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Goodbye Jesus

My Story ;)


MereChristian

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Well, there isn't really a place to post Christian testimonies, logically enough, but I've decided to post something like that here. Make of it what you will. Feel free to critique whatever you want, but keep in mind that I probably won't be responding. A lot of it is quite personal, too personal for me to argue over or debate. I just post it in the hopes that someone will be encouraged, edified, or led to think of things in a slightly different way. I certainly don't hope to convince anyone of anything in particular.

 

I don't know where to start, but the beginning seems pretty safe. I was raised for the first few years of my life in a small town in Oklahoma, with my mom and stepdad. My mom had broken up with my dad and remarried pretty early on, so I never really knew him except as, you know, the guy I occasionally visited and would give me random Native American paraphernalia. My stepfather was a pretty cool guy, a mechanic, and I sort of hero-worshiped him growing up. Neither of them were particularly religious and they never took me to church. My grandma, my dad's mother, did. She was and is a Southern Baptist, and she'd come and get me most weekends to stay with her and go to church. Church was okay. It was interesting, I accepted everything I was told, had fun with the other kids in Children's Church. I even grew fond of the book of Revelation. The images were just cool.

 

Meanwhile, at home, my parents (which is what I thought of my stepfather as) were fighting, partly over money, partly over God knows what. I got a baby a sister. And when I was eight years old I was molested by a neighbor I had been placed in the care of. The less said of that the better; I only mention it because it plays a role later on.

 

That kind of shit fucks a kid up, and I seemed to deal with it mainly by getting more involved in church and by reading like a fiend. I announced that I had 'accepted Jesus into my heart' when I was nine, and I guess something happened. I felt good, peaceful, like Jesus was going to take all the bad things in my life and replace them with Himself. And for a while that was apparently what happened. I do remember though, that even at that age I showed signs of what is called 'scrupulosity', sort of a religion-based ADD. I'd say prayers over and over again to get them right; I'd be afraid of looking at likenesses of Jesus for fear of thinking bad thoughts or generally being in the wrong spiritual state; I'd be worried that Satan was tempting me into imaginary sins, etc. I never mentioned this to anyone. I suppose I was ashamed. Nobody else seemed to have that problem.

 

Trouble at home escalated. When I was ten my mom and stepdad decided to stop living together, and while they were straightening their shit out I went to live with my other grandmother, my mom's mom. And that kind of sucked, but you know, life wasn't so bad. Bigger town, new school, but I still made friends, and I still went to the same Baptist church.

 

So...after a while, when she had her stuff straightened out, mom came to see me, right? And she wanted me to come live with her. I didn't want to. I was comfortable where I was, and I didn't like her boyfriend. So I said I wanted to stay, and she was upset with me. Few months later she asked my grandma if I could go camping with them. Grandma said yes. They said I'd be back by Sunday. Two days.

 

So they took me camping. Mostly I stayed at the campsite while they ran around doing God knows what. They left me with their neighbor campers they'd met, which fortunately happened to be semi-decent people. I had food and they treated me well. Then one night, mom and boyfriend told me, you're not going back to grandma's. You're going with us, and we're moving out of state. Mom will homeschool you, as she did in first grade. They'll get married, boyfriend will get a job. Not sure what they thought they'd do with my sister. Maybe a plan for that was in the works, maybe they were going to let her stay with stepdad. Lucky for me, some money problems came up, and they had to cool their heels in Oklahoma City for a little while.

 

They didn't have a place to stay regularly, so they decided to leave me with stepdad while mom and boyfriend slept in the car and scrounged up some cash. Mom still trusted stepdad, despite the divorce. It's hard not to. He is such a gentle and kind man. But they made a mistake in this case. While I was there, my Baptist grandma just drove up and got me, and brought me back.

 

After that I didn't see much of Mom for a while.

 

I do remember one moment pretty well. I was at school, elementary school at this time, and she came in and asked to see me. Apparently the school hadn't been told, not sure who was at fault for that oversight. She asked me if we could spend some time together, you know, if she could take me out to eat that day or whatever. She was technically supposed to have a cop in the room with us, when she visited, but whatever. I said no. And I told her I no longer trusted her. She cried.

 

So after that for a few weeks, we exchanged phone calls, because she hated the idea of meeting me with some officer standing by and was trying to put it off. She called me every Thursday. One night she called while a television show was on. I'm not even sure what it was now, but I was into it. I loathe talking on the phone anyway, and gave short responses to everything she said and asked me.

 

"How was school?"

 

"Fine."

 

"You doing alright?"

 

"Yep."

 

So she sort of gave up and told me she'd call me next week.

 

She didn't call me next week. That weekend she and boyfriend had a fight. I never did find out what it was about, but he left the house, drove off in the new car he'd bought by selling hers. She took a rope and hung herself. She didn't die immediately. I saw her in the hospital, and machines kept her alive for several days.

