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I Don’t Need the Government to Defend My Faith
A countercultural faith doesn’t need any government approval
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
— Jesus (Matthew 5:11–12)
For most of my teenage and adult life, I didn’t like Christians. Despite growing up in Oklahoma — the buckle of the Bible Belt — and attending church, the litany of rules and the hypocrisy I witnessed constantly annoyed me. Around age seventeen, I left the Christian faith but just didn’t tell anyone. When you grow up in the Bible belt and renounce your faith or have serious doubts, you get the hellfire and damnation talks, which revolve around your burning for eternity. Not that they give you much of an option anyway because the way it works is to either (A) believe as I do and come to your senses or (B) have Satan torture you for all eternity. I stayed silent, stopped attending church, and began looking for a way to escape my hometown, which came in the form of joining the military.
I was always polite and very good at playing a Christian when I needed to. After all, I knew all the pat answers having grown up in the church. However, when I would grow…
