My Deconversion

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

 

Since I’ve come to ex-C.net in
October, I’ve read the deconversion stories of other ex-Christians and even
though I thought about posting my own deconversion story, I just didn’t know if
I wanted to yet. I have lately read quite a few that were quite similar to
mine, yet quite different. Reading
those made me consider posting my own deconversion story again and now I think
I’m willing to do it.

 

Near the end of my time as a
Christian, as much as I wanted to serve the god I believed in, I just couldn’t
be who or what the Bible said God wanted me to be, and not because I didn’t
want to be that way either. I struggled too much with emotional problems and
violent thoughts. I still have problems with it, but to a lesser degree than
before.

There were some days when I had to
deal with too much stress, which isn’t very much, I never really learned how to
cope with it very well, but I was angry all the time, and my anger basically
controlled my actions and thoughts. Sometimes, I was afraid that I might have
been turning into some kind of monster and I prayed that God would save me from
this evil that I thought was in me, but I never got any answers. I got nothing.
Absolute silence, but I managed to deceive myself into believing I had gotten
an answer. Just by thinking he would help me, it made me feel better sometimes
and in those instances, I really thought my prayers were answered.

There were also other sins that I had
a really difficult time dealing with. Lust was a tough one for me and it always
has been. The majority of my prayers were for the strength to resist
temptations to sin. There was nothing selfish about those. I asked for the
strength to be a better follower and servant of Christ, because that is what I
wanted and what I thought the god in the Bible wanted too. Apparently he either
didn’t care or was not real.

What I have just described were not
the actual cause of my deconversion. I guess if I were to compare my faith that
I once had to the foundation of a building, the things I struggled with just
before my deconversion put cracks in my faith everywhere and weakened it
greatly.

 

Now when my deconversion actually
started, it was when the doubts started. My main doubt arose when I realized
that there was a big contradiction between the god of love I thought I believed
in and what the god of the Bible actually was. I was beginning to see that he was
more of a monster than I could ever be, considering my anger problems and often
extremely violent thoughts I sometimes had. The difference between Yahweh and I
is, I actually didn’t want to be a monster, while Yahweh on the other hand,
real or not, didn’t seem to care that he was a monster and at times seemed to
even enjoy being so.

The idea of being burned and tortured
forever in Hell was the worst thing for me. I began to realize that there isn’t
any good justification to torture people forever for a lack of faith. I knew
Hell was supposed to be for repentant sinners, but the thought about finite
crimes not being justifiably punished with eternal torment didn’t ever cross my
mind until after I fully deconverted. But I was beginning to see that this “god
of love” was really the most sadistic narcissist I had ever heard of in my
life.

Even though the signs were always
there in the scripture, I either chose to ignore most of them, or didn’t know
they were there. The fact is, I didn’t know as much about the Bible then as I
did after my deconversion. When I tried to study the Bible on my own, I just
couldn’t keep focused on it and there were always other things I was doing that
my focus was on. Even though I knew as a Christian I was supposed to know what
was in my Bible, I just couldn’t stay dedicated to it. So I mostly relied on
what I was taught about it and I even tried devotional books a few times, only
to once again get distracted from that.

Anyway, when I began to actually
notice the signs about Yahweh being some horrible monster, at first, I didn’t
know what I was supposed to do. My mind kept telling me “God’s a monster. He
doesn’t love you or anyone else but himself.” I tried to convince myself that
what I was thinking was just lies from Satan. I even tried to talk to my
Christian family members about this, but I could barely explain to them what my
doubts were. I almost couldn’t get the words out. It was painful and scary
because it felt like my faith in the one who was supposed to be number one in my
life was slipping away and that I couldn’t do anything about it.

The advice I got was “Just have
faith”. And that is what I did. Every time the doubts came, I just ignored them
and told myself, “It’s Satan trying to trick you. Ignore it.” It actually worked
eventually, for a while, but then the very same doubts came again. I was
beginning to think that maybe “God” was the deceiver and that “Satan” was just
some trickery of his. I thought maybe Jesus Christ and salvation was nothing
more than a sham used by this deceptive being to get people to worship him,
just so he could feel good about himself and show off to them. “Have faith” was
advice that got me nowhere the second time around. I absolutely could not do
it. I could not make the doubts go away.

