And it took me, since I was 17 and left home, running from God, to now, as a 30-year-old man, when I honestly feel like I've come full circle and my heart's finally in the right place.
But do you know I was never asked in 10 years if I was a Christian personally? We were only asked if Creed was a Christian band.
Creed was ended by egos and people wanting to do their own thing and poor decision-making.
Creed's sound is my sound.
Five years ago, I had a divorce that I didn't really want. I was so busy with Creed that I don't think I ever really dealt with that emotionally.
I always believed in God and Christ, but I was in rebellion - trying to make my relationship with God fit into my life instead of making my life fit in with him. I was stubborn.
I just hope it grows into where it was before because I want my son to see it. I want him to have a positive memory of it going forward, so he can be proud of his daddy.
I started making some proper decisions, getting things in order. It's kind of like cleaning up your house. I was looking for direction for what God wanted me to do - and that's when I got a call about The Passion.
I think everything worked out the way it was supposed to. Mark's happier. I'm sober. There are still phone calls to be made, people I need to say something to. But everyone from Creed who I've offended or hurt, I ask for their forgiveness.
I think my record is going to speak for itself to the Creed fans. I think it's going to be like when Sting left The Police.
I was a Christian in Creed, but nobody ever asked me.
I was emotionally and spiritually dried up, so I was just searching for God.
I was raised in a climate where I believed in God because I was afraid of going to hell - and I didn't think that was the right way to fall in love with somebody.
I'd fired anyone who was involved with Creed. I didn't want anything to do with the music business. The entire press and industry hated me, so what was the point?
I'd have called myself a struggling Christian who was trying to find holes in everything he had been raised to believe. I was a doubting Thomas.
I'm an artist who's a Christian, because I don't write music to be evangelical. Now, if that happens, it happens.
I'm still going to make mistakes, but I don't have any problems with publicly professing my faith now. It just took me a long time to get to the right place in my relationship with Christ.
I've since learned that my life's never gonna be right, and I'm always going to be scrutinized and looked at under a microscope.
It just took all of that to come to a screeching halt, to get to the point of having nothing, for me to finally realize, Hey, what are you fighting with this for? Until then, I hadn't claimed my faith as my own; I had just grown up with it.
My dad always said I was hard-headed, that it would take something like that to wake me up spiritually, and I guess it did. My heart had gotten so beat up that I didn't have anything left to give.
My problems were not what ended Creed.
No charges have been filed by the L.A. district attorney's office, and for that I am appreciative. I have said it before, but we all make mistakes, and the day will come soon enough where you no longer read of mine in the tabloids.
Now, there are people that are Christian artists, because they have a purpose to be evangelical for Christ. I don't feel I've been called to that yet. Now, that could change. There's no telling what kind of call God will put on my life.
So it's going to have some thump in the back and rock over the top of it - but I'm not going to rap. I'm going to sing.
Some stuff has hurt me along the way. And I've been self-destructive at times because of that, and I've made some bad choices because of that.
The Christian community latched onto a lot of my music, because there were a lot of things about my struggle they related to. But I didn't really want to come out and be identified as a Christian, because I didn't want to be a hypocrite, because my life wasn't right.
There comes a point with any collaboration like that where you start having other interests creatively. I was moving in one direction musically, and as a guitar player, Mark wanted to move in another direction. That was essentially the reason we broke up.
When something like that happens, people want to try to find some dirt and make it more of a soap opera. But I think we both walked away with the door still open, if we want to do something together again. So yeah, I would call it a friendly break-up.
Yes, and The Passion came along and gave me focus. It was kind of God's final confirmation that I was moving in the right direction.
You can sell millions of records, be showered with all this love and admiration and still feel despised and unwanted. That's what I felt. I've made a lot of mistakes I'm not proud of.
Scott Stapp married beauty queen Jaclyn Nesheiwat in Miami on Friday, 2/10/06.
He is the vocalist for the band Creed
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