 

It's funny how some things stick in your memory. The last time I was in there, I told my aunt, who had been sewing, that she could teach me to sew next time we got there. I didn't understand why she teared up. Then they brought me in the room and explained.

 

They took her off the machines, she died, the end. And that's when I began to hate God, and myself, too, for failing to give my mother any hope.

 

It wasn't an immediate thing, of course. But a seed had been planted. Whether a real being or a concept, I hated it. I hated the evil that Christians could so casually accept and ignore. I hated the hypocrisy. I hated the empty words, the meaningless prayers, the banal sermons. I hated the proselytizing, the seeker sensitive approach the church thought was so effective at reaching out to people, when in reality all they were doing was reaching out to themselves, and patting themselves on the back for it. I hated having to worry about the state of other people's souls. I hated all of it.

 

So when I was about fourteen I announced that I was a strong agnostic (a more sophisticated position, I supposed, than full-on atheism). I stopped going to church. My maternal grandma didn't care, my dad cared a little (oddly enough; he's always been more into Lakota spirituality, but I guess the way you're raised makes a difference), and my Baptist grandma was crushed. Why couldn't she wake up? I thought bitterly. Why does she have to act like something was wrong with me? Heh, it reminds me of this forum in a way. Once I told her that the Bible was just a bunch of fairy tales, that she was brainwashed. She didn't know how to respond. I talked to the pastor too. That didn't help either. He reduced me to tears, and I'm sure he said things worth considering, but as soon as I left all I felt was emptiness. Another Christian reaching out to himself and patting himself on the back for it. It didn't mean anything to me.

 

So for a long time my solace was in books. Life was this annoying, persistent thing I did my best to stay away from. And I developed a pretty impressive vocabulary, and I guess the teachers thought I was pretty smart. I don't think I was or am, but they pushed me into the role of Really Smart Kid anyway. And because I didn't want to disappoint my grandma, I tried to stay afloat, but I really couldn't. I just didn't care enough. I wasn't popular at school except with teachers - I was quiet, and people took that to mean I was arrogant, because I sometimes did not respond to them. But it didn't matter as long as I could get away from it all.

 

And when I got older, the cycle continued. Enter high school. Harder work, less motivation, borderline-failing grades. And so on. At first I was afraid, you know, of going against the norm - I was already unpopular, socially inept, and, I felt, unattractive. But then I decided, fuck it. I'm already a shit. Might as well make the best of it. So I tried pot, tried alcohol, tried LSD - once. Didn't care for that very much. Tried some other things. Had some sexual experiences with women and also with men. I was ashamed of that, even though I'd peeled away most of my religious foibles. I was afraid that it was a byproduct of my abuse.

 

Meanwhile, my dad continued to be a raging drunk and fight with my grandma constantly whilst simultaneously offering to let me go live with him. I was a weapon, of course. If any voices were raised my dad would say, "Alex will hear us fighting!" and try to use my grandma's anger as a proof that she wasn't competent to raise me. And meanwhile, I read and read and read, growing more disenchanted with religion mainly because of people trying to get me to come out of my shell and experience it.

 

So by the time I dropped out and got my GED I didn't believe in God, or much of anything else. I really did not care. It all seemed a pointless lie people tell themselves to justify their existences, to make what they have feel 'deeper'. A convenient illusion for weak people. Of course, I knew I was weak as well. I was so weak that I couldn't even be bothered to adopt some religion for comfort.

 

So I got out of high school and I got involved with some harder drugs, and that's when the real fun started. Why read when you can get stoned and be amazed by the wind in the branches of a tree? So I partied, and got high quite a lot, and barely had enough money to stay off the street because I couldn't hold down a stable job. That was around the first time I tried to kill myself. I opened up my veins, but my girlfriend found me (and I still don't know HOW in Hell she ended up my girlfriend, because she's not that stupid).

 

Went into rehab for a while. Got out and didn't know what to do with myself, except make my girlfriend happy, and she was a Christian. So I thought, okay, maybe we'll see what's going on with that. If nothing else, it could be an intriguing intellectual exercise, trying to make the pieces fit together, and seeing where they wouldn't. So I studied it and I became enthralled. The poetry of it was very powerful to me. The dogmas were simply fascinating, especially the early disputes. The Bible, barring some epistles, was a bore, but that didn't matter. So theology became my new hobby, something to take my mind off things, and everyone was pleased. Yay, he got religion! The prodigal son returns. All howling nonsense, of course.

 

And then it got more serious. I stepped into a Presbyterian church, and I half-listened to the sermon, and I eyed the cross like it was going to eat my face off, and suddenly I didn't want it to be a hobby. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to feel something. I wanted the poetry to live.

