Note: This post is a direct follow-up to Shallow.

My high school conversion to Christianity established a root system that delved as deep into the soil of my heart as my thoughts and devotion toward God ran: not an inch deep. After my baptism, I became a full member of Trinity Baptist Church in Weatherford, OK. I decided to attend the Sunday morning service regularly. I came unprepared to grow. I didn’t have a Bible of my own, so I showed up to church equally empty-handed and empty-headed. I had no spiritual inclination, so the pastor’s sermons never resonated with me. I didn’t understand them, nor did I exert effort to learn the language of faith. I grew bored quickly. Church service devolved into back-pew gossip sessions with my friend. We whispered back and forth about our weekend exploits and the girls we wanted to date. I tuned out the preacher, the word of God preached, and any spiritual illumination that came with it. The elation I initially felt at having my sins forgiven and my eternal prison sentence revoked had waned. I forced myself to get up every Sunday morning.

My friend pushed my boundaries further, asking me to attend Sunday school before church. I grumbled at the prospect of tumbling out of bed at an even earlier hour, but I obliged him. This is when I started enjoying church, just not in a pious manner. Our small Sunday school class consisted of me, my buddy, and a female teacher who was probably in her mid-thirties at the time. She took her faith seriously, as well as the teaching material she presented to us every week. The only problem with this scenario is that I did not match her level of sincerity. I cringe now as I recall the memories. I turned the entire class into a vehicle for scalding sarcasm and lame jokes. I made light of the teacher and the material with equal contempt. I exasperated her week after week. She lost patience on more than one occasion. Did I feel guilty? Not an iota. I enjoyed watching her religious facade fade as she struggled to maintain her composure and control of the class. Reflecting back now, I’m almost forced to admit the vitriol I poured out on her came from an unholy source in the deep crevices of my withered soul. I had never in my life treated another human being this poorly. I grew up with an extreme sensitivity to other people’s emotions and navigated the best I could to not offend any soul I encountered. I cannot rationally explain my sudden shift in attitude. Why did I disdain her so? In reality, I had no problem with the teacher, but I proved myself unteachable to God’s holy word. It rained brimstone down on my head every time I heard it. My depraved soul craved the safety and comfort found in the shadows hiding behind empty religious rites. It contorted in torment when the pure word of God was preached. My condemned soul desired the disillusionment of self-deception to the truth; I stood naked in the holy gaze of God. I refused the true remedy of faith in Christ. I wanted no part of Him or His people. I expressed this plainly every Sunday morning for perhaps six months or so. The pleasure I gleaned in seeing my Bible teacher squirm slowly dissipated. I could find no other compelling reason to remain in church. I had my fire insurance card, signed and laminated, resting comfortably in my back pocket. I left the church and never came back. I had a life to live, and I decided not to waste a second more sitting on my butt in an old church pew, listening to words that exposed the darkness in my soul.

Now that my belief system had been released from the tethers of church dogma and biblical texts, I could choose from a buffet of more suitable ideologies, then tailor them to my specific tastes. The first doctrine I tossed to the curb was the doctrine of hell. I could never forgive the Bible for clenching up my bowels in mortal fear over the endless terrors of the lake of fire. I performed a lot of hand-wringing over my lost friends who expressed the same strain of apathy I had toward Christianity for years. I knew they were lost and headed for a sulphurous fate. Upon my self-emancipation from the church, I decided hell didn’t really exist; a loving and gracious God would never pronounce such a sentence on His children. Which leads directly into the second church dogma I ditched: only born-again Christians are accounted as God’s children. Rather, He loves us all, and nobody is truly estranged from Him. People might drift away from fellowship, but reconciliation is neither required nor desired by God. We all end up in the same place, though we might take different paths to arrive home.

The nature of God Himself changed as I began to adopt a new age, humanistic view of deity. God is love, but he has no wrath. He is all goodness, and if sin exists, God does not take it all that seriously. Sins are nothing more than mistakes we make in our journey to spiritual enlightenment. I’m not exactly sure what sources I adopted these new-age philosophies from. I did dabble with postmodern spirituality in my younger days. I remember sorting through my mom’s library as a pre-teen and reading through her astrology and new-age books. I vaguely recall she had some Shirley MacLaine books in there, too. I read through some of them with mild interest. I didn’t realize for years just how much those ideas influenced my thinking and worldview. After I repudiated biblical truth, I rested back on these philosophies because they brought me comfort where Christian theology disquieted my spirit. The God of the Bible made me tremble, but the new-age god of my imagination filled me with joy. He approved of all my endeavors and gave me the occasional encouraging pat on the back as I pursued my own lusts. Interestingly, I still embraced the label of Christian, despite my utter rejection of Christian doctrine. I had to hedge my bets, after all. Within a span of six months, I went from condemned sinner to newly minted saint, to caustic critic, then to full-blown ‘Christian’ new-age acolyte. Jesus succinctly explained it like this:

Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away (Mar 4:5-6)… And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful (Mar 4:18–19).

Astute readers will note how I mixed the analogies from the parable. I quoted from the rocky ground portion, then quoted from the choked weeds portion in the explanation. Both rocky ground and choked weed hearers fall into the same category, lost sinners who initially respond positively to the gospel message. Some people may not fit neatly into either category. My roots definitely ran shallow. The soil of my heart contained innumerable stones, devoid of nutrients. However, I did not fall away because of trials or persecutions, though I would certainly have. No, I fell away due to the desires of youth, which I had no intentions of curbing. The God of Scripture forbade my concept of fun at almost every turn. The world, its allure, its philosophies had seduced me. I believe I had a true and powerful conviction of sin at that time in my life; however, I resisted the Holy Spirit’s call and clung to my sinful ways.

I endured for a short season.

But my roots ran shallow.

The weeds choked out the fragile stem with all its delicate leaves.

I withered under the steady gaze of the unrelenting sun.

I bore no fruit.