It began my freshman year of high school. This kid who I carpooled with to school started talking to me about his church. I was baptized catholic as a baby, but my parents were both hippies so nothing ever came of that. He finally convinced me and my younger brother to attend church with him at an Assembly of God church for what they called an "illustrated sermon." What this was, was, essentially, a terrifying montage of people dying and being dammned to hell. Needless to say, when the call came, we ran down the aisles to pray the "sinner's prayer." They later told us about something called speaking in tongues, but that is was something special, not something you really needed. I really wanted it, never got it, and, as a result, became disillusioned with the church. I slowly fell off and never really returned.

After my sophomore year of high school I switched from my small private school to a large public school. The sports seasons started a few weeks before school, and at practice this kid, who was a junior like I was and seemed really cool, started inviting me to a Bible Study. I just ignored him, since I thought I was pretty much done with religion, but he persisted, and I finally told him that I would go to one Bible study if he never mentioned it to me again.

I went to this Bible study and was not all that impressed, but they had a lot of food, and there was a pool table and stuff and fun people to hang out with afterwords, so I continued going for a few weeks. They convinced me (come on man, there are more fun people to hang out with there!) to come to their church. Lo and behold it was another guilt trip sermon! Hallelujah! They convinced me that the sinner's prayer is no good, that I need to get baptized (again, because those silly Catholics used the wrong name AND the wrong amount of water!) and talk in tongues, or I was doomed to hell. Well shoot, now that I needed it, tongues was surprisingly easy to get.

Standards was their key word. You really couldn't do anything at all without sinning. You aren't really even supposed to hang out with anyone who isn't the same religion unless you are trying to convert them. Summers are MUCH hotter without those immodest shorts, too. I believed every word of it, though. I needed to do all these things or hell was my place. I spent hours reading the Bible and highlighting things and memorizing them, and to this day I can go toe to toe with anyone on Bible quotes. I was also perfectly comfortable believing that my family was going to hell because they didn't believe the same things I did. Jesus DID say that we would have to leave mother and father to follow him.

Things changed when I went to college. These churches are not very common, and the closest one to my campus was 40 minutes away. Since church is generally four days a week (5 if you count Sunday twice, since there are night and morning services) this would have been quite taxing on my limited gas resources as a college student. I went for the first few weeks, but started slipping off. The longer I was away, the more I realized how messed up the standards of my church were. I was meeting people from all kinds of backgrounds who were good people, but never ever spoke in tongues before, believe it or not. It got to the point where I realized that I had been completely brainwashed, and they needed to have church so often to keep it fresh. Being away allowed me to think again, rather than getting my daily dose of fear. Pentecostals out there, take a few weeks off church and talk to some people who don't believe the same things as you... see if you can still believe that they are g

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