Chapter 2 | Gripped by Fear
This is from a series of blog posts I wrote back in 2020 to share the background for what was to come. It will help you understand the context of the rest of the stories if you read this introductory series.
Blinded to Love
Church has always been a huge part of my life. My family was part of a very conservative (Amish-Mennonite) church. My grandfather was the bishop (lead pastor) of our small congregation as well as a prominent business leader in our community, so my brothers and I grew up feeling like there was a little greater scrutiny on us than was comfortable.
There were a lot of rules that cascaded from our church into our family and became a central part of my childhood. Plain clothing was required, no stripes or prints allowed. Long plain dresses for the women, as well as a prerequisite prayer veiling that covered their hair almost completely. No TV, no movies, no musical instruments, no dancing, no motorcycles, no card games, no circuses or carnivals (because the root word of carnival is …. you guessed it: carne, which means ‘flesh’. And you know where fleshly desires and activities end up). I’m not making this up.
These myriad rules and the consequences for breaking them became so thoroughly woven into the fabric of my being that it dramatically shaped my view of God from a very young age. My primary view of God as a young boy growing into adolescence was that he was very hard to keep happy and he must surely hate me.
From my youngest memories, I pictured God as mostly angry in general and especially pissed at me for my shortcomings. Lord knows I had plenty of those.
One of the most powerful influences on my young life was a fear of what others would think. I think that’s in part due to my own insecurities, but it’s also due in part to the nature of the spirit of religion I was steeped in. It became incredibly important not to have someone think poorly of me. If there was something wrong with me, it was better to shut up about it and hide it than to be exposed and bring shame on myself or worse, my family.
Shame is a powerful tool for external behavior modification, but as I learned the hard way, it has no power to change the heart.
As I grew into adolescence, I began to escape into a fantasy world where I sought love and connection without sacrifice. Pornography fueled my imagination and made me feel alive, but left me wracked in shame and wallowing in self hatred.
Nonetheless, I learned to perform for those around me. I followed the church guidelines well enough to be baptized and become a member of the church at 16, all the while hiding my shame and wondering what was wrong with me.
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When I was 30, MJ and I left the ‘plain’ church tradition and joined a non-denominational Christian church in our community. I knew that I was hiding a lot of darkness and shame inside, but on the outside, I tried to be a good Christian. The pastor at our new church preached about the unconditional love of God in a way I had never heard before, and it intrigued me.
I tried to figure it all out and reason it out in my head. I tried so hard to figure out how to get it all right, but I kept feeling more and more lost and disconnected from God.
Fear gripped me.
Fear that I would be exposed as the fraud that I was. I numbed the fear and pain with porn and fantasy and soldiered on, figuring I would ‘get right with God’ some time, before it was too late. I couldn’t imagine living in a future in which my darkest secrets were made known, but I also sensed that in order to be truly healed, I’d have to bring my sins into the light.
