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Goodbye Jesus

My Trek


idic

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Hi all. I'm almost fifty, so my story is a rather long one. But I'll post it here nonetheless to "get it all out". I hope it encourages some of you to take the next steps in trying to discover a meaningful life.

 

Here goes...

 

I fell in love with Jesus when I was twelve years old. On the back wall of the baptistery of the Chemung Baptist Church, there was a mural of a stream flowing into the baptistery, a picture I thought quite ingenious at the time. The centerpiece of the mural was a life-size picture of Jesus as a shepherd, a staff in one hand, cradling a soft, little lamb in the other. And around Jesus were other sheep, grazing on the grass or drinking from the stream, safely guarded by the Great Shepherd. The colors of the mural were so bright and vibrant that as I looked at the face of Jesus, I felt that his eyes were gazing right into my soul -- kind eyes, eyes of love. Though I’m now almost fifty, I can recall the picture of Jesus like it was yesterday.

 

When I was twelve, my father decided that I needed religion. Whether this was due to my behavior or just due to some rite of passage, I don’t know. But he said, “It’s time that you start going to church.” I suppose this was his way of providing for my religious training because, to be honest, my family never talked about religion much. One of my grandparents’ neighbors was a Baptist minister so my sister and I were sent off to Vacation Bible School at this minister’s church in the summer of ’72. It was the first time that I can remember hearing about Jesus as something other than a swear word and I was enraptured by the story of how he came to earth as a baby born of a virgin, did miracles to prove that he was God, died for my sins so that I could be forgiven, and rose again to make a way so that I could go to live with him in heaven forevermore. The VBS teacher said that all I needed to do in order to go to heaven someday was to tell Jesus that I was a sinner, that I was sorry for my sins, and ask him to come into my heart to live. Of course, being in a Baptist church I was also warned about the consequences (namely going to hell) if I refused to believe in Jesus. But it was the love of Jesus that drew me and I responded to that love by becoming a Christian. A few weeks later, I was baptized in that baptistery and began my life of faith.

 

Things at home were rather rocky. As far back as I can remember, my parents were always fighting with one another over something and I can remember thinking that they were the ones who really needed to go to church. But they never did go with me that I recall. My impression from them was that religion was something for children, something that would help behave or keep them from messing up their lives later. Growing up in the farming countryside of upstate New York, I spent plenty of time exploring the woods and nature around me. I was fascinated by all the variety found in the great outdoors and felt close to God there. There were plenty of times that I took my Bible with me up into my tree-house and just spent time reading the scriptures, learning everything I could about God and Jesus and their plan for my life. As I read about God being a deliverer, a protector, a rock, and about Jesus being a savior, I prayed that God would also deliver me from the child abuse that I sometimes experienced and that he would heal my parent’s marriage. But despite my prayers, things continued to get worse.

 

In ’75, my parents divorced. I suppose that this could be seen as one way that God answered my prayers, but it still hurt nonetheless. My father had custody of all five of us kids and soon took on another when he remarried. We moved to a new town and began, according to my Dad, a new start. But while the strife at home stopped due to the divorce and remarriage, I missed my mother. She became an alcoholic after the divorce and went downhill fast. It hurt for me to see her drunk and I prayed that God would change her. One day when I went to see her, she had changed. She was no longer drinking and seemed to be truly happy. She had started attending church and had “found Jesus.” I was thrilled. To see such a change in my Mom not only relieved some of my heart-break for her, but encouraged me that God was indeed listening to and answering at least some of my prayers.

 

With this change, I asked my Dad if, now that I was fifteen, I could go to live with my mother. To my surprise, he said yes. I was elated and felt that I could help her to get her life back on track. Mom and I started attending a Pentecostal church and we were both “on fire” for Jesus. I took my Bible to school with me throughout my high school years and witnessed to anyone I felt God was leading me to. I hung out with a group of Christians at school but though we hung out together, I noticed that they tended to argue a lot with each other over doctrinal issues. Sometimes they even thought that other members of our Christian group were either not really Christians or were going to hell. This began to bother me because I felt deep down that Christians should be known by their love for each other.

