My Ex-christianity

[mick]

My EX-CHristianity

 

 

"The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and gratitude of the saints of heaven."

 

The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. . .Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell. . . I tell you, yea! Such will be his sense of justice that it will increase rather than diminish his bliss.

 

Jonathan Edwards

 

-Famous Christian Theologian. Calvanist.

 

 

 

 

 

I spent many years of my life as a sincere Bible believing Christian. To be sure, I was Bible believing, though admittedly now without having read most of its contents. At age 22, while in college, I became "saved" through the ministries of "Campus Crucade for Christ". When presented with a very simple (ultimately un-Biblical) Gospel tract I decided I was a sinner and that I needed Jesus Christ. So began the journey that is described in these pages. There was something terrible in me that made me able to believe that I should be going to a place called Hell. There was only one problem. It was a problem that I was never able to rationalize or overcome. When I looked around at the world around me, even as a Christian, it was obvious to me that no one else deserved Hell. For some sad reason I could accept it for me. However, I knew it was wrong.

 

This did not stop me from living the "Born Again" Christian life for quite a long time. I was discipled by Campus Crusade for Christ Staff members. They showed me how to develop and nurture my new "personal relationship" with Jesus Christ. They taught me how to "read" the Bible on their terms. They suggested reading the book of John and to stay away from the Old Testament for the time being. "You're not ready" for that was there explanation.

 

I went to very emotional meetings where powerful worship songs where sung together in great harmony. Many wonderful "godly" and "loving" Christian people adopted me as their own. I loved the attention. I ate it up and felt like I discovered the real truth. I had discovered all that had matter. Within weeks I was trying to lead people to believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. I was telling people that an ancient collection of ancient texts written by God only knows really were the perfect, inerrant, Word of the "Creator" of the universe. I was telling people this while not having even looked at least 90% of it.

 

Eventually I married a wonderful Christian woman I met through Campus Crusade for Christ. We joined an evangelical church. We led the music ministry together for a few years. I was discipled by my Pastor who taught me about Calvinism for the first time. (I will talk about Calvinism in a later chapter.) Within a few years I was elected as a Deacon in the church. I was eventually approached with the possibility of someday becoming an Elder.

 

This testimony is the story of how I discovered the truth about the Bible. It is about how Christians are actually victims of the religion so many of them claim to love. This book will demonstrate how most Christians are taught to "believe" they have this wonder personal relationship with Jesus Christ, long before they have any idea what is really in the Bible. It will show how most Christians have a horrible fear of Hell seared into their brain long before they ever know the horrible things this God did in the Old Testament. They are already so deep in the "relationship" with this God, and the fear of an imaginary Hell, that when they discover that God constantly and consistently orders babies and toddlers slaughtered by the sword it is already too late for most. When they realize that the God of the Bible orders the killings of ever man, women, and child in city after city after city it is too late for so many. When they learn their God banishes the handicapped from the Old Testament temple because they are unclean they have to find away to justify it. (A friend told me that must have been "symbolic" in some way, while obviously fighting back a sadness when I exposed that one to her) When they learn of how Jesus (I say Jesus because of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity) sent female bears to rip apart 42 little children who teased a prophet, they are forced into a depressing conundrum. Most Christians cling to their faith and their Bible for dear life. They will defend all these atrocities to the bitter end. Fundamentalist belief in the Bible (or any religion) is the only thing in this world that can cause normal, otherwise decent people, to defend things like genocide, infanticide, baby killing, torture, and ultimate the most repugnant belief in the history of the human race; Hell.

 

The good news for me was that I finally decided to truly read and study the Bible. I had been a Christian for 5 years when I read through the Old Testament. Shock and Awe would have been an accurate description of how I felt at the time. During my ultimate deconversion process, (which unfortunately was 10 full years after this first true read through the scriptures) I had a very close friend who was going through the loss of faith as well. He told me of how when he read through all those Old Testament scriptures that depict Yahweh/Jehova/Whoever as such a nasty son of a bitch, he used to just try to comfort himself. "Somehow this is all OK." He would say to himself. "Somehow he's still good, etc." I laughed out loud when he described it to me.

 

I had been a Christian 5 years when I learned that the God I loved murdered babies, often, and with anger and great awful wrath. Yes, I knew about Noah's Ark, and I knew he was a God of wrath. (How else could I have believed in God at all and Hell with some belief in these things) However, reading the specific details and the sheer quantity of these horrific verses caused me great sorrow. I buried my head in the sand and became a very defeated and often sad individual. My heart of hearts knew that the faith I was in was bull shit, even as early as that point. However, I didn't want it to be so. I pretended it away. I made myself forget. However, ten years later I would engage in the truly honest quest to determine if I was going to live the rest of my life believing this Bible. I revisited everything, including the Old Testament verses that describe the mass killings of Yahweh. I revisited the concept that we are all totally depraved and disgusting creatures deserving an eternity of torment for the sin of being born a human being. Most importantly, and I realized this was necessary, I took off the goggles of faith, and looked into it all with an open mind asking "what if it is all false?" I believe that it all falls down like a house of cards when a human being with a heart, even if they have been in the faith for a long time, examines it all with an open mind.

