I pushed the reset button, twice, and then some

I was born and raised in the heart of big church, Catholic Chicago. Cathedral spires and skyscrapers dominated the landscape of my life. I could see church buildings, but I could not see the kind of church people my little New Testament from vacation Bible school wrote about. I could not see God.

By seventh grade, I was a convinced atheist. God was dead, or He had abandoned the universe.

Then I got into Boy Scouts, and went camping for the first time, and we moved to a small town in southern Illinois. My horizons expanded and the dingy polluted air of the city brightened into living green trees and deep blue skies.

I thought bigger thoughts, dreamed greater dreams, asked deeper questions. I turned to my dad for help. Instead, he attacked me.

Three huge questions were asked of me which led to these four books.

I was only fourteen years old and I had discovered several unique Christian books in a public library. For the first time I saw a beautiful, living picture of a real God making choices in real history to bring us to a real future free from sin and death. Evil had a beginning and an end. Glorious perfection on a real perfect earth reigned before and after. No one ever told me such a thing! I thought everyone would want such bright hope, especially my dad.

Like he was, I am a writer. So I had written a few pages trying to describe to him what I learned. That’s when I found myself sitting in a small chair in front of my big dad being lectured and interrogated by him. The triple edged sword that slew me were his three questions:

How can you tell me, your father, that I am wrong?

How can you tell the oldest, biggest church in the world that they are wrong?

How can you tell the whole world that they are wrong?

I thought I was just sharing some beliefs and reasons, but apparently I was also making an accusation against his beliefs. To say the least, this rocked my world. I had no answers. In the blink of an eye, I really didn’t know what I believed because maybe the new stuff I was reading was just fiction!

My collection of beliefs tumbled like a house of cards, because I had no foundation and no proper system to connect and hold my beliefs together. Looking back, I see now that many things I held proved to be true, but I couldn’t keep holding them because I didn’t know why they were true.

I had to back up. I had to start over. I could not bear the thought of being wrong and leading anyone into suffering, failure, death, or worse.

Dad had told me that as long as I was in house I would do what he told me to do and think what he told me to think. But I had asked him for help earlier and he was still not giving me help now. And I had too many questions.

I checked out books on religion, history, science, philosophy, anything from any angle. I hid them in plastic bags down in the woods in the hollow at the bottom of the moose tree.

I could not have put it in words at the time, but I was building a belief system from scratch. I was looking for consistency, completeness, and creativity.

Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together naturally, the beliefs I would choose needed to be consistent with each other and with real life. Like the completed puzzle my beliefs needed to explain the complete story of history from beginning to end, including evil’s beginning and end.

Finally, the finished puzzle had to connect me to God and give me life and love and courage. I had to feel God’s creative power in my heart. I needed more than abstract theory. I needed, and still need, real connection.

However, that’s not the end of the story.

Even though that philosophical jigsaw puzzle called, worldview, was coming together in my mind, there was still an emotional intimidation in my heart. I could not wrap my mind around that fact that my smart, powerful dad had not much more than a wind shelter of logs on a beach. I was convinced I was right, but I was not willing to see that he was so wrong.

That is, until a certain confrontation removed the scales from eyes and the fear from my heart. Maybe later I’ll share the details, but for now, my timidity was replaced with pity. I could look at our positions objectively and move forward with my life independent from him.

I became a Christian school teacher and for over ten years enjoyed my work. Then, fellow Christian workers falsely accused me of something akin to educational heresy in my efforts to support my children’s needs. To me, true education and true religion are the same set of principles. I quit and sank into a depression that lasted for a few years. To escape it, I started over, again.

I was more efficient and organized this time around. With tweaking and stronger connections, I came to similar conclusions. After another period of teaching, I decided that I really should share my beliefs and the steps of thinking taken to reach them.

The process is not a random, cherry picking manner of choosing your favorite opinions. It is a logical, spiritually chosen plan of starting at zero, laying a foundation, and building on top of it. The effort is worth it, in this life and the next.

So that is the stage you find me in now. I have had all my ideas tested, and now I am trying to organize and express them in as simple and straightforward a manner as possible. Hopefully, I can help the widest audience possible, but if I don’t quite hit the spot with a question or objection you have, feel free to reach out to me and let’s deal with it.

May these resources help your understanding be expanded, and may your life filled with truly creative experiences!