From Theism To Christianity: My Journey To Faith

Belief and Disillusionment

My journey to faith has been a long and thoughtful one. My belief during my 20s and 30s hadn’t changed in regards to believing God was real, Jesus was real – but it had taken a back seat. From what I had been taught, not being a part of the Christadelphians (the religious community I grew up in) was not being a part of God and Jesus. One could not be without the other.

The catalyst for my change in my late 30s, over the past 2–3 years, strangely enough, was holding my dog when he passed away. Seeing that life – that is granted to all living things via God – fade, and having a feeling of trying to grasp it and hold it from slipping away.

This led to thoughts of mortality and how short our actual life is. The years pass by in a flash. When you’re younger, you go to school and can’t wait for it to all be over. Then, once you have a family and your own children, you suddenly realise how quickly those years pass.

The mental barriers I had to overcome along the way were the feelings of not being enough, not knowing enough. It still leaves me emotional, considering and feeling those feelings and reflecting on what I was led to believe. 

I went through what was called First Principles – this is a process of sitting down over weeks and months with one of the elders or older men in the church, where they run through what you know and ask you questions – almost like a job interview, but more intense.

I tried this three times with different elders, to the point that it scared me off completely, as I felt unworthy and unknowledgeable. I wasn’t enough for God or Jesus. He doesn’t want someone like me. 

The breaking point for me leaving was during a summer school.

To put it into context, we had, during Christmas time – when most people would be doing their Christmas holidays and Christmas meal, that kind of thing – a summer Bible school. We would all travel to an actual school and stay on campus in dorms and classrooms for a week for fellowship and Bible study. A large number of Christadelphians would gather, and we were separated from that time of the year.

At this one last summer school that I attended, there was a situation that happened. I was old enough to be staying in what they called the boys’ dormitory – so they separated the boys from girls, obviously – and in the boys’ dormitory, we had our own little rooms, two guys to a room.

Back then, cellphones were a thing that was sort of only just coming into common use. It wasn’t really that usual for people to have a cellphone in those days. My cellphone, which was in my dormitory, was seen, and one of the older baptised men (an ‘elder’) requested that I had to turn over my cellphone. The reason didn’t make sense to me. He needed to take my cell phone the day before the school was ending, because I was “bringing the world into this Christian camp“.

I was very stubborn about that and I refused, because I knew that all the other boys in the dormitory also had their cellphones and I felt it was very unfair. It wasn’t such a big drama, but obviously, being stubborn, I refused.

He left the situation and I was quite upset and felt very ridiculed, because the boys in the dormitory were all yelling out that I should hand my cellphone over and this and that. That evening, after that situation, I packed my things up – this would have been at midnight to one o’clock in the morning. I packed all my things into my car, and I left that summer school. I drove back towards my parents’ house, which was a three-and-a-half-hour drive away. From that day on, I fell away from going to Christadelphia.

I think that was the point where I started to distance myself from Christadelphia. I still had my friends that I would associate with because I was still deemed as going to church or going to Christadelphian events.

I ended up moving to Australia, to Adelaide, and lived with a Christadelphian family there -which was even more extreme in regards to the structure of their attending church, without fail. And if you didn’t go to church, then – you know – why not? And you needed to explain the reasons why.

I did find a good group of friends while I was living there. Then, after, I think it was about eight to nine months, I just couldn’t take the pressure of having to conform to going to church based on their ideals. I ended up moving back to New Zealand from Australia, and that was where I stopped going altogether. I no longer attended church on Sundays. I would have been probably 22 or 23 by this point.

I moved to Brisbane, Australia again a few years later, and at that point, I did attend a youth conference. According to the Christadelphians, if you weren’t attending church, you weren’t supposed to attend a youth conference. But I was able to get in and went along.

Again, it was more of a social aspect. It was nice being around people that believed in God and had good morals and whatnot. But again, it was dictated by the Christadelphian mindset that, once that youth group camp ended, you were heading back to your church again – which was a place that I didn’t feel comfortable in.

So from that point on, after that youth conference, it kind of fizzled out – from the age of 23. And from then on, I just did my own thing. I never stopped believing in God and Jesus, but it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind due to these various reasons.

