Over the past few years I have had quite a few people ask me how it is that I made the transition from Seventh-day Adventist Seminary student to Atheist. For those who I studied Theology with, I can definitely understand their curiosity, whether it be to try to win me back to the Christian faith or simply to understand how I made the switch. Back when I wrote about my struggles with faith and doubt on my MySpace blog I know it helped people who were dealing with similar issues and it is my hope that this might do the same.

This is the first of a series of three or four blogs that hopefully will all be posted over the course of the next few weeks. There is a chance that I might post about other topics that catch my interest while I’m trying to wrap these up, so there is no guarantee of the time line. The goal will be to keep each post in this series to a page or two.

I was born a 5th generation Seventh-day Adventist and dedicated to God in a Seventh-day Adventist Church. When I was eight, I started my Christian education with third grade at the local Adventist school. For the record I should point out that this was where the absolute destruction of my self-esteem and social development took place; proof that kids are not safer in Christian schools. When I was twelve I started reading the Bible for myself and felt convicted that I should be baptized and after a few weeks of feeling that conviction I told my parents. Out of respect, I waited for them to tell the pastor, but after a month or two, the pastor did an alter call and I went forward. A month later I was baptized.

During my sophomore year of high school, the last year offered by the small Adventist school I was attending, I begged my parents to let me go to the Adventist boarding academy about 50 miles from where we lived. A few months later, I moved to the dorm and started my junior year.

After the events of September 11, 2001 I was convinced that the end was near. I wanted to help prepare the world for Christ’s second coming, however, I also wanted to serve as an officer in the US Air Force. I was also feeling a strange sense of calling to the ministry. During spring break I went on a mission trip to Cancun to build a church for the locals. While I was there I was bit by a poisonous spider on my left big toe and developed a horrible infection. I started wondering if this was God’s work. The stories of the Angel wrestling with Jacob and Paul being blinded on the road to Damascus kept coming to mind. With all that going on in my head I had a growing a fear that if I kept resisting God’s will that I might loose the toe, foot, or even the leg. Surprise, surprise, I accepted this calling that I should be a pastor and I turned down the very Air Force ROTC scholarship that would have made my childhood dreams a reality. I graduated from high school and enrolled in Walla Walla College as a Theology major.

Walla Walla is a school that takes education very seriously. While they are a Christian institution with required chapel service attendance, mandatory religion credit requirements, a faculty that is required to be members of the church, and teaches everything through the lens of scripture, they do make a good effort to teach people how to think, not just what to believe.

I faced some major doubts at several times where the things I learned, even in this environment, went against what I had believed all my life. Sure, there were a lot of moments of spiritual highs, but I’ll get to those later in this series.

Since I loved science and had already taken Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy classes in High School, I figured that during my freshman year I would take a science I hadn’t studied yet, Astronomy. Up to that point I had never heard a fellow believer contradict the Bible and when, for example, I would watch “Bill Nye the Science Guy” as a kid, if he said something that disagreed with my beliefs I would just dismiss it. I was shocked when I found out from my Seventh-day Adventist professor that the universe was 13.47 billion years old and that God didn’t create the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day of creation a mere 6000 – 10,000 years. The evidence was undeniable and the way the professor tried to harmonize it with the Bible was pretty weak. All of a sudden the the accuracy and authority of scripture was called into question and this created quite the crisis of faith. After a few weeks I decided to put that problem on hold, figuring that I could figure out some way out to piece it together after some more study, which I did a little over a year later.

During my sophomore year I struggled with the doctrine of the Trinity and briefly considered Arianism, after all that was a view held by many of the early Adventist leaders. Arianism is obviously not compatible with the claims of the Bible, so as painful as it was, I accepted that we cannot understand the nature of God, even though the way is is described does not follow even the most basic math.

By the time my junior year came along I was again questioning the doctrine of the Trinity and the authority of scripture. Since I had taken a class on world religions, I figured it might be worthwhile to see if one of them offered any better explanations. Of course, each one seemed to have even more problems.

I don’t remember when I took the Synoptic Gospels class, but the professor didn’t want us to be surprised if somebody pointed out the contradictions in the Bible, so he did it for us so he could help us work through it with out destroying our faith. Matthew has Jesus being born during the reign of Herod, which can be easily placed at 5 BC. Luke has Jesus being born under the rule of a Roman governor in 4 AD. Yes, that’s nine years apart. If you compare the accounts of Peter’s denial between the different gospels and see which ones match you get a count of five separate occurrences, not three. So what do you do when you know the inerrant word of God doesn’t have all of its facts straight? Accept that the message is true but that a few details here and there might be off.

Toward the end of my senior year, I still had these unresolved doubts running through my mind. I had also been contemplating the mystery of salvation. I just couldn’t see how the Biblical presentation of salvation in anyway satisfied any kind of justice. It took me another year to better spell out what didn’t sit right, but it bothered me, a lot. Enough so that I spent a few weeks as a secret unbeliever. Pretending to believe when you really don’t isn’t easy, and since I was taking a class on systematic theology at the time, I skipped ahead in my text book and found an explanation, the “Governmental Model,” which still didn’t quite feel right, but seemed to be at least close enough for me to ignore the issue and return to my faith.

Since I didn’t get a call (job offer) from any of the conferences (equivalent to a diocese) I had interviewed with I decided to continue to follow God’s call and the path to ministry, which meant putting myself through seminary.

Next time we’ll cover the year I spent in the Seminary.