 

My last year of high school, I felt that God wanted me to go to Bible College to prepare for the ministry. And I also met a young Christian lady with whom I struck up a relationship. We talked of marriage but I really felt like God wanted me to go to Bible College first and so we agreed to post-pone our wedding for a couple years so that I could train for the ministry.

 

The year in Bible College was both a joy and a trial for me. It was a joy because I felt really close to God there, like I was doing what he wanted me to do, and I found that I had an aptitude for theology. I also really enjoyed going out with the ministry teams to different churches, trying to raise money for the Bible College. But two things happened during that year that made me realize, once again, that Christianity was no Pollyanna world. The first thing was that even though I was a Pentecostal, I had never spoken in tongues and I was labeled a second-class Christian. Speaking in tongues (an unknown language) is, to a Pentecostal, a sure sign that someone has the Spirit of God living in them. And because I never spoke in tongues, the School decided to pull me off the ministry teams because they wanted representatives that were “Spirit-filled.” I found this to be extremely judgmental and hypocritical because I knew a few kids on the ministry teams who, in spite of speaking in tongues, had wandering eyes and could tell the most offensive dirty jokes. The second thing that happened was that a senior there whom I had a good friendship with, someone who had been a homosexual before “getting saved”, was denied a license to preach by the college because of his “past life.” I felt like if people were really considered to be “new creations in Christ” after becoming Christians, who should judge them according to the past? I was disenchanted with the Bible College after these things and decided not to return the following year. Besides, with my inability to speak in tongues, the school dean asked me to consider whether that school was really the right one for me anyway. I again noted that people who claim to be Christians, who claim to follow Christ, are just as judgmental and exclusionary of others as any one else is. Christianity, for me, was beginning to tarnish a bit.

 

More to come...

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Chapter 2

 

After that first year of Bible College, I came back home and married the Christian girl I met in high school. We both came from rocky home backgrounds but felt like we could make it because we were, after all, Christians with God on our side. So we married and then I decided to go into the Army to get electronics training in order to provide for my family.

 

Despite the fact that we were both Christians, our marriage was a struggle. We both came from broken homes where problems had been dealt with, not by the hard work of communication and compromise, but with holding grudges and getting divorces. So neither of us was really equipped to work out our problems and all the going to church and praying that we did just didn’t seem to help. We just seemed to go to our own corners, so to speak, and wait for things to cool off, but often still harboring grudges or hurts. After five years of marriage, she had an affair and because we had no tools available to us to help us work anything out, we divorced – the unforgiveable sin in modern Christianity. Due to the fact that I was still in the service, she got custody of our two children. I was decimated. After all, despite many things in my past and in my life that may have been stacked against me, didn’t God have “a wonderful plan” for me? Didn’t Jesus come to give me an "abundant life"? I was disillusioned – with myself, my life, and my religion. So I stopped going to church as I tried to recover from the shambles that my life was in.

 

Upon exiting from the service, I went to work for an electronics company and felt that I was where I needed to be. I was still bitter about my divorce and some of the things I had gone through, and I especially felt that God was done with me. That is one of the problems that can drive someone in Christianity nuts – it is never really God’s fault if something goes wrong. Failure is always attributed to personal sin or to original sin or to the devil or to a sinful world. Disappointments and hurts in life are never blamed on the God that is said to be “in control” and who is running this universe according to his divine plan. God always seems to escape human suffering blameless. But I didn’t dare think this way back then; I just felt that the failure was mainly on my part because I was, after all, a sinful human being.

