Read on Twitter
The evangelicalism I was raised in taught it was good to risk your future by moving to Africa or your life by evangelizing natives in South America but under no circumstances were you to risk entering a situation where any of your beliefs might change.
"Apologetics" was, in this context, the prophylactic that would protect you if you went to public school or had non-believing friends or had to go to a secular college because your family didn't have enough money to send you somewhere fancy and safe
This wasn't really the case for me. I got into it because it was interesting. It was philosophy, it was history, it was fun to think and argue about. It introduced me to NT criticism
But in the end I still had to make a choice between trusting God and trusting my beliefs about God. I had help -- Greg Boyd's great book on (un)certainty, Christian Smith on infallibility, people writing about "missional" church
Plus I decided to go work in a church after college rather than go to seminary, which was one of my top 3 life decisions for a number of reasons but mostly it convinced me how bored I would get being surrounded by people who agreed with me all the time
I went to a non-confessional school for my MA. It was hard. Not having the constant reinforcement of scholars who were critical but still believing in the "fundamentals" of conservative Christianity took its toll. I changed in way I would never have imagined previously
But it's what I (and this is going to bother some people, deal with it) "felt called" to do. I think it was the absolute right thing for me to do, because meant following a God I knew in part, in order to learn more, rather than being comfortable in what I thought I already knew
So now I'm writing a self-consciously revisionist account of the earliest Christian martyrs and teaching Bible to undergrads at a state university. I'm pretty sure my students assume I'm an atheist if I don't tell them otherwise
In the end, very few of my beliefs about God have actually changed. The Bible, the church, even my understanding of history qua history has changed. But my God is still the same God. I still get annoyed that people won't let me call myself "evangelical"
Maybe that makes me the weird one; maybe everyone else is headed for a slipperly slope if they abandon anything they're taught to believe. My upbringing was a bit different than most, which may deserve its own Twitter thread
But the one thing I'm dying to tell my Christian students every semester (I don't, unless they specifically ask in private or in office hours) is that maybe if they do that thing that their parents and youth pastors and college leaders tell them to do, to follow God...
...And if they do, maybe they'll find him. Or maybe not. It's hard to say. But if he is who they claim to believe he is, he's worth the risk.
And if he isn't, he isn't who they claim to believe he is.
And if he isn't, he isn't who they claim to believe he is.
