It’s hard to stress how much the evangelical church was my entire world.
I went to public schools. This was both a curse and a blessing. Yeah, I was able to get out of the bubble somewhat to go to school, but it also meant that I was always on the “front lines.”
See, we were taught to be little “warriors for Christ,” and by being on the front lines all of the time, I got good at learning how to put up defenses. I got to see things first hand that my private school friends only heard about. (Homeschooling, while commonplace today, wasn’t so much back then.)
I got really good at “guarding my heart” and not letting “things of the world” influence me. This still has an impact on my life today. I learned to shun things that I knew I wasn’t suppose to listen to, like rock music.
Chris Stroop put it really well recently:
The day David Bowie died I had to go look up who he was, and what sort of music he made. The same with lots of other pop culture references. There’s a ton of movies I haven’t seen. A song will come on the radio that everyone else in the car can sing along to, and it’s the first time I’ve heard it.
The evangelical bubble is very thick, and very real. I grew up living in the world, but I was never really a part of it. 🙁
Leaving the Flock 