This is the second in a series of excerpts I am doing from my book “Born Again.” It’s from the first chapter, which is called Original Sin. If you’ve not yet read the introduction and first installment, you can find it here.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9a)1
I was raised in a severely conservative and fervently religious world in which I was taught, even as a child, that I was a totally depraved sinner, worthy only of eternal damnation. Unsurprisingly, I’ve struggled greatly ever since with fear, shame, and guilt.
We were what is known as “born-again Christians,” a reference to a Bible verse from the Gospel of John where Jesus tells Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, that he must be “born again” in order to see the kingdom of God.
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)
For my first three-plus decades, Christianity was pretty much my whole world. As a child, I went to church every time the doors were open, and on top of that, I went to a Christian school and Christian summer camps. I sang in the church’s youth ensemble, I was the vice president of my church’s youth group, and I was the state champion Bible Quizzer.
After high school, I went to Moody Bible Institute to study theology for two years. I then worked and volunteered at the country’s largest evangelical megachurch. I went on to be a member of a prominent conservative Presbyterian denomination before becoming a confirmed Catholic, all while working in Nashville’s Christian music industry. During the George W. Bush presidency, I sporadically attended a predominantly Black church, because I found the music to be moving, and because it was the only place I felt comfortable at the time, away from the strident voices of powerful white people who claimed to speak for God. Some years later, after moving to San Francisco, I joined a liberal Presbyterian denomination, before I eventually realized I was agnostic. It was a long, slow, and often messy journey.
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I have spent my entire adult life trying to make sense of my first 18 years. I’ve read countless books, seen three different therapists, worked with professional coaches, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, watched documentary films and television programs, and had nearly never-ending conversations with friends and family about the things that happened to and around me/us.
Somewhere along the way, I’d become quite comfortably uncomfortable in this place of constantly looking backwards, rehashing and relitigating and reprocessing the many difficult experiences I’d had as a child and young man. I had learned how to cope with it, but I’m not sure I’d learned how to thrive in a life beyond it.
I don’t know if I even believed it was possible to overcome the ongoing traumas of my youth. Being in a place of “deconstruction” had become so much a part of my identity that I realized I had perhaps stopped looking forward; I’d simply accepted that this was my life, and I was likely always going to struggle with these memories, was always going to be haunted by these experiences.
But, as I began this book, I thought...
What if it doesn’t have to be this way? What if I don’t have to live like this anymore? What if it is actually possible to be free? What if I were to just let go and move beyond the struggles and hurts I’d always known into a new life?
I am confident that I could, quite literally, continue to mull over my screwed-up childhood for the rest of my life; there certainly is no shortage of raw material. But I don’t want to! I don’t think that staying bogged down in that is useful, productive, or healthy anymore. Instead, I want to declare that I’ve processed the past enough, mark a fresh start, and turn my focus to the future.
So that’s what Born Again is for me. It’s an unflinching—and occasionally mortifying—look back at some things I’ve never really talked about, in ways I’ve never really talked about them.
This is the story of my rebirth.
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You can read the next excerpt here.
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I intend for the foreseeable future for my posts to remain free, including the excerpts from Born Again. But if you’d like the full book, you have two options:
You can purchase it directly from Blurb.
Or, for a limited time only, I am offering a FREE copy to all new Yearly subscribers to this newsletter! This is a $20 value—and I’ll even cover the cost of standard shipping.
(Note: The Substack back-end tech appears to be unable to accommodate the logistics of this offer, so I will reach out to you directly after you subscribe to get your shipping details and then place the book order for you myself.)
All Bible verses quoted in Born Again are from the King James Version, unless otherwise noted.
Buying your book now! Can't wait to read it. Am also at 50+ choosing to focus on the present with faith in the future. I find when blips from my past that pop up (especially the most painful ones) they sometimes have a nugget of truth showing me a way to feel love, compassion, and understanding for hard moments in the now.
I hope you can leave the past behind you, but keep the lessons and good memories.
I love you!
Be as kind to yourself as you are to others.
And have a great day!
Robin