 

An older technician at the company where I was working sort of took me under his wing and helped me readjust to civilian life. I soon found out that he was a Christian and I found that I could talk to him about most anything. Eventually, we talked about my divorce and my feelings of estrangement from God. He assured me, using the scriptures, that God could and would forgive my sin and restore me if I sincerely repented. And that is what I did. This, of course, is the “formula” for staying in fellowship with God in Christianity: a constant cycle of sin, repentance, and restoration. This is how Christians “keep their slate clean” before God. They intuitively know that they can’t stop sinning, so the best they can do is to try to stay forgiven. Ironically, their relationship with God doesn’t really stop the sinning, it only forgives it afterward. But I did find some healing and restoration through my co-worker’s counseling. His beliefs in God’s ability to restore were tested when I began to show an interest in his daughter. I knew she was special from the moment I met her and she was very accepting of me and even of my two children. We began dating and married almost a year later.

 

My wife and I became very involved in our local churches, both Southern Baptist and then Bible Churches. I played the piano and she sang in the choir and sometimes did solos. We made quite a few friends there and felt loved. But I slowly began to grow a little agitated with the kind of Christianity that I was involved with. Maybe because of my past, coming from a poor, broken family, going through brokenness myself, I felt like Christians ought to be doing more to help the poor and broken instead of just sitting in pews singing, “I’ll Fly Away.” I began to wonder, “Why is Christianity so focused on leaving this world instead of on changing it for the better?” I wondered why Christians weren’t doing more to follow Jesus’ teachings about helping the poor, setting captives free, healing the sick and broken, and living out the Sermon on the Mount. I felt that Christianity was almost entirely focused on only “personal” issues – personal sins, personal forgiveness, leaving this world for a personal heaven where we would get personally rewarded. After all, didn’t “the Lord’s Prayer” mention God’s will be done on earth? But the Christianity I knew not only was eager to leave earth but it wasn’t even concerned whether the earth was destroyed through war or misuse. For every song we sang that emphasized “This is My Father’s World”, we sang nine others that emphasized “This World Is Not My Home, I’m Just A’Passin’ Through.” And I found that most of the songs and sermons I heard were not about what God could do through us for the sake of others but only about what Jesus has done for us personally. I began to see that, despite claims to the contrary, Christianity is a very self-centered religion, that it is all about what God or Jesus does for us with very little about what we could do for others.

 

The “coupe de grace” came for me in this form of Christianity when one day during church service, my wife and I were called out of the service to come tend our 4-year-old son who was in Children’s Church. When we got there, he was in the hall, crying hysterically. Between sobs, he repeated, “Daddy, why would Jesus burn me? Why?” I assured him that Jesus loved him and would never burn him, but he was simply too scared to really listen to what I was saying. My wife took him out to the car and I went into the Children’s Church room to see what had happened. The teacher had shown the kids an artist’s rendition of a man, engulfed in flames, his arms raised to heaven, his face contorted with agony, crying out to heaven with a plea for mercy that would never be heard. She told the kids that this is what would happen to them if they did not accept Jesus as their personal savior. I reminded her that Jesus never once threatened children with hell but she insisted that she did not want God holding the blood of these children on her hands.

 

I was struggling myself at this time with the question of how a good and loving God could sentence people that he supposedly loves to eternal torment for finite sin, a question that no Christian that I have ever met has given me a convincing answer to. But I knew for sure that it was inappropriate to foist this doctrine upon young children and asked one of the church elders if a teacher should be allowed to expose children to this “side” of God, to this “side” of the, supposed, “good news.” His response was that truth should be taught to all and that, no surprise here, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It’s probably also the seed of many a psychotic break. We left that church shortly after that. I felt like the kind of Christianity that I knew leaned too much on hellfire and brimstone and that if my children decided to become Christians, I wanted them to do so out of love for God, not out of fear of him. Besides, the kind of Christianity that I knew seemed to have little use for Jesus’ teachings (except for the hellfire stuff) and went to the apostle Paul for answers to most everything.

