About the Author Part 2

Thinking for Myself

Knowing is holding a concept that you don’t have to accept by faith because you have evidence or facts to back it up—or because there is a knowing deep inside. Sometimes knowing is having something deep inside that you know is true, even if you don’t know why or how—you just do.
When I started thinking for myself and listening to that still small voice deep inside of my soul, that’s when things began to change. That’s when the blinders came off my eyes! That’s when the bubble that I was inside burst and I began to see reality for the first time!

Years of Missionary Work

Despite all the dark years of my youth with religion and disillusion, I felt a great compulsion to give my whole life in dedication to the service of God. It seemed that all the roads to that goal were closed off to me, so all that was left was to pray — pray that God would show me the day that would be the beginning of what I called: “my life’s work”.

Then one day, a still small voice told me the very day it was to happen. Marking it on my calendar, I had no idea what it would be or where it would take me. I waited and watched the days go by until finally the day marked on my calendar arrived — the day of the discovery of my ‘life’s work’! … the day that discovery finally became clear.” It was a Sunday after church just like every other Sunday, but this was the day that I discovered my “life’s work”! It’s a long story and its way outside the scope of this writing, and I’m not going to get into all the details.

Suffice it to say that from that day forward began a mission in foreign lands that would last 20 years! A Christian missionary on foreign fields, preaching the gospel, “winning souls” and doing voluntary work, doing it all with my whole heart, following what my belief told me was for Jesus and others.

There wasn’t an understanding of a lot of things, the only apparent thing to me was, that it was God who sent me along this path and it was there I was going to stay — no matter what.

I studied and studied the Bible and much other related publications in order to educate myself as much as possible for the line of work I had found myself in and to find the answers that I had so longed for all my life.

After many years there came a point in my journey through life that some things just didn’t seem to be right — things that didn’t match up to what I’d studied in the Bible and I wasn’t finding the answers that I had been searching for, for so long. It wasn’t me that was changing, but things around me were and it was affecting me. It was as though I had come to a crossroad and something deep down inside was saying, “It’s time to leave”.

For some time, there was a resistance in me to the voice that said to take a new path, since the logic inside me was saying, “this is the path God put me on and to stay on it no matter what”. But as time went on it became more and more obvious that it was time to make a change.

Time to Make a Change

Still on the mission field, that change eventually came. At first there was the feeling of being very lost and that required praying and searching for which way to go. That went on for some years. During this time, there was a lot of soul-searching and reflection, along with the realization that many of the things about what I had learned and believed over the years were completely wrong.

Have you ever heard the expression: “throw out the baby with the bathwater”? Well, everything just went “out the window” and it was about “back to the basics”. It was about reading the Bible all over again in a different light, with my eyes wide open and I ending up seeing everything from a different perspective.

Upon returning to the States after years on the mission field, visiting several different churches was in the itinerary. However, there was never one that really seemed like home. There were still the wounds from my youth that haunted me. All the pastors and psychologists could never help find the peace that was so longed for. Gradually the realization came to me that the problem wasn’t really with me, it was with religion.

Gradually the realization came to me

that the problem wasn’t really with me,

the problem was with religion

Everything I experienced during my childhood and teen years was caused by religion. These were things that left wounds in me and religion were only the germs that caused the open wounds to become more infected. Seeing that alone was the only way to find the solution to my own issues, the search began for researching deeper, uncovering the issues that were causing all the pain and darkness. The more falsehoods that I shook off, the more the light started coming through and gradually over time the pain subsided substantially.

Those questions just went up

on a shelf for a “later date”.

The writings in these books are some of the results of my research that led me to change my mind about Christianity and the Bible. For the majority of my life things I was taught, I just accepted at face value.

Most things were never questioned and the unobtainable answers to those questions just went up on a shelf for a later date — and that:

“It’s not ours to question why; it’s ours just to do or die.” (that’s what I was told to do with all my unanswered questions — just don’t question! Just put it up on a shelf for a later time.)

But the time had come to take those questions down from that shelf and take a serious look— “doing or dying” weren’t options.