Red Flags And Signs From God

 I started thinking about when it was that I can recall REALLY starting to question my belief in God and the Bible and a time where I felt like I had seen a sign of there being something else.

It didn't take me too long to figure it out a really good example of both of these things and they happened around the same time in my life. In my late 20's to early 30's. My thoughts about these experiences look very differently to me now than they did at the time they occurred. I perceived them within the framework I had at that point. When I look back on them now, they are still pivotal, but I perceive their meaning differently than I did before. 

The Big Bad Feeling

Because I used to have ZERO ABILITY  to say no when asked to do something, I was roped into teaching a middle school aged Sunday school class. I taught it for three years around the year 2010. At first it was fun, because I enjoy talking to kids and working with kids and this age group especially, are very entertaining and funny. They are also full of questions. 

I wasn't given a set curriculum to work from, but a stack of books to teach from and the option to choose my own lessons. By the end of that first year I had started to feel like it was wrong to be teaching the subject matter I was teaching, from these books. They had a lot of questions during the lessons and it was getting more and more difficult for me to to stop myself from having honest conversations with these kids about their questions instead of applying apologetics to explain away their doubts. By the end of that second year, I had to get out. I felt like I was spewing blatant lies to them, during Bible lessons and interpretations. I felt gross and dirty. It felt akin to talking to a group of teenagers, trying to convince them Santa was real.

At the time: I interpreted this as meaning my faith was not strong enough to be a teacher. I likened this to my being weak. Maybe I was allowing Satan to infiltrate my mind and heart and cause me to question God. I left teaching at the end of that year and I stopped going to church entirely. It did nothing for me and I was pretty convinced that said something about me, as a person and meant I was bad.

Now: I see this as another confirmation that church was not for me. I was not in a position to see that this was an issue with religion and not an issue of who I was as a person. I do see that now. I wish I would have had the courage to follow that feeling more seriously, back then. It would have saved me a lot of issues with depression in the years to come. This was not an issue of me being broken, like I assumed it was. It was my logical brain coming through and trying to show me the truth about the Bible. 

The Time I Asked For A Sign

In the next couple of years that followed my quitting teaching Sunday school for being unfit and leaving the church, I felt so incredibly lost. I went through some tough bouts of depression after that and I was convinced that this was being caused, at least in part, by my separation from God. I worked and worked to find that "thing" again, that would make me feel close to God. 

It came to a point, at the end of 2013 that I was at a crossroads. I needed answers. I called my mother and we planned a weekend away in early May (that I could in no way afford). She invited her best friend to come along too and the three of us drove from Michigan to Memphis, TN where I hoped the ghost of Jeff Buckley would be able to show me something. I was in a pretty desperate place. 

So, I went to Memphis begging God for a sign of some kind. I wanted a sign! 

Imagine my shock when the "sign" I received on my hunt for the Christian God came to me in a very unexpected way. While walking on the sidewalk along the Mississippi River from the Beale Street Landing toward the park, I was stopped by a young man who said he felt compelled to speak to me and give me a blessing. I told him that since I was on a spiritual quest in search of God, I was in no position to deny him. He introduced himself as a Buddhist monk, gave me a blessing and a copy of the Gita. My quest for answers from the Christian God was answered by a Buddhist monk? 

At the time: I was perplexed. I thought it was interesting and odd, that my perceived answer for a sign from God would be answered by a non-Christian. Maybe this was to show me that God is God, regardless of how you get to Him. I considered that it was also quite possibly a coincidence. When I got home, I thumbed through the Gita but ultimately threw it away. I had been taught that other religious texts were false prophesies and they were demonic or at the very least, served to place a wedge between me and God. These things were designed to confuse Christians and distance them from the truth which was Jesus Christ. Maybe it wasn't a sign at all.

Now: I can only point to it being a coincidence. Religious evangelists tend to wander tourist areas in search of people to convert. I find it funny now that I saw the Buddhist as the clear sign from God when, just the night before, when I encountered Christian street preachers blocking an intersection to try and get people to repent, I saw that as gross and evil. Why wasn't THAT my sign? 

This is an example of how we can convince ourselves of anything. This was a confirmation bias on my part. I was looking for something specific and I looked until I found that one thing and I declared it was something divine. Being removed from the experience and viewing it objectively and not through the lens of religion, it looks very different. 

It was still a great experience in Memphis and I am glad I got to experience that city, which was such a magical place. It was not the spiritual pilgrimage I had hoped. 

In Conclusion 

When you live by faith you can find ways to convince yourself of all sorts of things. Because if you can use faith to justify anything, you set yourself up to be duped into believing all kinds of things. The current situation of evangelicals buying into harmful narratives about the pandemic, the vaccine, and the election, are examples of this:

Why wear a mask? God will protect us from getting sick. And if we get sick and die it was all part of his plan anyway. When it's your time, it's your time.

Taking the vaccine will alter your DNA, changing you from how God made you and this will bar you from being able to enter heaven.

If Trump isn't reelected, this means Satan is in control of America.

It's both sad and disturbing.