A Grey Area Between Two Worlds

After the age of 23–24, when I’d stopped going along, because I had a mindset of what I found to be morally wrong or right, the age group that I tried to socialise with or wanted to make friends with outside of church, I was left feeling socially inadequate because they were doing things that I found to not line up with how I believed. But at the same time, the only people that I could really align with were those that were from where I came from.

So it left me in this grey area – this void of neither being of the world, as Christadelphians term it, nor was I part of Christadelphia, as they term it. So I was left sort of helpless and trapped in this area where I felt very alone, very lost, very friendless, and it was a very tough time to get through.

I had contemplated writing my car off into a pole at one point. As horrible as that sounds, it had crossed my mind that the easiest way out was to just drive my car into a pole and be done with it.

But at the same time, I’ve always had that deep-seated feeling that I couldn’t go through with that – even though the thought would cross my mind at certain times.

It was a dark place to be, and I hope that anybody reading this who finds themselves in that situation will know that they’re not alone in that feeling. They’re not alone with those thoughts, and there are people out there that are like them, even though it is hard to find them.

Wrestling With Religion And Baptism

I never termed myself with a name. I’ve always considered that I believed in God and Jesus – be that named as a Christian, if that’s the name you have to put to it. So yes, I always have been Christian in that sense.

I have a huge issue with the denominations of Christianity, where they all have their own various takes on religious things, but they all seem to miss the point in some small measure. I hate to think that I am special or I’ve found some amazing new form of Christianity, but there’s always something that is in one or another denomination that I can’t 100% agree with. 

For example, Christadelphians – they don’t believe in the Trinity – but everything else that they stand for is pretty up front. If you believe in the Trinity, you can’t be a Christadelphian. If you believe in the Trinity and go to a church where they have speaking of tongues and you don’t speak in tongues, then they maybe believe you’re not truly Christian. 

Various things are there, each different religious denomination, that there’s always something that doesn’t quite line up scripturally. That is, if it’s taught on the platform, but you don’t believe it, it’s a struggle. You want to find that place that sits true with you without being able to say, well, I don’t believe in this, but I’m just going to go along anyway, even though I don’t agree with it. It’s a hard road to be on. 

I’m sure there are other people that just go along, “oh, we’ll just ignore that“, or “no, I don’t believe in that, but I go along anyway because it’s the only place I can go“. It’s very hard in that regard.

Thinking about baptism made me feel absolutely terrified. Baptism was always, for me personally, a huge thing in that I knew if I went through with it, I was dedicating what I do and what I say and what I aim my life towards is to God and Jesus. 

What I mean is, many of my peers growing up chose to take that step, but I didn’t see their lifestyle change afterwards. I didn’t see a reflection of what they were confessing in their baptism after the fact. 

And I know that not everybody’s perfect, and not everybody’s going to be able to make those changes 100% up front and then stick to them. But that, for me, was the question I asked myself prior, is that if I can’t strive for that, then I shouldn’t take that step in faith because it would be a lie to myself and a lie to God.

Also, the fact that it had become almost like a stepping stone – a stepping stone in the peer group that I was in – that, oh, once you’re baptised, you can do this or you can do that, and you can have a girlfriend and all the rest. And even to the point that a lot of non-baptised were so excited about the day they can be baptised because then they can find a boyfriend/girlfriend and get married and they can have sex. 

The focus was never about the commitment they’re making. It was more about what they’re getting after the fact, which for me, I found personally, the wrong way of looking at it. It should never be what you’re getting. It should be what you’re doing.

So for me, it was very hard because obviously I looked at that and I was always saying, “well, I’m not good enough to reach that bar, that expectation“. And then a lot of the time, like I explained with the First Principles, is that I couldn’t always answer the questions on the spot. 

I’ve always been a person that, if you put a question to me, I may go away and think about it for a couple of days. And then my brain will go, “oh, hey, this is what I think about it. Oh, hey, this is the answer.” When I’m put on the spot, it leaves me floundering for the answer, which leaves me embarrassed and feeling like I’m inadequate – which is not what baptism is about at all, now that I understand it.

And in finally taking that step, I got asked the day of my baptism, “how do you feel?” And, obviously, my mindset was still in that place of fear and expectation. And I used the word relief, which I explained at the time, was not quite the word that I was wanting to use but it described what I was feeling in that moment.

