9: Presbyterian

I looked again to my work. The small company I worked for was a hotbed of religious tension, as among its 10-15 staff, you would find 10-15 deeply pious Christians of very different denominations. Being that it was a workplace, religion was not discussed very often, but whenever it came up, there were many jibes about his church would do things this way, while my church doesn’t accept that. I knew that the majority of my workmates belonged to COC-similar Charismatic Evangelical churches, and there was one person who looked disdainfully on all of them whenever the topic of church came up.

I asked this young man, let’s call him Paul, about his view of women in ministry, since that was the subject that was causing me hardship in the church I had called home for almost two years. He shook his head sadly and said “There are so many churches that give in nowadays, because it’s fashionable, but that’s not what the Bible says.”

I felt vindicated – here was an educated person who agreed with my understanding of the Bible. Upon enquiry, I discovered that he was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and his father’s church, which happened to be just around the corner, appeared to be the conservative, traditional church that I was looing for. He kindly gave me his father’s email address, and after work that night I emailed Reverend Michael to ask him about his standpoint on women in ministry, and other related topics.

Rev. Michael wrote back immediately, and became my main correspondent for a short period about every Biblical and religious issue I was having trouble with in my position in the Methodist church. What I knew of the Presbyterian Church was scattered, but appeared good: in the tiny outback town where I grew up, there were four churches: Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian, and the year before I was born the Methodist and Presbyterian had merged together to form the Uniting Church in Australia. This indicated to me that their core beliefs must be similar. It also told me that they were a respected, traditional church, around for a long time, something my parents would have heard of, and also a place where many of my friends from the Baptist Church had ended up.

So eventually my curiosity was peaked: I asked Rev. Michael to tell me about the Presbyterian Church. I was thinking that this may become my new church home, as things in the Methodist were continuing further down the path to Charismatic Evangelicalism, and I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with every passing Sunday. And so, Reverend Michael emailed me the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The email was, of course, huge, so to prevent square eyes I printed it out, stapled it together and took it to the bedroom to read in peace. I had not been reading long when I came across several passages that made me feel extremely uncomfortable:

Chapter III: “III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.” … “VI. As God has appointed the elect unto glory, so has He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. VII. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy, as He pleases, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.”

Chapter X: “III. Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how He pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word. IV. Others, not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men, not professing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested.” (Emphasis mine).

I re-read those passages three or four times, to ensure I understood their claims. At first I could not believe it, I was sure I had read it wrong. Three years of Bible College and all the denominations I had studied and worshiped with had not prepared me for actually coming face-to-face with a written confession of Predestination Doctrine. I decided to sleep on it, and read it again in the morning when my mind was more refreshed.

Unsurprisingly, the next morning the document told me exactly the same thing it had said the night before. I was devastated. I actually cried. Of all the confusing things I had been told about God from different sources, the one thing they all agreed on was that God was a loving, merciful and forgiving God. This god, described in this awful Confession, did not sound loving, merciful or forgiving in any way, shape or form. To actually create human beings, the majority of human beings no less, for the sole purpose of torturing them in Hell for all eternity? What kind of sick game was God playing with His creation??

I went to work that day with little else on my mind. At the earliest opportunity, when Paul asked me how I was going with the material his father had sent, I told him that I was having trouble getting my head around the Predestination concept, as this was not taught in any denomination I had studied with before.

“Yeah, that’s always a hard issue for people to understand,” he said, “but really when you think about it, do you want a soppy, happy-clappy god like the Charismatics have, or do you want a strong, powerful god?”

I blinked. “I want the True God,” was my reply.

I drove home from work that afternoon, went straight to my bedroom, picked up the crinkled copy of the Westminster Confession, my husband’s cigarette lighter, and took them both over to the sink, where I formally and officially put to rest any notion of my ever joining the Presbyterian Church.

10: Congregation of Yahweh

By this time, Facebook had become a mainstream communication tool, and so I incorporated it into my search methods. I would Google different denominations of Christianity, read the accompanying Wikipedia article, find the customary Facebook group, and then begin adding its members as Facebook Friends. My Friend list grew to over 800 and comprised of many “interesting” people from all over the world, who all came from different backgrounds and worship styles, but who all professed one thing: they loved, and served, God, and they were Christian.

