When I was a child, I believed in God. A vengeful, controlling, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, frightening God.
When I was a child, I believed the Bible was God's literal word, recorded by man but divine and perfect, and as such, it was to be interpreted prescriptively rather than descriptively.
When I was a child, I believed in Satan. A real, cunning, hidden-amongst-us kind of Satan who was constantly tempting believers, particularly the weaker of us, such as women and children.
When I was a child, I believed in Heaven. A distant, shimmery, solemn Heaven filled with perfect Christians who would spend eternity walking on streets of gold and singing the praises of the Almighty. I secretly thought this sounded rather dull.
When I was a child, I believed in Hell. A literal Hell, probably somewhere inside the Earth, inhabited with demons, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, everyone outside of our tiny fundamentalist Baptist sect, and even some from within that sect. My God was a hardcore Calvinist, and I was terrified that I was not truly one of the elect few.
When I was a child, I believed in Armageddon, and that it was imminent. The Antichrist was almost certainly already walking among us; at the time, speculation centered around Mikhael Gorbachev as the likely culprit. Plague, pestilence, and persecution were surely going to cut my young life short.
When I was a child, I believed I owed my parents and all authority figures perfect, first-time obedience with a joyful countenance, even when my unquestioning submission resulted in betrayal and pain. Bill Gothard said my father was the hammer, my mother was the chisel, and I was but a gem in the rough.
When I was a child, I believed good Christians should be happy and thankful all the time. Sadness and depression were indications of unconfessed sin or demonic influences.
When I was a child, I believed women were merely derivative of men and existed solely to serve as help-meets and mothers to large broods of home-schooled children.
When I was a child, I was taught all of these things and I believed them. As I grew older and witnessed injustice, pride, and hatred in the name of my God, I struggled desperately to continue believing, to sacrifice myself to Christ daily, to die to my flesh. When I inevitably fell short of perfection and succumbed to disillusionment, I was shunned and shamed and punished. I learned to pretend. I learned to obliterate my real self for the sake of appearances and acceptance. And I wondered if anyone else felt the same way.
Over time I decided, as St. Paul said in his first epistle to the Corinthians, that I must put away childish things and stop thinking and reasoning as a child. I was tired of seeing "through a glass, darkly," and determined to know fully, although I have not and may never be fully known even to myself. And today, I am an ex-Fundamentalist.
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