When you've grown up as I have, surrounded by a christian community, beginning to question your faith feels scary. It also feel dangerous.
Who dares question God?
It would have been more comfortable to accept everything.
It would have been more comfortable to just believe what I'd been taught and not rock the carefully constructed, safe boat of beliefs which sailed in that ocean of my world.
It would have been more comfortable to overlook the inconsistencies, the hypocrisy, the bending and manipulating of the Bible. The bending and manipulating of the Church and the people.
But safety does not always go hand in hand with truth, and I would rather have truth. Everytime. Even if it's painful and hard and even if it meant facing God's wrath. I had to know. I had to find out who I believed in and I wanted answers. Was God the God of my parents? Was God the God of my church? Was God the God of the books I read or the christian radio station I listened to, or the contemporary music I loved. Was God the God of the hymns? Was God the God of the end time preacher or the guest speaker from a far away nation? Was God the God of Bill Gothard? All these voices. All these opinions. All these interpretations? What was truth?
How do I shut out the voices - all those messages - and how do I find the God of the Truth?
Not my truth. Not their truth. Not even 'truth'. But 'The God of The Truth?"
It takes courage to find it. Some have the search forced on them. Others seek it out. The majority prefer the safety of their carefully constructed boats and never think of leaving the shore. But truth has a funny way of making its presence known - creeping up on the complacent, knocking at the doors of passivity. Who chooses to listen? Who wants to listen? For if you do, it will overwhelm your soul and there will be no turning back and nothing will ever be the same again.
I found Jesus when I was five years old, at the same time as both my parents who had been raised in traditional churches such as the Anglican and Methodist church. My father was not a church goer in his early adult years, but through my mother, they heard about this new movement in town and were curious to find out more. They eventually immersed themselves into the pentecostal church community, which in a few short ten years influenced my life so dramatically, that by fifteen years of age I was living away from my hometown in the big city and my father was about to start pastoring a small community church. We took short term missions trips to places like Thailand, Malaysia and Burma (Myanmar) and travelling to Australia with Barry Smith, the end times preacher and a close personal friend of my father and mother.
The last ten years had been full-on, evangelical, pentecostal immersion. The church we attended in my childhood hometown was no slouch in the scene of New Zealand pentecostal churches either. It was a hub of dynamic preachers, guest speakers and church launching. Looking back through my childhood autograph book, (a popular trend in the 1970s and 1980s), I have the signatures of some of the christian world's best-known teachers in there from the 1980s. People like David Wang from communist China and the famous evangelist Ray Comfort. My parents moved me from the local public school and into the newly established christian school. I thrived. It was a wonderful time - a wonderful community. It was total immersion into the pentecostal world and the church was at the centre of it and my family in the middle of it. Hook, line and sinker.
When I went off to YWAM in 1990 to Australia on a big adventure, I was barely 18 years old. Looking back this is one of the best times of my life. YWAM was perfect for me. I made lifelong, beautiful friends and it really cemented the call in my heart to give my life to God's service - regardless of denomination. Regardless of culture. Regardless of church politics and christian politics. I was, as we used to say then, 'sold out for God.' I really meant it.
Two important things happened to me when I was with YWAM. The first experience was a night on the Goulburn base when I told God I would go anywhere and do anything for Him and I meant it. I gave God permission to take over my life. I then expected He would send me off to the countries I feared the most like North Korea or Iraq because it always seemed that missionaries told tales of going to places they never wanted to go to and that God laughed at them and sent them there. The second was in Sydney, Australia after we returned from Indonesia. I had gone to the bathroom with my friends early in the morning and while I was at the basin, a woman I had never seen before approached me and told me that God wanted me to know He had a job for me to do in the years ahead.
This was the first of what I now call the little lights. Little glimpses into the true character of God. Little moments of light that I would remember years later, when I needed to.
I listened to her and took on board what she was saying, but at the same time I was self-effacing. There were others more fervent and more gifted than me. I even wondered if she'd mixed me up with my friend. I also had come from the background of hyper-spiritualism and had a hesitancy and natural questioning towards anything smattering of the supernatural. My parents, while believing in the spiritual world and 'spiritual warfare' (a christian term for battles of God against Satan), were cautious about all the fringe activity that went with this. They never totally bought into the 'demons behind every lamp-post' craze that swept through the Pentecostal Church in the 1980s.
You know how when you look back on your life you see forks in the road. Decisions made that controlled destiny.
I made one of those in 1991. I was in Hawaii at the YWAM university and a ministry opportunity came across my path. To go and work as an assistant to the widow of Keith Green in Texas. But I let it go. I turned away from it and came home to New Zealand. A year later I met Bill Gothard, and all my life changed.
I don't want to dwell on that time because my experiences are well documented in other places.
But I was 20 years old when I met Bill and my family had became involved in IBLP (Institute in Basic Life Principles) while I was away with YWAM. So I went to work for him as his secretary in his beautiful, plush office in Chicago. This was - as I would discover years later - the 'job' I had to do for God. This was my Iraq and my North Korea.
In many ways, this was my martyrdom, because it did suck the life out of me.
But the heresy of Bill Gothard only layered upon the constructed images of God and faith and christianity that were already there. Later, when I began to question, one of the big questions I asked was;
Why was my family vulnerable to the deep deception of Bill Gothard's teachings?
In Part 2 I'll talk about what questions led me to deconstruct everything I thought I knew about God and the little flashes of light in the answers that helped lead me back to God.
Disclaimer: I use Wikipedia to give basic information about some of the people and organisations I mention. Wikipedia is not always a reliable source - but I do not choose to link to some of the websites as I now disagree with their theology and don't want them getting an increase in visitor traffic.
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