Needless to say, this brought about some very interesting discussions on my Wall. All I had to do was post a question, such as “What does everyone think about women in ministry?”, go away for a few hours, and come home to a novel’s worth of comments from dozens of different people, sometimes – actually no usually - escalating to threats of violence from people who believed that the others’ denomination was sent from the Devil to destroy God’s True Church (which of course was their particular denomination).

I asked many questions and weeded through the answers, shortening and lengthening my Friends list at various times. I became aware of many issues I had not come across before, and this was a period of growth and learning, if confusion and misinformation at the same time. And then, late one night after several more heated discussions, I received a messaged from a lady named, let’s say, Theresa.

The subject heading was “I used to be Methodist”, and her message began with the words “I know you are a seeker of the Truth.. this site is perhaps the most important you will ever go to:” and she pasted a link to a site about a group called the Congregation of Yahweh.

Now, keep in mind that by this time, my head was so full of people pushing their own agendas dressed up in church, that all I was holding onto as being any remnant of Truth was the Bible. I referred daily to a nifty website that translated the Holy Scriptures line for line, with the original text on the left and English on the right, and each word explained in its context. I was aware of the way different popular translations represented the Name of the Lord, and so, when I began reading about this group who preached the importance of worshipping the correct God correctly, a small, minor chord was struck within me.

The Congregation of Yahweh told me that when I pray to the names God, Lord and Jesus, my worship is actually being superseded by Satan, as he goes by many names, but the true and sacred name of God was actually, and ONLY, YahWeh. The Son of God was addressed ONLY by the name of Ya’Shua. If I used ANY other names in my prayers, they would not be heard by the One they were intended for.

They spoke of the importance of identifying Ya’Shua as being sent by YahWeh, because “Ya” was a part of his name. They were so pedantic about this issue, that a poor woman who wrote a status update praising Yeshua was condemned by a paragraph as long as an A4 page, for although her pronunciation may have been correct, the True Meshiah bears the name of the One Who sent Him: Ya’Shua.

They spoke on a number of other subjects as well, subjects that my inquisitive mind was exactly ripe for the indoctrination of: Kosher food, and how it had never really been recanted by God, that was all a lie by the mainstream Protestant Church and their misinterpretation of Acts 10:9-15; Shabbat-keeping, another law which was never recanted, just misinterpreted; and many other Old Testament Laws which they preached were equally relevant, if not more so, in the New Testament Church.

By the end of one evening of deep conversation and Scripture study with this woman, I was so confused I was even too scared to pray before sleep. I was uncomfortable about that situation, as someone somewhere along the line had told me that ANYTHING that prevented me from praying was NEVER going to be from God – no matter what I had done, prayer was always going to be a step in the right direction. But, according to the teaching of this new “church”, unless I prayed to YahWeh in the name of His Son Ya’Shua, my prayers were being heard only by the Devil. What a conundrum.

I emailed every pastor I had in my Google Address Book, but, knowing how busy all these men were, I knew it could quite easily be a few days before I was able to pray comfortably again. In desperation I looked up the pastor of the Uniting Church in the old outback town where I had grown up – I figured an outback pastor would probably have the lightest workload, and therefore be quickest to replay to my desperate email.

I was right – perhaps not about the lightest workload, but about the speediest reply. Pastor Hausler emailed me back almost immediately, and was soon followed by Pastor Rod from the Methodist Church, Rev. Michael from the Presbyterian Church, and even Rev. White. They all said the same things: If I begin at Genesis and look through the Bible at all the names that were used and ascribed to God, often at His own insistence, in the original Hebrew and Koine text – well that kind of blows the Congregation’s theory right out of the water doesn’t it? And as I already believed, ANYTHING that prevents one from praying is NOT from God. Case closed.

11: Jehovah's Witnesses

So at this point I was still, though researching furiously in my free time, faithfully attending Sunday Services at the Methodist Church. I was getting more confused with each passing week, and the “development” of the church was making me most uncomfortable. There were hardly any old hymns sung anymore, all the songs were either sent up from Hillsong, or musical numbers performed by the teenagers or even the younger children. It became like a weekly concert put on for the people. It was about entertaining and amusing... not worship. There were less and less men in the whole church, and it began to feel like a mother’s club meeting – at one point, the elderly lady sitting next to me one Sunday whispered that to me, just as I was thinking the exact same thing! The services were stumbled over, around and through, and no one seemed to have any idea of what they were, or should have been, doing. But worse than that – they did not care.

