Stats: M, 26, 5'9", 150# ~9%BF, doing bodyweight exercises and biking to try to lean bulk.

  • Age: 26
  • Marital status: Single
  • Height: 5'9"
  • Weight: 155#
  • BF%: 9-10
  • Workout routine: Simple bodyweight routine + 10 miles biking
  • Hair: A frikin' dreadhawk. All my female friends said I shouldn't do it, but like that catchy song says, 'I don't care, I love it.'

So, a lot has gone down in the last two decades and I'm only now starting to realize a good bit of it, but here's my story best I can tell it.

When my parents got married, my mom was an average Christian, but my dad, although he was raised in a Christian home, was either not a Christian, or not a strong Christian. The last time we moved, when I was about 8, my mom picked out our new church. Honestly, I could just end the story right here, because you already know what's up.

The church was Presbyterian, and my mom picked it out because it had strong teaching. She was apparently skeptical of the doctrine of cessationism, but for several years she never saw a reason to bring it up and all was well. Then, she became chronically sick, became interested in miracles, and started doing research, and eventually ended up embracing Pentecostal theology. She tried to bring my dad into it, and he was open to it at first, but after several years of listening to solid Presbyterian teaching he had started to grow as a Christian, and after some intervention from the elders, he decided he disagreed with my mom's new beliefs. This led to several years of marriage drama, and an unfortunate situation where my dad would take us all to church on Sundays, and my mom would have us secretly listen to Pentecostal teaching while my dad was away at work. My mom told me and my siblings that we should find Pentecostal churches to go to when we turned 18, so when I went away to college, that's what I did. For years I lived a double life, going to a Presbyterian campus ministry, but going to Pentecostal church on Sunday because that was where I believed the truth could be found. Four years later, I moved to a new town to start vet school and again found a Pentecostal church to go to.

As school went on and I studied medicine, I started to realize that some of my mom's medical advice that I had listened to years wasn't exactly accurate. This made me realize that she was just as fallible as any other human, and might not be right about everything. I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, because I had definitely had past arguments with an ex who took her mom's words as scripture, but it led me to wonder if her views on the Bible might be flawed as well. To add to this, my friend group at the time consisted of several Mormons, several Catholics, an atheist, and an 'it's 2019'er, all of whom were convinced that they believed the truth. I knew that we couldn't all be right, and started to wonder if I might be wrong, and wasn't able to completely convince myself that I wasn't. It was this internal conflict that made me realize that none of my beliefs had come from a personal study of the Bible and that almost everything I believed involved me simply accepting another human's interpretation of scripture without checking it for myself. For a while I felt hopeless, wanting to know the truth, but not knowing how to find it, until one day when I decided to just pray and ask God for wisdom. No sooner than I had done that than I realized that the answers to all my questions were sitting in a leatherbound package on my bedside table, and all I had to do to know the truth was to open it and start reading.

Of course, studying the Bible takes some effort, and I slacked off on my efforts to study it for the first year or so. I kept going to the same Pentecostal church because I 'had to start somewhere' (there was a girl), but little by little, things started to bother me about that place. The thing that bothered me the most was that I was a new Christian trying to start over with my faith, learn what the Bible had to say, and become a man who could lead his own family spiritually, but sometimes I had to sit through an hour of church before the preacher even opened the Bible. When he did read the scriptures, it was usually no more than 10-15 verses that seemed to be handpicked to support the sermon.

The turning point came one Sunday when the preacher read a verse that just didn't sit well with me. I don't remember what it was, but it just seemed off, as if he had control+F'ed the Bible to find that one phrase that he needed for the sermon, but didn't stop to read what that verse was actually talking about. While everyone else stood up to cheer as he shouted on, I just sat down and looked at that verse, then spent the next minute or two reading the chapter before it. Sure enough, that verse was taken completely out of context and didn't seem to support his point at all. I don't remember what he was preaching about at that moment, but I do remember that when I finally did put down the Bible and look back up, the first thing he said was, "Don't go trying to get into heaven holding onto the bootstraps of someone else's faith!" That was the best advice I'd heard all day, so I took it, and when the sermon was over I walked out of that church for the last time. And to make matters easier, I'd just shot my shot with the most attractive girl there and came up empty-handed, so there was really nothing left to hold me back. One week later I was sitting in a church listening to a preacher go through the new testament chapter by chapter, and I haven't looked back since. I'm still not as consistent with my Bible reading as I should be, but I'm taking responsibility for my own faith now, and trying to become the man I need to be.

That probably wasn't the most coherent yarn you've ever read, but there it is. I don't even know why I'm posting this, except maybe to vent and to see if anyone has any advice on how to keep moving in the right direction.

Cool. Thanks.