It was Spring of 1990. I was rocking a bi-level mullet (“business on top / party in the back”), a short sleeve button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to make my developing arms look quasi-muscular, a knock-off pair of Docker style Khaki pants, and oversized Nike high tops that were like wearing laced up cement shoes. That was my own brand of what I considered “dressing up”. And it was necessary for one special Sunday in 1990: I was receiving the sacrament of Confirmation at the Catholic church I attended (or I should say the church that my parents *made* me attend).
For years, I had prepared for this moment: I received Baptism as an infant (twice — but that’s a story for another time), Penance at age 8, First Communion at age 9, and now I was completing yet another sacrament on my way to the priesthood. Yes, you heard that right: I wanted to be a Catholic priest. Believe it or not, my own parents weren’t quite privy to this (I have always had this quirk, if you will, about not revealing a goal unless I make a committed choice to pursue it, else jinx myself if I reveal too much too soon).
Now it was time for the moment of truth: I had chosen my confirmation name after St. Prosper — which led to an awkward moment in front of the entire congregation when the priest, Fr. Romero, announced that he had never heard of St. Prosper and to explain how I discovered him. Well, being a kid from a heavily Italian, devout Catholic family, I just so happened to have my parents’ “Lives of the Saints” book on-hand and had the satisfaction of exclaiming “Ha! See!” as I pointed out St. Prosper in the book.
Why did I choose St. Prosper? He was a bit of a renegade. He was a cut-his-own-path-in-life kind of guy. Keep in mind I was 17: Anybody who represented teenage rebellion or standing up to the status quo was my hero. In fact, St. Prosper was such a big influence in my life, that I ironically left the Catholic church a year later. Yes, I thought I had truly prospered. (pun shamelessly intended.)
But why did I leave Catholicism? Truth be told: It wasn’t just about St. Prosper. It was also about a female friend of mine, Cindy, who was also a co-worker at the grocery store where I unfortunately bagged groceries and pushed carts for three years. (Three *long* years when you are a teenager.) See, this friend of mine was eight years older than me at the time, though she had apparently taken a liking to me in a strictly platonic way. We spent many hours, every week, purposely having me bag groceries at her register, and often taking breaks on the same schedule, so that we could share our mutual interest in deep, philosophical conversations. (Or at least how I defined “philosophy” at the time).
During one conversation, which carried over many sessions of bagging groceries at Cindy’s register, Cindy was relentlessly curious about my Catholic faith. And though Cindy herself was agnostic, she asked many of the usual questions that Protestants often ask Catholics: Why do you worship Mary? Why do you worship statues? Why does the Catholic church have so many doctrines? Why doesn’t the church just give in and let priests marry? Why not just believe in Jesus and forget all the rules and regulations? How do you *know* Catholicism is true?
It was that last question that threw me into a tail spin. Yes, Cindy had a good point: Why had I spent the last 18 years believing in something if I couldn’t answer why I thought it was true? And apparently, saying “because that’s what I believe” didn’t cut it.
Next stop: college. Yes, the place that religious parents want their kids to gain a higher education, yet brace themselves for.the “101” classes in psychology and philosophy that arm 18 year-olds with a machine gun ammo belt full of new found knowledge to drive parents into a mental breakdown: “My professor taught us how Epicurus showed that God is not real.” Or that “according to Nietzche, ‘God is dead'”.
Ohh yes, I was a now a fully-qualified, armchair philosopher who had seen the light. Of course, that was not without me going through a bit of an existential crisis, being angry at my parents for duping me into believing something that I couldn’t defend, and spending hours at a time — everyday — asking the same questions that most skeptics going through an existential crisis ask: What is my real purpose in life? Why should I believe in a higher power at all? How can any religious person refute Epicurus’s famous (or infamous?) position on that being/thing/whatever called “God”?
So, I did what any hormonally charged, know-it-all, rebellious, almost 20 years-old teenager would do: I joined a band.