 

And I found...something. Maybe not God, but something. Maybe something in me that was more than just imagination. Whatever it was, my desire was calcifying into something real. It was turning from a hope into a shadow of truth, and I followed it. I felt that maybe God was peeking up at me through some beautiful thing, almost teasingly. Or I prayed, and I really felt like it was a prayer somebody, somewhere heard.

 

I've always been into philosophy, and I decided that, pragmatically (as in, William James pragmatically), this Christianity thing was a damn sight better than what I had going before. It brought me comfort. And I even think it brought me a measure of truth. I wasn't stable, of course. I suffer from depression, and I tried to kill myself again, and I just recently got out of the hospital for suicidal thoughts. Sometimes I think Christianity is just an intellectual game I play, and sometimes it seems like the only thing keeping me fastened to the earth. But I think Christianity is deeper than belief. It's deeper than having a great emotional experience or trusting in a set of dogmas. Every moment I doubt or disbelieve, every moment I want to grab a razor or swallow some sleeping pills or do whatever to end my life, those moments are just as Christian as any I have ever experienced. Because Christianity isn't just about taking comfort in the promise of the hereafter or the Infinite Sky-Daddy looking over your shoulder. It's about suffering. Accepting it. Enduring it. Even recoiling from it, because nobody is strong all the time and that's okay. It is about empathy. If I ever lose that, I will cease to be a Christian. And I will probably cease to be a human being, too.

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Guest Valkyrie0010

I was also OCD about religion, I would repeats prayers of forgiveness because I though I had committed the unforgivable sin.

 

I can slightly relate to the last paragraph, for me it is more about joy. Knowing that you got him and that is all you truly need.

 

God Bless

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Thanks for having the courage to share your story, MereChristian. Perhaps you might be interested in this , unless you already know about it. May the road ahead be bright for you.

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Even tears hold the light of eternity,

Weeping is a ballad of the soul.

Even fear can be a virtue,

A kind of courage that few will know.

There is something in the horror

That resonates my heart

And in my weakness I find the strength

To live without the hurt.

In my sorrow I find joy,

Stronger than the pain,

Because I know I have overcome

And will not fall again.

 

I can't say I know how you felt there. But I too had to face and overcome my past horrors and pains and within it all, the deepest despair and hopelessness I found... something. I did not recognize it as the Christian God and I don't think I could, but I can see what you mean in embracing the pain and finding something there. It made me remember this poem I wrote years ago. I am glad that in all the pain you went through you found the connection to something that pulls you through it, overcome it and be better for it in the end.

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Thank you for sharing your story. It's nice to see someone recognize the suffering aspect of the crucifixon as an internal awakening instead of just enduring for heavenly rewards. It puts it right back into the here and now, where it is dealt with and overcome.

 

My signature by Campbell alludes to this notion.

 

And Midnight, that poem is beautiful.

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Mere...I was left speechless after reading that, with tears in my eyes. Thankyou so much for sharing it. If at the end of the day your hope in God is the one and only thing that keeps you from destroying yourself, then for that alone, I am thankful.

 

Because Christianity isn't just about taking comfort in the promise of the hereafter or the Infinite Sky-Daddy looking over your shoulder. It's about suffering. Accepting it. Enduring it. Even recoiling from it, because nobody is strong all the time and that's okay. It is about empathy. If I ever lose that, I will cease to be a Christian. And I will probably cease to be a human being, too

 

 

This.

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Thanks for sharing your story, man.

 

 

An old war veteran once said to me, "I didn't fear death necessarily; I only feared losing my soul and being destroyed as a human person".

 

He had seen a lot of killing and suffering in WWII including the death camps. He'd also been a commando.

 

Your story for some reason got me thinking about him; I don't know why exactly. Yes, he was my uncle, now deceased.

 

Peace.

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Mere...I was left speechless after reading that, with tears in my eyes. Thankyou so much for sharing it. If at the end of the day your hope in God is the one and only thing that keeps you from destroying yourself, then for that alone, I am thankful.

 

Because Christianity isn't just about taking comfort in the promise of the hereafter or the Infinite Sky-Daddy looking over your shoulder. It's about suffering. Accepting it. Enduring it. Even recoiling from it, because nobody is strong all the time and that's okay. It is about empathy. If I ever lose that, I will cease to be a Christian. And I will probably cease to be a human being, too

 

 

This.

It is almost ironic that these very things make me an atheist. Well, that and the no-god thingy.

 

I see suffering, and it has nothing to do with a person's faith. I have empathy for others, and that includes those who live with varied religious convictions.

 

I have empathy even for those I have never met, those who suffered in the past (even the distant past), and those who may have no empathy for me. I empathize with the people slaughtered in the Bible, with Muslims and ancient Greeks and slaves of all the ages.

 

Even as a Christian, I could understand that others were convinced of their beliefs, and I understood why they didn't believe as I do. Social pressures are social pressures, and religion is geographic. I could not believe that there were good people or innocent people in the world that deserved Hell (when I believed it existed).

