Recovering Methodist

[Thork]

This very well may end up being much longer than I originally planned...just a fair warning

 

Hello to all of you! As the title says, I am a recovering methodist. I started questioning my religion around the age of eighteen or nineteen after a friend of mine showed me (I'm a bit embarrassed by it now) the zeitgeist movie. While that movie kick started my skepticism, the next two or three years of my life really shaped who I am today. I'm not exactly sure what age I was when I was fine calling myself an atheist but I've been saying 21 lately as my earliest memory of self identifying myself as an atheist was around that time. I am now 23 and still very much in the category of recovery.

 

While the methodist sect of christianity is relatively liberal to my knowledge, I took my religion to unsafe and unhealthy levels. I probably would have fit in very well at a southern baptist church. At my most religious, I was a literal young earth creationist. I truly believed that the earth was 6,000-10,000 years old. A friend of mine and I were driving one day and we saw a Darwin fish on the back of a car. I actually spoke the words, "I didn't come from a monkey" and I meant it. A different friend of mine had an idea for a t-shirt he wanted to have printed that simply had the words "Darwin Lied" on it and I was on board for buying them. This kind of ignorance that I had is extremely frustrating to me and it's painful for me to think back about those times.

 

Whats really worse than the creationism that I held to be true is the teaching I received on the subject of sex and relationships. In junior high I was finally getting to go to youth group on Sunday nights and hang out with the cool high school kids that seemed to know sooo much about god. I wanted to be that way. I grew to trust the older kids in youth group and really loved the youth pastor that had just started working at my church. He was young and was able to talk to us on our level in our language (cliche much?) and that sucked me in. Any way, at some point he started a several week long "program" with us called true love waits (TLW). Long story short, it is an abstinence program. We read from Songs of Solomon and learned about the horrors of premarital sex and how it would ruin our relationships with the person that god had made specially for us.

 

One night in particular our pastor did a kind of skit. It occurred to me within the last year just how traumatizing it seems to have been. When I came to the realization I remembered the night at youth group as if it hadn't really happened. I had almost blocked it out of my memory but I remembered it nonetheless and I think it's important to share it to show how terrible programs like TLW can be.

 

So basically our pastor stood in front of us all with a bouquet of flowers. He explained to us, "this bouquet represents your soul. The soul that god gave you to give to your husband or wife that has been made for you." He then asked a female volunteer to go to the front of the room with him and he handed her the flowers. Being the age we were, laughter rippled across the room. He then had a male volunteer come up to the front. "So lets say that these two met in school and started dating." Another ripple of laughter as he tells the girl to hand the flowers to the guy. "She gives him her heart and they date for a while. They get comfortable with each other and eventually their relationship gets to the point were they kiss each other. As time goes on they eventually have a fight and break up." The pastor then instructs the male volunteer to throw the bouquet on the ground and then take his seat. The girl picks it back up and the flowers are obviously a bit disheveled.

 

This act continues as a few more guys parade up to the stage and throw the flowers on the ground. Then the last guy comes up to the stage. "While these two are dating they decide to have sex." Giggles, of course. "But unfortunately they break up in the end." He then has the guy throw down the flowers and then stomp on them. "Now see, this is what is left of this girls heart and soul for her husband that god has for her." The moral of the story is of course never have sex or touch a girl until you find the one that god made for you and then still don't touch her until you're married or you will destroy her soul.

 

At the time I thought this was a great demonstration of why we should keep ourselves pure for our future spouse. It never occurred to me that dating is a great way to get to know a person. I went to retreats two or three times a year and they all preached the same thing but I won't go into detail about them.

 

So why did I tell this story, is it really important? Absolutely it is. Through high school I only ever asked one girl on a date and she turned me down. That event combined with the indoctrination from the story above paralyzed me. I was convinced that I was unwantable. I thought that no girl I would ever meet would want to be with me and translated into a horrible self hatred. I had a terrible body image problem and became a social wreck. I thought I was unattractive to every girl so I completely stopped trying. To this day I get paralyzed with fear when I try to talk to a girl that I find attractive. I didn't feel wanted by a girl until December of 2011, just a few weeks before my 23rd birthday. She was my first kiss.

