A Soul Call from Prison: How Yoga and Taoism Cured My Crises with Cocaine and Christianity: Soul Call Series, #1

By Scott Brooks Jr.

What does it take to survive 322 months in federal prison?    I had to bend over, grab my ankles, close my eyes, and breathe through the pain.   That's right!....

I practiced yoga.  Part humorous memoir, part spiritual self help book, this work  highlights the mistakes I made which led to half a life spent behind the razor wire.  It also shows how yoga and meditation helped me survive the experience with my sanity in tact and allowed me now to look back on the experience with almost as much gratitude as regret.  This is Volume I in the Soul Call Series: a line of books designed to help people overcome difficult situations and learn to live meaningful lives no matter their circumstances or surroundings.  I wrote each with the inmate in mind, but these books will help anyone live a more meaningful life, no matter which side of the gun towers they find themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Look Inside Personal Growth LLC
• Release date: Jul 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215124772

Scott Brooks Jr.

Brooks used various forms of meditation to survive 23 years in federal prison.  During that time, he found much inspiration from the collected works of the Kolbrin.  He hopes his writing will help his readers through any ordeal they face.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Andy Warhol owned a telephone plated in solid gold.  With it, the artist claimed to speak with God.  Imagine having a two-way conversation with heaven anytime you wanted, the answers to life's mysteries on speed dial, no more doubts, no more worries.  Of course, Warhol's long-distance-carrier was a heavy dose of LSD.  My prayers never got a dial tone.   Prayer seemed a hopeless act.  Like two cups with their connecting string cut, my religious endeavors heard no reply.  Instead of answers, each question led to ten more.  Questions like:

What is religion's purpose?  Is it the opiate of the masses?  Is it a way to subjugate the weak?  A means to reach political aims?  Is it good insurance, just in case?  Can it provide real answers?  Is any religion, right?  Are all the others wrong?  For that matter, does God even exist?  Can it be proved?

These questions have dogged me most of my life.  To my parents, the answers came easy.  Their faith was the cornerstone of their existence—and my upbringing—but I could never relate to it.  Christianity's doctrine seemed flawed, and the Bible's contradictions and paradoxes caused me to dismiss it; yet, this defiant act did nothing to fill the void I felt inside.  I would guess many of you feel this same emptiness. 

Historians would tell you our culture is the richest to have ever existed.  We certainly enjoy higher living standards than third-world countries and our own past generations.  Advancing technology continually produces new toys.  We have more free time to play.  Swanky websites tease us with exotic pleasures a few keystrokes away.  The world shrank over the past two decades.  It's not as big as it once was.  With a few exceptions, we've become a global neighborhood, proud of our civil liberties, but are we happy?

Judging by the financial statements of any pharmaceutical company, making that claim becomes difficult.  Due to underpaid teachers and overcrowded classrooms, doctors casually prescribe strong narcotics to rambunctious children.  Legal opiates, competing with smack, have created an epidemic of junkies in this country.  People swallow psychotropic pills as a Band Aid, masking symptoms, but never realize a cure to their anxiety or depression.  But take heart, gramps—Glaxo Smith Kline guarantees to keep you rock hard until the day you die, blissfully pumping away on grandma or the younger model you traded her for.

Most people have no idea where happiness comes from.  Some seek it through an outside source.  Others resign themselves to perpetual misery, believing that's the best they can achieve.  We all practice escapism using different methods.  The worst-off turn to suicide.

For years, we've watched the country's obesity rates soar, while the uninspired fed their fears, their disappointments, and their sadness.  Children perpetuate the cycle, following their parents' lead.  The nation's health care crisis could be corrected by a simple shift towards balanced nutrition and exercise, but instead of improved lifestyle choices, people book surgery rooms for gastric balloons, bands, and similar procedures.

Where is the hope for a better way?  Is it in God?  Where does happiness come from?  Our culture says it's caused by outside stimuli.  Marketers preach our purpose is to accumulate the most stuff, to be envied, to look better, and have more than the next person.  Some intuitively know this will lead to an empty life.  It takes much more for others to realize this plain fact.  Unfortunately, I was a slow learner.

