Dhyin Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 ...is still full of pricks.I was born & raised in avery conservative fundamentalist evangelical environment. The kind of group that'll condemn boys to hell if their hair hair was long enough to touch their ears and condemn women to hell if they wore pants or tried to exercise authority over a man, etc. You know the type, totally of the Westboro variety, although I grew up in the Southeast region myself. Personality wise, I was indistinguishable from they way VenomFangX used to be.At least one positive thing that came from my brainwashing of those days was, ironically, a strict adherence to, in theory, the doctrine of sola scriptura. I say in theory because looking back it seems like I was the only human being I ever personally knew who actually executed that doctrine in practice. Everyone else would pay it lip service and employ as convenient to them, but always had some cognitive dissonance somewhere. And when you tried to point out an inconsistencies they had with scripture, then all of a sudden it turns out we do need something other than scripture in order to interpret that scripture. But only those scriptures which were inconvenient, of course. All of the rest can remain sola and taken at face value. I was naive enough to refuse that kind of bullshit. So when a scripture said we could literally move mountains we had faith the size of a mustard seed, I believed it. If it said greater miracles than those performed by the son of god could be done by men, I believed it. And every time I'd confess that I'd receive a "yeah, but..." or "you don't understand, what that means is..." etc. But I'd have to retort that sola scriptura means only scripture, and your interpretation just given is not found in the scriptures. Now, when I said this strict adherence to the doctrine on my part had somewhat of a positive effect I mean that it taught be to have discipline over my emotions and not allow myself to be led about my just any old thing I "feel" like most religious people are so susceptible to doing. Whatever they "feel" they equated with the voice of god, and if they felt something that was at odds with scripture, the feelings won out. EVERY. Single. Time. But not for me, for I never found a place in scripture that equated the voice of god to a human's personal emotions. When a reference was made to god speaking, it was always audible, something heard with one's ears. And so it was that initial discipline I had over whatever my emotions- my very, very fallible & fickel emotional feelings -that I carried with me through my eventual deconversion and even on down until today. It's just that now I tend to use logic/reason as a guide rather than sola scriptura. Anyway, in my readings of those scriptures, the story of the nutritional habits a certain semetic prophet and his three friends (who later survived being thrown into a fire) got me interested in veganism, which in turn got me interested in health & fitness in general. Also, that prophets scriptures got me very interested in eschatology.All of those features made me ripe pickings for a certain cult of the Sabbatarian persuasion.While working at a religious bookstore at age 21, a member of this cult came into the bookstore trying to get us to sell their literature. Whenever we had requests like that, our boss made us (if she was too busy to do so herself) screen the books to make sure they were acceptable to sell in a store with our particular theme. So I read the books, and Pandroa's box had been opened. My curiosity was peaked. These folks were into veganism and health & fitness too, and taught that it had scriptural basis. They also claimed to be sola scriptura (a claim I would later find out was false), and the central focus of their denomination was eschatology. In fact, the very origins of their cult was founded in an eschatological debacle back in 1884. The next time this guy came again I had a ton of questions for him, so he invited me to home for dinner with him and his wife. After a two hour conversation with him, I was hooked. The arguments seems well reasoned & corroborative with scripture (so I thought at the time).One thing he nor any of the rest of them told until after I was already reeled in was that they had non-canonical texts which they regarded as equal to scripture, all written by a mentally ill woman who had hallucinations throughout her life after suffering head trauma from a stone and being in a coma for three weeks. They also never told me that one of their cult members was one Vernon Wayne Howell, who sparked a nationa tragedy in Waco, TX back in 1993. Those two admissions would be key factors in my decision to leave the cult a few years later. The biggest factors, however, where some of the things they did tell me. The most influential of which was comparative mythology. Their approach, however, was to demonstrate how their arch nemesis, the cult of Rome, had corrupted the true religion as revealed exclusively through sola scriptura. This the Romans did by incorporating pagan elements into the true religion, so they claimed. they would show me an aspect of the Roman cult, and then show me its counterpart in an earlier pagan religion. The thing is, they would only take that so far. But I was so fascinated by this topic that I kept searching for such parallels, even beyond the alleged "corruptions." And in that search I came to see very conspicuous parallels to pagan religions & mythology even in motifs contained within the canonical scriptures themselves. So it wasn't that the original layer of their religion had been corrupted through syncretism, it was that the entire religion through & through was derived from earlier "pagan" culture. (Or so it seemed at the time, nowadays I don't so much regard the whole thing as being taken whole cloth out pagan fabric with merely a change of names & settings. Now I'm also interested in the Campbellian & Jungian explanation for many of these parallels/archetypes .) It wasn't just rosary beads or hand signals or mitres or madonnas that were derived from heathen culture. The very idea of a miracle-working son of a god being killed, hung on a tree, resurrected, and taken up into heaven, etc. had its foundation in earlier tales of the same genre. It was, in effect, the "same" rose by another name.So in autumn of 2005, with that conclusion- the conclusion that this religion was just made up bullshit rather than the infallible word of god -I could no longer remain in this cult, or in any denomination of that religion in general.I obviously still remain very interested in the subjects of religion & mythology to this day, but from a much different perspective. Though it took a few years to get over the initial resentment & iconoclasm in the wake of realizing I'd been fooled for most of my life, I now actually have a new appreciation for my old religion and its mythology. I guess in much the same way many adults still have an appreciation for the Santa Claus myth even after they realize it's just a myth.For those who are likewise interested in comparative mythology, you can check out my E-Book, or my blog which features snippets derived from the book-The Amen Creed Akhified.wordpress.com 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellinas Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 Welcome. Yep, they dying and rising god has appeared here and there in various mythologies and guises. Not that any Christian would accept that - or at least, regard it as anything other than a satanic fraud and mockery of the "truth". Mind, the level of biblical; literalism you describe is impressive 9if that's the right word). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipVanWinkle Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 Dhyin: Very good post. May I ask which pagan religion you were referring to which involved a miracle working son of god who was hung on a tree, died, resurrected and ascended to heaven? Rip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TempestLyn Posted November 21, 2014 Share Posted November 21, 2014 Very interesting! I definitely plan at looking into comparative mythology Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
★ Citsonga ★ Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 Greetings, and welcome! Thanks for sharing your story. I'm glad you've broken free. Enjoy the journey ahead of you.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhyin Posted November 23, 2014 Author Share Posted November 23, 2014 Much thanks, folks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VahnBlue Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Welcome! ???? Please enjoy your stay at the Ex Christian Hotel. We have a 4 star rating and we give out complementary welcomes and a brother/sisterhood Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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