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vaneramos"...God is already writing on me."
My Gethsemane moment
Mystical awakening
The beginning of critical thinking
Reflections: These three entries record an essential turning point in my life. Again, I remember it but did not realize I had written about it. Reading it this morning I'm going, "Wow!"
The first passage describes a communion service one Sunday morning. These events were informal, my favourite part of church life. Various people might request songs or stand and read passages that had been meaningful to them during the week. That day I fell into what seemed to me a huge chasm of understanding and connection with God. My religious experience turned abruptly toward mysticism. The insights I gained were not entirely new, but came sharply into focus. For those of you reading Pilgrim's Cross, the novel in my fiction journal, this Gethsemane experience was the inspiration behind Trent's dream.
For the first time since my conversion to Christianity in 1983, I began to explore my own identity and question my church's teachings. The title of the book I criticize in the third entry, Experiencing God, seems ridiculous now. It dictated the prevailing evangelical view, which, while purporting to foster a personal relationship with Christ, in fact utterly discounts mystical experience, i.e. a dynamic interaction with the divine personality leading to apprehension of personal truth. A more accurate title for the book would be Obeying the Bible. Ironically, the ex-gay movement offered more acceptance of my spiritual journey.
My misgivings were regarded as a sign of spiritual immaturity and led to alienation from my church friends. In addition, my ideas about relating to Christ through his suffering probably facilitated my fall into debilitating depression, diagnosed in April 1995. On the other hand mystical experiences helped me resist suicide through that horrendous year and the unravelling of my marriage. They even guided my decision to come out, another kind of born again experience, on January 28, 1996.
This explains why my website, Silvan's Glade, designed and written mostly between 1997 and 2000, is largely devoted to mysticism. It's not as easy to explain why I'm an atheist now.
My Gethsemane moment
Mystical awakening
The beginning of critical thinking
Reflections: These three entries record an essential turning point in my life. Again, I remember it but did not realize I had written about it. Reading it this morning I'm going, "Wow!"
The first passage describes a communion service one Sunday morning. These events were informal, my favourite part of church life. Various people might request songs or stand and read passages that had been meaningful to them during the week. That day I fell into what seemed to me a huge chasm of understanding and connection with God. My religious experience turned abruptly toward mysticism. The insights I gained were not entirely new, but came sharply into focus. For those of you reading Pilgrim's Cross, the novel in my fiction journal, this Gethsemane experience was the inspiration behind Trent's dream.
For the first time since my conversion to Christianity in 1983, I began to explore my own identity and question my church's teachings. The title of the book I criticize in the third entry, Experiencing God, seems ridiculous now. It dictated the prevailing evangelical view, which, while purporting to foster a personal relationship with Christ, in fact utterly discounts mystical experience, i.e. a dynamic interaction with the divine personality leading to apprehension of personal truth. A more accurate title for the book would be Obeying the Bible. Ironically, the ex-gay movement offered more acceptance of my spiritual journey.
My misgivings were regarded as a sign of spiritual immaturity and led to alienation from my church friends. In addition, my ideas about relating to Christ through his suffering probably facilitated my fall into debilitating depression, diagnosed in April 1995. On the other hand mystical experiences helped me resist suicide through that horrendous year and the unravelling of my marriage. They even guided my decision to come out, another kind of born again experience, on January 28, 1996.
This explains why my website, Silvan's Glade, designed and written mostly between 1997 and 2000, is largely devoted to mysticism. It's not as easy to explain why I'm an atheist now.
