I just read this article about Megan Phelps-Roper, written by Jeff Chu. Megan was a member of the Westboro Baptist Church until late last year when she finally left.
What struck me most about the article was what she and her sister who left with her are going through right now. About leaving the Church and rethinking everything she has been taught, Megan said, “Think of how hard it would be to have a fortress of faith built around you, and to have to dismantle it yourself, brick by brick, examining each one and deciding whether there’s something worth keeping or whether it’s not as solid as you thought it was.” While not to the same extent, I can relate to what she’s going through.
In 2006 at the end of my fall semester at Clearwater Christian College I was expelled for drinking which was against the colleges policy on alcohol and their own interpretation of scripture in relation to christian life. When I was expelled I didn’t just stop matriculating at a University. I lost my job and in a very real sense I was shunned. The college even when so far as to forbid their students to come to my apartment under penalty of demerits or expulsion. I lost my friends and my social network. For the past year or more I had been asking questions about christianity and trying to decide what I really believed. In the summer of 2006 I finally decided to abandon God and not believe in anything anymore. In a way, I was an atheist attending a Christian college.
To this day I tell people that my expulsion was the best thing that ever happened to me. For the first time I had to decide things for myself. I had to make up my own mind and learn what I was really, truly going to believe; not because someone told me what to believe but deep down, in my core, what was I holding on to.
I could continue and make this a much longer post. But that’s a post for another time. For now, my thoughts are with Megan and here sister as they go through this time of soul searching and rediscovery. It’s not discovery, it’s always been there, it’s just taking the time to stop, be still and find it.
It’s a great article I would definitely recommend giving it a read!
theforeignguy.com 