Our theme for the month of June is “confessions.”

I was born into a loving family at the tail end of 1996, a mere seven days before the birth of Baby Jesus himself. Being born into a Christian family on the other side of the mid-nineties meant that The Newsboys were probably the first sounds I ever heard—at least, until Chris Tomlin monopolized the sound of the next decade.

After years of wandering in the wilderness of my sin, I finally accepted Jesus into my heart at the fully accountable and emotionally mature age of three. Later that year, I confidently told my mother that I, too, wanted to be “bath-tized.” Though I wasn’t baptized for real until I was a teenager, I was still dedicated to the Lord as an infant (take that, CRCers!)—and thus began my pilgrimage as a loyal and enthusiastic member of the Body of Christ.

I attended private Christian schools my whole life. I went to Bible camp every summer, church every Sunday, and youth group every Wednesday. I went with my mother to visit old people in their nursing homes and bring trays of lasagna to shut-ins. I volunteered at Kids Food Basket, Samaritan’s Purse, and Compassion International. In middle school, I started a Bible study for my classmates that met every other Friday all the way from fifth through eighth grade. In high school, I started a new Bible study which met Friday mornings before school. I taught Sunday school at church to elementary kids and also volunteered with the babies in the nursery. I attended apologetics camp for two consecutive summers and worked on staff the next. I started the first praise team at a new church my family started attending and rearranged all the music for acoustic instruments because Pastor said electric guitars and drums were of the devil. I was the first one awake, dressed, and in the car ready to go every Sunday morning. I attended a Christian university (go Knights), majored in Theology, and dated only Christian boys (the pastoral ministries major from Moody Bible was the longest run). I moved to Chicago where all my friends were Christian (Moody grads), all my roommates were Christian (more Moody grads), and where I attended the churches my Moody friends attended.

I knew all the arguments and counter-arguments for Creationism. I knew how to defend the inerrancy and divine inspiration of Scripture. I knew doctrines of predestination versus free-will, egalitarianism versus complementarianim, and all the different theories of eschatology (it’s not just what you saw in Left Behind). I knew that Galatians taught we are saved “by grace alone, through faith.” I also knew that the book of James told us “faith without works is dead.” I knew what encouraging lines to say if a friend was struggling with their faith. I knew to pray for wisdom, but, “when he asks he must believe and not doubt.” I knew Anselm’s Ontological Argument. I knew the book of 1 John tells us Jesus is “the Word of God,” and God spoke the universe into existence, thus indicating that Jesus was with the Father at the beginning of Creation, and the power of the Holy Spirit was the “energy” by which Creation occurred, thus indicating God’s triune nature—the “three persons in one substance”—and thus displaying God’s perichoretic nature, by which God communes within himself, and extends communion to all of Creation, and those who are his “image bearers”—

Are you exhausted yet?

I was recently watching an episode of Gilmore Girls where the main character, Lorelei, has an identity crisis. She came from an upper-class family, surrounded by cotillions, galas, ballroom dancing, six-piece-orchestras-at-birthday-parties, second-home-in-the-Hamptons kind of wealth. Well, Lorelei rejected her family’s lifestyle and values, got pregnant when she was sixteen, and left home to build an independent life for herself and her daughter. Now in her thirties, she was reflecting on if her love of Metallica, comedy, art-house films, sneakers, and cheeseburgers with fries were things that she genuinely loved—or, if they were a manifestation of her rejection of her family and upbringing.

Well. I’m not at all like Lorelei Gilmore.

I fully embraced everything about Christianity that I was raised with. I never rejected it as a teenager, never had a “screw-you-mom-and-dad!” phase, never ran away and planted my war flag on the hill of secularism…no. I did my best to be a good and responsible church-girl. Whenever I had doubts, I could always look up and follow that North Star of orthodoxy and tradition that would keep me on the straight and narrow. Whenever I had questions, I knew exactly which Bible verses and arguments to use to work through them. However, in the last few years, something unusual happened: I started looking around and seeing more and more things with my Christian culture, beliefs, and with the Church that I’ve been disappointed in, disenchanted by, and that have left me feeling spiritually doubting and confused—as if all this time I had been building my house “on the rock,” only to look down and find it’s suddenly sand.

And then I realized I had begun this pilgrimage of deconstruction that I didn’t even realize I was on, until I looked up and realized I couldn’t see my North Star anymore.

I am still a Christian; it’s just that my relationship with my faith and with the Church looks different now than it used to. While that’s definitely been scary, don’t worry: my Theology degree, apologetics training, and twenty-eight years of Bible reading, Scripture memorization, and Christian sermons and books have taught me that if God is who he says he is, then all my wandering, wrestling, and doubting will have a refining purpose…unless the devil gets me first, of course (I’ve read Screwtape Letters!).

Maybe I’m not deconstructing my faith as much as I’m deconstructing a religion, or institution, that I found myself part of but not really connected to in my heart. Maybe my Lorelei-Gilmore-style-identity-crisis, in assessing what’s really mine or my community’s, will finally show me what “a relationship, not a religion,” really means for the first time. Maybe in accepting this scary journey of questioning, wandering, and deconstructing, my feet will find solid rock, and I’ll meet this God that I’ve learned so much about in the wilderness—in a way I might’ve never expected.

Sophia Medawar

Sophia (‘19) double-majored in theatre and religion and insists that her life is a “storybook.” She lives in an apartment above a flower shop in downtown Chicago and has multiple roles working across the arts in comedy, music, theatre, film, and visual art—though her greatest passion is writing. Her work includes stage plays, screenplays, and articles, focusing mostly on cultural trends, comedy, reviews, and religious satire. She loves road trips, visiting her family in Grand Rapids, hunting for the perfect latte, and rescuing plants from the flower shop’s dumpster.