Space For Doubt

Allow me to introduce myself. Born into the conservative SDA church, schooled up until college in the SDA educational system, and fed a steady diet of traditional beliefs, I was generally exactly how you’d expect to me to be.

As a kid, I knew what I was supposed to be doing and not doing from a very early age. I remember a slew of (seemingly now) arbitrary Sabbath rules washing over me and I never questioned it. At home we only got the “Don’t do [Thing]”, but never got reasons. We never discussed religion, we just followed the rules.

NOT eating pork was held at about the same importance level as was not murdering your neighbor. Eating clean meat was fine but only at home. We never ate meat in the church….because reasons?

I remember feeling guilted into praying and studying my bible. You could never do it enough! It was heavily implied that by not engaging in this enough, you’d jeopardize your health/safety/life/salvation. Basically if you didn’t check this box off enough, bad things would happen. A real prosperity-gospel-esque affair.

I also remember never being very curious about what I believed. I didn’t not question things because I felt any particular burden of loyalty….I just didn’t care. All the important people in my life said these things were true, so they were. I didn’t care to the point where I didn’t even know what these “things” were half the time.

This lack of curiosity remained all the way up until my mid 20’s when I suddenly began to become much more interested in the minutia of the doctrine I supposedly held so dear. Still though…never really questioning it much….just far more curious about it.

It wasn’t until I reached my mid 30’s when my world got rocked by a simple audio book. More to come on that later.

I’m excited to have a space to share my journey and hopefully reach others to understand theirs.

Peace.