But, these doubts caused the
foundation of my faith to start crumbling all over the place. Cracks were
forming in it all over. That is when I finally talked to a nonbeliever, someone
that I actually did not realize was a believer, but when I wanted to know why
he did not believe, he explained to me. Hoping to defend my faith that I still
wanted to hold on to, I used every argument I knew of to defend it, hoping to
defend it from myself and hoping to somehow save my friend again (he is an
ex-Christian by the way). But he started giving me information and asking me
questions about my faith. I realized that Christianity didn’t have all the
answers I thought it did and that I had no good answers for believing what I
believed. My faith was absolutely destroyed. The foundation of my faith just
collapsed completely and everything I had built upon it, my views of the world,
myself, and other people, just collapsed with it.

I researched everything I could to
find out if the things my friend told me about Christianity was true. He
pointed out the logical flaws in the belief and showed me information about
some of the stories in the Bible being borrowed from other, much older,
religions. I realized that even though I both wanted and did not want my friend
to be right, he was. He knew what he was talking to me about.

For quite a while, this new
information, the doubts I already had, and my fear of losing my faith just
plagued my mind and I was afraid of losing my faith completely. I knew it was
inevitable, but my fear of Hell is what prevented me from giving up on my faith
completely. I realized that my fear of Hell was irrational and that there was
evidence to back up the new information I had received, so I just left my
beliefs behind and when I told my friend, we started joking about how we would
see each other in Hell, knowing that there was no such place.

The fear of Hell resurfaced many
times after my deconversion and I had to re-convince myself each time that the
fear was irrational. I had to read over all of the logical problems and the
evidence against believing in Christianity’s claims, in order for the fear to
go away. When I was not fearing Hell, I felt like I was free. I was free to
think for myself. It made me wish that other believers could be free too. So I right
away got in to trying to get Christians to deconvert, so they could experience
the same freedom I had. All it did each time was lead to me fearing Hell all
over again, and/or attacking the other person, which did happen once, when I
told them they were closed-minded and such. Debating when you are an
inexperienced and extremely recent ex-Christian is a bad idea, as I learned.
Now I feel like I’m safe enough to do it, which is why I’ve been participating
in the Lion’s Den.

 

Well, this is my deconversion story,
and this might not be very well organized, but I did my best to present this. I
made sure to explain my experiences I had just before I actually began to
deconvert and the ones I had just after, because I thought it was important to
mention. By the way, I deconverted just a little over a year before I joined
ex-C.net, in September of 2011.

 

[LifeCycle]

Thanks for sharing your story.  Hell brings the fear necessary to keep people in the fold.  Fear is one of the best motivators, after all.  Just an outside point here... Jesus never said the world "hell."  He said the word "Gehenna" which is a physical place on earth just outside of Jerusalem.  Of course, none of that really matters as it was just a story and not an account of a real event (Biblical Jesus never existed).

 

Christianity causes guilt-trips and low self-esteem.  It hardly builds people up...  After all, we're fallen, we're imperfect, we're prone to be fuck ups.  Well, isn't that just dandy!  How inspirational!  It's bullshit.  You're a good person and you don't need a god or a "saviour" to make you better. 

 

Welcome to the club.  Grab a chair and stay a while.  =)

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

Thanks for sharing your story.  Hell brings the fear necessary to keep people in the fold.  Fear is one of the best motivators, after all.  Just an outside point here... Jesus never said the world "hell."  He said the word "Gehenna" which is a physical place on earth just outside of Jerusalem.  Of course, none of that really matters as it was just a story and not an account of a real event (Biblical Jesus never existed).

 

Christianity causes guilt-trips and low self-esteem.  It hardly builds people up...  After all, we're fallen, we're imperfect, we're prone to be fuck ups.  Well, isn't that just dandy!  How inspirational!  It's bullshit.  You're a good person and you don't need a god or a "saviour" to make you better. 

 

Welcome to the club.  Grab a chair and stay a while.  =)

 

I learned about "Gehenna" after my deconversion and how it was a physical place. I don't remember what it was exactly. Wasn't it a place to burn dead bodies or something like that? I might have to research it to know more about it. I just know I saw it mentioned. Isn't it funny how some people learn more about Christianity during and after their deconversion than they did before?

 

Thanks for the welcome.

[LifeCycle]

 

Thanks for sharing your story.  Hell brings the fear necessary to keep people in the fold.  Fear is one of the best motivators, after all.  Just an outside point here... Jesus never said the world "hell."  He said the word "Gehenna" which is a physical place on earth just outside of Jerusalem.  Of course, none of that really matters as it was just a story and not an account of a real event (Biblical Jesus never existed).

