This is a guest post by Dan Pedersen.ย He is passionate about helping people break-free from religious oppression by writing about the true character of God, love. Dan lives in Canada with his wife and daughter. You can find his blog at www.livingwithconfidence.net
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I recently received an email from a lady questioning me about my last blog post, ‘Life Is But A Dream, But Love Is Real.’ She said that some of the things I wrote were not “biblical,” and warned me to be careful about “adding to Scripture.”
She also questioned me about who my “teachers” are, and what church I go to. And she stated that God does not reveal things to people which are not written in the bible, nor can you understand the bible without a teacher; she mentioned that her teacher (“pastor”) was “top of the line.”
This lady was not attacking me, she merely wanted to better understand what I was trying to say in my post, and essentially, what qualifies me to say it. I replied with a lengthy email, which has since inspired me to write about the issue of spiritual teachers (some of the following was taken from the said email).
When I was a youth I regularly attended a Pentecostal church. I went to Sunday school, I listened to sermons, I participated in a bible study group, I went to a Christian youth camp one summer, and I sometimes read the bible at home. Over the years I’ve also been to services at Baptist, Catholic, United, and “Non-Denominational” churches.
From about age 18 to 28 I fell away from the Christian “religion” altogether, but still harbored a belief in God and Jesus. But a little over 5 years ago I started reading the bible again, listening to preachers online, and reading books by Christian authors. During this time I experienced a radical change in my beliefs about God.
In short, I no longer saw God as a rule-based authoritarian, and began to see him as a loving Creator. Nowadays, I listen to a couple of pastors online once in awhile, and many of the books I read are by former “church pastors,” who had the same type of revelation about the character of God that I had.