Ok, not every teenager. And here is a good time to mention that I have been a guitarist/composer since age 14, and I had a thing for anti-establishment, free-thinking bands that proudly gave conservative society the middle finger any chance they had. Also keep in mind that pop music in the 80s was the epitome of cheesy bubble-gum compared to today’s pop music (which is a whole other conversation in itself), so when bands such as Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Sepultura became widely popular, I joined the growing herd of metal fans and found friendship in people who explored the dark side of human existence, that life as a middle-class kid was really an illusion of normalcy, and that rules and regulations were just for tyrants who hate freedom and want people to be robots to the system.
Now, that begs the question: How is that I was so free-thinking in high school, yet I had clung to Catholic tradition, and it took college and a shamelessly direct co-worker to make me change my views? Part of the reason is I was deathly afraid of my father (until I was 18), and that I had seen matters of faith as separate from breakdown in society. I had figured that God would eventually fix it all anyway; meanwhile, God had nothing to do with humans having to deal with control freaks in society. Not that that my logic was sharply on point back then — I clearly had some learning to do.
Back to the band: If anyone has ever said to you, “I had to grow up fast as a kid”, I became that person when I joined the band. I was indeed the “kid” in the band (everyone else was at least five to ten years older than me); my bandmates (and as men often do with each other in establishing hierarchies) were my mentors on how to navigate the music scene and, well, how to party “like it’s 1999”.
Having come from a strict background, including my Catholic roots, I myself was confoundedly uptight (again, I was a teenager, hence the already built-in confusion), and my bandmates were clearly amused about that. They took great pleasure in watching the visibly uncomfortable look on my face when they passed around the marijuana bong at band practice, drank themselves into a stupor just about everyday, and had wildly pornographic conversations about their girlfriends. To give you an idea, at the 10′ x 20′ storage space where we practiced three times per week, the walls were lined with Playboy pics (not, not the “articles”) and even more explicit pics from my drummer’s favorite magazine, “Debutante Monthly”. Side note: The drummer had also identified as “born-again Christian”. Take all the time you need with that one.
The band life had not only pried open my eyes to the many facets of human nature — much of which is qualified as “creepy” in today’s social jargon — but any remnant of innocence I had left was pretty much shattered.
So then I did what any hormonally charged, know-it-all, rebellious, now-all-grown-up (in the more disturbing sense) musician would do: I went out and found a girlfriend who liked guitar players. Her name was Kristen. And it turned out that like my drummer, Kristen was a born-again / Protestant Christian. Except that she was the actual definition of born-again and with a family on a Bible-thumping rampage. Kristen’s mother was immediately not a fan of my lifestyle — including that I was formerly a “Mary and statue worshipping’ Catholic” — and soon filed me under the category of “unequally yoked”.
Kristen had gone a little easier on me, as it turned out that she herself was a little rebellious — though her faith was still central to her life, and she was fully equipped to show me that all I needed was a “personal relationship with Jesus”. No Mary, no statues, no standing and sitting down during Mass, no people wearing extravagant robes, no altar, no magic spells cast on bread and wine. Just Jesus. Just the Bible. Nothing more, nothing less.
Or at least that was according to Kristen, her mother, the rest of her family, and their charmingly charismatic pastor named Marvin, who was on a mission to help me find salvation. In fact, I will never forget the first question Pastor Marvin asked when Kristen first introduced me on a fateful Sunday: “If you died today and stood before Jesus, would you be saved?” That’s right — we skipped all the small talk and went right to that doozy of a question.
My honest answer was “I don’t know”. To which Pastor Marvin jumped all over that, even having a one-on-one meeting with me in his office that week to discuss the following:
*Paul’s letters to the Romans.
*A stickman type illustration showing me standing on the edge of a cliff, looking at another cliff across from me, and a giant cross as the bridge between the two cliffs.
*A short book by Billy Graham that explained how we as humans had fallen from Grace, and then if I recited the “sinner’s prayer”, Jesus would enter my heart and I would be forever saved. Easy peasy, right?