 

When you extend your empathy far enough, you will loosen the need for Christianity and embrace a way of thinking that includes all of humanity instead of just Christians.

 

Hold on to your empathy. It will make you human yet.

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Wow, MC, you've had it hard. I hate to hear that people are suffering so.

 

I kinda feel like the guy that's about to kick the crutch out from under an injured person, but here goes.

 

From my contacts with people who have experiences such duress and abuse from their world, It is almost universal that they really have a pretty strong "Bullshit" meter in the back of their minds. I would bet that you do too. A woman that has been raped will have some bad feelings with some of the misogynistic verses of the bible,(Deuteronomy), and with the anti-women attitudes of several of the christian fundamentalist sects.

 

What are your thoughts on this perceived religious misogyny?

 

Also if 99.99% of self proclaimed christians are poor imitators and followers of christ, what does that really say about the quality of their beliefs?

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Because Christianity isn't just about taking comfort in the promise of the hereafter or the Infinite Sky-Daddy looking over your shoulder. It's about suffering. Accepting it. Enduring it. Even recoiling from it, because nobody is strong all the time and that's okay. It is about empathy. If I ever lose that, I will cease to be a Christian. And I will probably cease to be a human being, too.

 

This is a touching story Mere and have an old friend that, oddly, has a similar story, ending in the this same style. I agree with your conclusions. The world is cruel, and I think you have demonstrated the rationality of religion within the human experience of life. You were just attached enough to see it for what it is, and I also feel this to be true in my experience. I was close enough to see the dogma for what it is, close enough to see it in it's recoiling forms, but at the same time, close enough to see exactly what you saw that one day, when you felt and wanted it to feel real.

 

I feel encouraged by your testimony, because sometimes I feel like I am out there all alone. Thank you for sharing it with us here.

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I feel encouraged by your testimony, because sometimes I feel like I am out there all alone. Thank you for sharing it with us here.

 

That's because you are alone.

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...Sometimes I think Christianity is just an intellectual game I play, and sometimes it seems like the only thing keeping me fastened to the earth...

 

Turns out that this is all it is, an intellectual game. But you should keep playing it as long as it serves the intended purpose.

 

Least you think that I'm not sympathetic, I'll add that the game kept the shotgun out of my mouth for a decade or two. After that it wore off. I got tired of living on hope without substance. Fortunately somebody introduced me to drugs. Venlafaxine stepped in where God failed.

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Religion should never be about suffering. If one has to suffer in order to gain spiritual knowledge then one should take a real hard look at what he believes. Most of the suffering of Christians comes from the belief they should be suffering because Jesus suffered. This is a taught mental condition, through religious brainwashing that involves daily amounts of guilt for being a human being. A person can get so wrapped up in feelings of guilt about themselves, they never achieve their full potential in life. Religious depression sucks the worst for this very reason. We, I'm speaking as a former believer, impose depression upon ourselves thinking that suffering for god makes us feel better, when in reality, it has the opposite affect. Through our depression we believe god has mercy on us. In order to break this cycle, we have to defeat the defeatist mentality with which we were raised. There is no god that would want us to suffer because someone somewhere long ago died a horrible death and this death was made into some kind of perverted spiritual journey for the rest of humanity. Most Christians wear their little golden crosses because somewhere in their heads they believe this is how they bear their crosses. Honestly! The idea of bearing one's cross is not the burden of your brother but to prepare one's self for death, a very excruciating death which involves extreme torture. That is how Christians are supposed to bear their crosses. How can you defeat such an attitude? By accepting the fact that what you have been taught about Christianity is 100% bullshit. I cannot teach you that, only you can come to the conclusion on your own.

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MC,

 

If you rely on the power of god to get you through the daily trials, and you feel it does.. Then why is there not more than enough power to go beyond just coping?

 

Isn't the holy spirit supposed to imbue you with the power to perform miracles?

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So when I was about fourteen I announced that I was a strong agnostic (a more sophisticated position, I supposed, than full-on atheism). I stopped going to church. My maternal grandma didn't care, my dad cared a little (oddly enough; he's always been more into Lakota spirituality, but I guess the way you're raised makes a difference), and my Baptist grandma was crushed. Why couldn't she wake up? I thought bitterly. Why does she have to act like something was wrong with me? Heh, it reminds me of this forum in a way. Once I told her that the Bible was just a bunch of fairy tales, that she was brainwashed. She didn't know how to respond. I talked to the pastor too. That didn't help either. He reduced me to tears, and I'm sure he said things worth considering, but as soon as I left all I felt was emptiness. Another Christian reaching out to himself and patting himself on the back for it. It didn't mean anything to me.

 

It sounds like you could've used a dose of empathy. Maybe still?

 

Hang in there, friend.

 

Phanta

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