#johncrowder

And....this glorious book finally came in the mail!! Oh I'm so excited!!!! Reading the blurbs about it via the author on Facebook made it irresistible to me. I love teaching that challenges the view of God as the cosmic killjoy, and the horrible, completely extrabiblical teaching of secular/sacred dualism. Gonna devour this book for sure! #johncrowder #moneysexbeergod #myfourfavoritethings #summerread #booksofsummer

Over the years I've been influenced by many different people. I grew up in the Episcopal Church. Waking up each Sunday morning with the assumption that we were just automatically supposed to go to morning service. We had our own ritual as I'm sure similarly most Christian families like ours had. Once I hit that ripe age when I could ultimately choose for myself, however, I opted out. Nothing stuck to me that mattered personally, so the choice was easy. After years of drug addiction, some hospitalization, a belief in God became personal and meant something to me. Fast forward a bit to moving to Maryland to be youth pastor of a newly planted church in a town I'd never heard of. Five years later, I had a passion to plant my own and moved back home with my wife and new daughter. My beliefs didn't stray from what I'd grown up believing, traditionally at least, since this also was a basis of God for me. I read a lot. We lived close to a Christian publisher and I nearly bought them out; with the likes of Bill Johnson, Rick Joyner, Mike Bickle, Kris Vallotton, and anyone else in that charismatic, prophetic stream. So when I was reading through the Bible one night and certain passages stood out to me, some questions arose. I began seeing things right out of scripture that seemingly contradicted what I had grown up believing about God and myself. It flew in the face of all I'd been reading and had learned, even after graduating from the schooling I put some years and a lot of time and energy into. This began the search of my life. Over the next 2 years, I would struggle with faith and whatever 'truth' was, to the point where I nearly gave up on it all together. Finally coming out on the other end, convinced and satisfied of my new theological grid and lens of seeing God, humanity and the Bible, I couldn't go back and reread those same authors anymore. I picked up a new realm of writers and teachers to glean from. The likes of John Crowder, C. Baxter Kruger, Steve McVey, Francois du Toit, T.F. Torrance, Karl Bart, etc. I poured even more hours into these intellectual grace guys, fully enjoying what I was seeing now as actual Good News. When you have such a journey as I did with questioning all you grew up believing, and coming out on top with most of which was in fact wrong, you allow yourself to be open to questioning nearly everything else. And so I left myself open. I wanted to read every opinion and every thought and view that had to do with God and faith. And so there was a brand new book by Rob Bell (a familiar name to me) that had all this controversy surrounding it in the faith community. I had to read it! This too brought about new questions and new searching. So I did. And so after befriending an atheist, we exchanged authors. I gave him the C.S. Lewis I'd been reading and he gave me Richard Dawkins. Long story short, fast forward again to right now; to today, and I can tell you I'm grateful for every single one of these authors and thinkers that I've read and gleaned from and were influenced by. From my early traditional, evangelical days, through my searching and theology transformation, to my open minded, read whatever I can season, to where I am right now. I feel confident in where I am. I've left myself open to the extent that I know I still don't know everything and so I continue to enjoy learning. But I'm also confident and no longer insecure about what I believe. We can't be afraid to question and double check and search it out on our own. If something doesn't sit right with you, or if it seems contradictory, look at it, question it. Maybe you'll come out believing it the same way but it'll finally make sense, or maybe you'll come out on a totally different end of things and it'll make sense. I am thankful for and respect those who've gone ahead of me and allowed themselves the beauty of thinking for themselves despite what their outcome is. I am thankful for the Bill Johnson's, the John Crowder's, the Rob Bell's and the Richard Dawkin's that I've read, because they've all helped me get to where I am today. They've taught me, on some level, that it's ok to agree or disagree, just please, think and search for yourself. It's a good thing to read whatever you can. I've read books by authors like John Piper or Mark Driscoll who I adamantly disagree with and often have a hard time with. But it's more important to stay open and stay humble than be right. Do not be so quick to swallow what you're force fed by tradition. Don't be quick to build walls around your understanding and thinking. Just because it's tradition does not automatically mean it's right or good. And so I'm grateful for anyone who exercises their ability and freedom to think for themselves. And I encourage all of you to let yourselves do the same.

Mystical Union, Sons of Thunder, Loc: 3133

~John Crowder