My life began with all the opportunities a person could hope for.  I didn't suffer neglect and was never abused.  My home wasn't broken.  I never wanted.  The typical stereotypes you hear about on the nightly news—those which fill America's overcrowded prisons—did not apply to me.  My parents' love for one another was never in doubt.  They shared it abundantly with my sister and me.  The two of them gave us all the care and moral support any child could hope to receive.  Our needs were promptly met, along with most of our wants.  This included a chance at college, an opportunity they never had for themselves.

In spite of these blessings, I was unhappy.  I suffered disillusionment.  My life felt contrived and purposeless.  If there was a God, He appeared to indiscriminately dispense favor and punishment.  This unfairness made me angry.  As a result, I bought into the message everyone in our culture is bombarded with:  Money brings happiness, and life is for the taking.

I pursued all the hedonistic pleasures life has to offer.  I sought every enticing diversion, looking for fulfillment, and financed those desires by selling drugs.  To provide myself with good times and easy women, I ignored the potential consequences.  I chased every craving and never said no.  This carefree attitude brought initial pleasure, but eventually created more pain than it was worth.  Finding myself a confused cokehead and convicted felon, I still didn't change.  I couldn't.  I honestly did not know a better way to live and lacked the courage to try.

My folks set a fine example.  They lived moral lives, but it never seemed worthwhile.  I thought it weak to meekly surrender to the buffets and blows, trying to stay optimistic when you really felt like screaming.

In spite of the environmental support I had been given, in spite of my early role models, in spite of all the opportunities to succeed:  I began, on April 10, 2000, at age 23, to serve a 322-month, federal prison sentence.  This new life commenced in the opposite environment from that of my childhood.  It was an openly hostile place, where the only person I could count on was myself.  The disillusionment from before was magnified a thousandfold.  I had despised my life, when before me were all these chances for success.  But then they were gone, and suicide seemed the logical next step.

Instead, I began a path of soul searching, an inner and outer journey of discovery.  The search was for God; the goal, to make sense out of life.  The irony is that when I was given every available means of success:  I failed miserably.  Next, I found myself in a situation where there was every reason to give up; yet, because of a Soul Call, I again trampled normal expectations, by discovering a way to live a meaningful life filled with joy, contentment, hope, and power.

Today, I feel compassion towards a world struggling to process so much pain, anger, and hate.  Humanity has the potential for happiness, but few realize it.  We each have the ability to live a better, spirit-filled life.

Although I'm ill-equipped to put my experience into words, I understand the peace I now enjoy is partially due to the written words that have taught me through the years.  Great books, scripture, and written lessons were one of the avenues through which Grace was made available.  My desire is that these words will inspire you to hope, to find a true path, and to experience how close God is. 

Many self-help authors and motivational speakers offer inspiring words, filled with depth and insight, but at the risk of sounding crass, I often see them on television, sharing a tear with Dr. Phil, as they gaze soulfully into camera three; and I'm left wondering how many have had to test their teachings in a dangerous place, with their sanity taxed?

My life has provided a unique journey, from the depths of sorrow and lost hope, to an indescribable feeling of fulfillment.  I want to convey how Grace can be made manifest in your own life, like it was in mine.

This book has a twofold purpose:  First, it is a memoir.  It will highlight the string of bad decisions that led me to prison.  I hope to lend insight to anyone heading down a similar path.  I want you to enjoy this book.  Have fun laughing at the dumbass kid I was, but understand I have deep remorse for the mistakes I made and the people I hurt.  I've made sincere efforts to improve my flaws and find redemption, but I will never be able to erase the pain in my wake.  The humor isn't meant to be disrespectful; it keeps the tears at bay.  (To those whose names I've changed ...  you're welcome.)

The book's second half is the reason behind my writing.  A few years back, I had nearly given up.  My daily prayer involved asking for a speedy death.  I saw no reason to live but was too big of a coward to do it myself.  Thankfully, God didn't grant it either, but He did provide me with a new outlook on life, the human mind, religion, spirituality, and the interconnectedness of these things.

