I worked at a fast food joint as a late teen. Popeye's Chicken to be specific. I'd worked my way up to an assistant manger before I was 17. I was helping to run a store by the time I got married at 18.
That time of my life was filled with doubts and worry about faith. I had stopped attending church and was heavily into reading the Bible on my own. So many questions had begun to form and I had no one to ask them to. No one to challenge with new views on faith and God.
I was beginning to truly doubt. So heavy was my doubt. I felt nothing but shame and anger. Shame that I'd doubt, anger when the doubt grew strong. It cycled, shame and doubt, doubt and shame. I took a second job to help make ends meet. Reception at a hotel. I had little time for sleep now, sometimes it would be two or three days between rest.
I'd begun to dabble in drugs to get by. Cannabis to have fun and pass time, cocaine to get through the long days, alcohol to come down and put myself to sleep. Life was a blur between highs and lows, sober for work and intoxicated during the down time. I began to read the Bible less and less.
Each time I took a hit I felt like a sinner. The cannabis high was filled with anxiety half the time and I couldn't even enjoy myself. Worried I was sinning by using, worried I was going to get caught. My parents would know, my family would know, my church would know. It would get out that I was a druggie.
I didn't use much cocaine. I wasn't a heavy user. Just some days I needed it to get through between shifts I told myself, to keep awake before heading from one job to another. It made me paranoid if I took too much, used too much.
The alcohol I used a lot. I drank as soon as I'd have some time to spend passed out. I didn't drink for fun, to party. I drank to shut out the world and to crash in a stupor.
I prayed a lot during this time. Prayed to be saved from my sins, from my life, from the world. Prayed for a sign.
One day working the drive through at Popeye's a customer handed me a booklet. An issue of
But I'd been praying for a sign, was this it? Was God calling to me through this? The man who had handed me the magazine said if I ever wanted to talk about God to let him know, he'd given me his phone number. I asked if we could talk when my shift was done. That I needed to talk to someone about God. He was elated and promised to come by when I was off work, in a few hours.
I sat in his car after work that night and poured my heart out. I told him everything, like it was a Catholic confession. The failing marriage, the drugs, the sin, the doubt, the search for a sign. He listened quiet through it all, never interrupting. When I'd emptied my heart and mind and sat crying he told me all could change, I could get right both in life and with God. He had more material for me, asked me to read it. Asked if we could talk again soon, maybe with more people from his group.
The lessons taught in the copies of The Watchtower and Awake, the two magazines he'd given me seemed alien. The Jehovah's Witnesses' religion was based in the Bible, like my own Christianity, but was so different. They didn't believe that Jesus was God, they didn't believe in the Trinity. So much was so different despite the same roots and holy texts. It was confusing and strange.
The Jehovah's Witnesses had Biblical quotes and passages that supported their positions. They presented evidence for their stances directly from the Bible. I found myself drawn back into reading the Bible. To confirm these things I was reading. To challenge my old views.
And yet. And yet I remembered the passages we'd quote as a Fundamentalist Evangelical to support our own positions. How each stance and position was rooted in scripture as well.
Like a flash I had what could only be intuition. It was all lies. Each religion was misguided in its own way. Mapping belief onto the Bible, not pulling truth from the words. My doubt suddenly had center stage and control of the Ego. I doubted. I was a doubter. I didn't know if the Bible or God were true.
When the man called me I told him I was no longer interested, to leave me alone. I hung up on him. I ignored him when he came through the drive through at work the next time.
I'd had a moment where identity flashed bright and I felt something like truth. I didn't know. I doubted. Agnostic. I was agnostic. I wasn't yet ready to give up faith in God, in Jesus. But I was done with churches and their dogmas and ideologies. If I was to find the truth it would be on my own. Me and the Bible alone.
I would find the truth. If there was even truth to find. If truth even existed. Agnostic. I had a new identity and it felt right.
It felt right, for a time.