| My Personal UnChristian Story |
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| Written by Travis Griffith | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 15 May 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Travis Griffith, one of the many new and talented bloggers at Relief shares his personal "UnChristian" story with us.
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.”
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