faith story

0:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

From FALC to the Catholic Church,

0:03

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

a personal story of faith by Carol Sheck.

0:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

To begin,

0:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

a disclaimer.

0:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how best to address

0:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

my childhood faith and the issues therein publicly,

0:15

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

with an eye to both the truth and to the feelings of the people involved,

0:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

many of whom I love deeply.

0:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

This is my experience,

0:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I understand that everyone's experience is different.

0:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

That said,

0:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I would ask you not to allow slight variations in personal experience to

0:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

blind you completely to the issues at stake.

0:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Also,

0:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I ask the reader to consider the fact that the FALC's complete lack of formal

0:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

doctrine renders criticism exceptionally difficult,

0:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

as anything I say can be plausibly denied.

0:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Another note,

0:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

as I wrote the first draft of this piece,

0:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I quickly realized that I simply could not spend a lot of time diving into the weeds

0:51

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

on different theological issues.

0:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

After all,

0:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

most of these questions are big enough that many whole books have been written on them,

0:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

so it's deliberate that I didn't spend a lot of time explaining or defending things here.

1:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

If you want to learn more about a specific doctrine,

1:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I can probably recommend some resources or have a longer conversation

1:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

about that particular topic.

1:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The abbreviation FALC in this essay refers to the First

1:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Apostolic Lutheran Church,

1:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

also sometimes called Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church.

1:22

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It is sometimes known as the Torla Group.

1:24

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The FALC and the Lestadian Lutheran Church,

1:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

LLC, split in the early 1970s,

1:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

after which the LLC remained joined to the SRK in Finland.

1:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It is small,

1:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

with approximately 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 members,

1:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and primarily based in Michigan and Minnesota,

1:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

USA.

1:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The presence in Finland and Sweden is extremely small.

1:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Members of the FALC are uncomfortable with the name

1:52

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Lestadian, but they do trace their history back to Lars Levi Lestadius

1:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and Juhani Radema.

1:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I've occasionally used the term Lestadian in this essay to

2:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

refer to the larger movement and group of churches,

2:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and that does include the FALC.

2:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Growing up in the FALC,

2:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

my family were regular churchgoers.

2:11

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We,

2:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the children, attended Sunday school and learned the Ten Commandments and the Apostles'

2:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Creed from Luther's small catechism,

2:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

as well as a few Bible stories.

2:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Mostly,

2:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

we were taught that our sins were forgiven in Jesus' name and precious blood,

2:25

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and that we were incredibly fortunate to have been born to Christian mothers and fathers.

2:29

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Indeed,

2:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

our parents were the ones who had the power and the responsibility to forgive our sins.

2:35

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

By reciting,

2:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

believe all of your sins forgiven in Jesus' name and precious blood.

2:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Our parents and their friends did the same for each other.

2:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I don't remember at what age we kids began forgiving others

2:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

in this way,

2:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

with the understanding that this blessing wiped away all sins.

2:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It may have varied from family to family.

2:52

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

There was a lot of emphasis on our childhood faith and on our

2:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Christian friends.

2:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Church was a comforting routine,

2:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and it was the basis for the majority of our social life.

3:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We were supposed to get the message that we were set apart special.

3:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The phrase,

3:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

in the world,

3:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but not of the world,

3:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

was bandied about a lot,

3:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

as well as those I've already mentioned.

3:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

In this community,

3:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Christian meant only the FALC,

3:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and we were supposed to understand ourselves to belong to the one true church.

3:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

People at school weren't really Christians,

3:24

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

even if they thought they were.

3:25

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They had TVs.

3:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They didn't have big families.

3:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Their moms might drink wine or wear makeup.

3:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They were definitely different from us.

3:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

There weren't a lot of kids from other Lestadian traditions at my school,

3:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

so I didn't encounter people from what we generally referred to as the splits,

3:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

much as a child.

3:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Our specialness was easy enough for me to accept,

3:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

especially since we were always still friendly with other people,

3:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

if a bit more reserved.

3:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Plus,

3:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

it was easy to see how some of the things church people said about the world were true.

3:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Some of my friends at school had parents who were divorced.

3:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Some had parents who were married,

3:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but obviously unhappy.

4:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

These dreadful things happened more often to them because they didn't have living

4:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

faith.

4:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Formal catechesis in the FALC

4:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

stops at confirmation,

4:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

roughly age 14 to 15,

4:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and never progresses beyond Luther's small catechism.

4:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Essentially,

4:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

no doctrine is ever taught,

4:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and there's nowhere to go look it up.

4:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I'm not sure that the FALC as an organization actually has any.

4:25

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Maybe they were required to put some into their bylaws,

4:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

or maybe not.

4:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Theoretically,

4:29

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

we could have asked questions,

4:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

particularly in confirmation class,

4:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but I think most of us had no clue what questions to ask or why.

4:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

In my opinion,

4:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the huge emphasis placed on Christian friends hanging

4:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

out with the church kids only or primarily,

4:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

combined with a dearth of real spiritual formation,

4:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

causes a lot of problems.

4:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Teenagers are not in a position to be one another's primary moral guides,

4:52

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and the assumption that kids are basically okay if they're fitting in with the Christians is

4:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

an easy way to brush over a multitude.

5:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

deep sin issues that can and have set into both the individuals and the

5:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

group as a whole.

5:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

By the time I was a young adult,

5:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had an extremely shaky faith.

5:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Depression and purposelessness were features of my late teens and early twenties.

5:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had no sense of God's love,

5:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

no idea that God might have a plan or a will for my life.

5:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't have this language at the time,

5:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but in hindsight, I was a deist.

5:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I believed in a creator God,

5:24

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but not a personal God.

5:25

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

He was out there somewhere,

5:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but didn't have a vested interest in my day -to -day life.

5:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had good friends in the FALC,

5:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I mostly continued to maintain appearances,

5:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but deep patterns of sin set in in my young adulthood.

5:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Lestadian audiences are likely to assume from this sentence that

5:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I'm referring to a drinking habit.

5:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

That is not the case,

5:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though I did try alcohol on a handful of occasions throughout this time period.

5:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Much more damaging were my deep -rooted patterns of depression,

5:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

despair,

5:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

purposelessness,

5:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

unforgiveness,

5:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

gossip,

5:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

lust, and idolatry.

5:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I tried therapy and antidepressants with some amount of relief,

6:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though this was really fairly surface -level improvement.

6:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I could function.

6:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I could usually enjoy things,

6:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but I hadn't found purpose.

6:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

At some point,

6:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I became attached to the idea that if I found someone to marry,

6:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

that would solve everything.

6:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I would be fulfilled,

6:15

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

healed, and happy.

6:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I started dating my husband Dylan at the age of 24,

6:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and we were married less than eight months later.

6:22

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

There is no structure for marriage preparation or premarital counseling of any kind within

6:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the FALC,

6:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and we were radically underprepared for marriage.

6:29

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We also essentially never discussed our religious beliefs prior to marriage,

6:33

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

except for one conversation in which we agreed that neither of us thought it possible that

6:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the FALC was the only group who would go to heaven.

6:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We were carried in on the current of our overwhelming feelings for each other.

6:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Our oldest daughter was born 11 months after our wedding.

6:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We had a very tumultuous first year of marriage,

6:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

emotionally speaking,

6:51

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

with very little steadiness.

6:52

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

In hindsight,

6:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was codependent and had made an idol of my husband.

6:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was looking to him to prove to me that I was loved,

6:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

lovable, worthy,

7:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I would take any opportunity to assume that he did not in fact love me.

7:03

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I,

7:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

in turn, had very little love to give.

7:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Everything was about getting what I needed instead of about serving and giving.

7:11

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Something began to shift when I had my daughter,

7:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though certainly not overnight.

7:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had a real sense of the fact that as a mother,

7:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the carefree part of my life was behind me,

7:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but this didn't bother me.

7:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Instead,

7:22

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I realized that being with my baby was fulfilling in a way I'd never known before.

7:25

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Over time,

7:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

questions began to build about what I believed about God,

7:29

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

what my church really taught,

7:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and whether what it really taught was true.

7:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

My first couple years of motherhood were simultaneously

7:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

joyful,

7:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

sanctifying,

7:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and really lonely.

7:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I wasn't around friends or other moms all that much,

7:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

partly because the pandemic hit right around my oldest daughter's first birthday.

7:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I found plenty of time to consume a lot of podcasts and

7:51

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

other content during this time.

7:52

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

In between raising my daughter,

7:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

having my son,

7:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

still working as an ICU and then a hospice nurse,

7:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and thankfully growing as a wife and as a person.

8:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I followed a handful of people online who talked

8:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

about their Christian faith in a way that was so foreign to me.

8:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They talked about a relationship with God.

8:11

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They talked about doing the will of God.

8:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They talked about loving Jesus in a personal way that I did not understand.

8:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They studied the word of God,

8:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

also something I'd never done.

8:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I started to really yearn for these things,

8:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though I often genuinely could not understand what they were or how to get them.

8:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

How did one,

8:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

for example,

8:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

build a real relationship with Christ or begin to understand what his will was?

8:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I bought a Bible that wasn't King James Version,

8:35

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

a big no -no in the FALC.

8:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I found a Bible in a Year reading plan to follow.

8:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I knew I wasn't really living my faith,

8:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I was starting to really,

8:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

genuinely want to.

8:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I told no one about any of this.

8:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I began spending time every morning before my kids got up in God's

8:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Word. During the same time period,

8:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was working part -time as a hospice nurse for a Christian hospice and home health company.

9:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Certainly not every employee and not every patient publicly

9:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

declared their Christian faith,

9:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but a lot did.

9:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

My dying patients and the compassionate,

9:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

loving nurses who cared for them were a beautiful witness to me.

9:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Clearly,

9:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

they had a real faith that animated their lives and their souls.

9:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Though this time period,

9:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

2021 to 2022,

9:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

was very much a time of strengthening faith and real growth in my life,

9:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

in hindsight, I still had no idea how much I didn't know.

9:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Things that now seem like very basic knowledge to me had never

9:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

been told to me and I'd never asked.

9:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

For example,

9:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I hadn't known that the editors of the ESV Student Study Bible I'd been

9:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

reading have a strong Calvinist bias.

9:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't know who John Calvin was.

9:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't know the extent of the denominational differences in Christianity

9:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

or why those differences exist.

9:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't know that the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches each

9:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

claimed to be the church founded by Christ himself.

9:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't know that the

10:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

credo -baptist influencers I was following subscribed to a,

10:03

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

historically speaking,

10:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

relatively new doctrine.

10:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I only knew that my conscience kept on telling me more

10:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and more strongly that something wasn't right with the FALC.

10:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was bothered especially by the exclusivity in what I saw as a

10:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

culture of spiritual pride.

10:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't bring my concerns to anyone.

10:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I felt that I couldn't possibly.

10:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It's hard to explain the usual reaction of the FALC members to

10:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

those who ask challenging questions,

10:29

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

or to those who want to live their faith too loudly or talk about Jesus a

10:33

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

lot. A lot of fear and defensiveness is often involved,

10:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

even when someone says something as simple as,

10:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I'm really struggling with some stuff I'm reading in the Bible.

10:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Very, very few in the FALC are equipped to handle questions about their faith

10:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

with calm curiosity.

10:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Maybe I can't really describe it in a way that's charitable to

10:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

those involved.

10:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I've been guilty of it myself.

10:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Suffice to say,

10:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had no reason to believe that anyone in my life would receive my questions or my

11:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

journey well.

11:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

As my conscience grew heavier and heavier,

11:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I started finding other local pastors' sermons to listen to online.

11:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Again,

11:11

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

not understanding different denominations,

11:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was grasping fairly randomly.

11:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I found a local independent fundamental Baptist church whose pastor preached expositionally,

11:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

verse by verse.

11:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

This seemed like a marvelous thing to me to further enrich my

11:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Bible study, and I started listening to some of his work.

11:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I'd been dragging my feet all this time about bringing any of

11:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

my faith life or concerns to my husband.

11:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

He did know that I read the Bible.

11:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

One night I just did it.

11:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I told him I've got some real concerns about our church.

11:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

He heard me out calmly and steadily.

11:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I told him about how the Gospel of John says over and over that all

11:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

who come to Christ will be saved,

11:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

that I didn't understand how belonging to this one tiny church

11:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

group could possibly be essential for salvation,

11:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and that I didn't understand how they all claimed to have authority to forgive

11:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

one another's sins.

12:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I didn't understand why a group who claimed to be the one true

12:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

church wasn't trying to bring the whole world to Christ,

12:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

or do more charity outside the tiny group,

12:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

or get their members to dive into their Bibles and try to grow in their faith.

12:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

He had also never really read the Bible,

12:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but he started after that in the Gospel of John.

12:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We continued to have many conversations about what he was reading.

12:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I shared some of the sermons I was listening to with him as well.

12:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We decided we needed to meet with a minister from the FALC,

12:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and we reached out to the pastor of the local IFB church as well.

12:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I won't try to recount the conversation with the FALC minister in too much

12:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

detail for two reasons.

12:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

One,

12:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

when we met,

12:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I think everyone fully understood it to be a private conversation,

12:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I want to respect that.

12:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Two,

12:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I'm afraid I'll misquote or misremember.

12:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

This was an incredibly emotional and stressful time in my life for a few reasons,

12:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and my memories of the time are not as sharp as I'd like.

12:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The gist of the conversation is this.

13:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

When we invited him over,

13:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was already becoming deeply distraught over my concerns about the FALC.

13:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I felt deeply convicted that the Bible did not support the blessing the

13:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

way the FALC used it.

13:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I did not think that people could forgive one another's sins.

13:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I did not think it possible that the FALC could be the one true church.

13:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I also had become totally convinced that I could not stay

13:22

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and raise my children in a church with which I radically disagreed.

13:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I wanted the minister to clarify the FALC's positions in a

13:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

way that either showed I'd misunderstood what I'd been hearing my whole life,

13:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

or assuaged my conscience enough for me to stay.

13:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Neither of those things happened.

13:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I left the conversation understanding that the FALC does in fact consider

13:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

itself to be the one true church,

13:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and that it considers its blessing to be essential for salvation,

13:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

for having one's sins forgiven.

13:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

These things were completely irreconcilable to me.

13:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I knew I'd leave,

13:56

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though I didn't yet know when.

13:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We met with the local IFB pastor as well and attended

14:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

his church one Sunday.

14:03

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They were incredibly welcoming,

14:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

charitable people.

14:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I think,

14:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

in hindsight, that we just needed someone to make us feel less alone and less crazy.

14:11

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Certainly under his Baptist theology,

14:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

we were doing the right thing by planning to leave,

14:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though he wasn't at all the type to broadly condemn Lutherans.

14:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

All of us took the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura as a given and

14:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

our reading of scripture wasn't backing up what the FALC was preaching.

14:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

In March of 2023,

14:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

we told our families and friends that we were leaving the FALC.

14:33

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It was an emotional time for us as well as for many of our

14:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

loved ones.

14:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Again,

14:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I prefer not to share details of highly personal conversations.

14:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I do think some of the common themes to these conversations are

14:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

worthy of closer examination,

14:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but that's beyond the scope of this essay.

14:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We were carried through it mostly on the strength of our conviction that we were doing the right thing

14:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and that this was going to enable us to really live for the Lord.

14:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It was a time of major upheaval.

15:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

within most of our relationships,

15:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

which is the standard experience for those who leave.

15:03

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We did our best to stress that we were not leaving out of

15:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

hostility to those within the FALC,

15:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I'm glad we did.

15:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It didn't prevent deep changes to lifelong friendships,

15:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but in many cases it did prevent a final rupture.

15:15

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I'm grateful to have maintained some of those relationships,

15:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though they look very different now.

15:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We were church shopping at this point.

15:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

In hindsight,

15:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the logical inconsistencies within modern Protestantism were starting to

15:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

show already.

15:29

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We had left the FALC because we thought it was wrong.

15:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Therefore, we had to find a church that was right,

15:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

right? But we also knew that under sola scriptura,

15:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

no one church can realistically claim to be the one true church.

15:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It doesn't follow that any one Protestant denomination has a unique

15:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

claim to the promises of the kingdom of God.

15:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The effect of this approach is that we were trying to magically retrofit a

15:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

local church to our interpretation of the scriptures.

15:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was specifically trying to avoid the Reformed or Calvinist ones,

15:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

since I did,

15:57

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and still do,

15:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

strenuously object to quite a few of their doctrines.

16:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We wound up having phone calls and meetings with some local pastors,

16:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

getting their takes on some cherry -picked doctrines that were,

16:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

for the moment,

16:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

of great import to me.

16:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We wound up at a local evangelical covenant

16:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

church.

16:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It ticked some basic boxes.

16:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Not Calvinist.

16:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Lots of young families.

16:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Kids primarily attended the service instead of being shunted elsewhere.

16:24

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I started attending a ladies' Bible study.

16:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was still consuming a great deal of Christian books and content

16:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and wanting so much to grow in my faith.

16:33

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I've always enjoyed reading and learning,

16:35

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and one of the things I found deeply bothersome in the FALC was the lack of means to have

16:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

an intellectual faith.

16:41

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had come to believe that God wants us to use all of our faculties,

16:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

including our intellects,

16:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

to follow and know him instead of having a compartmentalized faith.

16:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Some of what I was reading challenged me and opened my eyes to

16:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

how little I really knew and how many questions I hadn't known to ask as

16:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

we were discerning whether to leave the FALC.

17:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

For example,

17:01

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

when I read about the Reformers,

17:03

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I realized that none of them had a theology like mine.

17:05

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Why couldn't I find a Reformer who thought like me?

17:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Wasn't I just reading the Bible for what it really said?

17:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I also learned that one of the major topics of disagreement between the Reformers was

17:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the role of Holy Communion.

17:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I hadn't thought to ask a single question about Communion.

17:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Actually,

17:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

it was beginning to strike me as very odd that we only received quarterly at our evangelical

17:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

church.

17:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Also,

17:28

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

our church's adult baptism service was upcoming,

17:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I didn't know if I should get baptized again.

17:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

At first,

17:33

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I thought I should, as a public declaration of my new life of faith.

17:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Certainly,

17:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

a lot of the people I was listening and talking to at that time thought so.

17:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

My husband asked gentle questions that made me pause and continue to think and pray about

17:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

whether to be rebaptized.

17:47

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Had our baptisms actually been wrong?

17:51

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Had people actually been baptizing babies since Jesus' time?

17:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Why? Also,

17:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

why couldn't our church definitively tell me one way or the other?

17:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

They accepted both infant and believer's baptisms.

18:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was starting to feel crushed under the weight of how little

18:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I knew and understood.

18:07

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I knew I loved Jesus.

18:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I believed he loved me and had died for me.

18:12

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I knew I wanted my faith life to be real and meaningful.

18:15

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I couldn't think of anything more important to focus my life around.

18:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I also knew I believed in real truth.

18:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

That was the whole point,

18:22

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and it was worth giving anything for.

