Travis Griffith, one of the many new and talented bloggers at Relief shares his personal "UnChristian" story with us.

I don’t know if the words “I’m a Christian” apply to me.

Until I was 28 years old, I despised the Christian religion. I hated it and anything else related to God.

It wasn’t something I was taught by friends or picked up from my parents. I can remember going to church, but I truly felt like I was burning up inside as I sat and listened to the pastor’s words. Something deep inside me just KNEW that religion wasn’t for me.

As I got a little older, my hatred of all things God-related grew. I felt that any belief in God (or the afterlife, spirit guides, angels, heaven or spirituality) was a sign of weakness in a person. I believed that if someone followed God, they obviously didn’t think much of themselves and needed an “excuse” to blame their misfortunes on. God was that excuse. God was just an easy explanation for all things unexplained, and I wasn’t going to fall for it.

During this time, I have to admit to being raucously arrogant. I was one cocky son of a bitch and felt that something inside made me better than anyone else. I just didn’t know what that “something” was.

One thing I wasn’t during this time in my life was outspoken about my beliefs. My parents probably got the idea, but no one else. I was a good kid; I did well in school, I played sports and I didn’t cause any trouble. There were no drugs in my life, no alcohol and no reckless sex. In short, there was no reason for anyone to label me as “godless.”

The book UnChristian tells me that my opposition to Christianity isn’t something that’s uncommon.

What may be more uncommon in this: At risk of being labeled completely crazy here, I’m going to be honest and say that I started seeing ghosts when I was 8-years-old, and continued seeing them until I was 18.

I was never afraid of them. In fact, they seemed comforting. I remember nonchalantly telling my mom about things I’d see or experience (the glowing orbs in my room, the fluttering magazine pages, the silhouetted forms), and I remember her asking me if I was afraid.

“No,” I’d say, “I don’t even know if I believe in ghosts.”

Yet I was seeing them with my own eyes.

It all ended though on a specific night when I was 18. I was on a date with my girlfriend (now my wife), which started out as a romantic and beautiful evening.  By the time it ended though, I was scared out of my mind and determined to stop seeing spirits, ghosts, whatever they were… forever.

Telling the full story takes much more time than I have here, but that night was the most frightening of my life. Had my wife not been there and experienced it with me, I’d think I’d gone insane. The bleeding marks down my back may have been enough to prove otherwise though.

Convinced I’d had a run-in with something evil, I remember crawling in bed, curling up in the fetal position and chanting “I give up, go away.”

I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary for the next 10 years, but my atheism and hatred of spirituality grew. Even my wife was slowly seeing my point and became disenchanted with the biases, traditions and meaningless rituals of Christian churches.

She however never stopped believing in God or spirituality; just in the modern churches that were preaching the supposed truth. That was a fundamental difference in our relationship, but we accepted it about each other.

Then I turned 28, which is when my transformation began.

Again, to tell the whole story takes many, many pages. To summarize though: the spirits came back into my life.

I had met a woman through work whom I immediately clicked with. I began telling her about my past experiences with spirits and my current beliefs about God. She had similar experiences as a child and understood me.

As her and I got closer, my marriage began to dissolve. The other woman showed me how to communicate with the spirits I’d seen as a child and, over time, we discovered what the evil spirit was from 10 years ago. It was then that I was given some incredible knowledge about God and insights into Christ that I simply HAD to believe. And that was a huge step for me, considering my past.

I questioned EVERYTHING along the way. I went to counseling to see if I was actually crazy and tried to prove this woman wrong on many occasions. But the coincidences were too many, the happenings too extreme for a scientific explanation.

After realizing the truth, I completely crumbled. I had a total breakdown. I told my wife I wanted a divorce. I felt like everything I’d known or thought I knew in life wasn’t true. I felt like I was burdened with knowledge that could influence the whole of Christianity… but didn’t know what to do with it. Who would believe such a story? Didn’t I have to completely believe it myself before I began talking about it with others?

In the end… my marriage survived thanks to an amazingly supportive and understanding wife (and loads of marriage counseling). I’m now to the point where I believe everything that happened, though even now sometimes reluctantly.

So, am I a Christian? By the expectations of today’s society, no. On a much simpler and ancient level though, yes. I believe in God. I believe in spirits. I believe that Christ existed. I still don’t conform with nor believe many the basic Christian doctrines, and I know that’s OK. I don’t need to in order to live God’s truth. I applaud the people who are standing up to say they don’t identify with modern Christianity, and I applaud David Kinnaman for writing his book.  

UnChristian has brought to light a very important truth about the perceptions of Christianity. Now it’s up to us to spread the message of what it really means to live a spiritual, if not religious, life based on the fundamentals of Christianity, but without the judgmental and pretentious bullshit.