After one such service I was sitting at home feeling hopeless and wondering where I could go to find the answers I was so desperately seeking. I wished someone would just turn up at my door with everything written down and say “here, read this, its will tell you what you need to know!” And wouldn’t you know it – at that moment the door bell rang.

The neatly dressed gentleman on the other side of the door was doing exactly what I had been wishing someone would do. And the book he thrust into my hands had the words “The Watchtower” printed across the front.

Now, I am Australian, I would have to have been living in a pretty secluded place to have never met with one of his kind before. I had read several of these Watchtower magazines in my life as well, and back in my days with the Baptist Church, I could confidently argue down any Jehovah’s Witness that made the mistake of coming to my door. But those heady days of confidence and well-rehearsed answers to every possible question were well behind me now, and I open-mindedly took the text he offered, promised to read it, and quietly nodded when he told me he would come back in a while to see what I thought of it.

I approached the magazine with the eyes of one who had learned, unlearned and relearned more religious dogma than I had ever thought possible. The idea occurred to me that, just like when I was sitting in Paul Church all the way over in Cornwall, and I allowed myself the possibility that God might exist, perhaps I should allow myself the possibility that Jehovah’s Witnesses, for all the warnings I had received from the age of five when I had first met the girl next door, may, after all, be the real keepers of the Truth.

The concepts raised in the Watchtower magazine cleared up for me (perhaps by nothing more magical than agreeing with my, though weakened, still held preconceived notions). It reinforced the importance of structure in worship and organisation in religion. It emphasised the roles played by order, respect and reverence in society. And of course who can resist those cheerfully-painted colour illustrations!

John, as I came to know him as, came back several times to my house, and we discussed religion in a conspicuously thorough manner. Conspicuous because, as it took me a few meetings to realise, he always came to me with a pre-written speech in his head, anticipating my objections and ready to fire off his answers to questions I had not even asked. Some of the time he was spot on – some times completely off the mark, but it did not take him long to have me pegged – he could tell from my modest dress, and the particular things I complained about from my Methodist Church, that I was looking for something more organised, traditional and regulated.

He confirmed my beliefs that women should not be ministers. He confirmed by beliefs that a women’s most blessed role was in the home. He confirmed my beliefs that mainstream fashion was infecting the church and distorting its vision and focus.

And then he started to tickle thoughts that had been planted in my mind without my being aware of them. The Trinity – I knew that word never appeared in the Bible, but in the denominations I had been a part of it did not come up very often. Had I ever considered that the whole concept was skewed and, in plain English, wrong? Well now that you mention it…

He invited me to their next “meeting”, and out of curiosity, I attended. I was well prepared for all the “love and affection” that I would be showered with upon entering the Kingdom Hall – I had read enough testimonies for that. The smiling faces and enthusiastic greetings therefore did little to sway my cautious curiosity. The lady that sat on one side of me gushed about her experience of “coming to the Truth with the Jehovah’s Witnesses” – she had first been pulled in when she discovered that God’s real name was Jehovah. Amazing! No one in her old Catholic Church had told her that! Did I know that was His name? Well yes, I did. I also knew that it was not spelled nor pronounced as “Jehovah” until the middle ages in England when Tyndale was looking for an appropriate English transliteration for the difficult Hebrew Tetragramaton known most accurately today as YHWH. But no, I did not expound on these facts to her.

I sat down and listened attentively to everything that was said from the pulpit. I had my New King James Bible open on my lap, and looked up every verse they mentioned, even though it was simultaneously displayed on the overhead projector. I also knew, from detractors, that Jehovah’s Witnesses preferred their own translation of Scripture, which was of questionable origin.

I compared everything and found only one small and seemingly insignificant variation in the two translations. At the end of the “meeting”, John offered to give me my own copy of the New World Translation of Holy Scriptures. I felt guilty accepting, because even though I was burning with curiosity and desperate to get my hands on that text, I knew it was not going to achieve the end he desired – my study of the New World Translation was to pull it apart, not to let it influence me toward joining this happy, well-dressed group of people.