 

But I was struggling with Paul’s writings also. Paul wanted women to be quiet in church, to never have any authority over men, to never teach men anything. Paul supports slavery in his writings. Paul thinks that government officials rule by “divine right.” And Paul puts forth this offensive doctrine that everyone is born into this world as an evil human being, deserving, not God’s love, but his wrath and destruction in hell. According to Paul, even babies are “born sinners” and will go to hell if they have not believed Paul’s gospel about believing in Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is the “good news” to the Gentiles? Where was the Jesus who loves the little children, all the children of the world? Christianity, I felt, had shelved Jesus, and put Paul on the pedestal of God’s revelation to the world. I found it ironic that the religion named for Christ really didn’t want much to do with him and wasn’t too concerned about people becoming like him.

 

More to come...

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Chapter 3

 

Despite all this, I wasn’t ready to give up on Christianity yet. I still felt that this religion could not have survived for the last 2000 years unless there was some truth to it, even if it was only a little grain of truth. So I began to investigate other “flavors” of Christianity. In my explorations, I discovered that Christians who are more “mainline” or lean more liberal generally do focus more on what Jesus taught than they do on Paul’s doctrines. They are usually more concerned about the same social issues that Jesus spoke about and worked to change – hunger, poverty, sickness, social injustice, just to name a few. And they also tended to emphasize God’s love more than the conservative Christianity that I grew up in. I was glad to find that there were different kinds of Christians from what I had previously known and experienced. I was drawn to liberal Christianity like a moth to a flame. I felt that if I didn’t find another form of Christianity, I could no longer be a Christian.

 

My wife was raised, like I was, in conservative Christianity. For the most part, she has been comfortable with it. Although she is very kind and understanding of my struggles, she probably doesn’t wrestle with Christianity the way I do. Maybe this is just because God has given her more faith than he has given me. Maybe it is simply because she is more trusting that everything is going according to God’s divine plan. Maybe it is simply because she has such a personal relationship with God that nothing shakes her or causes her doubt. But being an understanding soul, she didn’t mind that I wanted to move more “liberal” in my beliefs and we settled on going to a couple of Methodist churches for a while. In actuality, I would have preferred becoming Episcopalian for intellectual and doctrinal reasons except for two roadblocks: in the first place, I’m not big on liturgy and Episcopalians love the stuff. In the second place, living in the Bible Belt as we do, even the Episcopal churches down here are rather conservative. So we became Methodists. But, again, I quickly discovered that the Methodist churches in our area are fairly conservative and that as our world and economy get more and more unsure, churches move theologically more to the right, believing that God is in control rather than thinking that we, as humans, are just reaping what we sow and that we might need to change the way we do things.

 

But even in the Methodist Church, I had questions nagging at me. And despite the Methodist creed of “Open Doors, Open Hearts, Open Minds”, I found that they, like most Christian groups, felt that they had some kind of corner on “the truth” and exhibited spiritual pride that they weren’t as closed-minded as the conservatives or as worldly as the liberals.

 

What I think I found the most odd, though, was that I found it difficult to make friends there. In conservative churches, there is a tight bond of doctrinal similarities that bind people together. It is stressed that you be with other “like-minded” Christians so it seems that there are more social functions where friendships can be formed. But my experiences with the Methodist Church led me to think that because doctrines are not quite so central, that people just “do their thing” by going to church, they go home, and that is enough. And I found that the Methodist Church still has plenty of fundamental Christians who attend there, who want to call that denomination back to the “good ol’ days” before their leadership became so liberal.

 

Still, I think most of my problems were simply what was going on in my own heart. The more I studied the Bible, the more contradictions I found there, the more I saw things in the scriptures that I felt were, in what little middle-age wisdom I might have, immoral or unethical. Things like God killing women and children in the flood. Things like God commanding the Israelites, contrary to Jesus’ teachings, to kill their enemies, including women and children. Things like God supposedly testing people (remember Job) when he is supposedly omniscient (all-knowing). Things like God wanting his people to show their devotion by mutilating their sexual organs. Things like blood somehow removing sin. Things like God sending evil spirits. Things like God hardening Pharaoh’s heart and then, supposedly, destroying him. Things like God commanding genocide. I couldn’t help but wonder, this is the God that so loved the world?