The later chapters will reveal these discoveries.  They will also address a common occurrence I've encountered while teaching others.  I found that many people were drawn to Eastern philosophy, because they felt jaded with the Christian dogma they were exposed to as children.  My studies revealed many things about Jesus and Christianity's origins that are not common knowledge today.  This information has allowed me to release the hostility I once felt towards the religion, see the Christ in a new light, and recognize the Universal Truth underlying the world's major faiths.

My youth was a squandered one.  This book is a meager attempt at rectification.

The poet Kabir once wrote: 

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.  Live your life in such a manner that, when you die, the world will cry, and you rejoice.

God, I'm trying.  This is my story.

PROLOGUE

Hell Has No Bottom , but This Elevator Has Been Going Down for Years

It's been ten years and a thousand tears. Look at the mess I'm in ... a broken nose ... and a broken heart ... and an empty bottle of gin.—Social Distortion

The caddy's bad cylinder vibrated a sour note through my skeleton.  Like a pipe organ with a stuck key, it rattled my skull, intensifying the tightness in my jaw.  I opened my mouth to ease the tension and realized I had been grinding my teeth.  

Every breath came high and shallow, elevating my blood pressure until I could feel a heart beat in my eyes.  My bowels felt watery with too much adrenaline, too much alcohol, and not enough rest, while the spasms in my bladder had reduced its storage capacity to a shot glass.  I dug fingers into my abdomen, trying to soften the knotted muscles.  

As the cramp eased, I leaned into the back seat and closed my eyes, feigning calmness.

My final semester should have been coming to a close.  I should have been thinking about graduation and my future, but instead, I was sitting in an old Cadillac, dressed like a ninja, with a shoulder holster under my coat.  I had changed that much in a few short months.  How did a college kid shift, from studying full time, to kicking in locked doors?  Ego.  Addiction.  One bad choice too many.

I leaned over the driver's seat, checking my reflection in the rear view, making sure the face paint blacked the paleness from my skin.  Trying to hide the tremors in my fingers, I applied more and debated wearing shades.  My blue eyes gleamed in all that artificial darkness.  Anyone getting a close look would remember them.  So, I considered sunglasses but eventually dismissed the idea.  I didn't want to trip over a rock, in the night, and fire a round into my foot.

This wasn't my first job.  Germ and I had collected a quarter-million over the past two weeks, to keep West Coast thugs from busting down our doors.  It would, however, be the first job where the other guys planned to make a stand.  Last week, we tried to resolve the debt peacefully, but they pulled pistols on our partner, Quarterback, and told him the next time he came around they would shoot him.

Some guys, on Germ's list, had lost product in busts.  Some had been ripped off by underlings.  Some had been robbed at gunpoint by strangers.  Some spent Germ's money snorting lines off naked, beach bunnies (Okay, that was me), but these guys—the ones we were paying a visit—they simply decided they weren't going to pay.  They believed we were too weak to make them.

The four of us were about to show them otherwise.

Great.  The shaking spread from my hands to my knees.  I took a deep breath, while clenching my fists and thighs to quell it, but that just radiated the trembling throughout my entire body, like a tuning fork.

Riding shotgun, Cowboy took a long swallow, steadying his nerves the old-fashioned way.

Slow down on those, I said.  We need you clear headed.

Relax, he answered, tilting the Budweiser to vertical.  After tossing the empty bottle out the window, he reached into the cooler for another.

I killed an urge to grab one more myself.  I needed sharp reflexes more than liquid courage.  Maybe things would have turned out differently if Cowboy had used the same restraint.

Pull over, I said.

Jesus Christ.  Do you have to piss again?  Tin Man asked from the driver's seat.

I can do it in here or beside the road.  You decide.

We're almost there, Blue.  Hold it a few more minutes, Germ said.

Alright.

Ten miles further, Germ said, Start slowing down....  Okay, pull to the shoulder.

Woods lined the highway to the right.  A barren field lay to the left. 

Their place is just through those trees....  Tin Man, wait five minutes before circling around.  They live on the first cul-de-sac to the left, Germ said.

I've been there before.

