A personal story of faith by Carol Scheck

To begin, a disclaimer. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how best to address my ”childhood faith” and the issues therein publicly, with an eye to both the truth and to the feelings of the people involved, many of whom I love deeply. This is my experience, and I understand that everyone’s experience is different. That said, I would ask you not to allow slight variations in personal experience to blind you completely to the issues at stake. Also, I ask the reader to consider the fact that the FALC’s complete lack of formal doctrine renders criticism exceptionally difficult, as anything I say can be plausibly denied.

Another note: As I wrote the first draft of this piece, I quickly realized that I simply could not spend a lot of time diving into the weeds on different theological issues. After all, most of these questions are big enough that many whole books have been written on them, so it’s deliberate that I didn’t spend a lot of time explaining or defending things here. If you want to learn more about a specific doctrine, I can probably recommend some resources, or have a longer conversation about that particular topic.

The abbreviation “FALC” in this essay refers to the First Apostolic Lutheran Church (also sometimes called Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church). It is sometimes known as the Torola group. The FALC and the Laestadian Lutheran Church (LLC) split in the early 1970s, after which the LLC remained joined to the SRK in Finland. It is small, with approximately 5,000 – 10,000 members, and primarily based in Michigan and Minnesota, USA. The presence in Finland and Sweden is extremely small. Members of the FALC are uncomfortable with the name “Laestadian”, but they absolutely do trace their history back to Lars Levi Laestadius and Juhani Raattama. I’ve occasionally used the term “Laestadian” in this essay to refer to the larger movement and group of churches, and that does include the FALC.

Growing up in the FALC, my family were regular churchgoers. We (the children) attended Sunday school and learned the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed from Luther’s Small Catechism, as well as a few Bible stories. Mostly, we were taught that our sins were forgiven ”in Jesus’ Name and Precious Blood,” and that we were incredibly fortunate to have been born to ”Christian mothers and fathers”. Indeed, our parents were the ones who had the power and the responsibility to forgive our sins, by reciting ”Believe all of your sins forgiven in Jesus’ name and Precious Blood”. Our parents and their friends did the same for each other. I don’t remember at what age we kids began forgiving others in this way, with the understanding that this blessing wiped away all sins. It may have varied from family to family. There was a lot of emphasis on our ”childhood faith”, and on our Christian friends. Church was a comforting routine, and it was the basis for the majority of our social life.

We were supposed to get the message that we were set apart, special. The phrase ”in the world but not of the world” was bandied about a lot, as well as those I’ve already mentioned. In this community, ”Christian” meant only the FALC, and we were supposed to understand ourselves to belong to the one true church. People at school weren’t really Christians, even if they thought they were. They had TVs. They didn’t have big families. Their moms might drink wine or wear makeup. They were definitely different from us. There weren’t a lot of kids from other Laestadian traditions at my school, so I didn’t encounter people from what we generally referred to as the ”splits”  much, as a child. Our specialness was easy enough for me to accept, especially since we were always still friendly with other people, if a bit more reserved. Plus, it was easy to see how some of the things church people said about the ”world” were true. Some of my friends at school had parents who were divorced. Some had parents who were married but obviously unhappy. These dreadful things happened more often to them because they didn’t have ”living faith”.

Formal catechesis in the FALC stops at confirmation (roughly age 14-15) and never progresses beyond Luther’s Small Catechism. Essentially no doctrine is ever taught, and there’s nowhere to go look it up. I’m not sure that the FALC, as an organization, actually has any. Maybe they were required to put some into their bylaws– maybe not. Theoretically, we could have asked questions, particularly in confirmation class, but I think most of us had no clue what questions to ask or why. In my opinion, the huge emphasis placed on ”Christian friends” (hanging out with the church kids only or primarily) combined with a dearth of real spiritual formation causes a lot of problems. Teenagers are not in a position to be one another’s primary moral guides, and the assumption that kids are basically okay if they’re fitting in with ”the Christians” is an easy way to brush over a multitude of deep sin issues that can and have set into both the individuals and the group as a whole.

 By the time I was a young adult, I had an extremely shaky faith. Depression and purposelessness were features of my late teens and early twenties. I had no sense of God’s love, no idea that God might have a plan or a will for my life. I didn’t have this language at the time, but in hindsight I was a Deist– I believed in a Creator God, but not a personal God. He was out there–somewhere– but didn’t have a vested interest in my day-to-day life.