But now that I look at it, I use the word freeing, because I was freeing myself from the constraints placed upon me by other people’s expectations. God never put those expectations on me. He didn’t expect me to be this or that person. He just expected me to be me. And reaching that point of understanding that was very hard to say to myself, or to understand in myself that He loves me for who I am. 

We’re all sinners. He doesn’t love the sin that I do, but He loves the person that I am. And the commitment that I’ve taken to not be that sinner anymore and strive to not sin was a hard thing to grasp from where I came from.

Walking Forward With Christ

The experience of being baptised for me was – I didn’t do it in the church. I didn’t want to be baptised into a religion, per se. I had mentioned that before to other people who said, “Oh, you’re getting baptised – what church are you getting baptised into?” And my answer was, I’m not getting baptised into a church. I’m getting baptised into Jesus and God. And yes, you could say it’s the church of Jesus and God, but then that name is used for so many man-made churches around the world that I didn’t want to link myself to a man-made church.

I was baptised into Jesus and God – not some formal denomination of a religion that’s made by man to control their thoughts and understanding about what they believe is right or wrong.

The baptism itself – obviously – it was very small. I had a few friends and family there. Even then, I found that very hard because of the expectations that I was putting on myself based on my prior understanding. I felt like I was being judged – whether I was good enough to be doing that on that day. Which, obviously, again, as I explained previously, is not something that I should be feeling.

It should be an amazing feeling to be baptised – to go, “Okay, this is my life now.” I understand that I will still struggle. I will still fall. But I’ve put my hand out and said to God and Jesus, “Hey, I am going to struggle. I am going to fall. But I know that you’re there to lift me back up again. If I ask for help, you’re going to help me.” So yeah, it was an eye-opening and freeing experience.

As for how I see my life and my outlook now as a believer – day-to-day life doesn’t change. You still are you. I’m not Brett 2.0. I am still Brett 1.0. I’m still the same person that I was before.

I’m still a sinner that has recognised the fact that I am a sinner and have said to God, “I am a sinner, but I want to repent for the sins that I’ve done.” I want to be sheltered under that umbrella that Jesus has given us in His sacrifice – to atone for the sins that we do fall short in our lives.

So in that sense, you are a new person – but you’re not. You’re not suddenly going to be Superman or something like that. You are still the same person you were. I don’t know if some people think that they’re suddenly going to be this miracle worker overnight. But the change mentally is that you – if you take it personally and spiritually that you want to make a change in your life -then you will.

You find that you notice in the way you address things sometimes. And we still all fall short. You know, you get days where you might use a bad word or language. But I, myself – I find that if that happens, then afterwards I’ll go, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t used that word.” Whereas previously, it doesn’t even cross your mind, because your mindset’s different.

How you want to put that into words, I’m not sure. But you feel like you want to save the world. You want to go on the rooftops and scream out, “Hey everybody! This is what I’ve found – I want you to have it as well.“

It’s a crazy concept – to come to the belief or knowledge that this 80 to 90 years, if you’re lucky – maybe 100 years of life you get on this earth – and to ask somebody, “Hey, do you want to give up that 100 years, and I’ll give you an eternity?” And they say, “No, I’m not interested.“

But if you said to somebody in the same concept, “Hey, here’s a hundred-dollar note. I’ll keep it or I’ll throw it on the fire and destroy it if you want to have a hundred trillion billion dollars.” The answer straight away would be, “Yes, no worries. Throw that hundred dollars in the fire. I’ll accept those billions of dollars that you’d give to me.“

In that materialistic concept, they’ll 100% agree to it. But when it comes to the thought of giving up this life now and following God and Jesus for the promise of eternal life – they don’t want it. It’s mind-blowing.

Everything’s been done for us by Jesus. All he asks of us is to believe in him – to follow him, to strive to emulate who he was and what he lived for. Which is not easy. And he knows that. he lived our life. He knows how hard this is.

But yeah, it’s a day-by-day thing – that each day is trying to be better than the day before. And you may not be better than the day before. You may take two steps forward and three steps backwards. But as long as the next day you put that foot in front of the other and say, “Today, by the grace of God, I’m going to make myself better than the day before,” or “I did something yesterday that I’m not happy about, so I’m going to do something today that I can proudly say I did that in a Christlike way.“

I think that’s all anybody can really ask for – striving to follow God and Jesus.