Good.  Back in, turn your headlights off, and leave the motor running.  Any questions?

No.

Germ, Cowboy, and I climbed from the car, stood by the ditch, and pissed one last time.  When we finished, we jumped the canal and paused inside the tree line. 

I couldn't stop fidgeting.  My heart hammered so hard I expected Germ to tell me to keep the noise down.  Instead, the ex-Army Ranger looked me in the eyes and smiled.  I tried to return it as I swallowed stomach acid.

Before heading into the trees, I turned to Cowboy. 

Don't do anything stupid.

Worry about yourself.

Germ disappeared into the dense growth.  I sprinted to catch him.  After fifty meters, the woods opened onto two back yards, a house centered on each.

The one on the left, Germ said.

It had a screened porch.  I jumped the steps, reaching for the door.

Grrr!!  RRuuuff!!  RRuuff!!  

A pit bull snapped at the mesh wire, and I barely mastered another spasm in my bladder.

Around front!  Germ whispered.

I followed them, hoping the people inside would step to the back window, as we flanked them.

Cowboy reached the front first.  Clearing the steps, he drew back a size-fourteen boot and splintered the door around the handle.  It crashed into an adjoining wall, sounding like a gun shot.

He stepped to the right, leveling a forty-five, while I ran inside screaming, Everybody on the ground!

PART ONE:

HOW I GOT I INTO THIS MESS:

Chapter 1

God, We Are Never, Ever, Ever, Getting Back Together

I llusions are like mistresses. We can have many without tying ourselves down to responsibility, but truth insists on marriage. Once a person embraces truth, he is in its ruthless but gentle grasp.- Rabazar Tarz

Why did I go to church three times a week until my eighteenth birthday?  Why did I spend roughly 26,208 hours striking a prayerful pose on an uncomfortable pew?  I wasn't on fire for Jesus.  I might have been full of something, but it wasn't the Holy Spirit.  So, why did I go, you ask?  The answer is simple:  I didn't have a choice. 

Mom and Dad were the Bible thumpers, and their support carried a constant recurring theme: Faith.  It was a vital component in the love they showered. In many ways, their faith was oppressive.  Strangers knew they were Christians by the second minute after introductions.  Any girl I brought home was quickly interrogated about her religious beliefs.  Sometimes, my parents' faith was embarrassing; sometimes, it was warm blanket, but it was always present.  The best example concerns my birth.

My sister was ten when my mother discovered she was pregnant again.  The folks had gotten discouraged after an earlier miscarriage, but following repeated tries, in her early thirties, Mom was expecting a baby.  Unfortunately, the joy was short-lived. She felt a lump.

The doctor confirmed her worst fears.  It was breast cancer.  He suggested an abortion, so she could focus on her own health.  Instead, she had a unilateral mastectomy and postponed chemotherapy until the child was born. 

She keeps an embroidered cross-stitch pattern on her wall, a leftover from this time, it reads, Weeping may endure through a night, but joy cometh in the morning.  Psalm 30:5

Everyone prayed hard during the pregnancy.  Church members laid hands and petitioned God for intervention, and their hope wasn't misplaced.  Mom and I are both alive, each of us evidence to my family's Christian faith.

I was raised in a small town in North Carolina.  Everyone familiar with the story, or members of our church, called me the miracle baby.  These people were convinced God had intervened and commuted our death sentences.  I've spent a lifetime reflecting on that nickname.  A name like that creates pressure.  It's not an easy one like:  Shorty, Stretch, or Red.  As a child, I felt destined for some great act.  God had given me a second chance before my first breath.  This memory has always been with me.  I wore it like an albatross when starting my prison sentence.  Today, it motivates me to change for the better.

When I was young though, maybe the name gave me a sense of entitlement.  Maybe, it caused my mother to go easier on me.  Maybe, my sister was right when she said our parents were more strict with her.  Maybe, Mom's sickness influenced her parenting methods in my favor, or maybe, parents are always more protective of pretty daughters over precocious sons.