I had good friends in the FALC and I mostly continued to maintain appearances, but deep patterns of sin set in in my young adulthood. Laestadian audiences are likely to assume from this sentence that I’m referring to a drinking habit. That is not the case, though I did try alcohol on a handful of occasions throughout this time period. Much more damaging were my deep rooted patterns of depression, despair, purposelessness, unforgiveness, gossip, lust, and idolatry. I tried therapy and antidepressants with some amount of relief, though this really was fairly surface level improvement- I could function, I could usually enjoy things, but I hadn’t found purpose.

At some point, I became attached to the idea that if I found someone to marry, that would solve everything. I would be fulfilled, healed, happy. I started dating my husband Dylan at the age of 24, and we were married less than eight months later. There is no structure for marriage preparation or premarital counseling of any kind within the FALC, and we were radically underprepared for a marriage. We also essentially never discussed our religious beliefs prior to marriage, except for one conversation in which we agreed that neither of us thought it possible that the FALC was the only group who would go to heaven.  We were carried in on the current of our overwhelming feelings for each other. Our oldest daughter was born 11 months after our wedding.

We had a very tumultuous first year of marriage, emotionally speaking, with very little steadiness. In hindsight, I was codependent and had made an idol of my husband. I was looking to him to prove to me that I was loved, lovable, worthy, and I would take any opportunity to assume that he did not, in fact, love me. I, in turn, had little love to give– everything was about getting what I needed, instead of about serving and giving.

Something began to shift when I had my daughter (though certainly not overnight). I had a real sense of the fact that, as a mother, the carefree part of my life was behind me- but this didn’t bother me. Instead, I realized that being with my baby was fulfilling in a way I’d never known before. Over time, questions began to build about what I believed about God, what my church really taught–and whether what it really taught was true.

My first couple years of motherhood were simultaneously joyful, sanctifying, and really lonely. I wasn’t around friends or other moms all that much- partly because the pandemic hit right around my oldest daughter’s first birthday. I found plenty of time to consume a lot of podcasts and other content during this time, in between raising my daughter, having my son, still working as an ICU and then a hospice nurse, and (thankfully) growing as a wife and as a person.

 I followed a handful of people online who talked about their Christian faith in a way that was so foreign to me. They talked about a relationship with God. They talked about doing the will of God. They talked about loving Jesus in a personal way that I did not understand. They studied the Word of God- also something I’d never done. I started to really yearn for these things- though I often genuinely could not understand what they were or how to get them. How did one, for example, build a real relationship with Christ, or begin to understand what His will was?

I bought a Bible that wasn’t KJV (a big no-no, in the FALC). I found a Bible- in-a-year reading plan to follow. I knew that I wasn’t really living my faith, and I was starting to really, genuinely want to. I told no one about any of this. I began spending time every morning before my kids got up in God’s Word. During the same time period, I was working part- time as a hospice nurse for a Christian hospice and home health company. Certainly not every employee and not every patient publicly declared their Christian faith, but a lot did. My dying patients and the compassionate, loving nurses who cared for them were a beautiful witness to me. Clearly, they had a real faith that animated their lives and their souls.

Though this time period (2021-2022) was very much a time of strengthening faith and real growth in my life, in hindsight, I still had no idea how much I didn’t know. Things that now seem like very basic knowledge to me had never been told to me, and I’d never asked. For example, I hadn’t known that the editors of the ESV Student Study Bible I’d been reading have a strong Calvinist bias (I didn’t know who John Calvin was). I didn’t know the extent of the denominational differences in Christianity, or why those differences exist. I didn’t know that the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches each claim to be the Church founded by Christ himself. I didn’t know that the credobaptist influencers I was following subscribe to a (historically speaking) relatively new doctrine. I only knew that my conscience kept on telling me more and more strongly that something wasn’t right with the FALC. I was bothered especially by the exclusivity and by what I saw as a culture of spiritual pride.

I didn’t bring my concerns to anyone. I felt that I couldn’t possibly. It’s hard to explain the usual reaction of the FALC members to those who ask challenging questions, or to those who want to live their faith too loudly or talk about Jesus a lot. A lot of fear and defensiveness is often involved– even when someone says something as simple as ”I’m really struggling with some stuff I’m finding in the Bible”. Very, very few in the FALC are equipped to handle questions about their faith with calm curiosity.  Maybe I can’t really describe it in a way that’s charitable to those involved. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Suffice to say, I had no reason to believe that anyone in my life would receive my questions or my journey well.

