Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7:7-8
Throughout my rollercoaster ride, struggling with my personal belief in God as He was defined in the King James Version of The Bible, I kept coming back to those verses in Matthew in the New Testament.
I kept asking, seeking, and knocking … searching for the truth.
Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.
Proverbs 23:12
Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
Proverbs 23:23
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32
These are but a small sampling of The Bible’s admonition to seek the truth in all things. I felt I was headed in the right direction when I questioned what was offered as The Truth but on closer examination proved to be false … at least it seemed false to me. It didn’t seem false to True Believers, who also happened to be everyone in my family with whom I had deep and abiding emotional bonds.
It boiled down to accepting what I was told by the Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian authority figures in my life—my Sacred Elders—or going through the enormous emotional upheaval of questioning them and what they were telling me … which they interpreted as Satan gaining a foothold in my mind … dooming me to hell and damnation … (and if they allowed me to raise these issues then I might taint the minds of other young people) … God, it was a mess!
I was born in 1938, so my coming of age took place within the swirling maelstroms of the publishing of Kinsey’s SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN MALE, published in 1948, and SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN FEMALE, published in 1953; McCarthyism over four years beginning on February 9, 1950; and Elvis Presley emerging as an international phenomenon in the mid-1950’s.
Truth was in transition, as it has been throughout human history.
And I was hell-bent to follow it wherever it led—at times. At other times I simply wanted to stop struggling and live the imaginary “Leave It to Beaver” mid-America life.
The emotional upheaval in my personal life as I was caught up in the countervailing pulls and pushes of faith versus reason, as I went through the lows and highs of rejecting then re-accepting my faith-based cosmic view, brought about what I—and my friends and family—viewed as a series of shameful personal episodes during this period.
These "failures" proved to them the folly of my search for truth. They constantly exhorted me—my siblings still do--to “return to the fold”, renew my commitment to the Christian faith of my childhood. If I gave up my doubts, God would welcome me back and all would be resolved and put back into good order. Just put God in control—which largely meant accepting the instruction and authority of a Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian Church—and all would be well with my soul and life.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
The Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian faith had been embedded in me as a child. I had absolutely no reason to doubt that it was The Truth. Then from October 31, 1951, to October 30, 1958, I was a teenager. My hormones kicked in shortly after the first Kinsey report was published and widely reported.
There I was, my church was telling me that sexual lust—which was now raging in me—was the work of Satan. The Bible was clear on this point, even going so far as exhorting me to pluck out my eye if I was visually aroused sexually—which was a real problem when watching cheerleaders perform. (On the other hand, I began to think that if I was going to be punished as much for looking as for … well, I might as well “do it”.)
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Matthew 5:27-29
So, like I said, there I was, no more able to stop the lust spontaneously bursting forth—literally drenched in my wet dreams—while on one hand being told by the people I loved and who loved me (my “tribe”) that lust was the encroachment of the Devil in my life (I wasn't being encroached upon, I was being drowned) … and the Kinsey report establishing the scientific basis for the commonalty of my sexuality and that upwards of 95%+ (or whatever it was) males masturbated.
It began to dawn on me that a lot of the authority figures in my life must not be telling me the truth. My sexual experience and practice were not abnormal, as I they had led me to believe with the accompanying self-doubt and shame. This resulted in a huge split in my mind and personality. At times I was a pious church-attending believer—at least convincing myself of that. Other times I was a carousing womanizer (desparately?) seeking to satisfy the physical side of my sexual needs with whomever came along at the time.
My chemical of choice to transform myself from Dr. Jekel to Mr. Hyde, was alcohol. Within the fog of the inebriation (while being drunk, in other words) I could pursue my lust without conscious conflict with my faith.
With the dawning of the realization that the Sacred Elders in my life might not be telling the truth, the path to my own enlightenment opened up. Little did I know how long and arduous the journey would be—nor how ultimately satisfying for me.
Before I reached the end of my journey, I became a hopeless alcoholic (hopeless in the sense that I was powerless over whether or not I would get drunk once I started drinking alcohol), then a recovering alcoholic with the guidance of wise pantheist (finally a Sacred Elder who actually pursued the truth), then a re-examination of my childhood faith with what has proven to be a final rejection, and then the end of my journey: the near-death experience which cemented my understanding of what I now accept as the truth for me. (See Whose God is it?, IV: My God is ... )
Next: Finding God, Part 2, The end of the journey.
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