Twelve Strange Things I Used to Do When I Was an Evangelical
Growing up and moving on from my early Christian roots

When I was an evangelical Christian, I sat through so many sermons about sin, judgment, and the coming wrath of God that I was pretty much convinced that God was mostly unimpressed with me.
That’s putting it mildly.
Every sermon seemed to be about how I was letting God down somehow, followed by a three-step plan on how to do better. There are only so many times that you can be told that you are a wicked and depraved sinner before it damages your psyche. It caused me to live in a state of perpetual anxiety.
In fact, when I was a teenager, I was so scared of upsetting God that when I would willingly commit some kind of sin, it was always followed by days of contrition and repentance, sometimes accompanied by tears that I legitimately cried because I didn’t want God to reject me. You can imagine how often I came before the Lord with the willing sins of a teenage boy. I was caught in a vicious cycle of doing things that the church told me were naughty and then begging God not to condemn me to hell.
Subsequently, I was terrified of dying as well. What would happen when I stood before God? Would I be cast into the eternal fire? Or would he welcome me into my heavenly home?
Three decades later, I am only now becoming fully aware of just how toxic this kind of religion is. When I look back on it all, I realize that many of the things that I did to please and appease God were merely superstitions dressed up as religious fervor.
You will think I’m stupid, but here are some ridiculous things I did when I was a young evangelical Christian.
Praying the “just in case” prayer
I always prayed what I call the “just in case” prayer before bed when I was a child. It goes like this:
Now I lay me down to sleep Pray the Lord, my soul to keep But if at morn, I do not wake Pray the Lord, my soul to take
I prayed this each night, just in case I happened to die in my sleep, as extra insurance on my immortal soul.
Never forgetting a sin
When I would pray and ask God to forgive me of my sins, I spent a long time listing pretty much everything I could think of, from fighting with my little sister to saying a swear word at school to thinking naughty thoughts. I didn’t want to miss a single sin because I was convinced that God would hold me accountable for the one thing I forgot to mention.
Always praying before take-off
I’m not scared of flying.
Flying is nice.
But, I am scared of falling from thirty thousand feet in an uncontrollable dive inside an airplane whose wings have fallen off. Consequently, whenever I went on a plane trip anywhere, I always prayed before take-off: “Lord, if this is the end, please accept me into your Kingdom.”
I still haven’t been in a plane crash.
And I have decided if God wasn’t going to accept me before take-off, then praying that stupid little prayer won’t make any difference.
Being perfect on Christmas Day
As a kid, I always thought that it was especially wrong to sin on Jesus’s birthday. So, I would make every effort to be good on the 25th of December. Even in the throes of adolescence, never once on the 25th of December did I indulge in the kind of guilty pleasure that causes good evangelical Christian boys all sorts of guilt and shame despite the complete harmlessness of it.
I really don’t think the Lord cared.
Praying for a girlfriend
As a teenager, I prayed to the Lord for a suitable girlfriend. He sent me Tracy Manson when I was 14. We went and saw ‘The Lion King’ at the movies. We held hands. I bought her a cheap gold bracelet for her birthday.
I thanked God for answering my prayers.
We broke up two months later.

