I still remember the day I discovered the Bible wasn't what I thought it was.

The sun streamed through the open window as the cool breeze flowed into the room. I lay on my bed on a lazy weekend morning reading a book. Pretty normal for me. 

The book challenged me. It made me think a little differently, but not so much I was uncomfortable with it. Until…

The author noted that 1 Kings recorded Solomon having 40,000 stables of horses and 2 Chronicles said it was 4,000.

WhAt?!?

Surely, this was misinformation. There were no contradictions in the Bible. I looked it up for myself. 

I saw two different numbers: 40,000 and 4,000. 

I frantically read around for context. I needed some sort of explanation for why these texts were different. 

I found none.

Normally, I could have rationalized this away. But here was the problem: these were numbers. 

You can't pretend to use different counting methods to say 40,000 and 4,000 are somehow really the same number. 

The fact was that I had discovered an inconsistency in the Holy Bible.

On top of that, because these were numbers, it meant that only one of them could be correct. The other one was just simply…wrong. 

Yes, there I said it. There, I admitted it. Something in the Bible was wrong.

I felt like the cliff that I had been standing on so firmly had just crumbled and dropped me freefalling into an abyss.

Now what? 

I couldn't ignore this. I dove in deeper. And, I discovered that the biblical texts were littered with contradictions. 

I called a friend who was a student pastor. She said, “Yeah, they teach that stuff in seminary.”

WhAt?!?

I bought book after book after book. I read Marcus Borg. I think I purchased nearly everything John Shelby Spong had written up to that point. I read everything I could get my hands on.

A switch had flipped inside of me. Rapid growth and transformation. I had stepped off the path of a biblical literalist and sprinted down the path of academic biblical scholarship. 

Even better, with my background in the study of history, I thrived on this new path. It vitalized me spiritually in ways I could never have imagined before. I felt like I was integrating more of who I was into my spiritual life. I was becoming more fully Me.

It was a conversion experience of sorts. I like to think of that day resting on that bed with the book that would change my life as the day God saved me from fundamentalism. 

At the time, when I was in the midst of extreme confusion, it was excruciating. And I certainly understand why people would resist going there. I understand why people might default to the safety of, “I don't understand it, and I'm just going to assume my church leaders know what they're talking about and just keep believing it.”

But, if you want to truly grow spiritually, it's not always going to be comfortable, painless, or even safe. You have to be willing to take risks with uncertainty. You're going to have to embrace restlessness. You're going to have to hunger for “more”.

The bottom line is this…

My seemingly stable foundation had to crumble and drop me into the abyss so that I could discover what may be one of the most profound spiritual truths of my life…

I didn't need it to stand on, because deep within I already knew how to fly.