Caffeinated Chronicles: Part 8-Questioning Faith: Navigating the Rapids of Cognitive Dissonance in Lutheran Waters

Talking to myself

I have to apologize once more. I’ve let my blog lapse a bit, since I’ve been rather busy the last couple of weeks. I know I have an audience of thousands, just waiting with breath held for my next post.

Just kidding. I know I’m mostly talking to myself. That’s ok.

In my last post, I talked about a crucial moment, one that altered the course of my life forever. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but looking back I can see how that moment and the events that followed had a hand in setting me on a course, a path that I’m still traveling.

So in a way, I’m thankful that I got suspended. I don’t know where I’d be if things hadn’t come to a head in that way 20 years ago. But it certainly didn’t feel like a good thing at the time.

I won’t get bogged down in details, but my brother ended up getting expelled from our Baptist school the same year that I was suspended. That’s not my story to tell, but I’ll just say that my brother is a little… different. And, in an environment where conformity and obedience are expected unquestioningly, being different is a serious problem.

And so, following those events, my parents were completely disillusioned with the church and the school where we had been. They didn’t immediately leave, but as in my own story, their lives were never the same.

Into the lions’ den

The first things my parents decided was that I couldn’t attend that school anymore. You have to understand, for us public school just wasn’t an option. There were too many things that could go wrong in a public school, too many temptations to do evil. So my parents searched around the Saint Paul area to find another school where I could complete my final two years of high school.

My brother, by the way, was close to graduation when he was expelled, so he had to go on to get his GED (a high school diploma equivalent).

So my parents went searching in the summer of 2005, and they presented me with two options: the local Catholic school or the local Lutheran school. Both of those schools were a bit intimidating to me, because in the worldview in which I was raised, Baptists are the only denomination with the truth, the only way to achieve salvation. All those other churches were full of people who weren’t truly Christians.

To me, the Catholic school was the scarier option. Catholics worshipped Mary and the Saints, after all, and they didn’t even believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead! (I know now that neither of those things is true, but it’s what I was taught). As a result, with little hesitation, I chose the Lutheran school, fully expecting it to be filled with cultists who practiced infant baptism.

Between the time that finished my 10th grade year at the Baptist school and began the next year at the Lutheran school, we still attended the Baptist church that was connected to the school. It was a somewhat awkward experience, because almost everyone from the youth group also attended the school. No one ever said anything particularly offensive about it to me, which would have almost been better than what actually happened. No, instead there were snide remarks and occasional hints of heresy directed my way by both other kids in the youth group and the leaders of the church.

“Don’t let those Lutherans convert you!” was something whispered in my ear by the school secretary one Sunday after church.

“Joseph,” my friend said, “when you go to public school…”

“It’s not public school,” I replied. “It’s a Lutheran school.”

“Oh well, same thing,” he said. “When you go to the Lutheran school, just remember who you are and don’t get into any fights.”

There were many, many other such things said to me that summer. In fact, I began to take it to heart. I was already primed to believe that Lutheran’s weren’t real Christians, and so it was a small stretch to believe that they would tempt me to sin. I viewed it as almost going into the proverbial lions’ den.

How naive I was.

And so I went. Into the lion’s den. Only, the lions weren’t lions; they were people, just like me. With all their flaws and dreams and desires. Together they were reaching out for something greater than themselves.

Just like I was.

Cognitive Dissonance

Instead of devouring me whole, they welcomed me. Instead of “converting” me, they asked me to think for myself. Instead of rejecting the tenants of the Christian faith, they loved Jesus with their whole hearts. They were different than I was told that they’d be.

And I didn’t understand.

For a long time that first year, I had a bout of cognitive dissonance. How could these people who weren’t really Christians love Jesus so much? How could they have such differing beliefs than I did, when the Bible was so clear as to what it taught?

All of this sounds ridiculous now. It just shows how far I’ve come.

It turns out there was a reason the Baptists didn’t want me to leave the Baptist fold. Exactly what they were afraid of ended up happening to me. I began to accept people of other Christian traditions as brothers and sisters in faith. The control that my fundamentalist church had on my life began to slip. And I began to ask questions.

Many of the same questions I still ask to this day. And I still haven’t found all the answers.

“What kinds of questions?” you ask. Well, that will have to wait until next time, when I tell you the story of how I was introduced to a writer who would challenge many of the things I hold dear, someone who affected many young Christians of my generation.

Curse you, Shane Claiborne. My life was so much easier before I met you.