About Justin Yarnell

Ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by the Bible. I grew up in a fairly strict Christian family. My father was a minister, and my grandfather was what was called a Boxcar Preacher. He would travel from town to town throughout the Midwest by hopping on boxcars on trains and wherever the train stopped was the town he would preach in. I did a deep dive into my family history, and it turns out that I come from a long line of these types of travelling ministers, Quakers to be exact, and what is so interesting about this is that these particular Quakers believed in what they called the Doctrine of Inner Light, which basically says that all humans are divine, and that there is no need to have a mediator between us and God because we are one and the same; and the funny thing is, after years and years of spiritual seeking, I arrived at the same conclusion. Now, I don’t identify as a Quaker, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you get the point.

Anyway, as the years went on I continued to be captivated by the bible. I didn’t understand it all by any means, but I saw how it affected people. I saw people change their lives because of it, I saw wars fought because of it, I saw families fall apart over it, I saw people go off the deep end because of it, like David Koresh in Waco Texas during the early 90’s. I saw Televangelists get filthy rich off of it. There was no doubt in my mind, the Bible was a powerful book, and it could be used for good or evil depending on whose hands it was in.

Eventually, after following in my family’s footsteps I became a licensed Christian minister, and then a few years later became an ordained Christian minister and took a full-time position at one of America’s fastest growing megachurches in Tulsa Oklahoma. I worked at the church five days a week (Monday-Friday), volunteered on Wednesday nights, and attended church on Saturday and Sunday. I was saturated with Christian culture, it was literally seeping out of my pores. I lived like this for years. I could quote the Bible cover to cover, and if you came to me for help, I would happily give you a handful of scriptures and send you on your merry way. I had become part of the system, and I was proud of it!

During this time however, I got invited to go to India to preach at a giant open air Christian crusade. It was a big deal. World famous ministers were there, and the crowds were some of the largest on record for the time. (There may still be some videos of this floating around YouTube, but don’t tell anybody.) We were in a small city about four hours outside of Hyderabad, and night after night thousands upon thousands of people would gather to hear the almighty words from the famous ministers from America. I saw people with open leprosy sores all over their body, people who were supposedly possessed by demons thrashing through the crowds, and I saw such extreme poverty, that it literally brought me to my knees. Tears are welling up in my eyes even now all these years later. It was a complete sensory overload; but the one thing I saw more than anything else, the thing that literally triggered my spiritual awakening, was their smiles. These people had nothing, no money, no food, no healthcare, no restrooms, no clean water, and yet, they had the most beautiful smiles on their faces that I had ever seen.

We preached to these people for seven days straight. We taught them the Law of God. We taught them that they were hopeless sinners, and that they would end up in hell if they didn’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. I get a knot in my stomach thinking about this. By the end of the crusade, these poor people had been officially indoctrinated into Christianity, and by the time it was all over, their smiles began to fade. My heart ached within me as we bragged about all the souls we had saved that week. This Christian religion, this megachurch culture that I had given my whole to was fading within me, just like their smiles.

After this experience, I walked away from religion altogether. I got down on my knees and prayed for a re-do. Just God and me, no outside influence of any kind. I walked this path for several years, deprogramming my consciousness from everything the church had put in me. At times it was rough, turning your back on everything you have ever known, your church, your belief system, your career, is no easy task, but it had to be done; and what I began to realize was that just because you walk away from church, it doesn’t mean you’re walking away from God, in fact, it means your walking towards God.

Today, I am still walking this path as a spiritual seeker and I invite you to join me. I don’t have it all figured out, but I do have some things figured out, and those are things I share with you. Will you join me? Like my adored spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

P.S. There’s much more to the above story, and if you would like to know more, simply reach out. I’d love to hear your story as well.

In love and light,

-J