Shiny Happy People — Bill Gothard and other religious teachings
The pervasive religious cult reached as far as New Zealand and impacted my life.
From around 1982 until 1998, I called myself a Christian. A friend took me to a high school girls' bible study. I’ve thought about what drew me to bible study. Maybe it was just that my friend was going and I decided to see what it was like or perhaps as a teenager with some teenage angst I was looking to belong somewhere.
The local Presbyterian Church was popular and some of my friends were going to Sunday services so I went along. It wasn’t your average Presbyterian Church, there was something much deeper going on. It was evangelical, closely following the gospel, and fundamental, believing in the infallibility of the bible kind of church. You had to be born again, to be saved and then you would have a place in heaven.
Back then I was young and naïve and had no idea of the rabbit hole that being “born again” was going to lead me down and that it would take over my life for 15 years.
