One of the most empowering moments of my life was when a professor gave me permission to start a paper with "I used to think…"

"I used to think Starbucks coffee was good," I wrote. "I am ashamed of my past and the allegiance I gave them. The guaranteed uniformity of the bitter dark roast does not compare to the ever-so-smooth nodes of the local, Barista Parlor in Nashville. Nashville coffee, yes, Nashville, has changed my life." If you know what an $8 coffee that takes 10 minutes to make tastes like, you know what I'm talking about. I have repented from my admiration of coffee that was created for convenient mass consumerism. I have tasted good coffee and though it costs me more, I will never go back.

Before I moved to Nashville I lived in the suburbs of North Texas where a specific form of Christianity was expected. My faith was strong because of my color-coded Bible and regular church attendance. I was deemed as a leader because I outwardly expressed my disapproval of the LGBTQ+ organization on campus and advocated to have their posters removed from the walls. This is what I thought it meant to deny myself and take up my cross according to the gospels.

My environment told me that everything I learned from it was how the world worked and how the world wanted (and needed) me to be. I could not bring my doubts and questions and intellectual honesty to the table because it would cost me my faith. Somewhere in the rhythm of caking on makeup and memorizing scripture I abandoned my consciousness. My value was based on how many friends I could recruit to church, how pure and innocent my relationship with my boyfriend appeared, and how deep I planted my feet when arguing my beliefs. I was lost in a life I didn't create for myself.

Never mind my inner Knowing telling myself that the positions I held were damaging and didn't make sense. I was told to abandon myself for the sake of evangelical doctrine - so I did.

The day I began being a participant of my own thought process was the day I became saved.

As a Faith & Social Justice major, I'm required to take numerous theology and spiritual formation courses. My freshman self, fresh out of 18 years of conservative evangelicalism, was excited to be taking a course titled Vocation & Christian Life - that was, until, a gay, Baptist pastor visited my class. The course was all about listening to stories of other people and discovering the beauty of our own, but this speaker didn't have a beautiful story. No. He was living in sin and obviously didn't know how to discern the voice of God very well.

Why am I the only one in the college of theology outraged by this? I should write a letter to the President. What kind of Christian university do I go to? Doesn't the Bible clearly spell out that homosexuality is the worst sin one could live in? Let alone manage a congregation in?

I had an awakening.

Why do I associate being gay with evil? This guy doesn't seem bad. Who am I to determine who is able to pastor a church? Would Jesus flip tables if he found out a gay person was preaching in his church? Where else in my life am I quick to condemn? Why do I believe anything that I do?

The deconstruction began. My life began.

I continued asking myself hard questions that left me feeling confused and angry. I allowed myself to bring intuition and critical thinking when reading scripture. I looked up from the world that was created for me and began to see the world for what it is. I gave myself permission to disagree with pastors on stage and educated myself on social issues I had previously turned a blind eye to. I stopped settling for convenient coffee.

If you aren't questioning the values and texts that you hold as authoritative, then you are merely coinciding to someone else's ideology and self-benefiting beliefs. When I refer to the Bible as sacred, I am recognizing a beautifully diverse collection of authors and forms of literature that invite us to wrestle with the complexity of the human experience. We cannot look to it as a black-and-white instruction manual on how to live because, well, (*bubble burst*) it wasn't made to be one.

Sometimes I miss the days when I could attend a bible study or retweet a verse without bringing my intellect or questions to the forefront of my mind. It was easy to be naive. One time I gained 350+ Twitter followers in a day because of a thread I wrote condemning people who question the authority of scripture. It was so much easier to stand in faith with a fist in the air instead of open palms.

When I bring my whole self to God, I can't help but see that the only way to live by the Bible is to love and affirm my LGBTQ+, immigrant, and poor neighbors.

Now when I read scripture, I don't feel guilty when relating with people who wrestled with and questioned God - their stories are what it means to be human. I don't feel the urge to disregard its contradictions because they are what makes the text beautiful and inviting. The goodness of my religion is judged by the ways in which I vote, engage in my community, and love - not how high I can lift my hands in worship.

When I was willing to risk everything I'd ever known for the possibility of something more true, I found love. I found the gospel.