The Useful Thinker

      I grew up Baptist. Not just Baptist either, but Independent, Fundamental, Separated Baptist. I received Jesus Christ as my Saviour at the age of five and was baptized a year later. It was one of the few times I allowed myself to be dunked underwater completely because I had such a fear of putting my head underwater at that age. Growing up like this meant, of course, that I was raised to believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God. All of the stories are true. All of the instruction in the Bible is good for doctrine and practice in the daily life. Nothing was to be questioned, and it contains all of the answers you could possibly ask about life. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where do I go from here? All of these questions are answered in the pages of the Bible.     In later years, I lived a year and a half in Utah and zealously argued with the Mormons, trying to convince them of the error of their ways and to trust in Jesus Christ ...

Photo by Jben Beach Art from Pexels       When I was still a super-charged, Fundamental Baptist, fully unconscious and fully believing that my convictions we're correct because they were based on a book I believed to be infallible, I wrote a book. It was over five hundred pages. It was the culmination of years of Bible study. It was also the product of a lot of negative thinking due to a negative mindset I didn't know I had.      It was titled simply A Systematic Theology, and it had all the answers for everything. This is because all of the answers were Bible-based, and when you place all of your faith into a book that you believe has no errors, it wraps all of life up in a neat little package. No loose ends. Exactly what I always wanted.      If you are not familiar with Protestantism or Christianity altogether, I should explain why most theologians do not publish a systematic theology until they are very old, and have lots...