Personality-wise, my sister and I share few things in common, but our features show we come from the same gene pool.  Both average height, with blond hair, blue eyes, and cleft chins.  Our appearances reveal our British ancestry.  Mom's and Dad's families both hail from England.  In fact, every surname I can recall, even the most distant relations, all trace back to the island:  Brooks, Wilson, Robeson, Stanley, Alligood, and Purser.

Most things about my childhood were normal.  I felt support and had the freedom to explore passions.  My parents were only dictatorial in one way.  They never demanded law school, only encouraged higher learning.  The weren't the self-obsessed adults screaming from the bleachers, but they dutifully attended all the karate tournaments and wrestling matches. They didn't force-feed anything, except Roman's Road and salvation-through-grace—three indigestible servings a week, Wednesday night and twice on Sunday.

We disagreed on politics, but I always sensed their strong morality.  We disdained each other’s world view but loved despite that.   In some ways, we saw our relationship as a cross we each had to bear, like strangers forced to coexist.  My parents lived by their convictions.  I did right when it suited my agenda.  After more than fifty-five years, they still love each other.  I've never been faithful to a woman and sometimes wonder if I was adopted.

As a child, however, I lived under two illusions:  I fervently believed in Christianity and that I was a good person.  During these early years, I loved going to church.  That's where my friends were.  My social life revolved around the activities there.  We went roller skating, had slumber parties, and visited theme parks, like King's Dominion.

The road trips were my favorites, and the youth leaders were fun to be around.  They were big kids themselves.  My friend, Michael, and I loved to prank them.  I remember one night we spent in a hotel during a trip to Raleigh. 

This movie sucks.  I'm bored, Michael said. Pl

Yeah, me too.  Hey, is he asleep? 

Our Sunday school teacher had begun to snore from the other bed.

Yes, he is.  That was stupid.

What should we do to him?  I asked.

Go to one of the girls' rooms and borrow some lipstick.

What about fingernail polish and eyeliner?

Yeah, that too!

We had a hard time making it through breakfast without laughing.  It took him having his morning coffee before he realized what we had done.  He looked like an undercover cop at an Avenged Sevenfold concert, but our Goth waitress thought he was hot.

We got him again one night when a slumber party was held inside the church.  We waited until he went to the bathroom and shoved quarters into the doorframe.  The pressure jammed the knob.  While trapped, he must have become spirit-filled, because he began speaking-in-tongues.  But then again, the things he yelled weren't very Christ like.

We terrorized our Sunday school teacher, because he was only slightly older; but we left the preacher alone.  It was tempting.  The pastor usually fell asleep first, but screwing with him would have caused a prayer meeting on our behalf.

Peace Chapel was a simple brick building with a white steeple in the middle.  My father, and the other founding members, centered it on a green acre, across the highway from a sawmill.  It sat three-hundred yards outside the city limits.  Farm land bordered the property on two sides.  The western field grew peanuts half the year and soybeans the rest.  The south side produced corn and sunflowers.  The latter swayed in the wind like a choir singing benediction.

The interior was simple, reflecting the tastes of the simple, country people who worshipped there.  Army-green cloth lined the padded, church pews, with a similar color chosen for the carpet.  Faux wood panels adorned the walls.  The only decoration in the building could be seen hanging behind the pulpit and choir loft—two wooden beams tied with rope at right angles, our old rugged cross.

This church influenced all my childhood memories, some good, some bad.  My strongest understanding, as a kid, was believing God lived in that building.  The people there were my first, role models.  They were older and wiser.  In my childish way of thinking, I was convinced these people had a direct line of communication with God.  They spoke with confidence concerning a subject I had little to no understanding about, and I accepted them as authority figures, believing what they said.  It seemed important to listen to them and follow the rules they extracted from the Bible.

The stories they taught me were compelling.  There was blood and guts in gory fight scenes, action like in a Schwarzenegger film.  The tales had drama, betrayal, lost love, magical powers everything to enrapture a young boy's imagination, but the best part, like in the best movies, there was always a happy ending.  Good could be counted on to triumph, and every wrong was guaranteed to be set right eventually.  They read like fairy tales, but I was told these stories were true, even the most outrageous miracles were supposed to be guaranteed facts.

