I grew up middle class in the 1980s and 1990s, Minnesota and Tennessee, USA. Baptized and born into WELS church, though my family left in 1993 or 1994 when they started to get caught up in watching Trinity Broadcasting Network and doing "end times" speculations (believed the world was ending in 2008 based on poor, wrongly divided, out-of-context Scripture reading, sadly).
My early childhood, I remember quite fondly. But my family is an example of why doing Bible study at home, away from church bodies and others, can be a prideful thing, leading to lots of error and some very weird theology.
My older brother committed suicide in 1997 at 16 1/2 years old. He thought he had to hurry and get married since we believed the world was ending soon. We were early users of the Internet, and his online girlfriend was based in California. He had his driver license and decided to go one day and drive all the way there. The girl rejected him, and being probably dehydrated from the long drive (as well as an impulsive teenager), he used the gun he brought for protection, on himself instead.
I was 12 1/2 at the time. I became a rather withdrawn teenager after that. My family did a mixture of homeschooling (then a pretty novel thing) and public schooling. Prior to college, I went to Kindergarten, 4th, and 7th grade for public school -- every other year, I was homeschooled. We didn't really have much of an organized curriculum -- some Bob Jones books there, some ED Hirsch books there, but I was an autodidact who loved to learn, so I actually went to college a year early due to a high GED score and scholarship. I did well academically, but graduated right before the recession, so I never did establish myself in any kind of job or career.
There was also a time where I drifted from the faith. As an adolescent, I was an active user of Usenet groups. Being a quirky person, I was really into 1970s progressive rock music then, and most fans of that genre on the Usenet groups were atheistic sorts who thought they were much smarter than everyone else. I grew up thinking I was much smarter than everyone else as well (parents told me and my older brother how much smarter we supposedly were than other kids all the time -- sadly humility wasn't a well-taught moral principle in the home), so I eventually got caught up in their patterns of thought, and started to become convinced that being really smart actually wasn't compatible with religious faith.
My parents actually didn't struggle too much with me becoming agnostic for awhile, as my dad taught a heresy that people can be saved after they die, so he never worried about it.
I met my future husband in 2004, a year before I returned to the faith. He remains agnostic to this day, but is fine with me attending WELS church. My family never opposed the union.
This is getting a bit long, so I'll summarize some other main points.
Stuff my family did well: I was taught the basics about Jesus despite lots of bad theology; parents had a good marriage and remained married until my mother's passing in 2018; I was taught to not be prejudiced for the most part (except my mom was anti-Japanese, having been born literally on Pearl Harbor Day and hearing anti-Japanese rhetoric a lot herself growing up); I was given lots of love and encouragement; I didn't grow up with loads of legalism, politics, or other extremely strict expectations of women, etc. (I don't have any hang-ups that many others my age have)
Stuff my family didn't do well: I wasn't taught much about moral principles or how to do well in groups (my family emphasized the more loving parts of God, all while paradoxically emphasizing Ayn Rand individualism), my family's theology was very weird and I had to spend much of the 2010s learning about denominations and what most Christians actually believe; the lack of wide socializing (kind of odd given that my dad himself is extremely extroverted) made me constantly surprised when I learned about behaviors and traditions that my family didn't emphasize growing up
My early childhood, I remember quite fondly. But my family is an example of why doing Bible study at home, away from church bodies and others, can be a prideful thing, leading to lots of error and some very weird theology.
My older brother committed suicide in 1997 at 16 1/2 years old. He thought he had to hurry and get married since we believed the world was ending soon. We were early users of the Internet, and his online girlfriend was based in California. He had his driver license and decided to go one day and drive all the way there. The girl rejected him, and being probably dehydrated from the long drive (as well as an impulsive teenager), he used the gun he brought for protection, on himself instead.
I was 12 1/2 at the time. I became a rather withdrawn teenager after that. My family did a mixture of homeschooling (then a pretty novel thing) and public schooling. Prior to college, I went to Kindergarten, 4th, and 7th grade for public school -- every other year, I was homeschooled. We didn't really have much of an organized curriculum -- some Bob Jones books there, some ED Hirsch books there, but I was an autodidact who loved to learn, so I actually went to college a year early due to a high GED score and scholarship. I did well academically, but graduated right before the recession, so I never did establish myself in any kind of job or career.
There was also a time where I drifted from the faith. As an adolescent, I was an active user of Usenet groups. Being a quirky person, I was really into 1970s progressive rock music then, and most fans of that genre on the Usenet groups were atheistic sorts who thought they were much smarter than everyone else. I grew up thinking I was much smarter than everyone else as well (parents told me and my older brother how much smarter we supposedly were than other kids all the time -- sadly humility wasn't a well-taught moral principle in the home), so I eventually got caught up in their patterns of thought, and started to become convinced that being really smart actually wasn't compatible with religious faith.
My parents actually didn't struggle too much with me becoming agnostic for awhile, as my dad taught a heresy that people can be saved after they die, so he never worried about it.
I met my future husband in 2004, a year before I returned to the faith. He remains agnostic to this day, but is fine with me attending WELS church. My family never opposed the union.
This is getting a bit long, so I'll summarize some other main points.
Stuff my family did well: I was taught the basics about Jesus despite lots of bad theology; parents had a good marriage and remained married until my mother's passing in 2018; I was taught to not be prejudiced for the most part (except my mom was anti-Japanese, having been born literally on Pearl Harbor Day and hearing anti-Japanese rhetoric a lot herself growing up); I was given lots of love and encouragement; I didn't grow up with loads of legalism, politics, or other extremely strict expectations of women, etc. (I don't have any hang-ups that many others my age have)
Stuff my family didn't do well: I wasn't taught much about moral principles or how to do well in groups (my family emphasized the more loving parts of God, all while paradoxically emphasizing Ayn Rand individualism), my family's theology was very weird and I had to spend much of the 2010s learning about denominations and what most Christians actually believe; the lack of wide socializing (kind of odd given that my dad himself is extremely extroverted) made me constantly surprised when I learned about behaviors and traditions that my family didn't emphasize growing up
