How were your beliefs different… 2 years ago? 5 years ago?

Last updated on: June 2, 2015 at 12:42 pm by Billy Kangas

How were your beliefs different… 2 years ago? 5 years ago? 2015-06-02T12:42:51-04:00 Billy Kangas

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Yesterday Kristy Burmeister asked me:

What were you doing (life in general) and how were your beliefs different… 2 years ago? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 15 years ago? 20 years ago? (BONUS) 30 years ago?

I thought this would be an interesting exercise. As long time readers of this blog know, I have gone through a lot of theological shifts in the years this blog has existed. I started the blog as a Lutheran minister struggling to connect to the shifting cultural climate of the 21st century, this led me to the Evangelical Covenant Church where I earned my MDiv and worked for a few years and finally to the Catholic Church where I have found my home today. This evolution has been a difficult and humbling journey through which I have realized I’ve been wrong time after time. Here’s a look back through Kristy’s questions.

2 years ago:

My wife was pregnant with our second child. I had just joined the Catholic Church. I was still working on the coursework for my PhD at the Catholic University of America and was just about to start my fellowship at Bread for the World. My beliefs at this point were not vastly different, they just were not as sharp in some areas. At this point I was still looking very much toward the East for most of my liturgical theology because I hadn’t yet read the Catholic liturgical theologians who would help develop my liturgical center Aidan Kavanagh and David Fagerberg. I was just beginning to explore a theology of sexuality, a project that is far from complete. Finally I had not yet had my baptism into the world of Politics. The experience I had working beside lobbyists at Bread for The World would give me both a greater sense of hope and a deeper sense of cynicism. I am a much more politically engaged person today, and have started to get involved in the grassroots with for the first time.

5 years ago:

My wife was pregnant with our first Child. I was still in the Evangelical Covenant Church, and had just traveled to Alaska from Chicago to do work with Alaska Native youth in the bush for the summer. I loved that denomination and still do. They are one of the most generous and thoughtful groups of Christians I have run across. I joined them because they were able to live with people with a variety of Christian beliefs and work together toward goals of justice in the world. I was still very Lutheran in my theology at this point, except for my soteriology. I had been exploring Catholic and Orthodox Churches for some time at this point and was finding my list of objections to the Church was shrinking quickly. I was also going to Mass weekly after my morning service in the ECC. This was a place of spiritual refuge for me. I had started to hear God call me to become Catholic, but was doing my best to ignore Him.

10 years ago:

I was working as a youth minister in the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) and was doing a lot of work with an ecumenical youth outreach through the Word of God Community. This would shortly turn into a full-time position. I was deeply involved in the post-modern Church/ emergent movement. This movement had helped me develop a deeper concern for social justice and facilitated a more meaningfully engagement with the varieties of Christians that I was encountering with my ecumenical work. I was particularly impressed with the depth of prayer, spirituality, and passion for Jesus that the Catholics in the group had. I would meet my wife soon through these folks. I was beginning to move away from the anti-Catholic stance I had developed early on in my ministry.

15 years ago:

I was leading the Christian Group at Huron High School that I had helped to start. I ran a Men’s group as well and was involved in leadership at Mission Christ. I was playing guitar in a local Christian metal-core band. This was a period of intensity in my faith. I would go out on street corners and preach on milk crates. I would go door to door asking people if they knew they were saved. I passed out Bible tracks. I was deeply involved with the pro-life movement. I would picket using graphic images. Everything in my faith was taken to the extremes. My mentors were fairly antagonistic to the Catholic faith and this stance impacted me a great deal. I had a lot of Catholic friends and I tried to help them realize that their Catholic faith was a hindrance to the true Christian faith that didn’t need all that extra stuff. In spite of the intensity, I felt like I never could live up to the expectations I set for myself. This was particularly true in my relationship with women and with music. I still listened to music I felt was sinful and invested too much time and investment in the girls I was involved with.

20 years ago:

I was the oldest of 4 kids. I was attending a private Lutheran School in Ann Arbor. This was an LCMS school and was quite conservative. I was taught young-earth creationism (something it would take me many years to get over). My parents were both very dedicated to their faith. My Father was the Lutheran in the family and my faith was deeply impacted by this tradition. We learned Luther’s small catechism by heart. We were quizzed every week on memorizing bible passages. We regularly had bible trivia at school and at home. We practiced “sword drills” where we raced to look up a passage and read it first. I took great pride in being one of the top bible students in the school.

30 years ago:

I was very young. I had been baptized in a Charismatic Lutheran church where my parents were members. They had met through an ecumenical Charismatic community called the Word of God. We regularly attended Church, Word of God meetings events hosted by the WOG district that we were in. My God-parents were both strong Catholics. These two would eventually be major factors in my father’s joining of the Catholic Church shortly after my own entrance. My mother had been baptized Catholic but had come to faith in Jesus through a Baptist ministry in her hometown just outside of Detroit. After spending some time with Pentecostals in in Ann Arbor she eventually married my Father and began attending the Lutheran Church with the family. Our family life was focused on faith. My parents prayed with me every night. We celebrated the “Lord’s Day” ritual every Saturday night.

This has been a fascinating exercise in relocation. One of the most amazing things I noticed as I looked back at how my faith has evolved was how many times I was so certain of the truth, but found out I was wrong. This is one of the reasons I am so loathe to state any of my beliefs as absolutes. I know I am still very much on the journey.

I’m curious. What would YOUR evolution of faith look like? Let me know in the comments below.

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