enarchay

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Submitted by enarchay on 25 September, 2007 - 11:15.

Country: United States of America

My name is Zach. I am an 18-year old non-denominational Christian dedicated to studying the Scriptures. My goal is to have part in many different churches (even if I disagree with what some teach, because I want to find common ground with other Christians), eventually have a role in biblical scholarship (after college, of course), and perhaps missionary work (but not full-time).

Currently I am attending a small charismatic church, a Methodist church, and a small non-denominational church. I plan to attend other churches in the future. I still have not found a church that completely fits me doctrinally, but what can you do?

I am a big fan of Andrew Perriman and N.T. Wright, who have been extremely influential to me both theologically and historically.

I’m almost done with High School. Starting around 9th grade I began working hard in school and I still work fairly hard. I spend most of my free time studying the Scriptures, discussing the Scriptures online, or reading scholarly works about the Scriptures (especially by N.T. Wright). Other than that, I play guitar and watch television. Perhaps one day I can play guitar for a band in a church.

The above is what is going on in the present, but the present, I believe, would be quite different if it was not for the past. Here is my testimony.

(This biography is subject to editing as I reflect on my past and make advancements in the present).

I was raised a Protestant Christian by my parents. Though my parents were not loyal to any one particular denomination, making them non-denominational, many of their beliefs aligned close with the views of fundamentalism and Pentecostal and charismatic movements. My mother is now more attracted to Pentecostal churches than others and attends a Pentecostal church loyally. Growing up, my parents were aware of the Left Behind series and dispensationalism (though they did not know it was called that), so I was taught a very futuristic eschatology: the future antichrist, rapture of the church, and so on. Within all this was a strong emphasis on a “personal relationship” with Jesus (made manifest through the so-called “sinner’s prayer”), avoiding “hell,” gaining Heaven, works not a means of making one a Christian, and once saved always saved. Consequently, the only thing that really kept me a Christian was fear of hell-fire, and though I professed Jesus (whatever that was supposed to mean), I did not know much about him from a biblical perspective, did not attend Church, and probably eventually would have led a poor life style. Regardless of my lax faith, I always had a strong sense of morals, thanks to my parents.

Growing up I encountered many health problems, and partially as a result, was home schooled most of my life; this seemingly helped me mature much quicker than my contemporaries. This changed my outlook on life, but not on faith. By the events occurring from about the age of 16 to the present, however, my outlook on faith would change.

I grew up close to my grandparents. They lived about 5 minutes away most of my life. However, as I grew older I gradually drifted apart from them. I ebbed back when my grandfather developed cancer. This is one of the events that changed my outlook on faith.

Before my grandfather developed cancer, about the middle of my 10th grade school year, because of what began with high school as a strong academic motivation for good grades (despite my past health problems), I decided to take Honors English—English being my favorite subject. This had an impact on me because it sparked my interest in literature (and eventually the Bible). I had began thinking to myself that I should start reading the Bible shortly prior to 10th grade, and after my sparked interest in literature from my inspirational English teacher, I concluded, “If I am going to study literature, why not the greatest piece of literature of all, the Bible?”

The teacher would assign outside readings, so—and this is pretty ironic, as you will find out soon enough in my biography—I decided to read the “Inferno” of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This was somewhat significant because it helped me realize translations can distort or lessen the value of a piece of literature; I realized the rhyme scheme of Dante’s work is lost in most English translations, so I tried to get a grasp on the Italian. I had a vague knowledge that the Bible was written in other languages, but I did not realize the implications of that until then. I decided I would like to get the Bible in its original languages.

I went to a Bible bookstore with racks full of the KJV and NIV and the guy kept insisting on the KJV – he didn’t really know what he was talking about – and eventually recommended Strong’s Concordance and Lexicon. I bought both but didn’t get around to studying them yet.

When my grandfather became ill, given my mother’s Christian background, there was a strong sense of a need of prayer for intervention. We all prayed. We had our pastor come and pray. I felt, perhaps, reading the Bible might bring me closer to God and persuade him further to hear my prayers. I began reading the Bible, but only in brief.

Though my grandfather seemed to do better at first (perhaps God’s sign that he is listening), he did die. It did not have that much of an effect on me, since as I grew older my once strong relationship with my grandfather had weakened, but it did on my mother and my grandmother. Soon after, something else would happen to again spark my interest in the Bible.

While I had been reading my Bible during my grandfather’s ordeal, I was not studying very in-depth and I eventually slowed down until I stopped. After my mother struck ill, that changed.

We are still not exactly sure how or why it happened, but after eating at a restaurant, my mother had a pretty bad allergic reaction. She turned bright red, and when she was driving to her family doctor thinking it was perhaps related with her thyroid condition, she felt as if she could not breath and had to call 911. You can imagine my surprise when my mother called me on the phone and said something to the effect of, “I’m heading to the hospital in the ambulance, I love you!” and leaving me with those words ringing in my ear as I feared for my mother’s life. This was probably the most definitive time I felt the absolute need for God’s help; I fell on the floor and prayed that he would take care of my mother (which he did).

