I Grew Up Believing The Earth Was Flat And Dinosaurs Were Planted To Test Our Faith
“Jesus will return within the next decade, mark my words,” said my father as we walked home from church. It was 1998, and I had just turned six.
Secretly, I was gutted. If judgement day comes so soon, I’ll never learn to drive, I remember worrying. But the second I thought this, I was flooded with guilt. According to Psalm 139, “God knows what I am going to say before I say it. He knows my thoughts from afar. Like a caged bird, he’s got me surrounded.”
For 21 years, I earnestly believed this. Growing up, it seemed logical, because God was omnipresent.
At home, he was there.Christian memorabilia cluttered every room. Hand-written Bible verses and straw crosses were pinned to the walls. Even above the toilet, a poster read: “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever”.
In the car, he was there. Our Honda was an indoctrination mobile, the glove compartment crammed with sermon tapes describing hell in graphic detail. Those who rejected Christ, the narrator warned, would be “thrown into the furnace, where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
At school, he was there. A wooden crucifix hung in the hall, as though Jesus watched as we ate our meals, which always began with grace and ended with a hymn. Our headteacher would praise God rapturously, swaying at the piano.
On holiday, he was there. Summers were spent at Christian retreats, filled with like-minded, God-fearing families, who prayed in tongues and healed the sick. My life was an echo chamber of Christianity. That’s because my father, a born-again Christian, believed in the six-day creation narrative, biblical giants, and flat-earth theory. Interpreting the scriptures literally, he believed the earth had four corners, based on a prophecy in the book of Revelation, where angels guard each one in a war against God’s enemies last days.
He believed 90% of the population were hell-bound. Meaning well, he did everything he could to ensure me and my siblings were in the...