 

Now, some could argue that this is the God of the Old Testament and that Jesus came to show us a different view of God, a New Testament God. But the God that Jesus describes, while maybe not calling for God’s people to kill their enemies, steps things up by warning people of everlasting torture. Jesus’ gospel comes across as “God loves you, but he will torment you if you don’t love him back.” And then Jesus tells people to leave their families (what kind of “Christian family values” is that?), don’t plan for tomorrow, and to treat members of the church as their new family. And in the book of Revelation we see Jesus returning to the earth to kill people. So much for him being the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the New Testament also steps things up because the centerpiece of that part of the Bible is that God needed a human sacrifice before he could forgive sins. If Jesus hadn’t shed his blood, then God simply would not forgive sins, so the story goes. And I asked, what does shedding blood have to do with forgiving sins? As a flawed human, I can forgive sins without demanding blood. Why can’t God?

 

These things really bothered me. And on top of all these are the myriad of inconsistencies or downright contradictions found in the Bible. I won’t go into all the details because, truth be known, I don’t consider the Bible to be written by God and everyone knows that we humans get things wrong. But the fact of the matter is that all Christians claim to be “true Christians”, appealing to basically the same Bible as their source of truth, and, yet, can hardly stand one another, often doubting each other’s “salvation.” And it has been this way in Christianity for the past 2000 years. It was Christians who burnt women as witches (with biblical sanction). It was Christians who burnt scholars for translating the Bible into English. It was Christians who stood against women’s rights (with biblical sanction). It was Christians who stood against the abolition of slavery in the country (with biblical sanction) and who donned the costumes of the KKK. It was Christians who stood against the civil rights movement of the ‘60s. It was Christians who wanted us to go to war with Iraq and destroy that country in retribution for 9-11. And for any Christian to deny these things proves that they either don’t know their history or they simply chose to ignore it. Oddly, the same Christians that are anti-abortion, that insist that all life is sacred have no problem with all the genocide that God either committed or commanded in the Old Testament. They hold to a higher standard than God himself does.

 

All of these things, taken together, caused me to question the validity and genuineness of Christianity. Has this religion, taken as a whole, brought more harm or good to this world? And, on a personal level, has being or trying to be a Christian made me a better person? I think not. Christianity has, for me, given me no real answers for life nor has it encouraged me to enjoy my family and friends to the full. After all, the mantra of Christianity is “give up your life and you will find it.” Of course, it takes these words from Jesus, but it applies them to giving one’s life and finances to the church.

 

At this point, I have little use for Christianity. I don’t believe it makes our world or our people better. People are people, Christian or not. In fact, the largest Christian denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptists, also have the highest divorce rate. Following them closely are the Pentecostals and the Seventh Day Adventists, all three groups believing that the Bible is God’s Word and that they are following Jesus. I don’t believe that becoming a Christian or going to church makes people necessarily better. In this respect, the church is right, we are all still “just sinners”. At almost fifty, I’ve been through a process in the last eight years or so of trying to throw out the bath water while keeping the baby. What I’ve discovered is that there is no baby. If there ever was, he was killed 2000 years ago and no one follows him today. They call him “Lord”, but they have little use in following or obeying him, despite their claims.

 

One more chapter to come...

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Chapter 4

 

So where am I now in my journey? To be honest, I know more of what I don’t believe than of what I do. But, first, let me share the positives. I believe that Jesus was a good man. I believe that his Golden Rule is a moral and social truth that should transcend all times and cultures and, in fact, it does so. I believe that he was a person of good character who stood against the political and religious corruption of his day and that his stand got him killed. And I believe it would be good if more people followed his example, including myself.

