Deconstructing “Amen"

In this song I wanted to address all of the people that only know me as a christian. As that phrase of my life comes to an end, I wanted to share a little about my life prior to my conversion back in 2000 and some of the reasons that I have decided to walk away.

I was raised in a loving family, but not a christian family. I became a christian when I was about 20 years old. Give or take. Prior to that I was an agnostic at best with little to no belief in any kind of a higher power.

As a kid we moved a lot. I have lived all over the Oklahoma City Metro area, moving city to city, and neighborhood to neighborhood.

In the 6th grade I was attending Jackson Middle School on the SW side of OKC. Within the first month of being there, I got jumped by some dudes for simply walking by the basketball court and stopping to watch them play. They messed me up pretty good.

Some slightly older cat saw the whole thing happen and decided to take me under his wing.

I guess he had pity on me.

I was a weird, fat kid with long hair and slashed up jeans so I stood out like a sore thumb.

He showed me the ropes and really started to teach me on the ways of the street. I held on to the game that he gave me all though my JR. high and High School days, and still do to this day.

I am thankful for him.

I wouldn’t have made it without his influence and knowledge.

After that I started living a pretty wild and dangerous life. Selling drugs, getting into fights, and carrying illegal firearms daily. Not to mention the partying. Man… I was partying and getting very intoxicated daily. Not a little bit, I was going as hard as humanly possible.

By the 9th grade I had given up on school, and quite honestly on life.

I was wild and without a care.

Until I almost took a person’s life.

That shook me to my core! If you’ve never had that experience, and I hope that you haven’t, it’s hard to explain what it does to you.

It changes you. I still have nightmares to this day about it.

I was very scared of dying, going to jail, or killing someone.

I had experienced, and been apart of causing so much suffering that I was terrified at the thought of myself or anyone else having to suffer eternally.

So I changed my everything and dedicated myself wholly to christianity.

That’s one thing about me, I tend to be all or nothing. If I’m going to do something, I am going to do it BIG! That's exactly what I did.

I finally came to a breaking point when I was about 20 years old. By that time I had done more than most people will ever do in their life time. I was living and sleeping in my 77 Dodge Monaco and I had had enough of that life. So I walked away from it all and became a christian. Over the next 15 years I would go on to serve in many pastoral and church leadership positions. I was heavily involved in christian hip hop and doing as many shows as possible. But the bigger reality is, I always have one foot in the streets, and one in the church. When you done and seen the things that I have done in my life it is impossible to fully get away from it. There was some song from a christian hip hop artist that said something along the lines of “I’m too worldly for the church, and too churchy for the world”

That was me.

After 15 years of being a christian I could no longer pretend like I didn’t see the blatant inconsistencies within scripture and church doctrine. I simply got tired of having to dance around questions and do theological gymnastics in order to attempt to make sense out of archaic and nonsensical doctrine and writings. So I started being real with myself and started looking at scripture/god honestly. Without a need to make it all fit within my american-christian narrative. As a result, I found out that not only was I not a "reformed christian" I wasn’t even an evangelical anymore.

Nowadays I don’t even identify as “christian” anymore. At least not the christianity that most people have come to understand.

I still believe in a higher power, and It doesn’t seem out of the scope of possibility that IF god decided to come to earth to teach us a better way of living that we would hang him on a tree. Humans don’t tend to like to hear truth. I am now open to ALL truth.

I find it very arrogant to think that any one single human being or religion can fully understand or know who or how god is.

I now have a purpose of honestly and openness and being a part of progressing our world towards a new and better way of living. Moving away from ancient and harmful ways of thinking and living and moving us towards a more loving and equal society.

I am not anti christ, but I am VERY anti "turn or burn american christianity" and I am aiming to do my part to tear that hurtful and destructive system down.

Amen.