From Fear to Faith - Joel L. Watts

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long and hard road to become who I am today.

      My first class was Survey Into Biblical Literature. I discovered very quickly that I had no problem with the class as I knew most of it from Sunday School. But there were some “issues.” The professor had us purchase a modern English translation for class. I was a King James man. I had no problem with other versions, but I did not want to use them. There were also the new ideas and theories that were taught that I had never heard before. One was the JEPD theory. I had never heard that the Bible might be edited before. To me this was pure heresy. The Bible was inspired and God was the one who gave the inspiration, therefore there were no errors as well as no editing. But then something happened. I began to read, really read, the Bible and discovered that things were not so cut and dried as I had thought. There were parts that could only be explained by editing. I discovered I had never really read the Bible, just did a hit and miss reading, picking up stories here and there and learning what I thought was important. This one class would have an effect upon me that I really would not understand until later in my journey.

      Along this journey, I met Dr. Bill Fowler who was the Chaplain of the college as well as my professor for Biblical Lit. He was funny, intelligent, caring and above all a servant of God. He showed me that I could be a good Christian and not follow all the rules I had imposed upon myself or that I believed my church had imposed. Slowly, under his and others influence, the shackles of fear began to loosen. In fact, it was Dr. Fowler who began a campaign to get me into the ministry. Needless to say, things were changing for me.

      I began to realize that there were good Christians in all denominations. I slowly realized that most of my ideas of what God expected of me were not His ideas but rather mine that I had made or picked up through my years growing up in my church. And this was just my freshman year. By the end of that year I had been asked to become the Student Assistant Chaplain to Dr. Fowler, had become a very active member of Baptist Campus Ministries, and had become a Christian Studies minor. My next three years would be huge in my development of who I am now.

      During my next three years of college, I grew as a Christian. I discovered that God wanted me to care for the poor and for the downtrodden, not tell them to get a job. I also discovered that my one time a year of “doing good” was not what was wanted. God wanted me to do that all the time and not just because I would look good doing so. This was still a downfall for me. I was still self righteous and considered myself above others. I would still try to make others come to my point of view and force them to see that I was correct and they were wrong, when in reality, what mattered was that we were servants of God and the little differences that we had were, in the long run, nothing.

      College was also the place where I began an intellectual breaking of shackles in my faith. For most of my life I took what had been taught at church as gospel and that what was taught was what all Christians believed or should believe. In college, along with the JEPD theory, I learned that church history was not nice and tidy, that theology was anything but uniform and that what I had imagined as coming straight from God through the ages, especially in music, was actually a building upon foundations that had been laid centuries before. This was the time when I learned the Apostle’s Creed, when I discovered that Protestants celebrate Lent and Advent, and when it was gently pointed out that Christian Music, aside from Southern Gospel, does not have to come from a hymnal. I also discovered that holiness does not depend upon the list I have made of what is holy.

      My journey took a huge leap forward when I went to seminary right after college. I was suddenly thrown into an environment that challenged my beliefs more than I had ever experienced. I discovered that what my church taught regarding eschatology (a new word for me) was known as dispensationalism (another new word for me). I learned this in one of my classes where a professor took it step by step and carefully examined the teachings. I was then convinced that I was no longer a dispensationalist as what the professor said regarding the shortcomings of the beliefs made absolutely perfect sense and was more in line with historic Christianity. I would sit in impromptu discussions in the hallway kitchen or another schoolmate’s room and wrestle with the lessons I was learning and with how I had been taught. Most importantly, I began to read the Bible more thoroughly and examine closely where I was and where I had been. It struck me that I had not heard many sermons from the Minor Prophets because they did not teach about Jesus or point to his coming except in a few passages. Rather they taught compassion, justice and doing what God required. This was something that was not really taught at my church. I was discovering that God wanted me and not what I could do for him. I was discovering, in short, that path of being a disciple.

      By the time I attended seminary, which I entered in 1995, I had left the church in which I had been raised. Not because of the people nor because they did not teach salvation by grace. I left because they taught that it was their version of grace. That one could only be holy if he followed a certain set of rules. That if one believed evolution was true, that if one believed that the Bible might not be quite as straightforward as was taught, that if a person had doubts, that if a person did not feel an invitation was quite honest in leading to faith in Christ, then that person was suspect in his salvation. I left because I had found a faith that had me cling to God and His grace and holiness only. Did I still struggle? Of course, I did. To this day I struggle with what God wants and what He requires of me. But I know I am His and I am that by His grace.

      I am now a member of the United Methodist Church. I still have days and moments where I feel intense guilt because I believe that God is not approving of what I am doing. It is then that I realize I sometimes still have a list of how to be holy that I follow. When this occurs, I remember that it is God’s grace I must lean upon and His mercy. My journey from fear to faith has been a rocky one as most are. But I never lost sight of who was the ultimate guide. My faith today is stronger because of what I went through with my struggle with fear. My wish/mission today is to bring others to a greater understanding of grace that they may not have to move from fear to faith as I have done.

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      Confronting Our Fears

      Confronting Our Fears, Part 1: Introduction

      Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27, English Standard Version [ESV])

      In 2007, after a turbulent two-year process, I came to embrace evolutionary creationism as the best scientific and theological paradigm through which to view the natural world and God’s strategy to redeem humanity from the power of sin. As a layman who possessed neither a degree in the natural sciences nor a degree in theology, moving from my long-held young-earth creationist position was not an easy journey. My personal library was already full of literature arguing for a young-earth creationist position, and I was intimately familiar with all of the scientific and theological arguments against theistic evolution. Furthermore, my journey was relatively private and I knew few others who were traveling a similar path—others who could be fellow sojourners with me through the various spiritual and intellectual battles that lay ahead. But it was actually several personal fears that were the greatest enemies on my path toward the goal of integrating my long-held faith in Christ with a new understanding of physical world around me. In a step of faith, I dedicated myself to a robust self-study regimen in order to help wade through the diverse scientific and theological issues at hand.

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