My Journey
A Funny Thing Happened To
Me On The Way To Heaven
By GR Gaudreau
In the beginning
I was born and raised in the Roman Catholic
faith over fifty years ago, when this church still had an almost absolute sway
over the lives of my people, in the
In the
'60s, we had what some have come to call "The Quiet Revolution," a
mainly political movement, which finally broke the power of the Roman church
over us. We started getting rid of the priest's heavy-handed influence on our
society. By the same token, religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and
various Evangelical and Fundamentalist sects began to spread their
"gospel" in Québec, having now the freedom to do so, because of the
Quiet Revolution.
By the time
this revolution had happened, I had given up on religion, having seen its
nefarious hold on my people. In my mid-twenties I began exploring other
religious systems, such as Taoism, Buddhism, and other eastern religions. I
liked some of their ideas and incorporated them in my own worldview. I was then
basically an Agnostic/Atheist.
A fateful day in school
Still in my
mid twenties, I went back to school, in order to complete high school, which I
had quit in the days of my rebellion against authority. It was during this time
that I would meet a young man who would change the course of my life.
One day, at
the end of a math class, this young man asked me what I thought of Jesus of
Nazareth. I answered that I thought he was ok, but no more. I had had a
personal indoctrination into the world of religion by my former "spiritual
keepers" and thought that was sufficient. Little did I realize the
influence this young man would have on me. His name was Mark.
The gospel I had never heard
He began to
tell me of the gospel of Jesus Christ, how my former religion had lied to me
and that salvation was readily available to all who would "ask Jesus into
their hearts." This salvation," he said, was "by grace and not
by works." At that time, my favorite philosopher was Neitzche,
so you can probably imagine what kind of arguments we had.
Mark's
courage in the face of adversity impressed me and the strength of his arguments
against the background of that courage were a powerful
incentive for me. I longed to find the answers to the "mysteries" of
life. From an early age, I had asked why was I here?
Where did I come from? Where was I going? That last one held a particular
interest for me.
I had been tought that hell was the destination of the rebellious and
since I was a rebel, the thought of hell often predominated
my thoughts. In any event, after four years of "debating" with Mark,
I finally "asked Jesus into my heart."
Oh Happy days!
I wish I
could describe the joy I felt at having my sins forgiven and being inducted
into the "family of God." I read my Bible daily and studied hard to
be "a workman approved." After a while, I began to notice slight
discrepancies between what my pastor taught in the pulpit and what I was reading
in my Bible. Surely, I thought, it was me who didn't understand. I gave him and
the others that taught me the benefit of the doubt, because after all, they
were men of God and wouldn't make such mistakes. It was me, it had to be me.
As time
went by, I noticed still more discrepancies. It began to dawn on me that
perhaps they were, after all, wrong about certain things, so I began to
question them and to argue with them as to the various meanings of the texts on
which we didn't see eye-to-eye. I began to attract attention as being a rather
rebellious fellow who was "contentious" and always looked for the
proverbial "fly in the ointment".
Troubled waters ahead
After a
time it became clear to me that my teachers were wrong about how God
administered His Salvation and his Kingdom. I thought their theology was rather
inconsistent and contradictory and I told them so. This, of course, attracted
further attention to me; the kind of attention that "heretics"
usually got.
Sure as shootin', I was eventually disfellowshipped
and shunned. That was a tough year for me. This was the church I had been
"born again" in and I considered it as my spiritual mother. Of
course, I have to admit that I gave my "mom" a hard time, sometimes
being stubborn and prone to a bad temper and a quick response: They weren't to
blame for all my troubles.
This
experience was a good one for me as it opened up new horizons I had not
previously explored. I went to a Reformed church for a while and got a taste of
the "Calvinism" I had so often read about and studied -- my beloved sotereology. Little did I suspect that these folks were of
the same mind as those I had previously been with.
They also didn't appreciate dissent, so it was back to another Baptist church
for me, when I began to question infant baptism and their Covenant Theology.
Back to the fold
Well, I was
back with the Baptists, my first love, only this time they were what some
called "Reformed" Baptists. They were "Calvinistic" in
their approach to salvation. That suited me just fine. But after a while,
needless to say, I was in hot water again. I just couldn't adopt a theology
without trying to modify it, which irritated some folks no end.
