Why I Left The Church…Twice. (PART 1)

Growing up, I was taught about how much God loved me and how he sacrificed everything for me. I learned all of the Sabbath School (Seventh-Day Adventist equivalent to Sunday School) songs by heart like “Jesus Loves Me” and “This Little Light Of Mine”. I truly loved everything Jesus and wanted to live my life for him. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed church. I was the kid who memorized all of the Old and New Testament books in order. I was the boy who won 90% of the sword drills, beating everyone in finding the text that our teacher gave us. I was the child who believed wholly in the message of surrendering everything to God so that He change us from the inside out.

But it wasn’t long before something changed in me. I don’t know if it was my naivety or my unwillingness to accept my what was in front of me, but the reality is, no matter how much the preacher preached about God’s love, no matter how much we sang about God’s love, no matter how much we talked about God’s love, I soon realized that I rarely felt God’s love in His church…

Whether it was in Adventist churches or schools, I experienced situations and events that were contrary to what I was taught about the love of God. I felt judged and disrespected at times, and I would even go as far as to say that I was a victim of racist and classist behaviors. So as soon as I became of age as a college student, I made a conscious decision to stop attending Adventist churches. What’s the point? Why would I continue to expose myself to harmful environments and toxic people? Why would I let people “play in my face” about God and His infinite love, when it seemed like they had no desire to reciprocate that same love to God’s people? So I decided to leave.

I want to pause here because I want to affirm all those who have walked a similar path to me. It feels like within our denomination that if you are not of a certain family with a famous last name, if you are a minority in our American Regional Conferences, if you are a woman, if you have same-sex attraction, or if you do not have a certain amount of money, you may have felt “othered” and less than your counterparts. You were not treated the same as your colleagues and fellow parishioners, which has made you often question why you are still in this church. Well I just want to repent of our sins publicly and say I’m sorry. You did not deserve to be treated as anything less than a child and creation of the Most High God. You are valuable and have been given special talents that God still wants to use for your good and His glory. Do not let anyone derail the special calling that God has placed in your life!

I started living my life the way I wanted to, but deep down inside I still believed in God. But I refused to call myself Christian because I knew I wasn’t living a life that was representative of the God I professed to believe in. I take His name and His reputation seriously, so I did not want to taint the work He was doing with His people. I stopped going to church, partied at least 4 times a week, smoked, drank alcohol, was promiscuous, and committed all types of surface sins. But deep down inside I was just crying out for someone to see me and acknowledge my pain. This pain was present when I was in church, but unfortunately people were so turned off by my external appearance that they couldn’t recognize my internal turmoil.

I think we as a church need to take this issue very seriously. We continue to discredit, disown, and dismiss many powerful people that God wants to empower because we are easily thrown off by external appearance. We need to become more in tune with God’s Holy Spirit to see people’s pain and to love them so much that they cannot resist God’s calling on their lives. We have lost too many people because of our spiritual immaturity and I pray that God helps us to grow out of some of the toxic theology that we have been taught for many years…