Upon arriving home I referred to my faithful Online Interlinear Bible. I did not have to study long to find the deal breaker – probably because, even though I considered myself to be looking at this religion with an open mind, I knew where to look: John 1:1-2.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. I had loved those verses since I had first read them as an enthusiastic 19 year old in the Baptist Church. It was definitive proof to me that Jesus was, and IS, God – and so everything that followed, the entire Gospel, was right, true, and to be trusted. I was dying to know how the Jehovah’s Witnesses interpreted THAT.

And there I found the crack in their foundations. Their bible inserted a tiny word into that text, which extensive searching of Hebrew and interlinear translations proved was regarded by no other group: a.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god. Extra a, little g. That tiny insertion changed the entire message of the New Testament. Jesus was A god? How many gods were there?

And what a minute – so Jesus was not actually THE God?

Of course, if you build your house on foundations like that, it can wobble into any particular shape you desire it to. And if you arrange and lead your organisation with the eagle-sharp eyes and stealthy efficiency of The Watchtower, then you can train your armies to cheerfully believe, and preach, whatever you wish. Waco here we come.

I knew in that instant that Jehovah’s Witnesses did not have the Truth of God. It was a shame, they were lovely people, and in that room I really did see some whole-hearted love toward what they believed was God. But they did not have the Truth. And what I wanted, more than anything else in my life, was the Truth.

12: The Union of Chanochian Netzarim Yisraelites

So back to Facebook it was with a mind that was in some ways more open, in others more closed, and in most, more confused and impatient. Being like the Ethiopian eunuch, before that fateful trip to Jerusalem, I fervently searched the Scriptures daily – but had no one to guide me through them.

The words of Theresa echoed in my mind. I had renounced her wacky group, and dismissed the concept that God’s main concern regarding our salvation was how good our spelling was. However it had brought to the forefront of my mind the importance of the Old Testament, and I began to notice more and more how many modern denominations seemed to forget that it even existed, and focus solely on the forgiveness and grace parts of the Gospels.

I began to search for a church that acknowledged the importance and relevance of the WHOLE Bible, both New and Old Testaments. And, as proved to be the usual manner of God’s humour during my Great Search, right when my mind was filled with these thoughts I received a message from a person who seemed to be very learned on the subject, and more than willing to help.

Ana was actually fluent in Biblical Hebrew, and was able to translate passages from the original text all by herself. She explained to me many finer points of seemingly insignificant verses – for example, when Jonah (who was actually “Yonah”) was about to be thrown overboard for bringing calamity on the vessel, even though verse 12 in popular translations has him bravely proclaiming “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me” – apparently the original Hebrew text indicates that he was actually asking NOT to be thrown into the sea, even thought he knew he was the cause of the storm. What a revelation!

But what did it actually matter? Well, at that time I was so focused on the ONLY remnant of Truth available in the world today being the Bible, anything that indicated to me that my translations may not be 1,000,000% accurate had me packing my bags and heading for the hills. Luckily, I had Facebook, so I did not have to travel to Israel, where this lady currently was, to be able to study with her.

We conversed on many Old Testament subjects, such as Kosher food, Sabbath keeping, Temple practises and prescribed feasts and fasts. She reinforced to me the importance of following the Law of the Torah, as well as acknowledging that Jesus, or Ya’Shua or whatever you felt safe to call Him, was the promised and foretold Meshiah come into the world to save us from our sins. Only, unlike the simple Grace By Faith teachings of the Baptist and Methodist Churches, the True way to salvation was only to be found by following the WHOLE of God’s Word, not just the comfortable parts of the New Testament.

She sent me a link to her church’s website, the Union of Chanochian Netzarim Yisraelites. Over the next few weeks I read so much about Hebrew and Israel and the Law and the Prophets, that the Meshiah began to lose importance in the sea of feasts that needed to be observed and Laws that had to be obeyed. It wasn’t long before I began to doubt whether this Jesus was actually the real Messiah in the first place…which of course lead me to widen my Facebook Friends search to include those of the Jewish persuasion.