 

And now for the negative: I don’t believe that Christianity is a good religion. Jesus said to feed the poor. Charities do that. Jesus said to care for the homeless. Again, social charities and shelters do that. Jesus said to heal the sick. Our medical communities do that. Jesus said to stand with the oppressed, the forsaken, and the down-trodden. Our human social programs attempt to do that. Where are the Christian churches? Building buildings. Trying to make more and more Christians. Trying to build their own little kingdoms on earth where the “spiritual leaders” are the shepherds. Interestingly, in real life the shepherd’s ultimate goal is to fleece and then eat the sheep. It’s a good analogy, I think. If Christianity could get back to following the best of Jesus’ teachings, it might be a force for some good in our world. But as it stands, Christianity is more of a religion about Jesus instead of a way of following Jesus. Most Christians simply cannot separate the institutional church from their ideas of God and Jesus. They have made an idol out of the church, thinking that what they do for the church is what they do for Jesus. But that is not what Jesus said.

 

Personally, I’m now an agnostic. I don’t know whether there is a God or not. If there is, I hope he isn’t like the immoral God of the Old Testament. And I hope he isn’t like the Jesus of Revelation who comes to kill people and to cast them into everlasting flames, all the while reaffirming how much he loves them. My ideas about God are, as usual, in flux. I don’t see any way that God can be all-powerful, all-loving, and yet allow evil to run so rampant in the world, let alone in the church. It is not the secular institutions of our land that are sexually abusing little boys, it is men who claim to follow Christ. Something is wrong. I sometimes feel like I am the only one who sees it. If I have to leave Christianity to become a kinder, more compassion human, and I suspect I will, then I will. I’m almost fifty. I no longer have any desire to sit in a pew, looking at the back of the head of someone that I don’t even know, listening to a “man of God” who doesn’t even know me try to tell me how to live my life from a book that he doesn’t even follow himself. Life is too precious and too short to live that way. I want to enjoy whatever life I have left and to make a difference for others. Is that too much to ask? For Christianity, it seems so.

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Dude,

That was awesome!

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Hi, Idic. I definitely commend you for coming as far as you have. Your eyes have been opened and you are obviously in search of the truth. Keep going after that golden nugget. It is there and you can find it.

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Welcome to the forums, idic.

 

I've rarely read a more thoughtful and comprehensive telling of one's journey in questioning xianity. Congratulations.

 

Nobody in this forum needs to prod you further, as you seem entirely capable of forming your own independent judgments.

 

Consider me a neighbor (Schuyler County) to the territory of your youth.

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What I’ve discovered is that there is no baby.

 

So true! Thanks for taking the time to write up your story in such a thorough way.

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Guest trekker

[i've changed my ID from IDIC to Trekker to coincide with my page on the Ex-Christian Social Network]

 

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It's nice to "meet" all of you. Probably one of the few things that I miss about Christianity is the sense of community found there. So it is a thrill to find a vibrant, life-affirming community here on ExChristian.net while we are all trying, to varying degrees, to exorcise our religious demons.

 

To Pitchu: Schuyler County! Yeah, ya'll weren't too far away from Chemung County. Oops, I let the "ya'll" thing slip out. I've lived in the DFW area of Texas pretty much since '79. So I'm a damn Yankee now! I sure do miss the change of seasons though.

 

trekker (formerly idic)

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To Pitchu: Schuyler County! Yeah, ya'll weren't too far away from Chemung County. Oops, I let the "ya'll" thing slip out. I've lived in the DFW area of Texas pretty much since '79. So I'm a damn Yankee now! I sure do miss the change of seasons though.

Not too far away?! The two counties share a border, Trekker! (Has that Texas sun burned the geography outta your brain? :))

 

The change of seasons here is surely a thing to be appreciated -- especially glorious Spring which, as you may recall, lasts from seventeen to twenty-six minutes.