 

I kept telling her that I was broken. I still feel like I was broken, but I'm not anymore. Certainly i'm not completely healed, but i'm at least in repair. Two things have really helped me. I went to my first skeptic convention last November (Skepticon IV) in my hometown (basically) Springfield MO. After the first night a bunch of us went to a local bar and I was lucky enough to have a conversation with Dr. Darrell Ray over a beer and that was fantastic. What was so great about talking to him was that the second big thing that's helped me was reading his book The God Virus. Reading that book was what gave me the epiphany that I was guilt ridden when it came to women.

 

Any way, I could probably go on for several hours. The main thing I wanted to do is to give you a taste of who and where I am right now in my life. I'm looking forward to get to know you!

 

Michael

[Blue elephant]

Hi ya Thork

 

Welcome to Ex-Christian. Lots of kind people here to share experiences with and good company to do some further healing.

 

As I read the story about the bunch of flowers, two things came to my mind. The first was that this sort of con works by setting up an analogy which is not actually true. We just buy into the whole of the analogy instead of examing whether the analogy is valid. A very clever trick used by preachers (and politicians as well).

 

My second thought was that it is classic Christian / goatherder belief to see the woman in the role of the damaged bunch of flowers. What about the men?

 

Anyway, glad you have moved on and grown. Good that you have done this early in your life, rather than spending more years with limiting beliefs. The rest of your life awaits you with a growing sense of freedom!

[Positivist]

Welcome Thork! I completely agree--TLW and Gothard-esque teachings have a destructive force in them. Good for you for coming to your senses and pursuing wholeness. Peace!

 

[Spectrox]

Welcome Thork. Nice story. I identified with much of it. I've seen Zeitgeist too! I think it's analysis of money, politics, big business and religion is quite good although I don't accept it's solution to the problems we face.

 

Do you drink alcohol now? None of my business really, but just curious!

[2Honest]

Welcome, Thork! Glad you found the forum. Thanks for sharing your experience. Just wanna say - you're gonna be alright! I was reminded of this song when I read your post...

 

 

 

Peace,

2Honest

[Thork]

As I read the story about the bunch of flowers, two things came to my mind. The first was that this sort of con works by setting up an analogy which is not actually true. We just buy into the whole of the analogy instead of examing whether the analogy is valid. A very clever trick used by preachers (and politicians as well).

 

My second thought was that it is classic Christian / goatherder belief to see the woman in the role of the damaged bunch of flowers. What about the men?

 

I know right? It's nice being on this side of the belief, all those tricks they used seem so obviously transparent now.

 

 

Welcome Thork! I completely agree--TLW and Gothard-esque teachings have a destructive force in them. Good for you for coming to your senses and pursuing wholeness. Peace!

 

Those types of programs are the driving force behind my animosity toward religious belief. I've seen them do terrible things to my friends and, obviously, to myself.

 

 

Do you drink alcohol now? None of my business really, but just curious!

 

Heeeelll yes haha! I have a flask of Captain Morgan sitting next to the chair I'm in right now!

 

Welcome, Thork! Glad you found the forum. Thanks for sharing your experience. Just wanna say - you're gonna be alright! I was reminded of this song when I read your post...

 

Great lyrics! Above all else, music has been the one constant in my life. Music helped me to escape as well. They used to teach us that Marilyn Manson and Eminem where the worst musical acts to listen to and then I actually tried them out for myself and found out why the church despised them. They sing about being yourself and being able to be happy without religion.

 

Thank you so much all of you. It sucks being in a conservative christian majority town and not having a secular place to communicate. We have a meetup group in town but unfortunately I work odd hours so I never have the chance to go hang out with them. I'm looking forward to spending time on this forum with some fellow freethinkers!

[Akheia]

Welcome, Michael I was so touched to read about your journey.

 

Thankfully, that abstinence showboating didn't exist when I was in church. Our maybe not so thankfully: it's so blatantly offensive and manipulative it might have spared me years of hesitation. I am offended that some jackass represents a woman's sexuality with a bunch of stomped-on flowers. My sexuality is not degraded by using it as I see fit. Any man that thinks so is kindly invited to stay away from my Magic Pussy, because he probably sucks too bad in bed for me to want there anyway. By contrast, men who question the status quo are HAWT!

 

Michael, here's to awesome sex and other such fun times free of magic sky daddies who think women are worthless without hymens and that men who have sexual thoughts are evil. I hope you and your girl have a lot of great adventures, and that you keep learning and growing like you are now. Welcome.

