I thrive on learning.  Memorizing knowledge, thinking and over-thinking is how my brain runs.  So of course, I excelled as an evangelical.  I won gold stars and awards at VBS for memorizing verses.  At the Baptist summer camp I went to, every 40 verses memorized meant you could throw a pie at a counselor’s face.  And I threw a lot of pies over the years.

I wear the Bible like a second skin.  I’ve always known what it says, and what it means.  Eventually I knew it so well it bored me.  There was no magic to my faith anymore.  No mystery.  The faith I had was based on The Word.  It was the Romans Road and bullet-point sermons and try harder, and I knew all the answers.

I ended up not actually needing God for anything.  Saving me from hell was all Jesus was good for, and the Holy Spirit was supposed to help me with all that try harder stuff.  My faith had been reduced to knowing what I should do and doing it, so I would lead a morally correct (and self-righteous) life.

But one, that got boring, and two, didn’t really work.

Come on over to Carly’s to read the rest!