A Recovering Evangelical

Carlene Bauer tells her story:

There was always a tiny voice inside me saying “That can’t be right” whenever I heard something that seemed to contradict who I understood God and Jesus to be from reading the Bibleall-loving, all-forgiving. For example: it had been made clear to me that Catholics were lesser, wrongheaded Christians because they worshipped Mary and the Pope and thought works would save their souls. The disparagement made it seem that unless Catholics recognised that they needed to accept Jesus as their saviour (for the evangelicals you had to get down on your knees and make the overture in full awareness of your decision), they were going to hell. Now, my father, my grandmother and uncle were Catholic. My best friend at the time was Catholic. It didn’t seem right that God was looking down on them with arms crossed, shaking his head when they seemed sincere in their belief. Why would God allow there to be so many wrongheaded Christians?