As my conscience grew heavier and heavier, I started finding other local pastor’s sermons to listen to online. Again, not understanding different denominations, I was grasping fairly randomly. I found a local Independent Fundamental Baptist church whose pastor preached expositionally (verse by verse). This seemed like a marvelous thing to me to further enrich my Bible study, and I started listening to some of his work. I’d been dragging my feet, all this time, about bringing any of my faith life or concerns to my husband (he did know I read the Bible). One night, I just did it. I told him, ”I’ve got some real concerns about our church.” He heard me out, calmly and steadily. I told him about how the Gospel of John says, over and over, that all who come to Christ will be saved. That I didn’t understand how belonging to this one tiny church group could possibly be essential for salvation, and that I didn’t understand how they all claimed to have authority to forgive one another’s sins. I didn’t understand why a group who claimed to be the one true church wasn’t trying to bring the whole world to Christ, or do more charity outside the tiny group, or get their members to dive into their Bibles and try to grow in their faith. He had also never really read the Bible, but he started after that, in the Gospel of John. We continued to have many conversations about what he was reading. I shared some of the sermons I was listening to with him as well.

We decided we needed to meet with a minister from the FALC, and we reached out to the pastor of the local IFB church as well.

I won’t try to recount the conversation with the FALC minister in too much detail, for two reasons. One, when we met, I think everyone fully understood it to be a private conversation, and I want to respect that. Two, I’m afraid I’ll misquote or misremember. This was an incredibly emotional and stressful time in my life for a few reasons and my memories of the time are not as sharp as I’d like. The gist of the conversation is this: when we invited him over, I was already becoming deeply distraught over my concerns about the FALC. I felt deeply convicted that the Bible did not support the ”blessing” the way the FALC used it. I did not think that people could forgive one another’s sins. I did not think it possible that the FALC could be the one true church. I also had become totally convinced that I could not stay and raise my children in a church with which I radically disagreed. I wanted the minister to clarify the FALC’s positions in a way that either showed I’d misunderstood what I’d been hearing my whole life or assuaged my conscience enough for me to stay.  Neither of these things happened. I left the conversation understanding that the FALC does, in fact, consider itself to be the one true church, and that it considers its ”blessing” to be essential for salvation, for having one’s sins forgiven. These things were completely irreconcilable to me. I knew I’d leave, though I didn’t yet know when.

We met with the local IFB pastor as well, and attended his church one Sunday. They were incredibly welcoming, charitable people. I think, in hindsight, that we just needed someone to make us feel less alone and less crazy. Certainly, under his Baptist theology, we were doing the right thing by planning to leave, though he wasn’t at all the type to broadly condemn Lutherans. All of us took the Reformation doctrine of ”sola scriptura” as a given, and our reading of Scripture wasn’t backing up what the FALC was preaching.

In March of 2023, we told our families and friends that we were leaving the FALC. It was an emotional time for us, as well as for many of our loved ones. Again, I prefer not to share details of highly personal conversations. I do think some of the common themes to these conversations are worthy of closer examination, but that’s beyond the scope of this essay. We were carried through it mostly on the strength of our conviction that we were doing the right thing, and that this was going to enable us to really live for the Lord. It was a time of major upheaval within most of our relationships, which is the standard experience for those who leave. We did our best to stress that we were not leaving out of hostility to those within the FALC, and I’m glad we did. It didn’t prevent deep changes to lifelong friendships, but in many cases it did prevent a final rupture. I’m grateful to have maintained some of those relationships, though they look very different now.

We were church shopping at this point. In hindsight, the logical inconsistencies within modern Protestantism were starting to show already. We had left the FALC because we thought it was wrong: therefore, we had to find a church that was right, right? But we also knew that under sola scriptura, no one church can realistically claim to be the ”one true church”. It doesn’t follow that any one Protestant denomination has a unique claim to the promises of the Kingdom of God. The effect of this approach is that we were trying to magically retrofit a local church to our interpretation of the Scriptures. I was specifically trying to avoid the Reformed/Calvinist ones, since I did (and still do) strenuously object to quite a few of their doctrines. We wound up having phone calls and meetings with some local pastors, getting their takes on some cherry-picked doctrines that were, for the moment, of great import to me.

We wound up at a local Evangelical Covenant Church. It ticked some basic boxes: Not Calvinist, lots of young families, kids primarily attended the service instead of being shunted elsewhere. I started attending a ladies Bible study.