[Thork]

Thank you so much! I do need to find a girl to have some sexy adventures with first though unfortunately. It's rough being in the middle of godtown USA and trying to find people that I can talk to without offending in the first few seconds.

[Akheia]

Ouch, I've been there before in Godtown USA. I found solace in hanging out with the Warhammer players and the tabletop RPGers. I have no doubt you'll find someone great one way or another.

[Thork]

I used to play warhammer with a friend of mine back in junior high!

[spherr]

I can relate to this post as well, I'm also a recovering methodist. I'm currently deconverting, which has been a long process. Hope to hear more of your story soon...we probably each have stories we could share that would help each of us!

[Akheia]

Welcome, Spherr I'm afraid I don't know much about the Methodists, but am still happy to see both you and Michael.

 

Heartily recommend Warhammer. I paid rent one month in my own Godtown USA by painting people's armies. The adults playing it tend to be pretty nonconformist and I can tell you I didn't know a single fervent Christian in the entire town who was into it, in a town with 20 churches, 4 bars and precisely ONE Hispanic family, no black people except one man attending the local community college, and one Jewish family (the wife of which ran the Planned Parenthood, which got picketed like clockwork about once a week; all the local girls knew what days from their own church handouts, so they went on other days to get their free condoms and their clap tests--I don't need to mention how rampant STDs were, right? Or how everybody local had at least two DUIs under their belts?). Warhammer and tabletop RPGs were such a relief in that environment. Your own Godtown may vary, but I bet there's a little knot of young adults floating around who are recklessly rolling dice and dispelling the darkness there somewhere.

[VacuumFlux]

About the flower thing... I got a lot of that kind of message too. But it wasn't just a negative message about female sexuality that I got from it; I instead heard "one mistake will ruin your life forever, and making mistakes is a moral failure". I though that a moral person gets things right the first time every time, in most every aspect of life. So when I started college and struggled a little bit with the coursework (oh noes, I got a B!) I thought about killing myself. Because good people get As, so getting a B means that I'm impure and ruined.

 

The whole idea of there being one right person for you also gives a very misleading idea about how much work a relationship is. If you believe that god's got a perfect match for you out there, then what do you do when there's disagreements and the relationship needs some work and compromise? Does that mean you married the wrong person? And then they wonder why christians get divorced just as often as "the world"...

 

Glad you've realized just how much nonsense that is. I hope you find some nice, sane people to be yourself around.

[Zephie]

Welcome to Ex-C! I remember the True Love Waits crap. I bought into it as well. Glad you're out of it. It does take time but it'll get better.

[Akheia]

VF - from what I recall, evangelical Christians actually have an even worse divorce rate than the unsaved.

 

I'm very glad to be out of that entire mindset of "soulmates" that Christianity pushes so hard. It encourages people to commit too quickly and too much to relationships that might not be viable at all. It keeps people in relationships that are disastrous under the auspice of "Well, obviously this is my soulmate, so I have to put up with anything they do!" And it gives people (at least the people I knew) the idea that any two people could make a marriage work as long as God has brought them together. I can easily see why Christians get divorced more often--the inevitable disagreements that arise when two kids marry the wrong people would quickly make both partners feel that this couldn't possibly be God's "real" intention for their lives.

 

I've learned since leaving the church that there are probably thousands of men in this world that I could conceivably fall in love with, most of them men I might love very much but not be able to have a lifelong relationship with. And that a relationship doesn't need to last forever or even involve a wedding for it to be considered successful. Really, it's made me much more careful about relationships and given me much higher standards in who I date or marry besides "Is he a Good Christian Man." I learned the hard way how ephemeral a person's walk with God can be and how utterly flimsy externally-derived morals are when push came to shove.

 

Yeah, definitely glad to hear someone else escaped that bullshit. Even if there's a dry spell now, when the storm finally breaks, that desert is going to look fanTAStic.

[Thork]

I can relate to this post as well, I'm also a recovering methodist. I'm currently deconverting, which has been a long process. Hope to hear more of your story soon...we probably each have stories we could share that would help each of us!

 

I always thought that being a methodist was less "crazy" than being a baptist or something more fundamental like that. However looking back on it from this side of the belief has shown me otherwise. If it wasn't as bad then I don't think I would be this fucked up. I was quite deep into it. I was in the youth praise band for like five or six years and we played during the actual sunday morning services every other month or so. We played at a state religious convention as well one year. I just know that I am a happier person now. I don't feel like I have a constant burden from god on my shoulders any more. It's nice!

