I almost gave up on Christianity. Growing up in a conservative Protestant church, I was taught a lot of ideas about God, the Bible, salvation, and what was called faith. I never questioned most of this until I got older and began to really study the Bible.

I slowly discovered that much of what I had been taught did not make sense in that it was internally inconsistent and sometimes contradictory. My childhood theology could not answer even the simplest questions about prayer or how to know what was authoritative.

Jesus taught that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. Was my church in the forefront of advocating for social justice? Sadly no, but it didn’t really matter because all the church members believed they were saved regardless. This version of Christianity just didn’t make sense to me. I found it hard to believe that Jesus didn’t teach a coherent understanding of the nature of God, how God interacts with us, and what God expects of us in this life.