And that’s what I did — I gave my life to Jesus. Not in Pastor Marvin’s office, but in more dramatic fashion at the next Sunday service: As the lights were dimmed at the end of the service, and a soft, bitter-sweet piano melody played in the background, I walked with my head down, holding my hands against my heart, and allowing one of the assigned “prayer warriors” to hand me yet another copy of the Billy Graham brochure and pray the sinner’s prayer together.
Voila — I was official. I was born again. I was ready to be “on fire” for Jesus. I couldn’t wait to take my new found “Aha!” knowledge and evangelize the plan of Salvation to anyone willing to hear me tell them that all they need is Jesus. Kristen was ecstatic. Kristen’s mother was ecstatic. The rest of the Kristen’s family was ecstatic. Pastor Marvin..well, you get the idea.
Meanwhile, although I was still in rock star mode with my band, I had essentially switched from one form of uptight to another (though some of that had to do with my own personality). I was also a college dropout at that point; and as my parents had aptly predicted (they were not fans of my music career), I was yet another down-and-out musician living in a dumpy studio apartment, floating from one seemingly dead-end job to another, living on Cup O’ Noodles ramen, and sleeping on a hand-me-down, pull-out sofa bed for three years. This was also due to my rebellion against the establishment and probably over-listening to Rage Against the Machine songs.
But, hey, I now had Jesus. And as Pastor Marvin and Kristen’s mom regularly reminded me: “Leave your troubles to God”.
I took that to heart. I went all-in as a born-again Christian. I attended church twice per week, participated in a men’s Bible study group called “Bodybuilders” (*eye roll*), did some street evangelization here and there, and even tried converting many of my Catholic friends (100% unsuccessfully).
Then, around that same time, I fell ill. I would much later find out that I have an auto-immune and nerve related disorder that causes various types of chronic pain. But until I had received a correct diagnosis and treatment, I can say that I lived a “hell on Earth” for the next few years: I was now 24 at that point, I was surprisingly still playing in the band — which was unraveling as well, for the same self-destructive reasons why many tock / metal bands fall apart — and my body had been eating itself alive. I went from being a 185 lb., muscle-toned workout enthusiast to a nearly frail 126 lbs. Just about everything I once enjoyed eating was now causing my body to attack itself. And if that was not enough, my body added chronic migraines and random pain in my pelvis into the mix.
On top of that, being a 20-something with my health issues was somehow perceived as “what old people go through, not what happens to young people” — which did not make matters any better. It did a number on my mental well-being: I became severely anxious, withdrew from my friends and family, and spent most of my time hiding inside my home and only going out on rare occasions.
Really, my health issues took a wrecking ball to all areas of my life. I eventually quit the band, partly because I had grown so angry at the world around me, I was lashing out at anyone who even attempted to be supportive with me.
One particular evenng, I had just finished several repeated trips to the bathroom at Kristen’s mother’s house, aftering having eaten something that once again set my insides in flames. I recall collapsing on the living room couch, praying again and again to God to make the suffering and pain stop, when Kristen’s mother sat down near me and tried to help ease my pain.
Except the next words out of her mouth threw me for a loop that changed my whole life after that: “When God calls you to his ‘home’, then that’s what his plan is for you.” In other words, it was time for me to accept that I was going to die and to, well, leave it in God’ s hands.
That didn’t go over well with me at all. So much so, that I blew up in a rage and yelled, “How could you even say something like that?!”
I was still Protestant at that point; I was still clinging to my Bible for answers. But then it hit me — like the proverbial ton of bricks — that I had fallen into all-around, fundamentalist trap.
Yes, yet another existential crisis. I had gone from being an already confused kid about my spirituality, to oversimplifying my life into a state of “let Jesus take care of all of your problems” Grace, to taking every word of the Bible literally (and hence mostly why I could never convince my Catholic or non-believer friends why they just need Jesus and nothing else), to now thinking I was probably going to die because I left everything in Jesus’ hands, as He figured it was time for me check out from this world.
