My Personal Spiritual Journey and Why I’m Still Fascinated by the Bible Even Though I’m Not a Christian

I decided to take a step back today from reviewing a book about the Biblical “Watchers” and put a little context behind why I’m still interested in the topic even though I no longer consider myself Christian. I feel that those reading my blog may continually find themselves confused about how I feel about certain things (such as the Bible or belief in God) or where I’m going with all this. Let me take a moment to try and explain my background and spiritual journey as best I can for those interested. I’m ALWAYS interested in discussing any of my history, stories or even religious/spiritual choices with those sincerely interested.

My Childhood Religion

I was born and raised in a Seventh Day Adventist household and attended Seventh Day Adventist church schools from 1st through 8th grade. I also attended an SDA boarding school for part of my freshman year until I got kicked out out for things like getting my ear pierced and running a poker game in my dorm room.

For those who are not terribly familiar with Seventh-Day Adventism (or SDA), they are a pretty conservative christian denomination known primarily for their decision to assemble/worship on the Sabbath (i.e. Saturday) rather than Sunday like the vast majority of Christians and for abstaining from eating pork and shellfish following the old dietary food laws in the Old Testament. Additionally, Adventism is known for believing in a sort of modern-day prophet from the late 1800’s by the name of Ellen G. White (though they will STAUNCHLY insist Ellen White never added anything to the Bible and merely commented on it and clarified things). It is mostly due to their belief that Ellen White was a modern-day prophet that many Christians view Adventism as a “cult” following a cult leader in their prophet.

During my formative years I saw a lot of really bad and hypocritical behavior by so-called Christians that I am certain cloud my judgement at times to this day. As an example, I would be scolded for breaking a church rule like watching an “R-rated” movie or watching television after sundown on a Friday night (gasp) and then later find out that the people scolding me had a private porn collection, or were sexually abusing their own children, or were teaching classes on theology to 8th graders and sleeping with the pre-teen girls in their class and taking nude photos of them. All of that was not only true, I saw it with my own eyes and this is only scratching the surface of hypocrisy I’ve seen in my lifetime. By the way, I’m HAPPY to discuss these stories from my past in detail with anyone interested. Despite all this, I have LONG tried to accept the wisdom of not blaming “God” for what people do.

Anyway, because my family beliefs were different than most other Christians, I was continually questioned and even ridiculed by my non SDA friends for my not understanding that the day of worship had been changed to Sunday, that Christians had been “set free” from law and thereby the dietary food laws no longer applied, and I was told that I was trying to earn my salvation by trying to “obey” the law that man could never keep. I therefore grew up constantly having to defend my beliefs, conducting Bible studies with my friends willing to do so in order to prove to them that the Sabbath never changed, that the law was not in fact “done away with” and that being obedient has nothing to with trying to earn salvation.

Leaving the Church

As I grew older, I began having theological differences with my own church. I was taught to study for myself and form my own conclusions and, when I did, those conclusions did not always match what the SDA church was teaching. Primarily I took issue with the writings of Ellen White which, when I would point out that a verse in the Bible doesn’t mean what the church says it means they would correct me with the words of the Prophet who made it very clear that the verse means ONLY what the church says it means. I soon learned that Ellen White was the standard of truth and not the Bible. Any ambiguous verse or passage in the Bible first had to be run by Ellen White’s words first for the “correct” interpretation.

It was in my twenties that my father felt “called” to the ministry and left the computer field to attend our SDA university in Berrien Springs, Michigan. I was now a college aged man, and I followed my parents for one summer and attended a local community college while my father started seminary. While my father was in seminary, I visited our church organization’s local library on campus and inquired about the writings of Ellen White. It had come to my attention that the library had a LARGE collection of her original writings and books from Ellen White’s personal library that were available to view in the university library.

About that time I had discovered a book that claimed that the church was hiding the “truth” about Ellen’s writings and that there was an entire project going on at the university where students were continually finding passages Ellen wrote or spoke about during a so-called “vision” which were turning out to be word for word plagiarized copies of other books she had in her personal library. Students every year would go down to the library looking through her personal library and finding passages she “stole” word for word from and claimed that she’d seen it in a vision. I’ll never forget asking the librarian to show me this student project then known as “Project Sunlight” and seeing her break down in tears telling me, “Whatever you do, don’t let what you see here today ruin your faith in God.” Suffice it to say, that day changed my life forever.

While my father eventually reconciled his issues with Ellen White’s “gift,” I did not and formally requested that my name be taking off the books of SDA membership. I vowed that day never to allow a “church” or another human being decide for me what I believe. From now on I would follow my own understanding and feel ZERO compulsion to reconcile my differences or do mental gymnastics to convince myself I believe as someone else does.

Spiritual, Not Religious

Following my departure from the “church,” and during my mid to late twenties” I became what I might call spiritual but not religious. By this I mean that I still felt a constant desire to know and understand “God” but no longer believed that a denomination or church held the answers. Because I was allowing myself now to think for myself (and not compel myself to reconcile with a ‘church’) I began studying all sorts of books and varying understandings of God that those in the church previously had forbid me from or shunned me from reading.