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Guest trekker
Not too far away?! The two counties share a border, Trekker! (Has that Texas sun burned the geography outta your brain? :))

 

Yeah, somewhat. :grin: Actually, although some people wouldn't think it possible, I grew up very much "in the boonies" there in New York and have never been to NYC. But, yes, I've been to Watkins Glen quite a few times and my grandparents had a cottage on Cayuta Lake (not Cayuga, but the little lake of Cayuta). Those were some great years for me. Caught lotsa fish on that lake.

 

Fall in Texas is about the same way. The leaves on the trees turn October 9th, 3:15 PM and then fall to the ground at 3:17.

 

trekker

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I think most Americans who live outside the state think only of NYC when they think of New York, not realizing that most of the territory is, as you say, the boonies. But beautiful boonies, right?

 

So I'm going to give you a nostalgic trip back to the amazing Watkins Glen State Park Gorge, via a slide show of photos of that unbelievable place on this planet, carved out by glaciers:

 

http://nyfalls.com/watkinsglensp.html

 

Enjoy!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest burnthebible

 

 

The “coupe de grace” came for me in this form of Christianity when one day during church service, my wife and I were called out of the service to come tend our 4-year-old son who was in Children’s Church. When we got there, he was in the hall, crying hysterically. Between sobs, he repeated, “Daddy, why would Jesus burn me? Why?”

 

It really hurts me to know that brainwashed dellusional people who think they are saved, and are saving there children, when in fact they have never stepped back to even look at what they are believing in or teaching there children. To instill such a fear in a child so young is nothing short of murdering a child. I am 27 and still feal like doing exactly what your 4 year old son did when heard of jesus burning people. It is sad that you did not realize what you were doing to your innocent 4 year old son you may have stolen his childhood and may have murdered your own son by putting him in that room with that murderer. I believe in reincarnation, I believe God will ask me if i want to go back to earth after i die. I pray that i will not get stuck with dillusional parents that unknowingly will steal my childhood.

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Guest Melodramy
The “coupe de grace” came for me in this form of Christianity when one day during church service, my wife and I were called out of the service to come tend our 4-year-old son who was in Children’s Church. When we got there, he was in the hall, crying hysterically. Between sobs, he repeated, “Daddy, why would Jesus burn me? Why?”

 

I was that child at 4. My parents became "born again" after my older sister died at age 8. Some wonderful Christians told them God had taken her in order for them to turn from their sinful ways and that they would see her again in heaven. Of course they were "god / jesus believers" by default but had never embraced fundamentalist ways until then. After hearing a sermon entirely on hell in the church we started attending, I started sobbing hysterically and telling my mom "I want to be with Robin! I want to be with Robin!" Her suden disappearance had been explained to me as 'she's with God' so I already knew that's where she had gone, whereas I had just found out I was going to burn alive in hell. I was scared out of my mind.

 

So we said the "I accept Jesus into my heart" prayer and I instantly became a little automaton talking about death, heaven and hell to everyone who would listen, making all my friends say the Jesus prayer too so they wouldn't burn, which had me sobbing at night in bed. "I'm thankful that my sister died" is what I wrote for a Thanksgiving Essay in Kindergarten, horrifying my teacher. She asked me why and I said "because now we're saved." Prompting a very concerned call from my teacher to my parents. My parents were just proud of me for "witnessing."

 

Like you I have so much anger at this atrocity afflicted upon innocent children, marring them emotionally and psychologically. It is truly delusional, sick and abusive.

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When I was little, I tried my hardest to always be good so I would not go to hell. It's still a fear that I have.

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Guest trekker
I am 27 and still feal like doing exactly what your 4 year old son did when heard of jesus burning people. It is sad that you did not realize what you were doing to your innocent 4 year old son you may have stolen his childhood and may have murdered your own son by putting him in that room with that murderer. I believe in reincarnation, I believe God will ask me if i want to go back to earth after i die. I pray that i will not get stuck with dillusional parents that unknowingly will steal my childhood.