When I tried to do what I had termed “outsider research” (researching a religious group from the point of view of sceptics) on the CNYs, I found it extremely difficult to find anything at all. They appeared to be a worldwide group consisting of about 13 members. Although their wisdom seemed sound and their leaders seemed reverent, I was weary of following a tiny, breakaway cell who proclaimed that the Truth regarding God, the universe and salvation was held ONLY by them.

13: Judaism

I had begun to feel that the Torah was where the answers were at. A few well-timed Jewish documentaries on the History Channel added to my growing doubt about Jesus being the real Messiah. Along came a young man on Facebook who seemed to smell my moment of weakness and pounce on it with a website written solely to bring Christians to the correct understanding about Jesus – which was, of course, completely different to the one they all currently had.

He showed me verses in the Prophets that the Christians had deliberately mis-translated to make Jesus appear more like the Messiah. For example Isaiah 7:14 “A virgin will conceive and bring forth a son” was actually “A young woman will conceive and bring forth a son”. That made me stumble a little. It was kind of a big thing, the whole Mary being a Virgin and Jesus being conceived of the Holy Spirit. If that was not true, then how much else of the story had also been falsified to push whatever agenda this new sect called “Christians” had?

But then Yosef made the mistake of delving into the Gospels, and trying to trip me up with the so-called discrepancies between them. He had not counted on three years of Pentecostal Bible College, and when he tried to tell me that the Nativity story, regarding the census, was completely wrong because Joseph had a house in Bethlehem, as was “clearly” stated in Matthew 2:11 “..when they had come into the house”.. really? I had spent an entire term on matching and patching the three historical Gospels and was confident that his argument was flawed, based on semantics and fuelled by an anger that would poke holes in the strongest testimony, whether weakness existed or not.

That incident made me reconsider my horror over the Isaiah 7:14 debacle, and begin to doubt this young man’s stance in its entirety. And then I realised what it actually was that I was dabbling in: If I was seriously considering Judaism as being the “True” religion of God, then that meant that I was about to deny Jesus Christ as Son of God and Saviour. That was a very dangerous thing. If I was wrong, then I would be throwing away my salvation.

But if I was right, I would be gaining the Truth. I stepped back and looked at the Big Picture. Judaism was telling me that everything I had studied in the Old Testament was the entirety of the Bible. The Meshiah was still yet to come. Those who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Meshiah were deceived. That meant that 33% of the entire world population were deceived.

I had to go to a website called adherents.com to look up that statistic. And while I was there, I noted that Judaism accounted for less than 1% of the world population; 0.22% to be exact. I felt similar to the way I felt when trying to research the Union of Chanochian Netzarim Yisraelites – even though this was the oldest and most established religion in the world, the number of adherents today, in other words the percentage that “held to the truth” during the rise of Christianity, was miniscule. This was a very small group of people that was claiming to know the Truth about God that He had let the vast, vast majority of the population of the world, including many millions of people who loved Him and sought Him fervently, blindly miss.

Something major happened in history 2000 years ago. Something so major that it literally stopped time – the entire world today based their calendar on how many years it had been since Jesus’ birth. Could something so major, with such far-reaching ramifications, really be just the work of one crazy man who preached a few sermons and brainwashed a few people into thinking that he was the Messiah? That “few people” grew very quickly, and very miraculously, to engulf the whole world. It would take some stretching of my faith to believe that all of this was just a ploy to test the faith of the Israelites.

I recognised that I was at a point where I had to make a decision: to reject the entire concept of Jesus being the Christ; or to reject the claims of a minority group whose arguments, as much as I had seen of them, were easily debunked by one as uneducated as myself. I could not bring myself to reject Jesus Christ. I had seen and studied too much of Him to believe that He was just another false Messiah.

Judaism was dismissed with relative ease.

14: Islam

While I had been sniffing around the adherents.com website, I could not help but notice the next most populous group. 1.5 billion people in the world followed the teachings of Islam. And while I had been brought up to believe that the reason their religion was growing so fast was because they converted people – usually whole countries at a time – with a gun to the temple and a gruff “Accept Islam or die!” – I had been through enough eye-opening experiences over the previous year with my search through other odd religious groups that I wondered if my preconceived notions about Muslims had been wrong as well.