Then, my view of the Bible went south too. I was already in denial that my life as a Protestant was filled with all too easy reductionism, and that I had become a moral thug in the process. The latter didn’t become so apparent until I started asking my non-believer friends their perspective on the Bible — and, oh, that I was pissed off at Kristen’s mother for telling me to give in and die already. (Or at least that’s how I took it at the time).
That’s when my more astute non-believer friends gave me a littany of problems about the Bible: God is a blood-thirsty commander-in-chief who condones massive amounts of slaughtering disobedient people in His name — but then does a perceived 180 by sending Himself down to Earth to sacrifice Himself to Himself so that He can save us from Himself. I literally said out loud after that summary, “Why the hell am I believing in this?”
Yet I still wanted to believe in God. I wanted to stop plugging my ears while yelling “la la la la — I can’t hear you!” when I re-read the Bible from my non-believer friends’ perspective. I had thought they were still wrong somehow.
However, instead of going right to being atheist, I became Catholic again. It was familiar to me. I had spent the first 18 years of my life deep in my Catholic faith. Maybe I was being punished for not being Catholic? I needed answers.
I spent the next three years seeking out those answers. And as with my time as a born-again / Protestant Christian, I went all-in as a Catholic. I even taught Catechism to high school age students and adults in my third year as a Catholic (again).
Things were going swimmingly: I had believed I was growing stronger in my Catholic faith, I had restarted my journey in college a few years prior, completed an undergrad degree in Information Technology, and had taken a number of classes on philosophy, comparative religion, and Bible scholarship.
By that point, Kristen and I had ended our relationship for several reasons, and I eventually met my now ex-wife, Eleonora, a Brazilian woman who shared my Latin roots and who also happened to be Catholic (though would have been considered “Cafeteria Catholic”). Prior to meeting Eleonora, a good friend of mine had loaned me a book called the “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. As with many other people who have read that book, I was bowled over by it and struck with a new sense of purpose in life: I needed to “find my personal legend.”
Then, my same friend loaned me another book called, “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah” by Richard Bach. As cliche as this may sound, that little book (I read it one night) changed my life once again: It made me stop and think: Maybe there is life after religion? Part of the book’s message proclaims that once we fully understand the message a savior gives (let’s say Jesus in this case), we can move on from religion and simply embrace the experience of life, while keeping our values in check.
That led to me to pursuing degrees in Psychology, as well as taking a new look at world religions, not-so-well-known belief systems, and everything in-between. I studied many of the prominent psychologists of the 20th century. I was especially enamored with Carl Jung’s work in “depth psychology”, his theories about the collective unconscious, and drawing incredibly thorough parallels between myths taught throughout various cultures, throughout the history of humanity: that the stories from various cultures explain the human experience, that we can choose to partake in what’s called “the hero’s adventure”, that we can live up to our potential, or we can withdraw and lose out on our purpose in life.
That then lead me to studying Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade. My life was gaining so much more clarity. I was reading great scriptures from a more literary stand point, I was sorting out symbolism in stories, I was learning about the cycle of life: birth, rights of passage that require symbolic death and rebirth, and then ultimately physical death.
I had it all figured out, right?
Yet I was still wrestling with whether I believed in the God of the Bible or if I was just going to stay with the “collective unconscious” narrative and so be it.
Then, I stumbled across a quote one day that once again dramatically changed my trajectory in life: “Those who think they know, do not know. And those who know they do not know, know.”
It was at that moment that I said (and I think I said it out loud): “I am agnostic.”
Agnosticism then turned into atheism. As I was moving along in my continuing education, I had quite a bit of science under my belt — particularly neuroscience and biology. Yes, I eventually fell into that rather narrow perspective known as scientism: Science can explain everything, right? The pre-frontal cortex in the brain controls moral dilemmas. People with brain deformities or have lesions can exhibit erratic behavior; therefore, there goes the idea of being “possessed by Satan”, right? Why would God allow sex slavery, Hitler’s bloody reign, disease, famine, severely poor children dying from diarrhea?
I swore off God altogether. I read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, “God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that religion was dead. And as Nietzche put it (though I would later learn his comment has been grossly misinterpreted), “God is dead”.
