For example, on the first day of chapel (which we had every Wednesday, wherein I was forced to wear a skirt), the pastor proclaimed that the King James version of the Bible was the only trustworthy translation. Every other translation had been corrupted in some way or another, and was thus invalid and violated the very last verse in Revelations. I remember looking down at my camo green New Living Translation bible, and feeling my heart sink a little. 

My faith in any God, especially the Christian God, was barely hanging on by a frayed thread. I had many more reasons to disbelieve in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God than to believe in one. As days turned to weeks, and weeks into months, my faith continued to slip. 

In October of that year, Front Range Christian School invited my school to a science symposium, wherein an evolutionary Biologist and a creationist scholar debated whether or not humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees live. Mind you, both guys were staunch Christians, and both started and ended the discussion with a prayer. 

But, when I got back to Truth Christian Academy a couple days later (the symposium was held on a Friday), my teachers and peers immediately went into “attack mode”, openly expressing scorn towards the soft-spoken evolutionary Biologist, and even questioning the validity of his faith. 

However, I felt my faith literally snap within me a few weeks later, when we were studying Exodus, and came across Exodus 9:8-12,  where God commanded Moses to take soot from a furnace and throw it by Pharaoh to unleash a plague of boils on Egypt. My teacher (and principal of the school) looked up from Scripture and flat-out said, “Clearly, God uses illness sometimes to punish those of us who are not following His commands…” while staring directly at me. 

Even then, I knew what my teacher said was wrong, both morally and scripturally. However, it would take years for me to discover passages like John 9:1-12, which is the story of Christ healing the blind man. Until then, I couldn’t refute what she so confidently claimed while staring daggers into my soul. So, I ditched my faith right then and there; I became a full-fledged, Dawkins-style atheist. 

I know that my teachers took many more jabs at me for being a liberal atheist (at least, compared to them) over the course of the school year. But, nothing has stuck in my memory quite like the time Mrs. Asshat implied that my Cystic Fibrosis was a personal punishment from God. After all, her remark hurt me deeply. So deeply, in fact, that I decided God had to be evil if He existed at all, and was therefore not worthy of my adoration.

My departure from faith wasn’t permanent.

It would take me quite awhile to come back to God, but when I did, the faith I now had was entirely different from the faith I'd left behind. Plus, while I may’ve turned my back on God, He never turned His back on me. In fact, I firmly believe He’s the reason why I survived my bout with Pseudomonas virtually unscathed, despite the severity of my condition. 

Nowadays, my faith in Christ is stronger than it ever was, and it continues to strengthen every day. I’ve reconciled my faith with science and Epicurus’ famous Problem of Evil and Suffering, among other issues. Of course, I’ve still got a mountain of bones to pick with the Lord, and I don’t always trust Him or like what He has to say. But in my heart, I know He can handle my scathing questions and criticisms. My faith is not so weak that Bill Nye the Science Guy can topple it with a few scientific facts. 

But, I can’t say the same for the private Christian school I once attended, or the church it was housed in altogether.