Religious Views

Though I take great pride in what my people did to help build Middle America, ironically, when I became a teenager, it was also the restrictiveness of these religion-based, traditional values that I had to escape.

I went from belonging to a community to looking for a place to belong. I had to find my own way.

These kind of ‘religious people’ seem to feel they can dictate to the rest of us what’s proper and what’s not proper. Allow me, please, in my faith — and I grew up with this stuff when I was a kid, the hellfire and damnation kind of thing in my own Midwest where it was rampant in the Bible Belt. Man, if there was anything that was going to keep me away from a church, that was it — that kind of in-your-face, Bible in one hand, finger in the other, you know — and I don’t buy that.

I’ve had some real difficult personal struggles in my own life, but as much as I’ve gone in that direction I’ve also taken it and it’s helped lead me back into scripture in a way that says the cost of discipleship is a very heavy cost. It’s not a flag-waving thing. It’s not something where you do an external act of contrition and repentance and suddenly call yourself saved. The idea is that you don’t make a big deal of that. It’s the cost once you have met Christ. Now what do you do with your life? I think that’s what causes the struggle. You know, I think once God has you, you know He’s got you. … The difficulties that I’ve had, the struggles, the battles that I’ve had are not things which are to be hung out on a banner. They’re not things that I’m proud of. What I did first of all requires me to be repentant, and if what’s in my heart is different from what I’m doing, then I need to ask God to forgive me. And then in the responsiveness to that forgiveness, go and sin no more.  Click here to see David’s complete interview from The 700 Club program.