Moreover, as with other times I had gone all-in with my prior beliefs and my pursuits in general, I did the same with being atheist. Similar to the stages of recognizing an unhealthy behavior — denial, anger, confusion, acceptance, etc. — I had a major axe to grind with religion. I spent the next several years (beginning around 2007) following the evolution of YouTube and eating up the treasure trove of videos that atheists were posting left and right, showing anyone with a proclivity for religion that it is, well, bat sh*t crazy.
I then became a bit of a debate and call-in show junkie. I watched the New Atheists — Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Barker, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, and the list goes on –appear to decimate religious apologists. I religiously (yes, pun intended again) watched “The Atheist Experience” and practically had a man-crush on Matt Dillahunty, who, in my eyes, was the king of smacking down religious beliefs.
I was even moving into the Mythicist camp: meaning, that perhaps Jesus did not even exist at all and was just the product of yet another “dying and rising’ cult that had sprung up during the Hellenistic into Roman periods of rule throughout the Mediterranean. Then there was the whole problem of Zoastrianism,and the idea of “good god versus bad god” predating Judaism. So, this Jesus guy was just another “dying and rising god”, no?
Then, in 2014, I watched a debate between Trent Horn (a now very well-known Catholic apologist) and Richard Carrier (one of the few well-known mythicists in the Bible scholarship world). I was already well familiar with Richard Carrier (to this day, I still acknowledge that he put a thorough, sincere effort into answering the Jesus myth theory, and has even provided compelling cases for and against the argument) — but “Trent Horn” was not a familiar name to me. Yet that guy knocked me on my intellectual hiney that day. Horn held his ground like nobody’s business while, point by point, surgically dissecting all of Carrier’s arguments.
I was still a pretty proud atheist at that point — though I had also devolved into being somewhere between a methodological naturalist and full-on nilhist. But that Trent Horn guy opened up a whopping can of worms in my brain.
You probably see a pattern here, right? Yes, I have been a bit of drifter in some ways, over the years. You could even call me a bit extreme in my various trajectories. Yet isn’t it necessary to be a seeker in life? To find what’s true and not believe blindly in it?
After being knocked on my rear from the Horn-Carrier debate, I watched a whole lot of other Trent Horn videos, debates, and so on. I then discovered Jimmy Akin and Karl Keating. I *re-discovered* the works of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. And, oh boy, was that another humbling experience: intellectuals who had lived hundreds of years before me, yet were addressing all of the same doubts about the existence of God, about Biblical scripture, you name it.
In other words, not a single thought of my mine, as part of the “new atheist” movement, was original or hadn’t been asked before, you know, like a bazillion times. That was a blow to the clouded arrogance I had built up over time. And I was pretty ruthless in my arrogance: I couldn’t post enough Jesus jokes on social media and mic drop type memes that you would think would pulverize religion.
Except that a whole lot of Catholics, a whole lot of people who were clearly much more well studied than I thought I was, had brought to light a critical essence of the Catholic Church that has existed for almost 2000 years now: That faith and reason are tightly interconnected; that being Catholic is not about permanently suspending critical thinking; that it is not about reducing Grace to “just accept Jesus and He’ll take care of the rest”; that it is not just about doctrines and rituals; that is not just about being the true church. Rather, it is about God’s revelation to humanity — through a church that has meticuloisly, and quite extraordinarily, preserved and taught His revelation.
Sure, that last paragraph may sound a bit preachy, and that isn’t so much my intention for this post. However, I hope you do consider this entire post food for thought. What’s more, if you ever create the opportunity to embrace Catholicism in its entirely, I believe you will not regret it — and you may even feel more connected to God than you could possibly imagine.
Finally, a quick side bar: I took a detour earlier in this post regarding my health condition. I am going to save the full details for another post — but in the meantime, in 2005, I found a doctor who helped put me on the right path to dealing with my condition: I am happy to say that I gained all the weight back (and then some!) and have paid it forward over the years by becoming a personal trainer in 2006 and helping other people achieve their health goals. More on that another time!