ghostchild Posted August 22, 2008 Share Posted August 22, 2008 This is very long, and there's so much more to it, but my testimony is the story of my whole life and so i couldn't cut it too short.. sorry.. My mother was raised in a fundamentally christian family (mennonite) and has never really thought twice about her religion. My dad was raised in a dirt poor, messy family and didn't seek christianity until he was an adult. They met in a bible group, and his passionate christian apologetics won her heart forever. They proceeded to have five children, in 7 years, like good little christians should. i was the second. Christianity dominates many of my earliest memories. Picture-book bibles and saints lives for children filled the house. I don't remember ever not knowing the details of Jesus' execution and exactly why it happened, nor do i remember a time before a fear of hell didn't dominate my nightmares. From the moment i could understand human speech i was indoctrinated with the standard crap about god and his love for us. At the time we were in a fairly average evangelical parish, and most of you are probably familiar with what i'm talking about. In those very early years it didn't dominate my life, and I always remembered them as myt happiest. Only at night did i have nightmares, dominated by demons and hell. However, this relatively relaxed faith did not last past age six. We moved cities, and with that move we also moved churches. We became members of an eastern-rite orthodox church, with an emphasis on confession and repentance. Our daily lives became filled with the stories of the orthodox martyrs, their gory, brutal deaths, and above all, how only passion and repentance on that level could truly assure a place in god's kingdom. You see, apparently i was born in sin, and as such, my best thought would drive an angel mad with its impurity. We had to confess every, *every* sin to a priest, and pray with all our hearts never to reoffend... I was constantly terrified at that young age of forgetting something in confession. soon, i was sure i was hellbound. i developed severe insomnia, became fascinated with death.. ghosts especially, as they were evidence that maybe.. maybe one could escape the afterlife. Then, at the much more mature age of 11, we changed churches again, to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. These people were hardcore. my dad saw them as the One True Faith, which was kinda confusing as our previous church had also been, and we all needed to be baptised. My name, which wasn't a saints name, was changed and nobody in my family ever used it again... my only memories of the ceremony are shivering, humiliated in front of a crowded parish, all eyes on me and my family. The new rules involved six to eight hours of church a weekend.. fast periods lasting more than half the year.. no novels, movies, comic books, no exposure at all to magic or the supernatural. We were all pulled out of school and home schooled, and we moved out of the city to a little farm to "get away from worldly influences". I converted to the new faith wholeheartedly. All my old sins that i might have forgotten to confess were washed away in baptism and i was home free. except.. i was an adolescent, my sex drive kicked in for the first time and no matter how i tried i could *not* do the "right thing" and make it go away. Prayer didn't help, nothing did... and the priest was a close friend of my father. I just couldn't tell him! The endless hours of church (the first week of great lent involved four daily services, totalling 14 hours of church a day, for example) did my head in too. I still get the spinning, hypnotised sensation i used to. This state of things went on and on. My list of sins grew and grew, and i couldn't change myself, no matter how i prayed. I was told over and over that god brings us peace, but all he could bring me was fear. when i did confess things, all i got were meaningless platitudes and prayer. Repentance was supposed to mean change, wasn't it? God was supposed to help me! Meanwhile my family existed in a miasma of blind faith. My father was trying to convert every friend or family member he could, and the ones who refused to follow him to his newest faith were driven away by his eternal proselytizing. My mom loved the strict, in-depth rules about how to live her life, and loved having a father in the sky to call on at need. she once called in a priest to perform a special ritual to get rid of the house mice. the prayer featured a request for the mice to "seek out the unbarren hill" or somesuch.. total nonsense and i knew it even then. I still remember my older brother doing his nightly prayer rope, shadow flickering on the ceiling in the candlelightas he prostrated himself over and over, a hundred times. It took me until my late teens to begin to question, but it did happen. Suidical thoughts and depression took away my ability to continue even living, and i had no choice but to ask why. My life was in ruins, I was unable to go to school or get a job. Finally, i started to look at the question of why my religion was doing this to me. The holes started to show. I realised that it all made no sense. A truly loving, all-knowing god would have to have known when he created us that many of us would end up in hell, and been okay with many intelligent, feeling beings suffering horribly for all eternity! Therefore either god couldn't be loving, or god couldn't be all-knowing. Either way, i wanted no part in worshipping him.. That was the turning point. Now, a few years down the track, i've seen it all for what it is and want no part of any organized religion at all. My life is finally on track for something better, and i've never felt more at peace or able to love. I have *everything* promised to me by my faith, and the only way to get it was to run like mad. There are still problems, still nightmares, but the fear is almost totally gone. I have a future to look forward to. Sorry again for the length, and lack of coherence. it's hard to put it all down like this, as it's such an emotional topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.god Posted August 22, 2008 Share Posted August 22, 2008 Wow, that's a harrowing story! I've always found it remarkable what a person can accomplish when they overcome their fear of something. I used to be afraid of ghosts, but after I realized that they couldn't exist I can now just hang out in a pitch black room with just me and myself in complete peace. It's amazing how much fear one can instill in oneself over something that doesn't even exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghostchild Posted August 22, 2008 Author Share Posted August 22, 2008 What i think is amazing is how much that fear held me back, and how much better my life has become without "god's help". You're right though, it's shocking to look back and think how afraid i was of something that's so silly, really... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susanetal Posted August 22, 2008 Share Posted August 22, 2008 Hi Ghostchild, Welcome! It's nice to e-meet you. I am relatively new around here too, but I have found a lot of support here so far. You said: "My list of sins grew and grew, and i couldn't change myself, no matter how i prayed. I was told over and over that god brings us peace, but all he could bring me was fear." I totally identify with you on this... I feel like it's just now that I've left Christianity that I actually have true peace and contentment! I don't have to obsess about every sin - real and imagined - and worry that I'm hell-bound every second of my life. I can do things for other people just because I want to, and not out of an ulterior motive of leading those people to Jesus. I don't have to "witness" to everyone I meet and worry about my non-Christian friends going to hell. It has been such a relief to step away from the superstitions of the past and feel real freedom for the first time in my life. I hope you will find support and encouragement here. All the best, Susan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghostchild Posted August 23, 2008 Author Share Posted August 23, 2008 I had very few non-xtian friends growing up, especially in my teen years. i was raised to think of them as outsiders. our churches were never really into evangelising and stuff. when my dad converted to russian orthodoxy he was the first convert they'd had in decades, so we were never called on to witness, but we were always told that any non-baptised person (that is, baptised into our particular little sect) was a tool of the devil and potentially dangerous to my soul. Now i can actually have friends.. and yes, it's very nice to not constantly think of people as hell-bound! one of my few outside friends once asked me how i could think of the whole rest of the world as being condemned to hell, and that question always stuck with me and bothered the crap out of me, because i didn't have an answer, and when i did leave eventually it was something that helped me a lot. why should the whole world go to hell just cuz they aren't in the know? it made no sense. my dad used to try to tell me that god gave everyone a chance to see the truth, but his sect only had churches in a dozen countries so how could most people even become aware it existed? total bullshit. now i know hell is a total lie.. and it's so freeing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitchu Posted August 23, 2008 Share Posted August 23, 2008 Welcome to the forums, ghostchild. Your story is truly astonishing in the level of cruelty carried out on you, and more astonishing still in your escape from such unrelenting brainwashing. Feel free to exercise your obviously sharp mind in any way that catches your fancy around here. I'm sure you'll be a unique addition to Ex-c. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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