“To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”Ephesians 3:8-10 (NASB)

Having grown up in a nominally Christian culture, in my late teens I desired to know God for myself. Both my parents trained me up as best they could in Mississippi’s de facto state religion, a Southern fried style of Evangelicalism that we seasoned soulfully within the black Missionary Baptist tradition. I was dragged to church many a Sunday morning in my prepubescent days and sat on the back pew mystified by the frenzied and…