Such was the pliable state of my mind when I woke up one night at 2am to discover that my husband had yet again fallen asleep on the couch with the TV still on. As I dragged him by the feet to the bedroom, I noticed a British accent on the television, and being as ever obsessed with the Motherland, I thought I would take a few minutes to see what the program was before I turned it off.

To my fascination, it turned out to be a British reality show called “Make Me a Muslim”, where several “normal” British citizens from different walks of life were taken in my Muslim families for a determined period of time, I’d be guessing a week, and shown the ins and outs of daily life according to Islam. The part of the show I saw that night was about the cleanliness rules that Muslims live by, and how they dictate seemingly insignificant things, like which hand to use when going to the toilet as opposed to which hand to use when eating, according to the great importance they place on hygiene. A small issue I know, but I guess it was enough to present me with a different view than what I had always held of these people.

The next day as soon as time allowed, I jumped on Google and Wikipedia’s “Series On Religion” articles to learn more about this culture. There was one facet of Islam that had always fascinated me, usually in a negative way: why their women were always completely covered up from head to toe. For some reason I had always taken it personally, and the sight of a woman in a full niqab (burqa) had made me angry, as I believed that the women were being forced to wear those clothes by their husbands and fathers, so I was angry at the men for forcing such restrictions on their women, and I was angry at the women for allowing themselves to be pushed around. I had guessed it was a jealousy / possessiveness thing: “no one else is allowed to look at her because she belongs to ME.” There were probably television shows that helped perpetuate that view in the west as well over the years.

So the concept of women actually wanting to cover themselves up had never occurred to me. I could not comprehend the reason why anyone would want to wrap themselves up in a tent for their whole lives. Didn’t they get hot in summer? Didn’t they feel restricted? How did they go hiking or swimming? How could they live a normal life like that?

Wiki articles told me that the concept regarding women’s dress in Islam was called hishma, which corresponded to the English word modesty. A Google search of the word hishma brought me to a wonderful website called Ilovehishma: The Blog – and it was written by a woman!

Pixie taught me that women actually want to cover themselves up, because this was what they believed God wanted them to do. Her well-written articles covered all manner of topics relevant to western women in today’s world, and as an adult convert to Islam living in Canada, her opinions and experiences struck chords with me. She also wrote about the hijab regulations given to Jewish and Christian women in their Scriptures, and how they had over the years discarded them due to fashion, and how Muslim women were urged not to follow their example.

That did stick out in my mind. There was one thing that Islam seemed to have that Christianity, and also Judaism, did not: dedicated followers. You could look at a person from a mile away and tell that they were Muslim. But how can you tell if someone is a Christian these days? By being so close to them you can see a tiny gold cross around their neck? How do you know that’s not just a fashionable piece of jewellery? I thought back to the time I was in the COC and noticed the tight top and miniskirt on the young girl singing on the stage, and how the front two rows were taken up by enthusiastic teenage boys. I remembered thinking at the time that not all of those boys could have possibly been focused on the words in her songs alone.

Studying Pixie’s blogs brought home to me the importance of modesty in the worship of God. I came to realise that in my own life, a lot of the problems I encountered with my faith slipping away and my focus shifting from trying to be good to trying to be cool, were logical conclusions to the path of fashion that I had set myself on when I first came to Queensland. My appearance had brought me attention, and the more I got the more I wanted, so the more I focused on my appearance. Before I knew it any trace of religion had gone completely out of my head and my days consisted solely of spending enough time on the beach to deepen my tan, spending enough time on the dance floor to exercise my abs, and catching every possible glance in every possible mirror without letting myself be seen as being vain. Which really, especially in light of the concepts I was now learning, was exactly what I was.

I realised that what these women were doing was sacrificing their appearance, their vanity, to God. They would never have fallen into apostasy in the way I had. They would never have had to deal with the temptations I did or fail in the way that I had failed. They showed their faith in God by submitting to him their entire being, so that when anyone looked at them, all they would see was a faithful servant of God.