I once made the casual remark to my teacher, It would have been easy to have faith in Biblical times, when all those miracles happened. 

Who says they don't anymore?

I've never seen one, I said.

Are you sure?...  Lots of people, like you, have had close calls with disease, car accidents, and other events that should have taken their lives, but somehow they walked away from it.

That's true.

The Catholic church has a wing that investigates miracles, because their parishioners make so many claims.  That's how they name new saints.

But what about the big stuff like the Red Sea's parting or feeding five thousand with a couple fish and loaves?  Nobody makes claims that big that would have been witnessed by that many.

You need to understand that before the Bible had been completely written and assembled, miracles were a tool God used to grab people's attention.  They gave His prophets credibility.  This way everyone would listen to them, but now the Bible speaks for God.  You also need to understand that big miracles would negate free will.  If God opened the heavens and showed Himself, everyone would follow Him out of fear.  He wants us to choose Him from a place of faith and love.

That makes sense, but didn't Jesus say, '...even greater works than these shall you do also?'[1]

You are absolutely right, and my guess is that he was referring to the works of his apostles.  They acted as Christian missionaries after Jesus went to heaven.  If they performed miracles, then people would know that they really spoke for Jesus.

The passing years showed me that a Christian had to disregard things he or she learned to maintain faith.  Science contradicts many Christian beliefs, chiefly about the Creation Story, but also other things.  Christians say you must maintain faith to transcend these contradictions, but scientists use hard facts to support their hypotheses.  In this light, Christians look naive.  Christianity was the strongest conviction in my life—it formed my belief system—but the science I was learning in school dismissed the fundamental principles of Christianity as quaint at best, and silly under the harshest scrutiny.

On the one hand, I was told to believe certain things to please God, but I also had to consider these scientific findings as facts to graduate and go to college.  How could there be two different truths?  Where was the common denominator?

I approached my Sunday school teacher again with my confusion:  What is Christianity's standpoint on evolution?  Can the two ideas coexist?

"I believe the Theory of Evolution is a trick Satan used to steer people away from God."

I looked at him, feeling dumbfounded, trying to decide whether he was joking.

From a Biblical perspective, the Earth can only be ten-thousand years old,  he continued.

Wow!  I'm confused, because it seems odd that a trick by Satan would appear more logical, in light of rational thought, compared with God's Truth.  Does God want us to have trouble believing He exists?

God's ways are not man's ways.

What about the dinosaurs?

You don't think we came from monkeys, do you?

Then, he forced his tongue between his teeth and upper lip, pulled his ears out, and began making chimpanzee sounds.

Religion had simplified my life by providing ready answers to all the big mysteries.  From my earliest memories, I believed I knew what my purpose was.  In fact, I felt sure I understood what was expected from every man, woman, and child, but now my world teetered.  My faith was less sure, and I started to question Christianity's tenets.

There were two paradoxes that troubled me.  The first was the presentation of a God who seemed bloodthirsty, spiteful, and to have low self-esteem, when looked at through the Old Testament.  Leviticus described a petty, insecure, and demanding Being who wanted obedience in weird ways:

Chapter Fifteen, starting at verse fifteen:

...So the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord because of his discharge.If any man has an emission of semen, then he shall wash all his body in water, and be unclean until evening....If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening ... and whoever touches anything she sat on shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening ... and if any man lies with her at all, so that her impurity is on him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.[2]

Did God write that, or Woody Allen?  Seriously, am I to believe God is a germophobe with OCD?

Further, I never understood why the God in the Old Testament only loved the Jewish people.  Then taking it another step, why would He sanction them to slaughter other race groups?  The Hebrews suffered under this God as well:  Egyptian slavery, forty years in the desert, the Babylonian exile, the Roman occupation, not to mention Hitler and Stalin.

The New Testament presents an enormous contradiction.  Jesus delivered a message about God, and it sounded nothing like the other one.  He said God was loving and merciful.  Where did Jesus's information come from?—because that didn't seem like the other God.  God certainly didn't treat Jesus with love or mercy.  Jesus's teachings were beautiful, but they seemed to speak of an entirely different religion.

