There have been a lot of “I” statements going around the internet lately. Lots of celebrities holding up signs with various statements written (often illegibly) on plain sheets of paper and photographed with camera phones.

Some of these may actually be real and not Photoshopped. Continue reading …

In the 1970s Johnsons Baby Powder ran a television ad with a lady standing in front of her bathroom mirror saying, “Who am I? What am I? Why’d I cut my hair, I look like a squirrel.” It was a humorous way of telling the potential consumers who were viewing the ad how to stay cool and collected with their product while in stressful situations like having a hair style that conforms to societal expectations. “Who am I,” our self identity, is often confused or mixed up with my conformance to certain group expectations. I have had to think about this a lot over the years as I have counseled with people leaving cults and false religious groups. In leaving they have walked away from a certain set of beliefs which comprise and inform their worldview and in many cases they have left family and friends who remain in the group. How do they recover and where do they begin rebuilding their lives? This is a question some who have started a new Facebook page, ATI Survivors and subsequently a website, Recovering Grace have asked me.

For those who are unaware, ATI stands for Continue reading …

(This originally appreared in the March/April 1997 edition of the MCOI Journal)

I was raised in a Christian home but, in my teens and early twenties, I became very skeptical of Christian claims, the good book, and especially of God Himself. Looking back, I cannot say I really doubted the existence of God, although I think I made that claim. No, as I reflect on it, I did believe that He was there, but I did not like Him very much, or at least not the God I thought He was at the time. I can honestly say I did not know who I was rejecting, because I really did not know Him as I do now. I did not see Him as a Father, but as a judge; not as a friend, but as a powerful bully.

I truly enjoyed doubting God, finding supposed problems in scripture, Continue reading …