I was still consuming a great deal of Christian books and content, wanting so much to grow in my faith. I’ve always enjoyed reading and learning, and one of the things I found deeply bothersome in the FALC was the lack of means to have an intellectual faith. I had come to believe that God wants us to use all of our faculties, including our intellects, to follow and know Him, instead of having a compartmentalized faith. Some of what I was reading challenged me, and opened my eyes to how little I really knew, and how many questions I hadn’t known to ask as we were discerning whether to leave the FALC. For example, when I read about the Reformers, I realized that none of them had a theology like mine. Why couldn’t I find a Reformer who thought like me? Wasn’t I just reading the Bible for what it really said? I also learned that one of the major topics of disagreement between the Reformers was the role of Holy Communion. I hadn’t thought to ask a single question about Communion. Actually, it was beginning to strike me as very odd that we only received quarterly at our evangelical church. Also, our church’s adult baptism service was upcoming, and I didn’t know if I should get baptized again. At first I thought I should, as a public declaration of my new life of faith. Certainly, a lot of the people I was listening and talking to at the time thought so. My husband asked gentle questions that made me pause and continue to think and pray about whether to be re-baptized. Had our baptisms actually been wrong? Had people actually been baptizing babies since Jesus’ time? Why? Also, why couldn’t our church definitively tell me one way or the other? (they accepted both infant and believer’s baptisms).

I was starting to feel crushed under the weight of how little I knew and understood. I knew I loved Jesus. I believed He loved me, and had died for me. I knew I wanted my faith life to be real, and meaningful. I couldn’t think of anything more important to focus my life around. I also knew I believed in real truth. That was the whole point, and it was worth giving anything for. There had to be a right way.

I happened to follow an Instagram account at the time of a woman who was an Eastern Orthodox(EO) Christian. This wasn’t even what her content was about, but she talked about it and took questions about it from time to time, and I was intrigued. She mentioned once that EO don’t believe in Sola Scriptura. I was floored. Another time, she stated that the Orthodox Church is the Church founded by Our Lord himself. I was flummoxed. Was this seriously a real claim people made? Wasn’t the ”Church” just the worldwide body of believers? So many questions were opening up for me. I was absolutely frantic in my content consumption at this point. I was listening to many podcasts about Orthodoxy, and a lot of what they were saying was starting to make so much sense to me. I still had questions, though, especially since the Orthodox sometimes seemed to be almost anti-Western, and I couldn’t get there. I was bringing a lot of this to my husband. He was patiently hearing me out, and agreeing on some points, but he was hesitant. Also, we were a solid hour from an Orthodox Church. One day it occurred to me: I had never, at any point in my life, tried to learn what Catholics really believe. Everything I’d ever heard about Catholicism was from the perspective of Protestants or the Orthodox and it was primarily negative. As I’d soon come to learn, it was also largely nonsense.

I started to dip my toes into Catholic doctrine. I had happened upon an interview between Matt Fradd and Live Action’s Lila Rose, who I’d heard of from her pro-life work, on the topic of Lila’s conversion to Catholicism. This was the first time I’d ever heard of someone choosing Catholicism as an adult. I continued to explore Catholicism online, and soon heard of the apologist Trent Horn and the theologian Scott Hahn. Both men were instrumental to our conversion as they explained key doctrines in a way that made the truth of the Catholic faith plain. Scott Hahn’s book Rome Sweet Home deserves a specific mention here. I read it and immediately passed it to my husband. We both consider that book to have had a major role in our conversion, for a couple of reasons. First, the depth and breadth of Hahn’s Bible knowledge is so vast, it became very obvious to me that I (and most laypeople) could never hope for that level of scholarship. To be clear, I don’t necessarily mean that I came to believe that Scott Hahn has earned the right to tell people which Christian tradition is correct through the extent of his knowledge. I merely came to see very clearly that I’d been incredibly prideful to think that I had the ability to interpret Scripture to its fullest extent on my own. Scott Hahn was asking and exploring questions about Scripture on a level I’d never been capable of. The underlying assumptions behind ”sola scriptura” were really beginning to fall apart for me.

 Second, the way Hahn explores and explains some key doctrines just made them click for us in a way that cannot be un-clicked (so to speak). For example, he does a really wonderful job laying out the way the Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New, and that the new Israel is the Catholic Church, to which all are called. The way the Papacy is pre-figured in the Old Testament is another great example.