 

Christianity causes guilt-trips and low self-esteem.  It hardly builds people up...  After all, we're fallen, we're imperfect, we're prone to be fuck ups.  Well, isn't that just dandy!  How inspirational!  It's bullshit.  You're a good person and you don't need a god or a "saviour" to make you better. 

 

Welcome to the club.  Grab a chair and stay a while.  =)

 

I learned about "Gehenna" after my deconversion and how it was a physical place. I don't remember what it was exactly. Wasn't it a place to burn dead bodies or something like that? I might have to research it to know more about it. I just know I saw it mentioned. Isn't it funny how some people learn more about Christianity during and after their deconversion than they did before?

 

Thanks for the welcome.

Haha, yeah, if you have Christian friends, you're bound to be in debates for a while. 

 

Yeah, Gehenna was a trash dump outside Jerusalem.  It was also a place where offerings and burnt sacrifices were offered up to foreign gods.

To take a physical place on earth and turn it into a mystical place of endless torture, is not a translation.  It's an interpretation and a very liberal one.  Every other physical placed mentioned on earth is translated to its English name.  They don't turn it into a place not even on the freaking planet!  So why the hell did they do that with the word "Gehenna?" 

 

Oh that's right, because it's all bullshit.  That, and it lines their pockets.  Religion is a good great money-maker.

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

Oh that's right, because it's all bullshit.  That, and it lines their pockets.  Religion is a good great money-maker.

 

Yeah... definitely. I've recently been trying out writing songs and I think I'm getting better at it. I'm working on one now that is actually, all basically about what you just said in 3 short sentences, while also encouraging doubting believers at the same time. How do you put a line through text like that anyway? I do not know how to do that.

[LifeCycle]

 

Oh that's right, because it's all bullshit.  That, and it lines their pockets.  Religion is a good great money-maker.

 

Yeah... definitely. I've recently been trying out writing songs and I think I'm getting better at it. I'm working on one now that is actually, all basically about what you just said in 3 short sentences, while also encouraging doubting believers at the same time. How do you put a line through text like that anyway? I do not know how to do that.

There's an S icon right near the Underline icon up on the top left of your message window.  The S with the line through it.  =)

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

Ok, thanks for letting me know how to put the line through text.

[RipVanWinkle]

You have been through the ringer as the saying goes. It's good to be free of extremists. As you know one of the major tactics of the Xtian strategy is to tell their converts to read the scriptures  every day. That is a significant part of the conversion process: repetition. It is ever so effective. In reading scriptures, Xtians focus on the portions they have already been taught. The others they either don't read or, if they do, they don't really try to understand how they fit with the "main" scriptures. I truly do not believe that the vast majority of people are capable of reading and understanding the whole bible. I know I wasn't until I was through college and had some life experience under my belt. It is a real dedication of time and energy to really study the bible. I don't think that many Xtians actually do it. Those that do usually do so under the supervision of a fundamentalist with a plan. 

 

So why do we exchristains need to read the rebuttal to fundamentalists to keep from freaking out at times? I think it is because the repetition strategy used in converting christians is so effective on a deep emotional level that it takes at least some of the same tactics to purge oneself of the poison. That old default way of thinking is easy to resurface without the use of an effective antidote: Repeated reading and talking about Xtianity's gaping holes. It sure has helped me.  bill 

[new2me]

Welcome, crazyguy!

 

It's funny, I used to think that 'still, small voice' in my head was God.  That little voice of reason was trying to get through to me for years, and I kept justifying things away...

yes, there is hell - but God's judgment is perfect and he won't send anyone there unless they REALLY deserve it

yes, there is hell - but it is not eternal torture but just eternal separation from God - it's just sad but not painful

yes, Jesus is the way to heaven - but he will judge people on the state of their heart if they never heard of Jesus in their lifetime

etc. etc. etc.

 

Eventually I heard that little voice telling me that all of this stuff was nonsense.  It took a long time to get to that point, and it was fear (of God and of hell) that kept me from getting there sooner.  Throughout the evolution of the Christian religion, they sure have perfected the art of frightening people into obedience (and out of their money.)

[Denyoz]

Hi crazyguy,

 

I was touched by your testimony and went through the emotions with you as I read.

 

I'm glad to see you deconverted at your age.  Man, when I was 20, I had just given my will to Jesus and I was in for a long painful ride through mental-torture land!

 

You are better equipped now than I was, so you should have a successful life!

 

Thanks for sharing, I appreciate it.

