In many ways, my personal history, or the history of other Scribes on this site, is irrelevant. What matters is that we are here working in defense of and for the promotion of truth as we currently know it.
On the other hand (be ready to read that a lot!!), if I happened to be led to this site, I would first want to find something that I could relate to and understand. A viewpoint which has grown from the place I am at, so to speak, would be helpful.
Here you will find a wide gamut of experience. From those, like me, who were raised in a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, to those whose “current life” experiences include no religious background. We consider that this diversity adds to our strength.
That being said, what follows is a brief timeline as to what led me here.
I was raised as the oldest child of a Southern Baptist Minister of Music. We went to Church 3 days a week and twice on Sundays. From the time I could remember I was memorizing New Testament Scripture from the King James Version. This was the core way of life for the entire family. It was also not a choice that I had for the first eighteen years. Frankly, I never considered that there was anything other than being saved by “accepting Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal Savior”. This I did publicly at age 12 and was convinced from that time that Heaven was my certain eternal home.
Looking back, I see this time as oddly paradoxical. Then I was convinced that anyone who did not believe as I was taught was going straight to hell. My parents had the kids sheltered and sequestered from any influence that might cause us to question. Yet, as I leapt away from home to go to college, I became the epitome of the questioner, absolutely the reverse of my parent’s intention.
Does it make any sense that athletics would lead me to begin a lifelong quest for truth? It sure does to me. Coming from the South, I was offered “academically based” football scholarships to the University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie-Mellon University.
Life takes strange twists that provide a sense that you are here for a reason. I had rejected, out of hand, an offer from an old pastor friend of my family to obtain a scholarship to Marshall. Had I gone there, I would have died in the plane crash that wiped out their entire football team. I still get chills thinking about it.
So here I am, a sheltered, Southern boy from the white middle class attending a liberal engineering school in Pittsburgh. I have often wondered how much of a right wing Fundamentalist I might still be had I attended Florida or Georgia or Bob Jones. The thought scares me. Naively, I bring my “Bible thumping” ways North, only to find myself surrounded by Jews, Hindus, Muslims, agnostics and atheists, feminists and, what we would call today, “New Agers”. Discussions about where we come from and where we are going were rampant. So I defended my faith. At 18, I did not know anything else.
In a discussion with an atheist he said “How do you know there is a God?” Naively I answered, “Because the Bible says so.”
He laughed his head off!!! “Ridiculous reasoning at its finest!!” he said. “Since by your belief God wrote the Bible, and since I do not believe in God, I do not believe in the Bible. You cannot use what you say is written by God to prove God!”
It seems so simple now, so obvious. Yet at the time I was speechless. I could not logically disagree with his point, yet, there was nothing in my 18 years of indoctrination that would counteract it. But it made so much sense to me at the time.
The question became, “If there is a God, should His existence be provable outside of and beyond any written work, regardless of where it comes from?” In all honesty, I had to answer in the affirmative and, in doing so, realized that I was ill-equipped to prove it. I took Paul’s warning to “prove all things” very literally.
That simple moment has led to almost 40 years of seeking, studying the religions of the world, studying nature and always looking for those “AHA!!” moments….for understanding, for any chance to reach out and touch the face of my Creator.
I wish I could say it has been a smooth ride, but it has not. Leaving behind everything you had been taught, finding new answers and then leaving those behind, time and time again, has been a strange combination of sadness and joy; of elation and despair. For years these combinations seemed to lie in wait for me around every new corner. These, I came to believe, are the rungs of Jacob’s Ladder. These are what led to a knowing beyond mere faith. They were and are the inner workings of the “still small voice” and the continuing fulfillment of the Master’s promise, “Seek and ye shall find.”
Then, as if by some invisible hand, I found the Reluctant Messenger website in 2003. On that site I found an article on Biblical Corruption written by Allan Cronshaw. What I read confirmed, in great detail and with significantly more research and background material than I had found, what I had come to believe as factual. I searched the author and was led to one of his many websites.
The pages of “The Watcher” were filled with what I had a sense of and more. I had considered my self a lone beacon and was content to remain so. But in these pages I found community and confirmation beyond that which I thought existed. I read and re-read for months. I could feel my spirit opening to greater and greater possibilities as that which had guided me silently began to speak. I heard the inner calling magnified beyond what I thought was possible.
It is not persons, but the desire for Truths that should drive us all. It is not what we are, but the firm and wondrous knowledge that we are so much more in what is our timeless reality.
There are a few mantras that I live by. One of my favorites is, “Those who think they have all the answers are merely unaware of all the questions.”
As you read through the Scribes of Light website, be prepared for more questions!!