Member-only story

Tim Gebauer
4 min readJul 5, 2022

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MyPhoto by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

I grew up in a conservative Baptist church. So conservative the Southern Baptists were practically considered Satanists. That was well before they proved they might be with recent revelations.

At a minimum, it verged on being a cult. Now that I think of it, sexual shenanigans were going on there as well.

If it was fun it was wrong. Simple as that. Movies bad, long hair bad, Pentecostals bad, Martin Luther bad, alcohol, any alcohol very bad, the list was endless.

A lot of bible verses, that wer inconvenient were twisted to fit a scenario. Critical thinking or actual thinking was discouraged.

In much of my teen years, I was at church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night, with organized activities for young people on weekend nights. Plus camps and other activities to keep us “out of trouble” on big days like New Year.

Prom, well, a den of sin.

In this insulated world, there weren’t a lot of dating choices. I had long run through anyone that I even might be interested in. One girl that apparently really liked me, I took out because I was badgered into it. Yes, to a church-sanctioned activity. It was at a different affiliated church so it was like a real date. She didn’t say more than two words all evening. She scooted over next to me while I was driving (Ahhh, the days of bench seats and not wearing seat belts). No…

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Tim Gebauer
Tim Gebauer

Written by Tim Gebauer

Thrift and retail blogger. Helping small business succeed. Connect on linkedIn, my thrift reseller blog thethrifter or my amazon thrift merchandising e-book.

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