[SallySang]

"So why do we exchristains need to read the rebuttal to fundamentalists to keep from freaking out at times? I think it is because the repetition strategy used in converting christians is so effective on a deep emotional level that it takes at least some of the same tactics to purge oneself of the poison."

 

This is so true.  Replacing the indoctrination with the rebuttals works. It requires repetition of the new thoughts until they have become well-established and they have replaced the previous indoctrination with the new concepts.

 

Reading these refutations of indoctrination is really helpful.  I spent a whole night on this site and felt MUCH  better by the end of it.

 

 

 

[RipVanWinkle]

Our brains have been altered by the indoctrination. So much so that to reverse it we have to indoctrinate ourselves the other way. 

So, we must be careful not become a robot again, only with a different. message.  bill

[Lerk]

This is a reawakened thread! I hadn't seen it before, and there is something I'd like to comment on.

 

It's the "lust" part. Churches today have boys really freaked out about lust. It's so bad that they feel guilty when they look at a girl and thnk she's pretty. They're told they're awful, depraved beings, and that if they see any cleavage at all, they can't help but lust.

 

Of course, this is aimed at getting girls to completely cover up, but the message to the boys is that they have no self control, and it results in their feeling guilty for nothing. I've seen a couple of Christian websites that are starting to address this, but it's still more common to see quotes from brainwashed boys pleading with girls to make themselves unattractive.

[SallySang]

This sounds like psychological torture, MisterTwo.  Can't this kind of thing be made illegal?

[RenaissanceWoman]

Absolute silence, but I managed to deceive myself into believing I had gotten an answer...

 

Apparently he either didn’t care or was not real...

 

My main doubt arose when I realized that there was a big contradiction between the god of love I thought I believed in and what the god of the Bible actually was...

 

Yes, Yes, YES!

 

I totally feel you, my friend! That "trickery of Satan" excuse was a hard one for me to overcome. So glad you overcame it too.

 

As to all your other points that I did not quote, I have one more thing to say: YES!

 

I'm so glad you are here. Thanks for sharing.

[M4rio]

"Researched everything I could", that sounds like what I did too. I had one of those ginormous industrial size white binders full of "Christian Literature" that I printed from the Internet, along with some apologetics books, etc.

 

I'm glad to hear you have decided to think for yourself!

[M4rio]

I knew some Christians who were visiting a church

I was attending, and one of them said to me:

 

"This place is a lot different. My normal church is more into total depravity and inherrent sinfulness of mankind."

 

I remember thinking how I could never want to attend that place! I also remember a couple years later telling him that I didn't interpret the resurrection literally and did not believe in heaven or hell as literal afterlife destinations. We discussed it for a while. He said something like "you're getting too cerebral about this." He wasn't mean about it, just was admitting that he preferred to take it on faith instead of "overthinking it".

 

 

This is a reawakened thread! I hadn't seen it before, and there is something I'd like to comment on.

It's the "lust" part. Churches today have boys really freaked out about lust. It's so bad that they feel guilty when they look at a girl and thnk she's pretty. They're told they're awful, depraved beings, and that if they see any cleavage at all, they can't help but lust.

Of course, this is aimed at getting girls to completely cover up, but the message to the boys is that they have no self control, and it results in their feeling guilty for nothing. I've seen a couple of Christian websites that are starting to address this, but it's still more common to see quotes from brainwashed boys pleading with girls to make themselves unattractive.

[NeverAgainV]

I'm late coming to this, but thanks for sharing your story. I think it's so sad that religious dogma makes us loathe ourselves just for our natural instincts as human males and females. I had so much Catholic guilt growing up, even before joining the fundamentalist Calvin/Baptist cult, which was a million times worse as far as supposed "sins".

 

Making out when i was a Catholic was OK, just NO sex....but in the IFB cult even looking at one of the opposite sex was sinful, let alone kissing. It is soooo oppressive and I think really messes w/ our minds.

 

And realizing that bible god was a mean mother fucker and NOT some "loving father" was eye opening for me. It's hard to undo all of the brainwashing, but it just shows how if we open our minds to question and allow for real study that we can free ourselves from the religious dogma.

 

Thanks again for sharing and good luck!!

[Blood]

The legend that Gehenna was the trash dump outside of Jerusalem was a guess that first appears in medieval rabbinical commentaries. It could be true, but it's just a guess. 

 

Gehenna is barely mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. There it just means the place where the Canaanites burned the bodies of human sacrifices, including (we're told) children. There is no reason to think this actually happened. Biblical writers excelled at vilifying anyone who was not them. 

