I was raised in a strictly conservative household. I remember thinking that Bill Clinton was the next worst thing to the anti-Christ. I remember going to a rally for Bob Dole in what must have been late 1996 even. So when I suggested to my family mid-way through last year I would be voting Democratic, it was no surprise that I didn't get the world's most welcoming reception.
I had begun to think for myself. I didn't want anything to do with anyone training me to feel or think in any particular way. So I adopted the method of researching things I knew nothing about. It turns out that most of us have a pretty skewed vision of the world. I learned all I could about what was going on. But the hunger to be liberated politically was quickly replaced.
I no longer had use for the faith of my fathers. I still believed it wholeheartedly, but began to acknowledge to myself that each faith and practice is flawed. My quest at this time was to examine the flaws of the things I was taught as a child.
To start out, it was things that were trivial. Things like language. I hypothesized that if God was there listening to the words coming out of my mouth, he had a lot bigger things to deal with than whether I said something was badass or had a couple beers after work. I just felt and to this day feel that those things are unimportant in the big picture.
For what I would say was about a year, I was in limbo with my faith, progressively moving from one theory to the next. But when August rolled around, I finally decided that I had no reason to believe any of what was instilled in me from such a young age.
Part 4 available Saturday, November 7th, 2009.
Visit ...The Paper Bag blog
:) Excited for the next post!
ReplyDelete