My Starting Point

Before I get into the content of blog itself, I think it is important that I provide a brief overview of my background, as this will likely help to explain the position from which I am writing this blog.

As I start writing this blog, I am 36 years old. I am a male, married with no kids and one dog. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, which meant, among other things, that I grew up believing in notions such as:

• a literal understanding of the Bible as the "Word of God" (this has a huge impact on all other beliefs and emphases)
• the exclusivity of Christianity in terms of providing a path to God
• an emphasis on believing and faith
• a focus on humanity's sinful nature, guilt related to that nature, and the salvation that is required as a result to enable you to spend the afterlife with God (i.e. rights and rewards)
• a fixation on the afterlife (to the degree that if someone walked in and said that there was proof that there was no afterlife, I would have had no idea why I should be Christian - that was what it was all about)
• an emphasis on "being good" by living in accordance with the Bible

The particular form of fundamentalism that I was part of for the first 25 years of my life was Pentecostalism. For the last decade or so, I have been associated with the Wesleyan denomination.

And while I grew up in a modern Canadian town in a modern household and have lived in a major urban centre for the past almost 20 years with a professional job, I haven't (until the last year or so) really thought about questioning any of the above notions. In that sense, I consider myself to have been a "natural literalist" (not even thinking to question the tenets of my faith...just believing it because that is what I grew up with).

And while I have been involved (sometimes heavily) in the churches I have attended over the year, as I have reflected in the last year or so, I would suggest that I have not been overly focused on theology or theological matters. By that, I mean that I didn't THINK a lot about my theological beliefs. Of that fact, I am not proud; having said that, I don't think that I am an "unusual" Christian in that regard (at least the Christians that I have been associated with in my lifetime).

As I write blog entries, I will endeavour to point out the relevant portions of my background and the beliefs I have held most of my life. I will do this for two reasons. First, to help readers understand why I might be approaching a topic the way I am (that is, the perspectives that would have shaped my beliefs related to that topic for most of my life). Second, to help readers better associate with my starting point and recognize any similarities between their current beliefs and my "historical" beliefs - thereby (hopefully) increasing the relevance of the blog in helping them better assess their own perspectives in relation to my points of view, and decide whether the positions I put forward are worthy of their further consideration.