I was not raised in your typical Christian home, the second youngest of seven children in a Midwestern family. I was born late in my parents lives, my father retired shortly after I graduated from high school.
My mother was Catholic but did not go to church regularly by the time I was born due to my fathers lack of interest.
My father was raised Lutheran, but had not stepped foot in a church except for weddings since I can remember, proclaiming himself a heathen. But do not think that he was not read in the bible, he would often correct me as a child if I misquoted the bible. He encouraged me to read it, even if I did not believe in it at the time, so I at least would not be ignorant about it.
Being raised without religion being a major influence over my life, but do not confuse that with having a lack of morals, my father and mother had a very strict moral code and instilled it in all of their children with varying success. Science had been my passion and I was convinced that science would cure all humanities ills, I devoured scientific magazines and textbooks and was unconcerned about spirituality.
I spent most of my youth as an atheist/agnostic, much to my mothers dismay, It would be my sister and her husband that witnessed to a stubborn 14 year old and slowly won him over.
I still could not attend church because my father would not drive me and I has no close neighbors that could take me living out in the country as I did. My only vent for my newfound belief was Christian radio which at the time and still today was filled with YEC teachings and the YEC materials my sister would bring me. I was intrigued and fooled by the pseudo science that they put out. And for five years I never questioned my YEC beliefs.
I moved in with my sister who lived in the town I was going to go to college in, that is where I helped with college ministries and youth ministries. While in college I enrolled in several science classes, and where I was confronted with the reality of what science said compared to what YEC had led me to believe about it. I expected to find a theory on chaos and retreat that had no real evidence behind it, what I did find was quite the opposite. I had made many friends that were professors and grad students there through the church that I attended and the ministries I helped, they were not the atheists I had expected to find in the science department but Christians like myself, except they were not YEC.
Everything was exactly the opposite of what the YEC movement had told me and I was confused and troubled, after all you would loose your faith if you didnt take the Bible literally right?
When I talked to my YEC friends about what I was seeing they began calling my faith into question rather than answeringany questions I was starting to have.
I started to look at the arguments that I learned as a YEC, moon dust, shrinking sun, vapor canopy, etc. etc
Hoping to find something to prove I was right, but found time and time again that they were false. It shook me to the core. It wasnt that I could not believe in God because YEC was wrong, it was the fact that people I trusted, the radio preachers and the book writers had lied to me and I had been so easily duped by them. I have to call it lying by them because the falsifications I found were not hard to find, ant college library would do, and they never bothered to check it out, and until then I had not either. I was mad at them, I was mad at myself for being fooled so easily.
If it had not been for my non-YEC friends, both Christian and Atheists, I may have lost my faith. After a few years of prayer and thinking on the subject I have decided that I must try to reach those that would lie in Gods name whether because they have been mislead by others and dont know any better or because they think that the lie is more beneficial to faith than the truth.
I don't see any non-Christians.