This was the opposite of the way I had conducted myself and my life up to that point, and it seemed to me to be the answer I was looking for. By sacrificing my appearance and vanity to God, I was ensuring that I would never be tempted away from Him as I had been before. Also, it would have to be a good thing for my marriage, as my husband, who had confidence issues of his own, had always been uncomfortable with me wearing “attractive” clothing, and was always paranoid that other men were looking at me. When I began to dress modestly, he was overjoyed.

With my eyes being opened to the honest love for God that Muslim women had, I began to seek and study Islam more earnestly. I spoke with the Muslim girl at my husband’s work, who had just moved here from Pakistan. She gave me literature about the outlook of Muslims and the respect they had for their neighbours and their desire to spread their message of the love of God. I was shown where the local Muslim women bought their hijab, which was unsurprisingly in the centre of my city. I purchased for myself some modest – but not so different that my husband would be alarmed - clothing from there, and an English translation of the Qur’an.

I studied it with the fervour I had previously applied to the Bible. At the same time, as per the custom I followed when studying any new religion, I also studied articles about Islam from Christian, Jewish and Secular sources, to get a fuller picture. And for a long time, the picture I was seeing was a nice one.

I watched videos of young girls crying over the state of war in Muslim countries, and saying how Islam was a religion of peace. I read the reports of spousal and family abuse of women in Muslim countries, and statements from women begging people to understand that it was not Islam that caused these atrocities; that the Prophet Muhammad would never have wanted women to be treated like that.

I was close to being convinced. There was one nagging little thought though that would not seem to leave my head: “You will know them by their fruit.” I had begun to wonder if I had found the answer to my painfully long search – the True religion of God. This was certainly one that was taking the world by storm, and all who belonged to it were most wholehearted and passionate. But the rule of thumb that I had always held to, when searching for anything from a new religion or a new diet, was the simple guidance that Jesus gave us in Matthew 7. We will know them by their fruit. People cannot pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles. Evil will always eventually show through. And when you step back and look at the Big Picture of Islam, for all its dedicated young women who want only to love and serve God, what do you see? A plane full of hostages being flown into an office building.

Muslims say that the terrible attacks on the World Trade Centre were orchestrated by one madman and his small band of crazed followers, and were nothing to do with honest Islam. But when you look back through history, what stands out from this religion is the war, the violence, the hate, the oppression, the injustice, the cruelty. Yes, there are some lovely people who are Muslim. There are lovely Atheists too. But the religion of Islam, when judged according to its fruit, is a rotten vine of evil.

I put my Qur’an up on the bookshelf. Phew, that was close!

15: Lutheranism

And so there I was again, sitting in between my computer, my Bibles and my Foxtel remote, with no idea of how to proceed further in my search for the Truth. I looked back over my previous few months: I had studied with Jews, and come to the conclusion that the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth was not negotiable. I had studied with Muslims, and decided that Mohammed had gone off on the wrong tangent.

So, Christianity it was then. But I was hurt by Evangelical Protestantism, disillusioned by “traditional” churches, and discombobulated by breakaway groups. Christianity in 2010 was a mess. But surely it could not always have been that way. I decided I needed to go back to the start, and find out what the Church was like in the beginning.

Being as I was, educated solely by Protestants, even though I knew that Jesus had been born 2000 years ago, for some reason my brain was content to believe that the Christian Church began in the Middle Ages. That was when there had been a big split from the Catholic Church, and the “true” Christians were now free to worship God the way they were supposed to, without all the corruption the Catholic Church had oppressed them with for hundreds of years. This period of time was called the Reformation. So I Googled that.

I found an awesomely catchy video on You Tube called the “95 Theses Rap”. It actually taught me a great deal and gave me more subjects to go to Wikipedia with. I learned that in 1517 a monk by the name of Martin Luther was fed up with the corruption he witnessed in the Catholic Church, and wrote out his complaints, all 95 of them, and nailed them to the church door, thereby sparking a revolution that created a new church known as the Lutheran Church. A Google Maps search revealed one of these Lutheran Churches not too far away from my house, so the following Sunday I headed for there.

Before the first service I had familiarised myself with the 95 Theses and Wiki articles on the history of Martin Luther. I felt that, if any Christian church today would have the Truth about God, surely it would be them. They did not have the corruption of the Catholic Church, the sinful foundation of the Anglican Church, the evil Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian Church, and hopefully, they would not have the apostasy of the Methodist Church. From everything I had learned over the previous two years, this seemed like the best, if not the last, option.