Our hospital is lousy (and I had heard this before, not taking notice), apparently. They gave my mother some Benadryl and sent her home. Not surprisingly after the fact, the same thing happened the next day and my mother was on her way to the hospital again. They gave her some drugs to “calm” her and some sleeping medication, which definitely made her situation worse. They recommended she stop her thyroid medication cold turkey. Probably from a combination of the reaction, the hospital over medicating her, and at the same time, under medicating her, things got worse. She had swallowing difficulties and seemed to be sensitive to “chemicals” (such as soap detergent, which we think may have been part of the problem).

Eventually my mother found a new doctor who had her off all medicine and recommended we remove or thoroughly clean all clothing washed in the detergent we had been using so her body could recuperate, feeling also the hospital was a cause of some of her problems. We think our laundry machine may not have been washing the soap out of our clothing well enough, because we had problems with it before, so we bought a new one. My mother stayed at my grandmother’s house (which in turn was good for my grandmother) for a while as the situation played out. Through this whole situation, what else did I do but seek God through the Bible?

(It should be noted in brief, without getting into too much detail, my mother eventually improved and is doing much better now. Thank God).

On the other hand, I started noticing some things. I began asking many questions about the Bible. One of my first, which I still have barely any opinion on to this day, was, “Who or what exactly were the ‘Sons of God’ of Genesis?” As I read more, I discovered the Hebrew word sheol via my concordance, and as I read about the Old Covenant descriptions of death, I started to question a strong emphasis on the afterlife that is a part of many Christian denominations. I began to realize that resurrection is really the Christian hope, not disembodied bliss. I had to ask the question, “If one of the things I was taught could be wrong, could not some of the other things I was taught be wrong also?”

Another thing I was struggling with, as I think we all do at some point in our life, was the question of “hell.” Though I basically adopted a so-called “soul sleep” doctrine from my studies of sheol, I could not understand how God would eventually torment the majority of mankind, including those who earnestly seek God in other religions like Islam. Eventually, I stumbled upon Universalism.

I found out, chiefly, about the Greek word aion and its cognates, and the implication of its translation. I studied this subject in and out; the problem I acknowledge now, however, is that all the articles on the word were extremely biased, written by either a Universalist, or one trying to refute a Universalist.

You could imagine what my parents thought when I told them I believed all of mankind was eventually going to be saved and that my parents were wrong for teaching me otherwise.

I was largely affiliated with, or at least impressed by, one in particular Universalist website. The owner wrote many articles expounding his beliefs about the salvation of humanity. On this website, I met another Universalist who was attending college for philosophy and eventually planning to study theology. The problem is, him and me began to see hypocrisy among the Universalists, particularly on the website I mentioned, and also a non-Christian attitude from the website’s author. This friend and me decided we needed to go off on our own and ask questions for ourselves.

We had many questions, but I think it narrows down to about four:

1) Are all non-canonical texts not inspired and completely irrelevant, especially 1 Enoch, and if not, what do they have to say about our strong belief in Universal Salvation?

2) Is Jesus divine and if so in what sense? Was he created? Is God a Trinity?

3) Does man have free will? Is everything predestinated? Does God know the future?

4) What makes Universalism a more likely doctrine than Annihilationism? How do we reconcile Jesus’ warning of geenna and Isaiah’s talk about corpses being burned with “unquenchable fire” with our beliefs? Can we honestly allegorize “worm,” “unquenchable fire,” and so on?

Question number three was pretty important, because one thing the author of the website we came from taught was that everything in life is predestinated, and therefore, indirectly or otherwise, God is responsible for every tiny detail of what happens in the world. This is what really bothered me in particular. I was just waiting for the day these people started saying, “Oh, I sin constantly—get drunk, fornicate, murder—but it’s God’s will so I can’t help it.”

Question number two drove us crazy because the subject seemed so ambiguous. It was as if one day we thought we were Trinitarian and the next day we were Unitarian.

Number four is where I hit my breaking point. I could not answer the questions I wanted answered. I was starting to give up because I had a strong sense for the need of understanding the Bible as a part of my calling as a Christian, and when it seemed I would never find answers, I thought it might be best not to seek them in the first place.

One problem with our studies was our influence from futurism (in my case, dispenstionalism), our lack of knowledge of the first century, and our reading of Scripture from sometimes an anachronistic perspective.

I decided I needed to take a break. I stopped going online for a while (since I read the Bible through online software) and lost contact with my friend.

As I took this break, I would think about the questions I could not before answer from time to time. Was I still a Universalist? What did I believe? I felt that the stuff I was seeing on T.V. on TBN (Word-Faith and prosperity gospel doctrines, hell-fire, dispenstionalism, etc.), for example, was just not biblical, but how could I say that?

Eventually I found my way back to my studies, but this time, I promised myself I would try to keep a more open mind. I revisited Universalism, and while I mostly kept my initial opinion about aion and its cognates (an opinion similar to what Andrew Perriman seems to uphold), I started to see that the word and its cognates is more context dependent than both Universalists and eternal torment advocates would like one to think, and became less convinced the double plural literally translated “ages of the ages” does not constitute an idiom at least remotely close to what we call “eternity” today. Saying that when the authors talk about the “ages of the ages” they really mean ages that will eventually end began to seem slightly naive to me, especially in the context of the end of history.

