Playing House With My Faith

Somebody I Used to Know--Part 2

There were times we did not go to church on a Sunday.  This probably only happened 5 times during my entire childhood and adolescence. On these rare occasions, we would have “home church”--we would sing a song, my dad would read a Bible story (from my Children’s Bible), and we would say a final prayer--it was rather like playing house.  I enjoyed not going to church on these days because, other than “home church”, it was another free weekend day. 

More often than not, we were at church.  At a minimum, 3 times a week:  Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and often Friday/Saturday youth activities.  This is just what you do– church becomes a part of your life–it’s just what was expected of me and it was what I did.  In addition, as the son of the pastor, participating in the business of the church was expected of me.  I taught Sunday School, helped in the nursery, and sang specials during the morning service.  As a teenager my life revolved around two things:  school and church.  

When I got my driver’s license, my dad encouraged me to start going to Gainesville First Church of the Nazarene on Sunday nights–this was a larger church and had an active youth group.  I soon added Wednesday nights to Sunday nights.  Once I graduated from high school, I was going to Gainesville for every church service.  My involvement in church became my central focus–my social life intertwined itself with my church life.  The youth pastor became a mentor and started teaching me how to be a leader in the church. Christian leadership (also known in the lingo as stewardship) was a responsibility I viewed as being bestowed on me.  It was a role I relished and took very seriously.  I was a youth leader and would get to church early on Wednesday night to help set up.  I was a member of the church choir.  I participated in Sunday School.  I was selected to be a part of the district youth IMPACT team.  I helped lead Bible studies.  I helped plan retreats and camps.  Every night before bed, I would have my “quiet time with God” and read my Bible and journal in my spiritual notebook.   Everything I did revolved around church.  

The time eventually came when the senior pastor and the youth pastor left because they were “being called” to another church.  In the youth pastor’s absence, I was the one that continued leading the youth group until another pastor could be hired.  Often, after my classes at the local community college, I would go to the church, sit in the youth pastor’s old office, and plan out the weekly youth activities.  

Like home church years before, it was like playing house.    

I did all of this because that was what I thought was the right thing to do.  This was what Christian stewardship was about–giving your time and being a leader that others could look up to.  I didn’t drink, cuss, or fornicate.  I was a positive Christian role model, doing what (I believed to be) was morally right.  I was making the adults around me proud and that made me feel good. 

I had been lured into a sense of righteous safety.  I drank the grape Flavor-Aid and it was delicious.  

Or so I thought.  

It was soon after moving to MA to attend Eastern Nazarene College, that my faith began to crack.  

After arriving at ENC, one of the first things I did was to try and find a church I felt comfortable in. I was also interested in joining a “Flock Group'.  Flock Groups were Bible study groups made up of 5-8 people (of the same gender, of course).  These were things that were expected of new students, so I blindly did them without giving any thought of what I wanted.  Having left my church/social circle back in Florida, I was also looking for new friends–this would be a great way to meet people.   

I went to the large campus church.  It was too forma and stuffy.  I went to every Nazarene church in the area, trying to find the right church for me.  But nothing seemed right–they were too small, too conservative, too far away, to fill in the blank.  I had an excuse for every church I visited.  It was just easier to not go.  Also, I was starting to realize that it felt really nice to sleep in on Sunday mornings and not worry about getting up and going somewhere.  I started to rationalize and think the issue might be the Church of the Nazarene.  Maybe I would be happier exploring other denominations?

I was assigned to a Flock Group with people that supposedly had similar interests.  That was not the case–I was lumped into a group with people that I would never normally interact with.  There was a jock (who was never there due to being at practice), myself, some people I don’t remember, but there were two people that really gave me pause.  One of them was the group leader and the other was another participant.  Now, I have no proof of anything, but I just got an uneasy, gross feeling around both of these people. In an attempt to be vulnerable, they would both overshare things that I had no interest in knowing about them.  And in return, the leader expected the rest of the group to also be vulnerable and, I’m guessing, also share.  Plus, as if that wasn’t enough, everything about the group just felt fake–the book we were studying, the leader's pretend sincerity, the interest level of the others–it all felt very plastic.  When I stopped going, the leader would call me incessantly wondering why I wasn’t going.  I eventually just stopped answering the phone.  

This non-church-going person who didn’t attend Bible studies was very different from who I used to be. Something was not right, but I was not mature enough (or worldly enough, for that matter) to recognize what it was.  I was confused and had lost my focus. Before, my goal was to be a steward of Christianity.  Now I struggled to know what my purpose was.  

The cracks started getting a bit bigger.

It is normal to leave home to figure out who you are without being under the periphery of your parents.   That is a part of healthy growth and development.  In retrospect, my growth had been stunted for a very long time.  I did not know how to think for myself, though I fooled myself into believing myself to be a “free thinker”. My circumstances forced me into thinking I was fortunate to have the life I had.  I had “chosen” this path and it was supposed to be righteous and good.  But a fear had been kindled inside of me and it did not allow me to veer very far from my moral center.  I was scared to make any decision that was contrary to what I had been raised to believe.  Looking back, I had been given no other option or choice. I was being smothered under a blanket of Christianity and gaslighting myself into believing this was the norm.  I was becoming an adult without having the freedom to make any of the normal, developmentally appropriate mistakes of youth.   

This was the beginning of the end of my faith. Though I did not realize it at the time, small cracks in my faith had begun to develop. However, the first real fissure was about to develop.   

To be continued.