I had never been made to feel as welcome anywhere as I was at the Lutheran Church. From the moment I stepped out of the car I was greeted with friendly smiles and polite enquiries. They even admired my headscarf and modest dress, which was something the Methodist Church had been mocking me over, during the last few weeks of my attending services there. After my study of Islam and personal sacrifice of my vanity to God, I was determined that a scarf would be on my head whenever I worshipped in a church building, whether it was the custom of the particular church or not. And the Lutherans did not seem to mind that at all, even though I was one of only two women there who wore a head covering of any description.

The building itself was delightful – everything I had been searching for in a church. It was brick, and pointy, with the wooden pews and stained glass windows that I had craved. It even had enormous organ flutes on the walls, although I discovered that they were only for show and the organ was electric. But still, this church had an organ! I was enraptured.

I was introduced to the Pastor, Adrian, before the service, and he greeted me with the same friendliness that the parishioners had. I told him I had never been to a Lutheran service before, but that I had read a little about the Lutheran Church online. I told him briefly about my search and all the different churches I had been to. He asked if I wanted to take communion with them that day. I told him I did, if I could. He asked if I had been baptised. I said yes, but at a Baptist Church. He nodded and said that was okay. He then asked me if I believed that the bread and wine were the true body and blood of Christ.

I blinked. And then I nodded. I had heard of this concept before, usually by detracting Evangelical Protestants who taught that Communion was only symbolic. However, after everything I had learned, and learned not to learn, I figured if this Lutheran Pastor was telling me that the wine became the True Blood of Christ, and the bread became His True Flesh, then in that instant, I believed it.

And so I had my first Communion in which I believed I was actually partaking in the Flesh and Blood of the Lord. It was an incredibly reverent moment, and the reverence and respect shown on the faces of the other young people kneeling beside me gave me even more of a feeling of awe at the wonderful service I was partaking in. I felt wonderful. I felt like I had finally, at last, against all odds, found the True Church of Christ.

I was eager to go back the following week, and the week after that. I attended Bible Study with them as well. And in between services I read every piece of material I could on the history, beliefs and practises of the Lutheran Church. In keeping with my tradition, I also read criticisms of the Lutherans, most of which were written by Roman Catholics. I found nothing that shook my stance to any great degree. And Pastor Adrian was only too happy to help me with all manner of questions I fired at him.

And being that all things are accomplished in God’s perfect timing, I was lucky enough to find myself in the Lutheran Church on October 31^st, the celebration of Reformation Day. I had emailed a list of questions to Pastor Adrian during the week, and he had asked me if he could use them as the basis for his Reformation Day sermon. I was only to happy to comply, and so on that Sunday, we were each given a handout on the history of the Lutheran Church, and during the next hour and a half I was given the answers to most of my historical, theological and practical questions regarding this institution.

And, even though I had not been in such a happy and peaceful environment since my Great Search began, on that day the first seeds of doubt were sown.

The first thing I noticed was the title of the first page we were given that day. It read “The Four Alones of Lutheranism.” Pastor Adrian told us that the theology of the Lutheran Church was based on Four “Alones”: Salvation was to be obtained by Grace Alone, through Faith Alone, with Scripture Alone, in Christ Alone.

Now, I think even the youngest, most ill-educated searcher of Truth might stop in their tracks and say, now hold on, if there are four of them, well they’re not really alone then, are they?

But even brushing that aside, the water-tight vase of the Lutheran Church suddenly began to appear leaky. The traditions they held to, down to the translation of Scripture they held in highest regard, was all done by Martin Luther. While he was under house arrest in a castle in the middle of nowhere. He translated the whole Bible himself, with all of his fallible human idiosyncrasies woven right into the text. That decreased my comfort level.

I went home and watched my favourite 95 Theses Rap video again. Even though the kids who produced it were pushing Luther’s agenda, I now saw that there were gaping holes waiting to be punched in his credibility. I dug out and re-read some of the detractors’ text, including Pope Leo X’s rebuttal to the 95 Theses. When viewed with an open mind, I could kind of see the validity in some of his points.

I sighed. The Lutheran Church wasn’t my Telos either.