Building a Testimony
If I were writing this five years ago, I would have led you to believe that the next 2-3 year stage of my life was a time of spiritual rebellion. Now, I'm not sure why. (My theory is that it has something to do with the Evangelical tendency to emphasize the need to have a powerful "testimony" so that you can tell people how much your life has changed since you got "saved". My friends and I would joke about doing bad things in order to "build a testimony" for the future, and I think that mentality worked itself into a skewed perception of my own past).
To be honest, I've never had a genuinely rebellious stage, spiritually or otherwise. I personally dislike conflict, so any rebellion or revolution I'm likely to be involved in would be peaceful. In any case though, during my first two to three years of high school, I did feel generally ambivalent towards religion and Christianity. I was primarily interested in girls, music, and figuring out who I wanted to be--not that those things are unrelated to faith. Looking back, this was the time when I picked up a bent towards the countercultural, mainly through music, but this tendency eventually contributed to my attraction to Christian faith.
I was certainly absorbing something of the evangelical faith that my church was teaching, and a lot of my social life centered on youth group, but I wasn't totally sold on Christianity yet. I was interested in trying things out that my church would have prohibited. However, that desire didn't lead to anything more than a few months of skipped church services, some cursing, a couple puffs of tobacco, and punk rock concert or two (all done primarily with friends from youth group, I should say). At the time it felt like rebellion, but the fact that I lived in a town of 2,000 shielded me from any real involvement in illicit sex, drugs, or rock 'n roll.
Ironically enough, at this point in life, I am more comfortable with the person I was during this "rebellious" stage than with the hyper-religious person that I became over the next 4 years or so.
To be honest, I've never had a genuinely rebellious stage, spiritually or otherwise. I personally dislike conflict, so any rebellion or revolution I'm likely to be involved in would be peaceful. In any case though, during my first two to three years of high school, I did feel generally ambivalent towards religion and Christianity. I was primarily interested in girls, music, and figuring out who I wanted to be--not that those things are unrelated to faith. Looking back, this was the time when I picked up a bent towards the countercultural, mainly through music, but this tendency eventually contributed to my attraction to Christian faith.
I was certainly absorbing something of the evangelical faith that my church was teaching, and a lot of my social life centered on youth group, but I wasn't totally sold on Christianity yet. I was interested in trying things out that my church would have prohibited. However, that desire didn't lead to anything more than a few months of skipped church services, some cursing, a couple puffs of tobacco, and punk rock concert or two (all done primarily with friends from youth group, I should say). At the time it felt like rebellion, but the fact that I lived in a town of 2,000 shielded me from any real involvement in illicit sex, drugs, or rock 'n roll.
Ironically enough, at this point in life, I am more comfortable with the person I was during this "rebellious" stage than with the hyper-religious person that I became over the next 4 years or so.
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