Missionary Kid Finally Grows Up

I am a second-generation MK; a missionary kid. I was brought up in the church. My family was originally Baptist, but my parents worked with an interdenominational mission organization, so we ended up attending a variety of churches, depending on where we were living. (We moved a lot, like many missionaries do.) All the churches were strongly fundamentalist, however.

I was taught since earliest childhood to "say my prayers" before I went to sleep. I memorized a little ditty:

"Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.

If I die before I wake,

I pray Thee, Lord. my soul to take."

Around the time I was 10 or so, this verse gave rise to a horror in me. "If I should die before I wake..." What if I did die in my sleep? I hadn't prayed the sinners' prayer yet; I would go to hell. I tried to convince myself that I was safe, since I had been a Christian as long as I could remember, but the preachers kept drumming it in that "you aren't a Christian because your parents raised you that way; you have to repent of your sins!" I wasn't aware of any real sins that I had committed, but that was because my heart was "hardened", they said.

When I was 11 I told an out-and-out, blatant lie. Then I knew I was going to hell, for sure. And it was hard to repent, because the lie had been to protect a friend. I hardly slept for a week. Finally, I blurted out a frightened prayer, and fell asleep instantly. What a relief!

Like most of my family and friends, I grew up and went into full-time Christian work. For many years, I taught, in venues from Sunday Schools to colleges. I wrote Sunday School materials and other training manuals, Christmas pageants, and apologetics. I even led groups in door-to-door evangelism.

(I feel as if I had just disclosed my criminal record.)

It was the Rapture theory that broke the first link in the chain. I like to have things in order, and I was studying Daniel and Revelations in tandem, trying to fit Hal Lindey's book, "The Late, Great Planet Earth", into them, when I saw that the text does not support what I had been taught.

I started studying my Bible without the "aid" of commentaries. I examined all the old proof texts in context. I followed words from one book to another. I checked alternate translations. I slowly worked through the NT in Greek. I read whole books over and over to get the "feel" of them.

And I found that I had been misled. Many of the doctrines I had taken for granted had no Scriptural foundation at all. Words were mis-translated. Clear statements were "explained" until they meant the opposite.

The doctrines involved were not the core of Christianity, but still, the awareness that the authorities could be wrong was troubling.

I became very cautious. In teaching, I avoided controversial topics: believer's baptism, the Rapture, speaking in tongues. Where it was safe, I was always saying, "But what does the Bible say? Read it!"

With the Southern Baptists, I took a mini-course in evangelism techinques: psychological manipulation, using the Four Spiritual Laws; getting assent without cognition; finding the soft underbelly of the "unbeliever". I was sickened by it, and confused. Would God rape his creatures?

I began to be more assertive about my new understanding of the Bible. The strange thing was, this actually increased my influence in the church. Maybe my message was becoming popular then; I challenged barriers between denominations, the artificial Shibboleths we had always insisted on. I was still a fundamentalist, though.

Then my youngest son proclaimed his atheism. We argued and fought and cried. He was adamant. I prayed. I used all the techniques I had discarded: "praying the blood", bargaining, "claiming the promises", rebuking Satan, fasting, calling on guardian angels . No use. He was still an atheist.

And going to hell. That was what scared me. My baby, going to hell?

I started researching hell in the Bible. And discovered it wasn't there, at least not as I had been taught. I couldn't believe what I read; I thought maybe wishful thinking was causing me to see what I wanted to see. I studied and read more. I consulted the scholars. I finally accepted it; there is no Dantesque eternal torment for unbelievers. Not according to the Bible, there isn't.

But that called into question the whole basis of my life. (Scary, isn't it, that the doctrine of hell can be central?) If there is no eternal damnation, why do we sacrifice everything to "go into all the world and preach"? Why do we live in fear, watching lest we commit the unpardonable sin? Why do we have to harden our hearts against unbelieving loved ones to avoid going crazy with grief?

Since I was no longer a fundamentalist, (An eternal, fiery hell is one of the five "fundamentals".) I began to explore the other basic tenets of our creed. The inerrancy of the Scripture. The Trinity. The virgin birth. The atonement. I had always been reluctant to use the standard arguments for Biblical inerrancy, especially the so-called fulfilled prophecies. The interpretations seemed arbitrary and contrived: "This part of the sentence is prophetic; this is not." or "This prophecy must have a double fulfillment; we know this because it did not happen the first time exactly as stated." Using the same methods, I could have argued for the inerrancy of Nostradamus' quatrains.

And the proof text, II Tim. 3:16, didn't help. "All Scripture is given by inspiration..." What Scriptures (or writings)? The canon had not been decided upon yet. If Paul was the author (II Tim. 1:1), the gospels had not even been written. What was meant by "inspiration"? How did that guarantee perfection, when it had passed through fallible human hands?

Until now, I had accepted the doctrine in spite of this; it was what I had been taught since childhood. But at this point, I began to deal with Biblical contradictions. I couldn't just brush them away any more.("I don't understand, but the Bible is never wrong, so...") Why did Ezra teach the opposite to Moses? Why does Jeremiah say God never instigated the sacrificial system? Why does Paul do what Jesus prohibited? These were not picky details, like wondering why Goliath was killed twice, by two different people: the contradictions that worried me struck at the foundation of the Gospel.

When I finally admitted to myself that the Bible was a mix of truth and fiction, everything else crumbled. I was on my way out.

This was a frightful time for me. I prayed daily, "Lord, don't let me go!" My faith had been a rock to me through many difficult days. I needed it. I begged to be enabled to believe, to have the confidence that I was protected and guided by an all-knowing, loving God. "Lord, you promised!" But there was no answer.

I back-pedalled at church, moved, joined a new congregation, planning to be "just one of the bench-warmers". I quit my job with the mission organization. Maybe I could ride through the doubting years until the temptation passed.

I was miserable. The preaching nauseated me. The music: "I was sinking deep in sin", "...trusting in His Word...". I love to sing, but now the words hurt. I couldn't take it any more. Two years ago, after more than fifty years in the church, I quit going.

I still study the Bible. It sits on my desk where I can reach for it several times a day. But each time I open it, I find another error, either in the Bible itself or in the way it is taught in the churches. Occasionally I meet, either on-line or in the RW, an honest, gentle, kind Christian and I think, "Maybe I could go back..." But no, I can't unlearn and unknow. I was always plagued with a need for the truth.

My family still thinks I'm a Christian. My father is very old, and frail; I don't want to ruin his last year or two with the torment I went through with my son. After he goes, I will tell the family I no longer believe. Many of them are still missionaries; I expect to be ostracized. That's what happened to my son; they speak of him as "lost". It hurts.

PS. Answer to a question: "...what it is like to have that belief fall like a foundation of sand?"

Scary, at first. Embarrassing; I believed all that garbage! Infuriating: they lied to me! Disheartening: I've wasted my life chasing after a non-existent hope. I've turned down opportunities to do what I would have excelled at and enjoyed, in favour of an endless walking down dead-end streets. I have submitted where I should have stood firm, forgiven the unforgivable, validated the frauds. Worse; I have inspired many people to follow me. On the happy side; I am now free to make my own path. Free to tell the truth. Free to do what I think is right. Free to read, to make friends, to try new things.