 

So the Jesus character basically has no idea what he's talking about when he talks about going into Gehenna. Mark just found the word in the Bible and understood it to mean a place where sacrifices occurred a long time ago. 

[rach]

I am somebody who took the hell thing extremely serious and cried all the time and was extremely panicked about it as "a believer."  Unsuprisingly the threat of hell is the very thing that made me a "believer."  Anyways I was in for a medical procedure a couple years ago and had to go into the MRI scanner the whole way.  So I was in this very small tube, very claustrophobic, head to toe, and it was really nervewracking for me.  I really realized then, hell would be like being closed up inside that tube, and being ignited into flame, and kept alive in that state forever (for fucking ever.....one thousand years, two thousand years, four billion years, ten zillion years, you're not even close to done.  There is no done).  Having experienced the agonies of just minor burns, I was shuddering in complete horror at the thought.  I saw a video of men who had actually set themselves aflame in a government protest, and the screams of those men just in those few seconds they were lit, were unforgettable.  What kind of mind other than Yahweh himself could even be capable of the very idea of burning somebody forever.  He's a monster, a monster.

 

The other thing I realized is I've never met a Christian other than myself, and Andrea Yates (who I didn't actually meet) who really believed in this eternal burning stuff.  Yeah they all say they believe in it.  Yeah they preach the hellfire and brimstone.  But there's no way you genuinely believe in possibilities like eternal burning and then proceed to bear children.  There is no way.  Christians who get pregnant don't really believe it.  Andrea Yates really believed it.  And what she did to those kids, was completely rational in light of the expectation of what she thought she was sparing them from.  Andrea Yates was more of a "biblical Christian" than anybody I've ever heard of.  And you see what a tragedy it wroght.  Christianity wrought many tragedies in my life, mental and psychological breakdowns.  Every day I am trying to take another step, then another, away from the religion that has dominated and destroyed my life.  I still feel the grip of Yaheweh holding me down.  But at least now I can admit to myself what he really is. 

[M4rio]

 

I am sorry to hear what you have gone through, but I am glad that you feel you have more clarity now and are loosening the grip that the belief in yahweh had for so long.

 

How long have you been in the loosening process?

 

I am somebody who took the hell thing extremely serious and cried all the time and was extremely panicked about it as "a believer." Unsuprisingly the threat of hell is the very thing that made me a "believer." Anyways I was in for a medical procedure a couple years ago and had to go into the MRI scanner the whole way. So I was in this very small tube, very claustrophobic, head to toe, and it was really nervewracking for me. I really realized then, hell would be like being closed up inside that tube, and being ignited into flame, and kept alive in that state forever (for fucking ever.....one thousand years, two thousand years, four billion years, ten zillion years, you're not even close to done. There is no done). Having experienced the agonies of just minor burns, I was shuddering in complete horror at the thought. I saw a video of men who had actually set themselves aflame in a government protest, and the screams of those men just in those few seconds they were lit, were unforgettable. What kind of mind other than Yahweh himself could even be capable of the very idea of burning somebody forever. He's a monster, a monster.

 

The other thing I realized is I've never met a Christian other than myself, and Andrea Yates (who I didn't actually meet) who really believed in this eternal burning stuff. Yeah they all say they believe in it. Yeah they preach the hellfire and brimstone. But there's no way you genuinely believe in possibilities like eternal burning and then proceed to bear children. There is no way. Christians who get pregnant don't really believe it. Andrea Yates really believed it. And what she did to those kids, was completely rational in light of the expectation of what she thought she was sparing them from. Andrea Yates was more of a "biblical Christian" than anybody I've ever heard of. And you see what a tragedy it wroght. Christianity wrought many tragedies in my life, mental and psychological breakdowns. Every day I am trying to take another step, then another, away from the religion that has dominated and destroyed my life. I still feel the grip of Yaheweh holding me down. But at least now I can admit to myself what he really is.

[rach]

I am sorry to hear what you have gone through, but I am glad that you feel you have more clarity now and are loosening the grip that the belief in yahweh had for so long.

 

How long have you been in the loosening process?

 

The process is in it's third year I think.  It was about three years ago I finally got brave enough to start looking into atheist and agnostic blogs.  My brain has been like, well you know those lights that have a dimmer and so you can gradually brighten them slowly?  That's how my brain is going.  Brighter and brighter and brighter as I question things I was always too scared to question.