 

 

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith'," (Rom. 1:16,17). Paul of Tarsus

 

 

I am ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me repeat; I AM ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ now. For many years this verse from Paul troubled me because even as a Christian I realized that I was at least partly ashamed of the gospel. Even so, I witnessed more often then the other Christians that I saw around me. The idea of Hell bothered me greatly. I though about my friends and family that were openly not Christian and hence had to be going to Hell by my own faith. I cared about them. I was even able to convince myself that my wonderful, selfless, kind, caring, loving mother was already in Hell, because she had never received Jesus Christ the right way. (The fact that I believed my mother was being tortured in Hell, no matter how sad and sick it made me feel, is something that I will never forgive myself. I loved and still love the memory of my mother. If there is any Deity that thinks she deserves to be tormented for all eternity forever with out parole, then I say to that Deity's face, Damn You! And send me to the same place you bastard!)

 

 

 

Later in the book I am going to share a lot of scriptures from the Bible. They are hopefully going to sicken and shock you. For now I am going to stay with conceptual discussion. Let me explain the core reason why I am ashamed of the gospel, and why you, Christian or not, should also be ashamed of the gospel. The core reason that I am ashamed of the gospel is because it is ultimately an anti-human and anti-human being doctrine. It is also a lie. The fact that it is a lie is hardly secondary.&NBSP; SPAN <>Being a lie, I believe it is the likely the worst lie ever foisted upon the world. It has cause at least as much harm, war, torture, more burnings at the stake, more hatred, as any other lie I can think of. Christians think the gospel is such a wonderful thing. They ponder how they have been saved by grace. They sing "Amazing grace" openly calling themselves "wretches" with joy and gladness.

 

 

 

The very problem is we are not all wretches and certainly none of us are born wretches. (Play with a 1 year old who is trying to learn how to walk, and then try to imagine that this little being already deserves to be tortured and tormented in extreme suffering beyond what anyone can imagine without hope for all eternity.) However, for Christianity to be true at all, it is an absolute imperative that we are not only wretched now, but we were wretches in the womb. How else could anyone ever justify a soldier driving a sword through a toddler slicing the little one to death at the order of the Creator? How else could we justify God being so upset with us that he would drown the entire human race but a handful of people he found to be righteous? (Side note: What the hell was the point of that flood anyway? God drowns the entire world because he wakes up one day and declares that "he repents" that he made us. He picks 8 people because Noah was "righteous" even though Romans 3:23 says "No one is righteous, not even one". He drowns the entire world but let's these 8 people live. Then they repopulate the world. All their billions and billions of descendants are still sinners, still have to go to Hell, and the world is more in need of a bloody sacrifice then ever. Why did God not just send Christ at that time instead of a murderous flood? Did he not drink his coffee that morning? Why not send Christ when there was only the 8 left, and let them get saved? Why wait until there are millions and millions, and now billions and billions that require saving? After all Christ himself said it would have been better for many to have never been born than to fall into the hands of his pissed off father. Then why make them in the first place? You're the one who ordained their birth!) And the biggest disgrace of all is Hell. Our level of wretchedness has to be beyond even what a Christian can imagine in order for us to deserve to be tormented for all eternity without hope and mercy for the sin of simply existing. Please get this straight for it is the Biblical fact. You deserve to be tormented forever and ever, simply for the sin of being born. This is scriptural. And I will share the scriptures in this book. Fortunately the Bible is not the Word of God. It is the insane collection of horrible, ghastly doctrine written mostly by very deluded, primitive barbarians. My friend who deconverted around the same time as me approached our Pastor. He asked him about all the atrocious God ordered baby slaughter verses of the old Testament. His answer was essentially, "Well, he is sending most of everyone to Hell, which is far worse than anything he did to anyone in the Bible. If it's alright for him to send us to Hell, it's certainly alright for him to slaughter babies. God I am so glad I am not an evangelical anymore.

 

 

 

The very thing that I once naively thought was the best virtue of Christianity is actually its greatest flaw. I am referring to the atonement and the "Grace" of god. There was a time I would ponder for hours and hours why God would save a wretch like me. And I would thank him endlessly for my salvation. However, now the very atonement is what disgusts me. The issue is not that God showed his grace and mercy by dying on a cross to pay for our sins and "save" us from eternal torment. At least that should not be the issue at all. The issue is and should be why in any god's name should have derserved such a ghastly fate in the first place? Who is ultimately responsible for what is happening to the poor creature who ends up in eternal torment? Is it their fault? Is it Adam or Eve's fault. (trying not to laugh as I type) No! It is the one who is control of the punishment! Is the one who determines such an unfair and ghastly sentence! It is the fault of the Being who sustains the torture chamber for all eternity. It is the fault of the being who could, at any time, by just a word, end the suffering. If he were real then it would be all his fault. Thankfully he is not real.

[Taphophilia]

Thanks for post this.

 

When I was a Christian I would have moments where I would think this religion is really stupid and makes no sense. However, that was simply an attack of SATAN making me think that way and doubt. I would push those thoughts out of my head. It wasn't until after I de-converted that I realised those thoughts were simply my rational brain and my own thought process actually working.

 

Taph

[bush country]

"Most importantly, and I realized this was necessary, I took off the goggles of faith, and looked into it all with an open mind asking "what if it is all false?" I believe that it all falls down like a house of cards when a human being with a heart, even if they have been in the faith for a long time, examines it all with an open mind."

 

When I took off the "goggles of faith" I asked myself - as an adult, if I was "unsaved" and someone presented the gospel story, would I believe it now? The answer was a resounding "NO!"

 

I enjoyed your post.

[OnceConvinced]

Wow! A great commentary there, with lots of great points. I look forward to reading the next chapter.