My dad grew up as a 7th day Adventist. He would often refer to the church as a cult, and tell me about attending St. Andrews University, an institution where all to-be ministers went to study. He told me about how if you wore jeans, you’d get in major trouble, and if a guy was caught in the girls dorms, they’d get kicked out. Growing up, he would tell me these little snippets of stories, but I never heard the full story of how he ended up leaving the church/cult.

He had been groomed by his mother to become a minister someday. Out of 6 siblings, he was the one she chose; he was the “golden child.” As a kid, he was raised very strictly. While other kids were outside playing in the sun, he was stuck inside reading a black and white encyclopedia. All 22 volumes of it. HIs mother encouraged whatever interest he had, but it was always fake. When he started drawing a lot, she told everyone that he was going to become a great painter. She brought him into her kindergarden classroom where she taught, and had him do a presentation of his art. Him, at 8 years old, giving a presentation of his supposedly wonderful art to kids just a couple years younger than him. He recalls now that they weren’t anything special, but his mother made him believe he was special.

Throughout middle school, he never really agreed with the teachings of the 7th day Adventist bible. He would sometimes teach Sunday school in the basement of the church, but he would speak about the teachings in a way that was borderline not deemed appropriate by the elders. He wouldn’t cross the line, but he would give his own interpretations of the bible. As he got older, he was always discontented with the church, but it had such a hold on him that it wasn’t until he was 27 that he was finally able to break free.

He had returned to Michigan to go to grad school at Michigan State University. There, in East Lansing, he met and befriended a young, passionate, outgoing pastor who was working on a youth revival for the church. This pastor became a sort of older brother figure to my dad, and they would often have long talks about the religion and the bible. At this point in time, my dad was reading literature like Emerson and Thoreau, psychology, and philosophy. Through his education he came to disagree with the teachings of his church more and more. Finally one day, he sat down with his pastor friend, Michael, and posed some questions to him, saying that if he couldn’t answer those questions, he was going to leave the church.

One of the questions my dad asked the pastor was, “Jesus says if your hand offends, then cut it off, if your eye lusts after a woman, pluck it out. These are obviously sexual references, but if sex is a natural part of humans, why is it evil?” Michael could not answer any of my dads questions, and finally told him that he had done his research and studying, and that he knew more about literature and psychology than he did, and that my dad was right. So then, my dad asked Michael why, if he knew the truth about the religion, was he still a pastor? With tears in his eyes, Michael told my dad that he had a wife and two kids at home who were depending on him, and that becoming a pastor was all he knew, and what his life path had set him on. He said he didn’t know anything else.

My dad, however, was able to break free. Afterwards, he said he felt so liberated and happy that when he returned to his horrendously messy apartment to find his good friend there, he wasn’t even embarrassed about the mess because he was just so happy. His relationship with his mom was strained through this decision, of course. But he was able to reconnect with his non-religious father who he had been distant from his whole childhood because of how he was raised by his Mom. When I was young, he made my grandma promise to never speak about the teachings of the 7th Day Adventist church to me, or else she was not allowed to see me.