Coming Out of the Dark

My evangelical, fundamentalist, pastor husband said I was just "having a crisis of faith" or "struggling with doubt". To me, it just felt like someone had turned the light on in the pitch-black room I'd been locked in all of my life.

The brightness was shocking! It took time for my "spiritual eyes" to adjust. But once they did, the real shocker was seeing that the place I'd been living in all of my life - which I had been told on a daily basis was "pure and holy" - was actually filthy with lies, manipulations, hatred, and hypocrisy.

This culture (this cult) that I'd been born into and raised up in was not at all what I had been programmed to believe that it was. Seeing it and evaluating it with the blinders off just made me start asking, "Where is the Love?"

My journey out of the dark began innocently enough. In my earnest quest to, "study to show yourself (myself) approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth," [from 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV], I had found a parallel literal translation of the Bible and went about my studying. I thought, "What better way to 'rightly divide the word of truth' than to study it in its earliest original form. My new Bible's pages were formatted in two columns - the King James Version on one side and the literal translation from either the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek on the other.

As I read through each verse, comparing the words on the right and the left, it became clear that the version that I had been spoon-fed all of my life presented a very different message than the literal translations of the original texts. In fact, several of the same passages from both columns seemed to be in blatant opposition of each other.

I started mentioning these oddities to my husband in passing conversation, and shortly thereafter, my new Bible suddenly disappeared. I searched high and low through our house, our cars, and at the church - it was gone. But the nagging questions that it had brought up for me kept stirring in my mind and heart.

Those questions kept me searching, but now I was searching in secret, and keeping my findings to myself. In my search I came across a course that I could listen to on my phone about the history of the New Testament by a guy named Bart Ehrman. This was someone who had been steeped in evangelicalism from his teenage years and subsequently had spent decades studying the history of the New Testament.

What I came to understand was that the book - which I had been told to believe was completely inerrant and perfect and had come straight from the mouth of God and was then written down by 'holy men' - had been altered, edited, and revised multiple times throughout history. Even more concerning to me was the fact that most theologians agreed that the very earliest manuscript of any portion of the New Testament wasn't written until at least 20 years after Jesus' death - 20 YEARS!

Now all of those sermons telling me that I needed to be sure to memorize and quote "what Jesus said" word-for-word and follow it "to the letter" seemed absolutely absurd. Because, honestly, how could anyone be so arrogant as to think that they actually knew for certain "exactly" what he had said?

Now my little spark of curiosity had turned into a desperate need to find actual, unmanipulated truth. The more I searched, the more evident it became that the reason the "holy scriptures" of my culture-of-origin had been edited and changed so many times was so that those who had power and control (rich men) would be able to hang on to their power and control.

Over time, in little spurts here and there, I started reading other books like The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I also began listening to podcasts like The Liturgists, and Exvangelical as well as paying very close attention to the narration in my favorite tv show - Grey's Anatomy.

All of these beautiful, courageous women's voices were speaking to my weary heart. They helped me see the possibility of freedom, empowerment, and peace. And, although the journey took me over a decade, I followed their voices, and many others along the way, to my new and better life.

Light at the End of the Tunnel