Christianity Uncensored | Part One
By: Cam Cheline
Tags: Christianity, Church, Faith, Questions, Religion

Christianity Uncensored | Part One

Eight Questions from an Ex-Vangelical

If you met me in the first 3 decades of my life, you would have known a different person. Whether as a youth intern or a paid church employee, school breaks were filled with winter and summer youth retreats and mission trips to Mexico in the protestant Christian church. Sunday and Wednesday nights were reserved for youth programs and another night for a bible study “small group.” I lived and breathed church. It was my identity.

‘Backyard Bible Clubs’ Someone give this kid a haircut.

I’m thankful today that my love for design was fostered and encouraged by being given the opportunity to design flyers, powerpoint slides and retreat booklets for the student ministry. I also grew to love film, making terrible promo videos (many of which I’m horrendously embarrassed by because of how bad I am on camera), shorts and even a video series based on the show 24 that had an episode played each session at a winter retreat. Half of my Facebook friends are church friends. So many of you reading this only know this side of me.

Summer Intern Team (Each these people who played a big part in my life)

After high school I just assumed I had a calling that involved ministry and anything else would have been a mistake. I quickly turned my major to Communications so I could take classes I really enjoyed. Give me design and videography. The other Bible classes, with exception of a few, felt like a book club. 14 years later and I’m almost done paying school loans for a college education that has long lost its value. I did gain one thing. I left Bible college with expensive friendships.

To this day some of the only people I’ve kept in contact with are the 10 or so guys I lived with in a house the last year of college. Each of them are dear to me, even though I rarely see them. In the last 14 years we’ve tried to have consistent reunions hitting a cabin or home on the east coast. But I skipped the latest reunion. I confessed to my friend Dan, bearded in the pic below, I felt out of place last time as the only one who hasn’t been in the church for the better part of his 30’s. I admire each of these guys, but it was Dan I was closest with. He’s a strange combo of a theological mind with an emotional core. He’s a sharp thinker, but he also has empathy and compassion like no one I know. He also happens to be damn stellar at any sport he tries (a trait his offspring seem to have taken on) which is infuriating. Dan is one of those guys that says you’ve been on his mind for some reason and wanted to check in on you, but you know he’s not full of shit and he really truly cares when he messages you with beautifully written messages I have to reread a few times. Curtis is the same in a completely different way, also an incredible writer and great articulator. Last time I saw him in one sentence he made fun of my frisbee golf throw while complimenting my ass. He’s one that reminds me to not hold onto things and not grow cynical, encourages me to not let negativity reign and I know he loves me in his uncomfortably harsh ways and his uncomfortably complimentary ways. This picture below is why I don’t regret that I’m still not done (though close!) with paying off my student loans after 14 years.

Me, Nuggles, Kent, Curtis (center) Dan, Frappy Mahaffey, Nathan and Luth

After leaving college, studying Communications which admittedly made up all the easy classes, I came back to what I was comfortable with. The very place I’m not comfortable today. The church.

My first couple jobs I took on the role of Communications Director. At one I started a program with another staff member that we called Q8: Christianity Uncensored. Of course my biggest contribution was the marketing, with cool announcement videos with footage spliced together with a slick Q8 logo animation I created frame by frame. Ok, it was cool for a church class. In 2007. But I was able to use my gifts and passions to change the world. One logo at a time.

The class was a “seeker class.” For those who were outsiders, non-Christians, but were curious and held back by 8 of the classic questions like “If God exists, why is there suffering in the world?,” “Is the Bible Reliable?” or “Is Jesus Really God?” A 50 minute class was built around a different topic each week that would give you the opportunity to hear an answer to the questions we were asking. I had my own theological answers to each of these questions. I did go to Bible college after all.

I could answer my own questions. But I felt like I was trying to find the right theological interpretation, the right angle, to make me feel better, or feel right about the religion my parents brought me up in, the religion more or less chosen for me, or let’s say that “strongly influenced” me, that really could have been any one of thousands.

I needed a break. What if this is all I believe because it’s all I’ve ever known?

My break from the church started out as that. A break. Sleeping in was a great perk. But not having the pressure of having any free time claimed for “ministry” was another. What would I do with all this time? Time went on, along with silence from all those I grew up in the church with. But there was one moment that really gutted me.

Summer mission trip in Juarez (also went to Reynosa and Saltillo) Look at that zit. Yikes.

It had been years since I had been in the church. I felt obliged, as even some who don’t believe the Bible are, to be there on Easter Sunday. I went to Austin Stone. A hipster church meeting out of Austin High School. It was home to Chris Tomlin, of Christian worship music fame. But all I heard about him was that he was a dick. One of the reasons being that he refused to move into the community his staff was required to live in. Something I saw common in my circles as well. You have to “live in the mission field.” Austin Stone was (and I’m sure still is) the church where the best musician Christians were drawn. So the quality of the service would be high.

It was packed. The overflow auditorium was packed. Standing room just to watch the pastor speak on a giant screen sized to look like the image was his actual size. Hands were raised. One hand. One and a half hand. Awkward prayers with repetitive phrases like “and we thank you Father” and “ some here today…” Mhmmms through the crowd. Whispered amens. (This was after all 99.5% white attendance, not a hint of the great black gospel culture) Eyes closed. The sermon felt scripted. Fake. Painfully cheesy. Like an uncle trying to be cool to his nieces and nephews, but dancing around cursing with “crap, “darn” and “heck.” Who the fuck says ‘heck’?

I was….uncomfortable.

Then I felt guilty for being uncomfortable. Why was this so weird to me? This is where I was always right at home. Is this how everyone feels when they come in through those doors with anxiety-inducing greeters? (I would avoid certain doors like the plague)

Now all the answers I had forced myself to be satisfied with that always irked me became a problem. Have I just been a sheep this whole time? Accepting non-answers in a culture that now more than ever felt like a cult? Now the questions I were no longer satisfied ignoring or writing off weren’t ones I could work out in my head or by interpreting the original Greek or Hebrew. They were ones that in my heart, I was fucking broken about.

we’ve been through so much

lost and gained some trust

honestly i’m just glad we still talk

nothing stays the same

no one is to blame

everyone has their own path to walk so if you stop listening now

we can still be friends

if your eyes can see what’s killing me

i’ll need you by the end

but i’ll understand if you stop listening Derek Webb, Stop Listening

At Q8 we weren’t asking uncensored questions. We were asking questions we had easy answers for and saying “his ways are higher than our ways” when we were stumped. 10 years later, this is my Q8. With no answers to follow. Born out of all that I know. What I have felt, experiences I’ve had within the church and actions I’ve seen that have left me not wanting to have any part of it.