I began first with western esotericism such as the Jewish Kabbalah and teachings of the Golden Dawn and even Wicca. From there I started getting into eastern esotericsm such as Kundalini energy, chi, prana, the chakra system, etc. At all times during my studies however, I would find connection points to things in the “Bible” which I was unable to ignore – concepts that at times sounded a bit “Christian”. Often times, particularly in western esotericism, the “masters” of these systems would use the Hebrew/Greek “Bible” to make their point and insist that modern Christians has simply missed the real/deeper hidden meaning in their own texts. This always fascinated me. Was that true? Did the Bible contain a deeper hidden meaning about God and reality that the modern church missed due to taking things too literally?

A Return to “Church”

Shortly after the tragic events of September 11, 2001 I felt a much stronger pull to step up my game spiritually and get “right with God”. While I still REFUSED to allow any church (or any other man or woman for that matter) to decide for me (or too strongly influence me) on what to believe, I decided that it would be beneficial for me to at least “fellowship” with other people who are seeking God. Christianity was what I knew best but, because I still firmly believed from my own personal studies that the day of worship never changed from Saturday to Sunday and that the law as not “done away with” I simply couldn’t feel “right” attending a Sunday keeping “church”. Considering 99% of Christians worship on Sunday and teach that the law is done away with, that left me VERY view choices.

In 2001 I decided to start fellowshipping with a local sabbath keeping group known as the United Church of God (UCG) due merely to the fact that they assembled on Saturdays and they believed in keeping at least major portions of “the law”. I have to say I learned a TON from this church as they made me questions several major things the SDA church never made me question and my understanding of the Bible took a monumental leap forward. During this time my beliefs became even MORE conservative and for seven years I started observing annual “Holy Days” or “feasts” and through this, began to see the “Bible” in an entirely new light. Most radical of all however, was the change in my understand of “God”.

The United Church of God was big on the notion that the “Trinity” doctrine was not “biblical”. I thought this sounded crazy at first but I kept a VERY open mind. To my astonishment, the more I studied the more I came to 100% agree with them that the “trinity” doctrine was NOT taught in the Bible but rather is a modern invention of the church that didn’t appear for hundreds of years after “Jesus” died. Ironically however, while I agreed with UCG that the Trinity was not biblical, I disagreed with them over the nature of “Jesus” whom they still referred to as “God in the flesh” (a claim Jesus NEVER made about himself and repeatedly rejected). I kept my opinions about the nature of “Jesus” to myself and just a couple of church members I had befriended and studied with outside of “church”. However, when word got back to the pastor of UCG that I (and my closest friend who’d also come to the same conclusion) did not believe Jesus was “God” or that “God died on a cross,” I was cordially invited in front of the entire church to leave. I was told that anyone who rejects the divinity of Jesus does not have the Holy Spirit in them and does not belong in the church. That was the last time I ever attended a “church” again.

As an aside, I found out YEARS later that the very same pastor who invited me to leave the church because the “Holy Spirit wasn’t in me”, had broken off from UCG and formed a new splinter group teaching the VERY same thing (that Jesus was not himself “God in the flesh”). This whole thing still negatively taints my view of modern Christianity and the authority of the “church” and leaves a VERY sour taste in my mouth. I sincerely apologize when some of that residual anger and bitterness seeps out in my writing. I’m trying to let it go.

My Spiritual Awakening (Eastern Philosophy and Gnosticism)

A fear years back now I had what I refer to as a spiritual awakening and virtually overnight I intuitively “knew” certain things about God that I’d never even seriously considered before. Unfortunately, I can’t PROVE any of that to you from a book or even from the Bible, but certain passages in the Bible made MORE sense in light of my new understanding. And, for the first time ever, I started realizing that my beliefs lined up more closely with western Buddhism and a very old form of Christianity known as Gnosticism. In fact, Gnosticism was said by some to be a form of Christianity that emerged when eastern philosophy met western Christianity.

Without getting into all the specifics now, basically I came to have a new understanding of what the spirit realm is, who or what “god” is, what entities or beings live there in the spiritual dimension, and how we interact with them in the physical world. To this day I find it fascinating when things in the Bible about the spirit realm line up with how I understand things now. I’m not trying to BEND the Bible to fit my current beliefs but rather think I often see beliefs in the Bible that were always there but I simply missed them like missing the forest for the trees. I was so focused on the specifics that I missed the bigger picture that confirms a very similar view of “gods” and the spiritual dimension.

Paranormal

As a final note I mustn’t gloss over the fact that I have felt I have had a life long interaction with things of a spiritual nature. I have seen and heard things my entire life that seem to be from the unseen world that materialize for brief moments in the physical world to make light, shadow, sound, or other manifestations. As a child, the church told me these things were demons and I was taught to pray to God to make them go away. As I grew older I saw and heard these paranormal things with friends and family who corroborated that yes, something unexplained and supernatural had just happened in front of us both and no, they have no explanation for it. I feel I understand a bit better now what’s happening in the so-called spiritual realm and how to “communicate” better between worlds. But that is a topic for another discussion.