18:24

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

There had to be a right way.

18:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I happened to follow an Instagram account at the time of a woman

18:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

who was an Eastern Orthodox Christian.

18:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

That wasn't even what her content was about,

18:35

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but she talked about it and took questions about it from time to time,

18:37

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I was intrigued.

18:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

She mentioned once that Eastern Orthodox don't believe in sola scriptura.

18:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was floored.

18:43

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Another time,

18:45

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

she stated that the Orthodox Church is the church founded by our Lord himself.

18:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was flummoxed.

18:49

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Was this seriously a real claim people made?

18:52

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Wasn't the church just the worldwide body of believers?

18:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

So many questions were opening up for me.

18:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was absolutely frantic in my content consumption at this point.

19:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was listening to many podcasts about Orthodoxy,

19:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and a lot of what they were saying was starting to make so much sense to me.

19:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I still had questions,

19:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

though, especially since the Orthodox sometimes seemed to be almost anti -Western

19:13

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and I couldn't get there.

19:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I was bringing a lot of this to my husband.

19:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

He was patiently hearing me out and agreeing on some points,

19:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

but he was hesitant.

19:20

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Also,

19:21

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

we were a solid hour from an Orthodox church.

19:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

One day it occurred to me.

19:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had never at any point in my life tried to learn what Catholics

19:30

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

really believe.

19:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Everything I'd ever heard about Catholicism was from the perspective of

19:35

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Protestants or the Orthodox,

19:36

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

and it was primarily negative.

19:38

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

As I'd soon come to learn,

19:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

it was also largely nonsense.

19:40

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I started to dip my toes into Catholic doctrine.

19:44

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I had happened upon an interview between Matt Fradd and Live Action's

19:48

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Lila Rose, who I'd heard of from her pro -life work,

19:51

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

on the topic of Lila's conversion to Catholicism.

19:53

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

This was the first time I'd ever heard of someone choosing Catholicism as an adult.

19:58

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I continued to

20:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

explore Catholicism online and soon heard of the apologist Trent Horn and the theologian

20:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Scott Hahn.

20:04

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Both men were instrumental to our conversion as they explained key

20:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

doctrines in a way that made the truth of the Catholic faith plain.

20:11

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Scott Hahn's book Rome Sweet Home deserves a specific mention

20:15

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

here.

20:16

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I read it and immediately passed it to my husband.

20:18

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

We both consider that book to have had a major role in our conversion for a couple

20:22

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

of reasons.

20:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

First, the depth and breadth of Hahn's Bible knowledge is so vast,

20:27

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

it became very obvious to me that I and most laypeople could never hope for

20:31

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

that level of scholarship.

20:32

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

To be clear,

20:34

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I don't necessarily mean that I came to believe that Scott Hahn has earned the right to tell

20:39

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

people which Christian tradition is correct through the extent of his knowledge.

20:42

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

I merely came to see very clearly that I'd been incredibly prideful to think

20:46

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

that I had the ability to interpret scripture to its fullest extent on my own.

20:50

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Scott Hahn was asking and exploring questions about scripture on a level I'd never

20:54

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

been capable of.

20:55

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The underlying assumptions behind sola scriptura were really beginning

20:59

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

to fall apart for me.

21:00

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

Second,

21:02

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the way Hahn explores and explains some key doctrines just made them click for us

21:06

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

in a way that cannot be unclicked,

21:08

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

so to speak.

21:09

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

For example,

21:10

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

he does a really wonderful job laying out the way the old covenant is fulfilled in

21:14

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

the new, and that the new Israel is the Catholic Church,

21:17

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

to which all are called.

21:19

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

The way the papacy is prefigured in the Old Testament is another great example.

21:23

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

It's beyond the scope of this essay,

21:26

S… Speaker 1 (faith story)

again, to dive into every single Catholic doctrine that I came to accept and understand during

Resume

Konbyen tan pou m' fè transkript la?