Looking back now, it’s no surprise that I grew into a man pulled in two directions at once. The fracture was there long before adulthood — planted in childhood, hardened in adolescence, and carried like a hairline crack through every decision I made afterward.
In Suffering Blessings, I told you how church was both sanctuary and shelling for me. It was the only place I felt safe, yet also the place where fear of God — not the reverent kind, but the terrified, punitive kind — seeped into my bones.
In Fighting to Forgive, I told you how the bullying that scarred me at home and school eventually twisted into a reflexive, fist-first way of surviving.
Those two forces — spiritual fear and physical self-defense — became the double helix of my early faith.
One strand wanted God.
The other didn’t trust Him.
And that is where double-mindedness is born.
The Gospel They Gave Me — And What They Didn’t
As a boy, I was taught a version of the Gospel that was technically true but spiritually incomplete. I was told:
- Sin sends you to hell.
- Jesus paid the penalty.
- Ask Him into your heart.
- Stop sinning.
- Try harder tomorrow.
The Scriptures they quoted were real:
“Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9:22)
“The wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23)
But the power of the Spirit, the indwelling life of Christ, the freedom of grace, the joy of obedience — those were foreign concepts to us.
Holiness was preached like a threat, not a promise.
Sanctification was demanded but never explained.
And the “signs that follow those who believe”? Well, those had “ceased,” or so they told us.
So I grew up with a kind of spiritual math:
I sin.
God gets angry.
I apologize.
Maybe He forgives me.
Repeat.
Forever.
This wasn’t sanctification.
It was spiritual anxiety disorder.
And yet I prayed the sinner’s prayer with all the sincerity a child can muster. I asked Jesus into my heart, fully believing something miraculous would happen.
But no miracle came. At least not one I could see.
The Boy Who Stayed Guilty
Night after night I would lie awake, rehearsing my sins like a child cross-examining himself on trial. If I apologized twice yesterday, I would force myself to do it four times today, and eight tomorrow — doubling it like spiritual penance.
I wasn’t repenting.
I was terrified.
I wasn’t trusting Christ.
I was trying to appease Him.
I wasn’t resting in grace.
I was running from condemnation.
And because I didn’t understand that the Spirit transforms us over time — not instantly by emotional voltage — I assumed something worse:
Jesus hadn’t moved in at all.
My childish conclusion was simple and devastating:
“If I’m still sinning, I must not be saved.”
And yet — and here’s the irony — part of me didn’t actually want Him to move in. Not fully. Not in a way that would change everything.
Somewhere deep inside, I wanted freedom
…to run
…to chase
…to taste
…to test
…to sow my wild oats without reaping the consequences.
That seed of rebellion didn’t come from nowhere. It came from pain. From fear. From the bruises in Fighting to Forgive that taught me power was something I had to take or defend, never receive.
So I prayed for the Spirit to take over,
but secretly hoped He wouldn’t.
The Whisper That Fed the Wound
And right there — in that tension — the Deceiver found his foothold.
“You did your part. You prayed. You asked. If God hasn’t taken over, that’s His fault, not yours.”
“You have time.”
“Enjoy yourself until He finally shows up.”
The lie was subtle: shift the blame to God.
If I sinned, it was because He hadn’t “fixed” me.
If I wandered, it was because He hadn’t “claimed” me.
If I spiraled, it was because He hadn’t “intervened.”
But Scripture held up a mirror I didn’t want to see:
“People loved the darkness rather than the Light…” (John 3:19–21)
I wasn’t abandoned.
I was avoiding.
I wasn’t forgotten.
I was resisting.
I wasn’t unfilled.
I was double-minded.
Two Masters, One Heart Torn in Half
The double-minded child became a double-minded young man, and later a double-minded adult.
I went to church.
I tithed.
I prayed.
I knew Scripture.
But I also chased wealth like it carried the cure to every childhood wound. I wanted influence, power, security, and applause — the things that had always been withheld from me.
I told myself it was for noble reasons. I wanted to protect the “Richies” of the world. I wanted to fight injustice. I wanted to help people who couldn’t help themselves.
But the truth was simpler and uglier:
I wanted to never feel powerless again.
The bullied kid wanted to become the one who could not be touched.
The guilty kid wanted to become the one who could not be condemned.
The fearful kid wanted to become the one who controlled everything.
No wonder Jesus said:
“No one can serve two masters…” (Matthew 6:24)
I wasn’t choosing between God and money.
I was choosing between God and myself.
Between surrender and self-protection.
Between obedience and autonomy.
Between light and shadow.
And that fracture only widens with time.
“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:8, KJV)
The instability showed up everywhere — in relationships, in decisions, in moral compromises, in the slow slide into self-justification that set the stage for the collapse I describe in Rock Bottom.
The Bridge to Rock Bottom
Double-mindedness didn’t destroy me overnight.
It eroded me.
Little by little, I became the man who prayed for God’s blessing while living as if I were my own savior. I adored the Jesus who forgives but sidestepped the Jesus who commands. I wanted the peace of God without the death of self.
And at some point, inevitably, everything in my life reached a point where the crack could no longer hold.
The “Russian Roulette” guilt.
The self-inflicted wounds.
The failed marriage.
The legalistic fear.
The desperate search for loopholes.
The sense of impending judgment.
The collapse of the world I built.
All of that belongs to the next chapter — but its roots are here.
This is where the fracture began.
This is where the wanderings took shape.
This is where the old man dug in his heels.
This is where I learned how to pray without trusting, obey without surrendering, love God without following Him.
This is where I became
Double-Minded.