfortable during the services, but did enjoy the social aspect at the time. Occasionally, I would get feelings that I took as God. An odd chill, maybe goosebumps. Some other 'off' feeling at a moment that I was paying attention. The all powerful God of the universe was making himself known to me conspicuously timed as HVAC units kicked on and off during church.
I would say my "faith" ended roughly at the beginning of high school. As Christian after Christian I knew broke about every "rule" the church was making... I think I just kind of slipped away. In contrast... I was, by all accounts, a really good kid. I didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs. I was never in trouble. I didn't skip classes or cause any disturbances. I was in "advanced placement" courses. I got really good grades, but school was fantastically easy for me. I graduated and got a two year scholarship to the community college in town. That was easier than high school for me and I worked 38 hours a week at a grocery store bagging groceries and stocking shelves, a job I'd started part-way through high school. After those two years I decided... why not be an electrical engineer? My uncle was an engineer and he seemed better off than my dad. And I was good at computer programming in high school. So it seemed like a good fit.
So off I went to Bradley University in Peoria, IL. It is a smallish (~5,000 students between undergrad and graduate level) private university known mostly for its engineering programs and astronomical cost. I got some scholarships and pissed them away in short order because I was in no way, shape, or form prepared for real school. I have never studied a day in my life. Never done any sort of homework that wasn't required. I simply knocked high school out of the part without any effort on my part. And I was, frankly, FAILING at big boy school. I had always made sure I did well in school because my parents expected it of me, and without them really being there... I was struggling at finding motivation.
I'll spare the nitty gritty of my turning it around. I had to drop some classes and take summer and winter classes. But I righted the ship. I completed almost the entire Electrical Engineering program in three years. I had taken some gen-ed classes that transferred, but none of the engineering courses transferred. So while most of my friends had their senior project and a few blow-off classes their last semester at school, I had 16 engineering hours. I don't remember my overall GPA at graduation, but I want to say my last semester at school came in at somewhere in the 3.4-3.5/4.0 range.
So... back to faith. The first semester I was at Bradley I took a Western Civilization class taught by a man by the name of Dr. Daniel Getz. I won't say that I never dozed off during the 6-10PM class twice a week. But, Dr. Getz made it interesting. At some point we were discussing other flood myths from Mesopotamia. I'll be damned if I didn't have a SINGLE clue that there were GOBS of flood stories that were shockingly similar to the one contained in Genesis. During this discussion Dr. Getz made a really simple statement that has stuck with me until this day. And it has eaten at me over the years (it has been twelve already!). Dr. Getz never told us what he believed about the flood stories. But he flipped a switch that I have not be able to turn off despite my digging for it... he taught me HOW to think.
"To them it WOULD have looked like the whole world had flooded."
At the time would have told you that I was a Bible-believing Christian. But, through the prism of time, Dr. Getz drove a pick into the face of my brain mountain. And it's slowly been fracturing away since. With that simple statement he basically gave me permission to think, something that certainly isn't encouraged in most fundamentalist Christian churches.
This, in my experience, is the type of attitude towards using your supposedly God-given faculties in most churches I've been involved with during the course of my life. Setting aside the dangerous attitude towards depression, what kind of parents doesn't want their kid to reason? Substitute mindless obedience to an unknown entity for critical thought?
I originally started this post to talk about the two creation stories in Genesis (yes, there are two), but when I started writing about my background it became a rambling post of its own. Thanks for reading! Genesis discussion is going to have to wait for a few days.
Jacob