I
eventually left that Baptist church and went back to my original church -- yep,
the one that first kicked me out. They had gotten another pastor and he seemed
to be more reasonable than the former pastor, so I decided I'd give them
another try. I was glad to be back there, as I'd missed my first spiritual
family.
It was
during my stay there that I got myself an Internet account and began to browse
the cyber routes of spirituality. That was quite a shocker for me. As time went
by I saw that there were a thousand different opinions out there and that some
of them were pretty wacked out.
It was
during this time that I came upon Preterism. This is a teaching which basically
stated that Jesus came back during the last third of the first century,
according as He gave His word to His disciples by saying: "Verily I say
unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." (Matt 24:34) These "things"
were all the things He'd told them about in the Olivet discourse, in the 24th
chapter of the gospel of Matthew.
Welcome
back to Hereticville -- population: ME!
I then
learned that a future return of Christ was just not taught in the Scriptures. I
wrote myself up a webpage and started telling other Christians how mistaken
they were, waiting for Jesus to come back. The statements concerning His return
and "the end of the world" were quite clear and I believed that the
"world" He was speaking of was not the physical word, but the
covenant world of the Israelites, i.e., the religious system they had lived
under for lo, these many centuries.
I began
getting letters stating that I was destroying the true faith, that I was
attacking a fundamental doctrine that the church had traditionally taught for
centuries. In short, I simply wasn't being orthodox. Preterists were later
labeled (get a load of this fancy term) "Hymanean-Hyper-Preterists"
by the Reformed Church of the United States (RCUS). Now that's what I call a
label!
Well, it
was back to Hereticville for me; but then again, I
was used to that, having been labeled a heretic and a rebel long before I had
entered the ranks of Preterism. I liked Preterists, on
the whole, I thought they were honest researchers who were not afraid to
challenge traditions for the sake of truth. Unfortunately, they weren't as
anti-traditional as I first thought.
Tradition
is alive and well in Preteristville
I found, to
my dismay, that Preterists were also prone to be
traditionalists, even though they claimed to challenge tradition and to stand
on the Word of God only. This became even more clear
to me as I began to deny the doctrine of eternal torments. Some of them got
downright aggressive about it.
I saw that
those who yelled the loudest in favor of Sola Scritpura,
"The Scriptures Alone", were very often those who would take the
hardest stand where tradition and so-called orthodoxy were concerned, thus
denying in the same breath their beloved doctrine, Sola Scriptura.
However
inconsistent this may seem, whenever anyone questioned the authority of the
Bible, there were always those who would be ready with a word of warning. One
day, a lady on a Preterist discussion list I had subscribed to, posted a reply
to a previous question, stating that she thought the apostle Paul had been
misguided in his teachings on the resurrection. Needless to say, all hell broke
loose.
Condemnation
came in fast and furious and in no uncertain terms and this lady was branded a
wolf and ordered to recant forthwith. She didn't and got more of the same.
During this troubled time, another man posted a list of errors he'd found in
the Bible.
Innerrancy challenged, challenge ignored
He, of
course, got a few well chosen reprimands from those who held to the inerrancy
of the Bible. In fact, I was one of the people who wrote him to ask "if
the Bible is so full of errors, then how can we ever trust it? Where would we
go to find truth? And on what rock would we stand?"
I then
determined to find answers to his list of so-called errors and began to study
them in earnest, as I wanted to "bring him back to the fold." To my
great horror, I found even more errors. I was, as you can imagine, shocked. I
had always firmly believed that the Bible was the "inspired and inerrant
Word of God." I kept studying this and kept trying to find solutions to
these problems.
I found a
few solutions to problems that one could consider copyist and translation errors, that really didn't affect any important doctrine.
This, of course, assumed that the original autographs were inerrant. I found
that some of the errors were simply verses that were taken out of context by
the Sceptics. Such is life.
The other
errors, however, simply wouldn't go away. In fact, the more I tried to explain
them, the less I could justify them. I tried going to various inerrancy
websites, but found the answers to be unsatisfactory. I found a lot of
"this could be interpreted", or, "this is a possible
solution," but the real answers were not to be found. The "big
guns" of Bible inerrancy just couldn't still my spirit.
I then
posted some of the errors I had found and asked my Christian brothers on the
list to help me with them. I really wanted to believe in the doctrine of
inerrancy. I kept telling myself that it was me that was wrong. It was my faith
that was weak. The Word of God couldn't be wrong!