One of my biggest questions was about geenna. By doing a google search on the word that in past times came up with fruitless results, I came across opensourcetheology. I am glad I did, because Andrew’s work and the other authors I have discovered through him and the other members of this website have had a tremendous influence on me. I honestly never knew people like Andrew or Wright existed in the Christian world, and I had this vague naive sense that the majority (and perhaps this is true) of the Christian church (perhaps more so in America than else where) were fundamentalists that read the Left Behind series like many people are reading The Da Vinci Code today—as fact and not fiction.

I had known about partial-preterism, but never really investigated it. I would not call Andrew or Wright preterists, but many of the interpretation principles they employ, including a strong sense of history, have much in common with preterism, and frankly, I found it refreshing as I began to investigate.

When I found out about Wright, I listened to almost all of his audio sermons in about two days. I continued to read the posts on opensourcetheology while flooding the site with questions. Along the way I began reading many very refreshing books recommended from users on this site and other authors affiliated with those books. I have advanced significantly theologically (among other things) since I have come to Open Source Theology and I thank Andrew and the various users for that!

I finally believe I did answer my questions about geenna, at least better than before, but I still have many more questions that I may never answer (but this no longer bothers me). And in case you are wondering, today I lean closer to a doctrine of annihilationism than Universalism, and find it more likely the wicked will be destroyed; but I’m not ready to label all non-Christians “wicked,” reluctant at the same time to subscribe to a “many roads lead to the same destination” theology.

Though the same was true when I was a Universalist, I try to pay close attention to the Bible in its original languages. Though I cannot read Hebrew or Greek fluently yet, I have many Greek-English interlinear versions (some online some offline) I use to get a general idea of what the texts in their original languages are saying. I also realize the importance of the LXX. I am planning to self-teach myself Koine Greek (at least until college), but I might wait until after high school, because it is hard to juggle both at the same time.

I may go to a community college for two years first, but I do plan to eventually go on to college for theology. I would like to take up biblical Scholarship as a career. In the meantime, I am just reading along the way and trying my best to study the Scriptures.

You may notice throughout the last few years of my re-visitation of Christianity, I have put a strong emphasis on seeking knowledge and studying the Bible. This is because people, in my opinion, feel close with God in different ways. I feel especially close to God when I read about the people he interacted with throughout history in the Bible, so that is what I do. But I realize at the same time I need to have room for God interacting with me and the communities I am a part of directly. I also believe different people have different callings as Christians. I feel, perhaps wrongly, that I am called to be a Christian involved in academics, theology, teaching in the church, and perhaps apologetics. In addition, I see the possibility that I will be involved in missionary work in the future, just not full time. If my calling is to be in some sense a Christian teacher, and I feel closest to God preparing for this calling, then I must spend time studying the Bible, but what I have come to realize, and never fully understood or appreciated before, I need to make room for other parts of the Christian life-style: prayer, worship, fellowship, evangelism, helping the poor, and so on. Nevertheless, reading the Bible will always be extremely important to me and my relationship with God.

For those of you (usually hardcore Calvinists) who may not see the Spirit of God working in me, and are questioning my “salvation,” I have some uneasy comments to make. Importantly, as of lately, the negative attitude I use to embrace during my early walk in Christ (if you can call it that) toward those who express doctrinal disagreements (that I considered heretical and damnable) is almost completely gone. I am actually going to my mother’s church despite my disagreements – a church a couple of years ago I never would have even considered stepping foot in – while a few are cutting and running. I am trying to fellowship as much as possible lately, which is another thing I neglected years ago. Sometimes I observe an attitude in myself – a willingness and passion to do what is just and loving in God’s eyes – that I cannot attribute it to anyone else but God and the power of the indwelling of his Holy Spirit.

When I look back at how I saw the world before I started studying the Bible and developing a more personal relationship with God, I see what are now almost unnoticeable, but drastic changes. It is hard for me to describe my “conversion” (if you want to call it that) because I never really led an extremely sinful life or felt inherently empty or estranged from God to begin with, but I know something has changed even if it is hard to describe. I know all this may sound egotistical, but when you find yourself asking about others who lack the love of God, and follow the wide, easy, self-serving, hateful road to destruction, “How can they be that way? I cannot imagine myself being like that… at all. It just does not seem possible for me!”, but recall how you were almost headed toward, if not already treading down, that self-serving path in the past, you start to realize what is dwelling inside the people of God, and soon, yourself. To sum up the last two paragraphs, my “conversion” (if you want to call it that) has, and in a sense, continues to be progressive. I still have major falls, and we all do, but I notice gradual, progressive changes in my life every time I look to my past – changes that I like to hope the Holy Spirit has influenced. It is as Paul says, “Not that I have already obtained this [i.e. resurrection] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own , because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Php 3:12).

By the way, in case you are wondering, the name “enarchay” is derived from the Greek en archē, particularly from John 1:1, meaning “in [the] beginning” or “originally.” Don’t ask me how I came to adopt that as a username. I may eventually change my username on this website to my actual name to make the experience more genuine.