It’s beyond the scope of this essay, again, to dive into every single Catholic doctrine that I came to accept and understand during this time period (there are a lot). I’ll mention a few which I found either especially important or especially difficult to accept. I also feel the need to state plainly that I did not blindly follow Scott Hahn or any other Catholic thinker because I was stressed out and wanted to pass off my own responsibility. This entire process took place alongside prayer, fasting, and Scripture reading, and I genuinely believe that Catholicism is true.

First, as I’ve alluded to already, I could see that ”sola scriptura” is logically impossible. Relatedly, I came to accept that Our Lord started one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church before His Ascension (He didn’t leave a book, or, as far as we know, instruct anyone to write one). Once I knew that the Catholic Church was indeed founded in AD 33 by Jesus of Nazareth himself, I knew that there was no other place for me, especially once I came to fully accept that the Eucharist is Jesus: literally Jesus, present in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

”Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69).

When I’d accepted the authority of Holy Mother Church (authority given directly by Jesus), I knew that it was my responsibility to have the humility and the obedience to accept even the teachings that were directly challenging to my pride: things I’d been totally wrong about before. The main stumbling block in my case was related to the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). When we’d left the FALC, we’d talked a lot about how only Jesus can forgive sins, and that the FALC practice of laypeople forgiving other laypeople’s sins is unbiblical. Coming to realize that Jesus did actually intend for all of us to report to a human being for the forgiveness of our sins did sting my pride a little.

To be clear, I still don’t believe that laypeople have spiritual authority to forgive one another’s sins, in the way the FALC understands it. I believe that, through apostolic succession (via the Sacrament of Holy Orders) that right and responsibility rests with the clergy only, and that sins must be confessed aloud. However, I couldn’t deny that I’d been plain wrong about quite a few things. This was a deeply humbling time, and also a time of great spiritual growth as I began to understand my faith more deeply and also to grow in my prayer life, with the aid of various Catholic prayer practices.

We had, along the way, begun attending Mass (also a jarring and humbling experience, at first), and gotten to know our local priest, who answered many questions and taught us more about the Faith. Priests are one of those gems of our faith that I wish the whole world could experience. Nearly all of the ones I’ve met are so knowledgeable and pastoral. They have dedicated their lives to bringing the love of Christ to the people. We entered OCIA (the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults) in September of 2023, 6 months after leaving the FALC. I’d looked forward to beginning classes, but I was not prepared for what a transformational journey it would still be. OCIA gave me answers to questions I’d still, to this point, never thought to ask: questions like ”So why do we believe there is a God, anyway?” I still find it incredible how much clearer my thinking is on all topics now that I have a solid grounding in my Catholic faith.

I’d felt an incredible lightening and relief when I’d accepted the truth of the Catholic faith. The pressure to figure out right doctrine on my own had disappeared, and I was free to joyfully grow in my knowledge and love of God without fear of messing it all up. It’s also much easier to dive deeper into faith when the basic issues are well defined and established. That doesn’t mean the journey was easy- the first year after we left the FALC was often very painful emotionally. In hindsight, though, I can see that we were being pruned by the Lord.

Dylan and I were received into the Church via the sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist on March 30, 2024. It was a beautiful, joyful occasion, and a huge milestone on our journey of faith. In preparation for our Sacraments of Initiation, we had also made our first Confessions. Since we’d been baptized as infants, we had to make general Confessions- basically, to confess all our serious sins for our entire lives up until that point. This was no small undertaking. I’d intellectually accepted the necessity of this sacrament already, but it was only after I’d made my first Confession that I began to really understand what an incredible gift it is. I can’t say enough good about the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the healing it has brought to my life already in my first few years as a Catholic.

My grasp of the English language cannot ever adequately describe the beauty, truth and richness that can be found within the Catholic Church. I truly believe that the Catholic Church contains the fullness of the Christian faith and the fullness of the means of salvation. It is the delight of my life to be Catholic, receive Our Lord physically weekly (sometimes daily) in the Eucharist, and raise a Catholic family. It would be my honor to further discuss any part of my journey or my understanding of the issues raised here with anyone who is curious and wishes to reach out.

As a last note, I’d like to encourage the reader to be unafraid to ask good faith questions, even challenging ones. Truth does not mind being questioned. If the claims made by your church are true, they can be interrogated and will stand up to your questioning. If you are not sure what the core claims of your church even are, start there. I don’t mean that anyone should be combative or seek to “win”, but all should earnestly and persistently seek God’s Truth. Your comfort and your happiness should not dissuade you from seeking the truth- truth is the higher value. 

“Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches”. (Revelation 3:20-22).