For a a few years after I left my dad's house, I never experienced anything particularly bad or even interesting. Life just went on as usual. But, my experiences at my dad's house did turn me pretty religious for awhile. I didn't want to run into that stuff again. It freaked me out and made me question everything I thought I knew. So, I avoided discussing, reading about, or even thinking about the dark side of the spiritual realm. If I didn't bother it, then maybe it wouldn't bother me.
I did my best to get close to God. I studied my bible, attended church, and prayed every night. Whenever I visited my grandpa, we'd talk about theology and Christianity for hours, discussing everything from the life of Jesus Christ to miracles. However, I resisted it if the conversation ever began to turn towards demons or the devil.
After about a year of outright refusing to deal with anything that was remotely associated with hell or the devil, I finally relaxed. I figured if I could go a whole year without experiencing anything, I was probably safe. I could let down my guard and get that stick out of my ass. I felt confident and secure in my faith, and my mom reassured me that I was safe from evil as long as I called upon the name of Jesus Christ for help if I needed it.
However, as my life turned stale, I felt my faith in God slipping once again. I held onto it strongly through the rest of middle school and my freshman year of high school. But, once I moved houses and began attending a private Christian school for my sophomore year, I really started losing grip on my faith.
My private Christian school wasn't the undenominational Christian school the staff claimed it to be. It really was just a private fundamentalist school, where I was taught that demons are lurking around every corner, it was a sin to read any bible translation except for the King James Version (which was a problem because my bible was a different translation, but I refused to get a different one because I really liked what I already had), and the world was out to get Christians. Several of my teachers believed the world would end within that school year, citing Alex Jones' conspiracy theories and random, cherry-picked bible verses as proof. At times, I couldn't help but laugh at their wild beliefs and point out why they were likely wrong. Other times, I just played along to avoid a confrontation. Because of that, I was labeled as a rebel, and my questions and concerns were often shot down or ignored.
I struggled to get along with many of my classmates who grew up in the school. They were painfully naive and sheltered from the world, so holding a productive conversation with them was often too difficult for me to do. They just didn't know the world quite like I did, because unlike me, they were heavily sheltered from it by both the school and their parents. Plus, most of them never knew someone who suffered from a terminal illness like myself. Many students, and even a couple teachers, believed that if I just prayed enough and got very close to God, my Cystic Fibrosis would be cured. While I didn't doubt God's power, and believed He could cure my Cystic Fibrosis like He cured my Pulmonary Atresia if He wanted to, I didn't think that God would just take away my CF if I just prayed hard enough. He gave me CF for a reason.
As the school year progressed, I really started to rethink religion. I didn't want to be associated with people like those fundamentalists. Many of their claims were crazy, and I finally understood why so many people in the world were resistant of religion. These fundamentalists firmly believed every negative thought, action, and event in life was caused entirely by the devil and his minions. Every bump in the night, every odd gust of wind, every shadow, every growl, every hole in the road, every fear, and every strange feeling was caused by demons. They strictly banned anything associated with things like Harry Potter and Halloween, fearing that just merely mentioning those things would invite an evil presence into their lives. They even banned Monster Energy drinks, because apparently the logo represented the Hebrew letters for 666.
Growing up, I was told that evil entities do exist in the spiritual realm, and they can and do interact with our realm. My mom proved that to be true by playing the Ouija board when she was a teen. But I wasn't taught that they were lurking around every corner, or were just waiting for me to play World of Warcraft one too many times so they could raise some hell in my life. In fact, my family told me that most evil entities aren't powerful enough to do anything in the physical realm, and I ought to be skeptical of claims such as haunted houses and possessed people. I shouldn't actively seek out those things to mess with them, but I shouldn't give it much thought either.
If for some reason I ran into an evil entity or felt something was wrong, I could just call it out in the name of Christ and be done with it. There was no need to obsess over spiritual warfare, or spiritual matters in general. God was, is, and always will be in control, so I never had to fear the invisible things that were outside of my control. Nor did I have to worry about every possible reference to satanism in society. I could drink all of the Monster Energy drinks and read all of the Harry Potter books I wanted, and nothing evil could come from it. I just didn't do those things because I was never interested in Harry Potter or enjoyed the taste of Monster Energy drinks. I was (and still largely am) a hardcore fan of nonfiction books, and practically lived off of Mountain Dew.
But, I must admit, I rebelled against my Christian school. I didn't do anything most normal people would call rebellious against the school. I didn't start drawing pentagrams on the whiteboards or slipping the bibles in the fiction section in my school's library. However, I actively challenged the ridiculous claims made by many of my teachers and peers. I acknowledged that evil entities do exist, and you shouldn't pull out a Ouija board and start asking questions. But you shouldn't give the devil and his minions power where they have none either.
Harry Potter wasn't encouraging kids to get into satanism. Monster Energy drinks weren't inviting demons into people's houses. Violent video games weren't turning kids violent. Harry Potter was just a stupid book-turned-movie series about silly, nonexistent magic. Monster Energy drinks were just crappy tasting energy drinks with a meaningless logo printed on every can. And violent video games were just fun things to waste time on. They had no real power to cause harm.
Yet, despite what I said, nobody listened. Eventually, my teachers just started shutting me down right away, or simply ignoring me when I asked difficult questions regarding their beliefs. Because of this, I really questioned the strength of God and Christianity in general. Was God so fragile that a discussion about the real world could destroy Him? Were demons so powerful that a movie about silly fake magic could empower them enough to attack people in the physical realm? Unfortunately, neither of those questions, or any challenging question for that matter, was allowed in my Christian school. They were just blown off as insignificant, a waste of time, an attempt to provoke the class, or just an evil thought implanted in my mind by the devil to kill my faith in God.
In reality, the questions I had weren't to blame for my dying faith. It was the lack of answers, as well as the stark denial of the real world by people who were supposedly well-educated, that were screwing with my faith. So, I turned to the internet for answers, as well as to my grandpa Lyle, who seemed to be the only person in my life who was not afraid to tackle the hard questions with me, as well as give me useful advice.
I didn't agree with everything my grandpa had to say. In fact, I often found myself challenging him, because I didn't like some of his answers. But unlike the teachers and students at my school, my grandpa listened, acknowledged that these were difficult questions, and then tackled them with me. He admitted that neither he, or the bible, had all of the answers. The bible was not a science book. It wasn't a history book. It wasn't a book about every other religion out there. It was a book about how to have a relationship with God. The bible did have some science, history, and stuff about other religions written into it, but that wasn't the reason why the bible existed. God left a lot up to us to discover, explore, and understand ourselves, rather than just giving us all of the answers in a collection of 66 books bound together into one.
