I grew up in a Baptist Church, and “heeded the call of God” to be baptized and become devoted to him at a very early age. Then, after a few years in public school, my parents sent us to a Catholic elementary school for a time and I was confirmed Catholic. As an adult, I mostly attended Baptist churches but visited and studied with over 12 denominations in my late 20’s. Throughout, I maintained a core understanding and belief about God.

It wasn’t until I started to read the Bible and study the Bible (mostly topical and word studies), that my understanding began to change, and I began to question the “correctness” of my faith — my understanding about God.

My faith was — generally:

I was sure that there was a God, that he had a son named Jesus, and that Jesus had been killed as a “move“ in some sort of spiritual gamesmanship between God and “the devil”, to allow humans to escape hell when we die.

We all deserved to go to hell because we were hopelessly bad people who could not stop sinning no matter what. Sinning was doing bad things; things that were forbidden by God. Chief among sins were those of a sexual nature and murder.

Jesus was a teacher who was a hybrid god-man who came to teach mankind how to stop sinning and love each other, and then die to take the punishment for our sins away from us.  That punishment was eternal death in hell.

We needed a savior, so God gave us one on the first Christmas — “his only begotten/biological son, Jesus.” Jesus was successful in saving us when he was killed without having sinned, and God miraculously resurrected him from the dead on the first Easter. He was born on December 25th and was killed three days before Easter and that is why we celebrated those two holidays.

I was sure that what God wanted us to do was to go to church, sing, pray, study the Bible a little, and listen to sermons every Sunday. If we *really* believed Jesus died for us and God raised him on the third day after he was killed for us, then we are saved, which means we get to go to heaven when we die, regardless of the bad things we had done in life. We also needed to say “the sinners’ prayer” and get baptized.

So I did all that, and became a teacher/preacher to help tell people about all that.

But, then I was led to study the whole Bible in depth, without considering the doctrines that I had learned, and my faith was enlightened. My understanding about God changed extensively.

end part one