The cavalry does not ride in
To my
amazement, those on the list that were the loudest defenders of inerrancy
ignored my posts, as well as those of the man that had first posted the
original list. I couldn't believe this! How could Christians just ignore this
problem? How could Preterists, who challenged such traditional teachings as the
future return of Christ and the mode of resurrection, just ignore this problem
and refuse to help out a brother???
That's when
it began to finally sink in. The doctrine of inerrancy was just not true. My
heart was broken and my soul plunged in a mire of uncertainty. I posted a
letter to the list telling people how I felt about this. Some were very
sympathetic and told me they "felt" for me and would pray that God
would give me light and bring me back to inerrancy, but none of them offered to
help with the errors. In fact, I got letters from some telling me that they had
already been through this and had settled the issue in their hearts and had no
wish to rehash it. So much for compassion. Besides, I
was told, this was a Preterist list, not an inerrancy list. It was suggested
that I join an inerrancy list for help. I think the problem was that they were
scared.
A light
begins to shine in the darkness
It took a
while, but I saw that there were no answers to this problem, other than to
admit that there actually were errors in the Bible and that I would have to
accept my losses and move on. This was a traumatic experience for me, as I had
given myself, heart and soul, to my faith. I had spent eighteen years studying
this book, ignoring the doubts I'd had over the years, telling myself that it
was me that was wrong. Well, it wasn't me! It was the Bible!
There are
insuperable errors in the Bible; errors that are, to quote a Christian I know,
"ungetoverable". I eventually found error
after error that simply couldn't be justified. There were counting errors,
errors in historical data, biological data and scientific data of all kinds and
a host of others too long to name. So many in fact, that I was amazed I could
ignore them for so long. My conclusion is that when a man really wants to
believe, the facts won't make any difference.
The years
of doubt culminate
I had been
bothered for years by the nagging suspicion that if the Bible was so clear,
then how come there were so many different interpretations? I kept telling
myself that it was "the others" that just didn't interpret the Bible
correctly. But if the book was so clear, then why all these
different sects? Why so many denominations? How could there be so many
contradictory opinions on even the most fundamental doctrines, when the Bible
was supposed to be as clear as crystal?
Furthermore,
what about the problem of evil? Why was there so much suffering and senseless
violence in the world, when an omnipotent and benevolent God could put a stop
to it? It just didn't make sense. We are often told by some Christians that God
doesn't want suffering and death. Well, if he doesn't want it, why does it
happen? And why did he cause so much of it himself? Why did he command the
slaughter of women, children, suckling infants, the elderly and the crippled?
How did the slaughter of infants, for the sins of their fathers, ever satisfy "divine
justice?"
Preterism
was a watershed for me. It brought all the different problems and doubts into
one place and put them into focus as never before. It forced me to see that the
church could be wrong about a major doctrine and that it had been wrong for a
long time. This really bothered me. It was in October 1996, when I came to Preterism, that I started having these very serious doubts
and I just couldn't get rid of them. I kept trying to bury them, but they just
kept coming back.
The straw
that broke the camel's back was when I started investigating inerrancy.
Preterism had opened the door to recognizing that "the ground and pillar
of the truth," the church, was wrong about the second coming and the
resurrection. I saw how much tradition held sway in the church and that its cry
of "The Scriptures Alone" was just a smoke screen. The reality was
that the emperor had no clothes.
The various
denominations held to their traditions, despite what the Bible said about them.
Beliefs set in and the hard questions were frowned upon. When I took a hard and
honest look at the inerrancy problem, everything began to unravel. It was quite
disconcerting. I was troubled as I'd never been before, because I just couldn't
bury the problem anymore. I had to deal with it. And if Preterism had been the
watershed, inerrancy was the floodgates opened. It was the most difficult
decision I had ever had to make, but it was unavoidable.
I'm glad I
found these errors and I'm grateful to that man who first posted the list of
errors. He had a lot of courage. He met with a lot of opposition and stood his
ground, because he knew he was right. He could not, would not, ignore the
evidence. Though he was accused and often treated unkindly, he stood for what
he knew was right. He was an inspiration to me. I can't say I agree with all of
his conclusions regarding the truth, but he was a boon to me in my search for
truth.