This is an open letter. To anyone and everyone it may concern, may I begin with the following words:

Fear of God--this is a concept with which I have been intimately familiar most of my life. Even as a child, I was afraid of God, afraid of what he could do to me, afraid of what he wanted to do to me--from a very early age in life, I decided not to let God inside of me. I walked in suspicion of God, and of all of his characteristics as described in the Bible--I stepped around him in a wide circuit that included occultism, witchcraft, and atheism.

Then I came to Christ, and I reconciled with him . . . and I came to know a new fear--a fear imposed by religion. It was a fear of truth.

From somewhere along the way--I'm not sure where--I learned that God was a caprcious deity who "chastised" and "corrected" those who misstepped, to the point that making a mistake became a terror more palpable than any other terror I had known--except for death. In the name of "appeasing" my God, I participated in slander, prejudice, and the worst forms of judgmentalism. In a church where people were often pressured to leave when they didn't conform, I participated in their ostracization--in a movement that often judged those outside of it as "rebellious," "anti-Christian," or "evil," I became a steadfast adherent.

I hurt a lot of people along the way--people I should have called "brother" and "friend."

I'm sorry.

To all of those people (some of whom may read this letter), I say, you were right--right about me, right about Christians, and right not to let what you knew to be true fall before the force of a crushing, if suspect, ideology of religion. I wish I could have seen that 3 or 4 years ago, when the new-ness of my reconciliation with God was so present in my life . . . however, my reconciliation with truth (which is one and the same with God) has enabled me to recover some of that spiritual beauty I thought I had lost.

I will not compromise what I know to be true for what a congregation, a Christian, or a spiritual leader says I should believe to be true. I will not compromise a purity that God has woven into me for a pseudo-purity of rules, restrictions, and idiotic assumptions. I will not pretend to be anyone other than I am--nor will I ask anyone else to.

I am.

I was.

I will be.

And I will inspire others to make the same confession with me--so help me God.