 

I hear what you're saying, BTB. I did get my son (and my family) out of that church as soon as possible. But the truth is that Christianity has as its overall paradigm the notion of heaven and hell, no matter how you cut it. As I'm sure you know, the bible clearly teaches this. So it is almost impossible to find a brand of Christianity that doesn't pander to this doctrine. For myself, I neither believe in God nor in reincarnation. If God really was God, he wouldn't let us get stuck with dellusional parents of any religion. But it happens every day.

 

trekker

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I still fear the existence of hell. Not only that I'm going there but I fear hell actually exists. Christianity has done more harm than good in my life (and thus most of Ex-Christian.net).

 

I hope you enjoy our friendly community at Ex-Christian!

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Guest trekker
I still fear the existence of hell. Not only that I'm going there but I fear hell actually exists.

 

Yep, it's a tough notion to get rid of, mainly because it is based in irrational fear.

 

On one hand, you can think of it this way: all Christians are going to Allah's hell because they don't follow Mohammed. All Christians are going Yahweh's hell because they don't follow Torah. So if you are going to believe in hell, which one are you going to? :)

 

Some irrational crap about the traditional view of hell:

1. It is a place of darkness...but there is fire there.

2. It is a place where you pay for your sins...but god never accepts your payment.

3. It is a place where you are punished for your sins...with no hope of reform.

4. It is a place where god is not...despite the fact that he is omnipresent.

5. It is a place where you die forevermore...but you cannot die.

6. It is a place of "eternal life" (living forevermore)...despite Christian claims that only believers get "eternal life."

7. It is a place of our own choosing...despite angels casting people there.

8. It is a place of never-ending torture inflicted by a god who is never-ending love and mercy.

9. It is a place where babies go, as well as anyone else who hasn't "accepted Jesus."

 

Has there ever been any other doctrine that makes so little sense but instill such fear?

 

trekker

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idic, thank you for writing all that out.

 

I'm 51 and am at a similar place after a similar journey, although I haven't gone public with it yet because I haven't fully admitted it to myself. I'm the sort of guy who wants to make sure every i is dotted and every t crossed before doing something drastic. I've looked for evidence to support my faith just about everywhere, and have found none, but maybe I'm not quite done. Also, it will break my wife's heart so I want to be ready for that.

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I still fear the existence of hell. Not only that I'm going there but I fear hell actually exists.

 

Yep, it's a tough notion to get rid of, mainly because it is based in irrational fear.

 

On one hand, you can think of it this way: all Christians are going to Allah's hell because they don't follow Mohammed. All Christians are going Yahweh's hell because they don't follow Torah. So if you are going to believe in hell, which one are you going to? :)

 

Some irrational crap about the traditional view of hell:

1. It is a place of darkness...but there is fire there.

2. It is a place where you pay for your sins...but god never accepts your payment.

3. It is a place where you are punished for your sins...with no hope of reform.

4. It is a place where god is not...despite the fact that he is omnipresent.

5. It is a place where you die forevermore...but you cannot die.

6. It is a place of "eternal life" (living forevermore)...despite Christian claims that only believers get "eternal life."

7. It is a place of our own choosing...despite angels casting people there.

8. It is a place of never-ending torture inflicted by a god who is never-ending love and mercy.

9. It is a place where babies go, as well as anyone else who hasn't "accepted Jesus."

 

Has there ever been any other doctrine that makes so little sense but instill such fear?

 

trekker

 

When you put it that way it sure sounds fucking evil don't it.

 

Hell is supposedly prepared for satan and his angels according to that one thing Jesus said, but I would think a god of love would simply just destroy his enemies and be done with them instead of just torturing them for eternity. That is just sick. Why not just make them disappear? Does he not have the power to unmake what he makes?

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Satan is not the enemy of god, but rather his sub-contractor, running hell for god's benefit. Satan is god's Blackwater.

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