Musician Kirk Franklin has opened up about how Christian subculture—rules, dress codes and worship and sermon standards—caused him to question if God even existed.
“Even then, there was something about the Christian church environment that made me feel like I was left out of some secret, private meeting.
“I didn’t always feel like quoting a favorite author from a book in the Bible, and I didn’t understand why everyone at times seemed so perfect and super weirdly happy,” Franklin writes. “I sometimes questioned if God was even real. Was His Word even true? I seemed more like a heretic than a part of the ‘Christian Club.'”
The answer to life’s ultimate question, Franklin determines, isn’t how you respond in church or even if you live your life by Christian standards.
“It’s the yanking and pulling and doubting and running and chasing and falling and questioning and crying and dancing and listening that’s important,” he writes.
Too often, Franklin writes, people are so focused on being “churchy” that they fail to be “chasers.” That is, people get so focused on man’s standards and appearances, they end up walking away from Christianity because they find nothing of substance.
But God’s standard supersedes human ones.