Saving my friend’s souls
Not only was I concerned about the eternal destiny of my own soul, but I also carried the full weight of my friend’s souls as well. I was taught that if I didn’t share the “good news” with them, I would be held accountable for the fact that they spent eternity in Hell.
We were told vivid stories of our school friends looking up at us from Hell as they burned and begged, “Why didn’t you tell me about Jesus?”
It doesn’t make Heaven sound very pleasant, does it?
Now, I think if souls need saving, that’s God’s job. It’s far too much pressure and responsibility for any human to have to bear.
Casting out the demons
Whenever we moved into a new house, I would always pray over my room, just in case there were any lingering demons left behind by the previous occupants. I was taught that we are caught in a constant battle between the forces of good and evil, and Christians were to be vigilant at all times.
How exhausting.
Superstitious nonsense.
Forcing myself to read the Bible
I was told that good Christians should read the Bible every single day. So, that is what I did. Before the age of 12, I had read the Bible cover-to-cover. I suffered through the snoozefest that is Leviticus, and although I had no idea what John was smoking when he wrote the book of Revelation, I read every single word — all because I thought that would make God happy.
As a kid, most of it made no sense.
Making a thousand recommitments
In the evangelical church in the eighties and nineties, it was fashionable to give an altar call at the end of a sermon where people could get up out of their seats and come down to the front of the church if they wanted to make a commitment to Christ. It was often accompanied by all kinds of emotive language and even some ethereal-sounding keyboard pad just to make it ‘feel’ like God was in the room.
I reckon I’ve ended up down the front of a church about a dozen times or more. I suppose I just wanted to be extra sure that God understood how I felt.
Once was probably enough for him.
Giving to make God give
I was a sucker for the prosperity doctrine.
I was taught that if I gave financially to God (which really meant ‘the church’), then God would pour out so many blessings on me that my ‘cup’ would overflow. It was a ‘give-to-get’ system that I now see as both stupid and manipulative. As if God needs to be paid off in order to bless us! Please!
I once gave $10,000 in a single offering. I am a sucker, and I wish I could get that money back and give it to something good.

Begging for God to notice me
I remember attending a Pentecostal youth conference as an impressionable teenager. A preacher spoke of the blind man in the Gospel of Mark who sat by the side of the road and, upon hearing that Jesus had just passed by, began to shout at the top of his lungs, “Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!” When the people around him tried to shut him up, he shouted all the more! “Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!” Sure enough, Jesus returned to the blind man and restored his sight.
I like to think that Jesus was moved by love and compassion for the hurting man, and that is what precipitated his action in that man’s life. However, the Pentecostal preacher had a different take on the story.
Rather than focusing on the heart of Jesus, he zeroed in on the actions of the blind man. “Did you notice that Jesus passed by the blind man? But did he stop the first time? No! He kept on walking! What was it that made Jesus turn around and come back?” Yelled the preacher with great evangelistic fervor.
He concluded that it was the blind man’s desperate yelling that made Jesus come back. Then he made us all close our eyes and imagine that Jesus had just walked past us and ignored us. “There he goes!” said the Preacher man, as the music from the worship band swelled behind him, “Jesus is walking away from you! What are you going to do? Cry out to him now!”
That is how I found myself on my knees, fervently praying that Jesus wouldn’t pass me by. “Please! Please come back, Jesus!” I pleaded through tears, wondering if Jesus would even notice me in the room full of crowded teenagers who were all vying for a piece of Jesus’s attention.
I’m pretty sure Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and gently whispered in my ear: “There’s no need to yell, Son. I’m right here next to you, and I never left.”
But I was so busy yelling that I never heard him
Trying to make God proud
So much of what I did when I was part of the evangelical church system — even the very good things I did — was really an effort to make myself feel that God was okay with me.
I helped the poor. I gave my money. I volunteered. I tried to save souls. I preached and evangelized. I tried especially hard to manage my sin.
Then I burned out.
And despite all my religious activity, I only ever felt that God just barely tolerated me. What a great tragedy.
Maybe — just maybe — it was because I was pursuing something I already had. I adore my three children. They don’t have to do anything to earn that. If only I understood that God the Father sees me in the same way I see my own children.
Where I find myself now
I look back on the silly things I used to do to curry favor with God, preserve my life from the flames of Hell, and manipulate God to do my bidding, and I have to laugh.
I reckon that God laughs, too.
Not in a mocking way, but in the same way that I laugh at my eight-year-old daughter when she tries to make pancakes and fails. The shadow of my evangelical self still tries to get me to believe that God is angry with me, but I think God is delighted and just enjoys watching me grow up.
Once I feared him.
Now I love him.
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Dan Foster is the author of “Leaving Church, Finding God: Discovering Faith Beyond Organized Religion.”
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