I am aware of Christianity's standard rant explaining this problem away.  Preachers would be quick to tell how Christ became the ultimate sacrifice.  They would say his death appeased God's sense of justice for our sinful ways and the original fall of man in the Garden of Eden.  This is their reasoning for how man can now approach God's love.  They say someone had to be punished for our sins.  To that I would ask:  Did God create us?  If He did, and we are imperfect; then whose fault is that—His or ours?

Further, God made the rules.  So, why all the blood?  Why did He choose to be worshipped by animal sacrifice?  I never understood how that would benefit Him in any way.  My confusion multiplied after reading Job.  The title character was once God's favored son, but the Old Testament told how God tortured Job simply to win a bet against the Devil.  This God inspired more nightmares than psalms of praise.

The second paradox was the difference between Jesus's teachings and Paul's epistles.  Jesus was a compassionate being.  He visited the poor, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and all the other oppressed members of society, even though it brought criticism from the Jewish clergy.

My favorite passage highlighting his nature is John 8:4-11: 

They sayest unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act.Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned:but what sayest thou?This they said, tempting him, that they might accuse him.But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.So when they continued asking him, he lifted himself, and said unto them, 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,'...And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last:and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, 'Woman, where are those thine accusers?Hath no man condemned thee?'She said, 'No man, Lord.'And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I condemn thee:go, and sin no more.'

On the other hand, Paul seemed to be sticking to the old God, because he was quick with the hell, fire, and damnation.  In I Corinthians, Chapter Five, a man is accused of adultery with his father's wife.  It is unclear whether the woman is his mother.  Paul's judgment is, ...to deliver such a[n] one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

Jesus was once asked, Which is the greatest commandment of all?  He answered:

...thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:this is the first commandment.And the second is like, namely this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.There is none other commandment greater than these.Mark 12:30-31

I couldn't accept Paul's claims of authority, either.  Frequently, the gospels showed Jesus reprimanding his apostles for misunderstanding his teachings.  These were men that were by his side throughout his ministry.  Paul never knew Jesus, while the Christ was alive, and some of Paul's exhortations seem petty. 

Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head ...but every woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered, dishonoureth her head.I Corinthians 11:4-5

Let your women keep silence in the churches:for it is not permitted unto them to speak.¹⁴:³⁴

One of the most insane passages in the entire Bible is Paul's epistle to Philemon.  Paul had been harboring a runaway slave, named Onesimus.  Paul requested, through this letter, that the slave owner take his property back, without animosity towards the slave.  Paul promised to pay any outstanding debts owed by the runaway.  What happened to, ...love your neighbor as yourself?  Did Paul condone human bondage?  You may say this was a necessary evil of the time, but Paul wasn't shy to condemn other evils.

At this point in life, I felt confused.  Christianity was the bedrock of my parents' existence.  It had been the bedrock of my own, but now it seemed irrational.  I wasn't sure what to think anymore.  I remember a conversation I had with my mother.

Mom, I'm starting to have doubts about Christianity.

What kind of doubts?

Why do so many scientific findings contradict Christian theology?  What about the evidence supporting evolution?  Science says the universe is thirteen-billion years old, and life was the result of a gradual process, not the product of six-days’ work.[3]  Where did all those dinosaur bones come from?  Why aren't they ever mentioned in the Bible?  What about radiocarbon dating?

One of the psalms says, 'For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.'  We can't know for sure what is meant by seven days in Genesis.  I don't think we will know anything, with any certainty, until God makes it clear to us; but I believe God gives everyone enough faith to believe in Him and make it through this life.[4]

You aren't bothered by these inconsistencies?

No, because my faith comes from my personal experience with God.  He gave me strength when the doctors told me I had no more reason to hope—that I would be dead in six months.  He pulled me through it, and he pulled you through it as well.  God's ways are too big for man to fully grasp.  Your sister went through a similar phase when she was your age.  She eventually found enough faith, and I know God will help you also.

Mom gave me something to consider, but an event occurred while I faced this internal struggle.  A few years earlier, my church had been involved