G. K. Chesterton once said something that now seems appropriate:

 “Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried.”

Kevin Lucia, one of five new bloggers at Relief, continues his first blog series on the path to publication.

Writing is tough, if you’re really committed.  There’s a distinction between those who “like to write” and those who are hardcore writers. There are writers out there of all kinds: The former “like” to occasionally jot down their thoughts here and there, but when push comes to shove, writing isn’t a priority in their daily schedule (Notice I said ‘A’ priority, not ‘The’ priority. We’ll get to that later).

The later are those who write and type to the brink of carpel-tunnel destruction, whose eyes twitch from computer screen over-exposure, get cranky when they don’t write, and write into the wee hours of the morning. There are writers out there of all kinds, but I’m sure every one would tell you: writing seriously consumes serious energy and requires fierce dedication.

Author Robert Liparulo offers a great example. When asked how he finally found the time to write his breakout novel, Comes A Horseman, he answered that with a family and a full schedule, he began waking every day at 4 AM so he could have quiet time to write before everyone else woke up.

The willingness to write into the wee hours of the morning isn’t the only thing that separates the writers from the hopefuls; patience is another qualifying factor. With the exception of a few, it takes awhile to get published.  Some writers wait years before publication; some see it never. Others spend years in non-writing careers (such as Andrew Gross, who managed sports retail businesses before The Blue Zone) before publication.  Everyone has to do their time and take some lumps.  It’s said that even J.K. Rowling was rejected by Penguin/Putnam, among scores of others, before Scholastic took on Harry Potter.

This waiting period, fraught with rejection letters and repeated “No thank yous” from editors, serves a purpose (despite being frustrating): it gives writers time to refine their craft.  It also separates those who were meant to be published writers, from those who really want to be published writers. As painfully true as it is, just because someone loves writing doesn’t mean they’re meant to write for publication. Writing is something everyone can enjoy, but statistically – and unfortunately – not everyone is meant to be published.

Of course, technology has changed society radically, and the writing/publishing world hasn’t remained unaffected.  With the advent of Print On Demand technologies, scores of independent small press publishers and self-publishers have opened shop on the Internet. Now almost anyone, regardless of talent, can pay a fairly reasonable “package fee” or “pay per copy” to have a book “published”.

I won’t spend a lot of time on this, except to make the following statement: self-publishing itself is not ultimately foolish or a waste of money. Everyone needs to make a decision about what’s right for them, and there are many projects with niche audiences that self-publishing is suited for. However, bottom line: POD/vanity/self-publishers who promise that you can have your novel published “now, why wait?” and get all the ensuing fame are at the very least not telling the whole truth, at the very worst, lying.

Many have wasted time and resources until they discovered they’d either made a mistake trying to manufacture writing success or, worse yet, they weren’t meant to be writers at all, while someone took advantage of their dreams. The most unfortunate cases are folks whose natural talent and inexperience are taken advantage of. I myself have missed several traps, by the thinnest of margins. Popular detective fiction author John Laurence Robinson’s first novel was an unfortunate victim of such a “publisher,” but he recovered and continued to publish several fine novels, (When A Skylark Falls, To Skin A Cat, & Until the Last Dog Dies), through River Oak Press.

A good example of patience is the experience of another popular suspense/thriller author, T.L. Hines. Before Waking Lazarus was a Library Journal Suspense/Thriller of the Year choice, it languished in a drawer with three other completed manuscripts.  Over the course of several years, Hines garnered almost 181 rejections from a variety of publishers and agents.

Considering his rejections many lessons learned, Hines stopped sending out Lazarus and worked on other projects, until Bethany House acquisitions editor Dave Long came across a sample of Waking Lazarus on Hines’ blog, downloaded it, and asked for more. At that point, Hines had become simply content with one thing: writing for the enjoyment and development of his craft. His third novel, Unseen, will be hitting store shelves soon.

To recap :
1.    First and foremost, you need patience.
2.    Check back next week for point two…

At least five. Our Assistant Editor Heather and her husband Fiction Editor Alan discovered a problem with their apartment, and so the Relief team here in Chicago kicked some serious ass packing and moving all their stuff in six days start to finish. It has put a delay in our regularly scheduled programming, but when life happens, our team moves. Ha ha. I'm a funny guy. Get it? Moves? Oh never mind.

So please forgive the delay while Heather and Alan get settled into their new place, and we'll be rockin' and rollin' in no time again. 

Diner Subs Open Until May 31 

Submisisons for Coach's Midnight Diner will remain open until May 31st. After receiving some harried emails from folks we met at Calvin ("I just found out about the Diner! My story is almost finished but not quite! Can I please have more time?!?!?") I decided to go ahead and leave it open. So go ahead and finish your Shatner on a Plane story and get it in!