Several years ago, I was in a really challenging place. Where my beliefs about God and the Bible and Christianity were shifting rather dramatically from what I had been taught in the church growing up. My religion degree chewed me up and spit me out and led me to realize things that my former understandings couldn’t justify. What made it harder was that I was working for a church. Teaching for a church that expected me to teach things I no longer thought true. hahaha! I imagine some peers have been there. I was on an island. Lonely and struggling to rationalize what to do, what to say, where to go. Should I just fall in line and trust what I’ve always been told or keep going forward, asking the questions, living in the tension, wrestling with God?
I chose the latter. I had to. It meant the loss of my certitudes. It meant wilderness. It meant losing friends. It meant losing jobs. It meant disruption and death in nearly every part of my life. But what has come from it is something renewed and honest. It’s taken me places I never would have thought and drawn me deeper into mystery than I ever imagined.
I needed to write this then. And in the years since I only shared it with a few people because initially I think it was more for me than anyone else. The assumptions placed on me and how I got to my beliefs is often so very frustrating. People are so easily dismissive and fail to understand the painful journey of doubt and loneliness that got me and so, so many others here.
I wanted to share some of those writings with you:
DevonBailey.com 