 

You said you're still deconverting, well all I can say to that is question everything. I know it's a bit cliche'd to say that but seriously, question everything.

 

 

Heartily recommend Warhammer. I paid rent one month in my own Godtown USA by painting people's armies. The adults playing it tend to be pretty nonconformist and I can tell you I didn't know a single fervent Christian in the entire town who was into it...

 

Strangely enough, the guy that got me into it was my best friend at the time when we were both very heavily into our religion. He still is though.

 

 

About the flower thing... I got a lot of that kind of message too. But it wasn't just a negative message about female sexuality that I got from it; I instead heard "one mistake will ruin your life forever, and making mistakes is a moral failure". I though that a moral person gets things right the first time every time, in most every aspect of life. So when I started college and struggled a little bit with the coursework (oh noes, I got a B!) I thought about killing myself. Because good people get As, so getting a B means that I'm impure and ruined.

 

The message that I got in my head from all that nonsense was that I was a horrible person for having sexual thoughts about girls. I hated myself for wanting to get with this girl or that girl. I had myself convinced that if I did anything with a girl that I would break her for life in a sense. I didn't want to hurt anyone and I still don't. I suppose my chivalrous nature mixed with that message did horrible things to my mind. I wanted to kill myself as well, I just never had the balls to put any real pressure on the knife (luckily).

[Akheia]

That is ghastly. You poor man. No wonder you were so conflicted. Your church's view might not have been as obviously bizarre as some of the sects I've seen, but it's still pretty anti-women if it dehumanizes them to such an extent that you had distanced them so much from the human experience that you were thinking of hurting yourself to avoid hurting the precious little flowers with a perfectly normal and indeed potentially awesome human activity that people have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years successfully without too much supervision. Nobody has really benefited by thinking of women as little flowers who are broken for all time if some guy so much as touches them. Women are really tough. If we break up with someone, we somehow manage, most of us, to get past it and find someone new later. Trust the woman you find to be an adult and be able to fuck without needing a daddy figure to pull a creepy protection thing over the festivities. Get in there like you want sparks to come out, once you find an amenable partner. And you're exactly smart enough to be able to look at your community, think outside the box, and find a place where less religious girls cluster to meet some of those.

 

Leaving Christianity was exactly like becoming an adult for me--if I want to, say, eat pizza for breakfast or call a lawn guy because I'm that sick of mowing, then that's my call. The church is like a daddy who hasn't figured out his little boy is all grown up, but all children eventually grow up when they realize that pizza still has all 4 food groups and the lawn guys do better than you ever did at mowing. Daddy might not approve, but then, he's not the one who has to come up with breakfast every day for you anymore or deal with the Indiana Jones jungle in the backyard every week lest the neighbors flip out. You're free to handle stuff the way you think works best for you and those around you.

[spherr]

I can relate to this post as well, I'm also a recovering methodist. I'm currently deconverting, which has been a long process. Hope to hear more of your story soon...we probably each have stories we could share that would help each of us!

 

I always thought that being a methodist was less "crazy" than being a baptist or something more fundamental like that. However looking back on it from this side of the belief has shown me otherwise. If it wasn't as bad then I don't think I would be this fucked up. I was quite deep into it. I was in the youth praise band for like five or six years and we played during the actual sunday morning services every other month or so. We played at a state religious convention as well one year. I just know that I am a happier person now. I don't feel like I have a constant burden from god on my shoulders any more. It's nice!

 

You said you're still deconverting, well all I can say to that is question everything. I know it's a bit cliche'd to say that but seriously, question everything.

 

 

I have been questioning everything for the past year or so. I seriously dread going to church every Sunday now. I'd rather have my teeth pulled then listen to their crap an hour each week.

 

I do have excuses to leave my church when I feel the time is right. My sister is halfway out the door as well. When she leaves for good, I'm following right after her.

[YellowJacket]

 

 

I've learned since leaving the church that there are probably thousands of men in this world that I could conceivably fall in love with, most of them men I might love very much but not be able to have a lifelong relationship with. And that a relationship doesn't need to last forever or even involve a wedding for it to be considered successful.

 

 

 

[Thork]

@Yellowjacket. Love Tim Minchin and love that song!

 

 

I have been questioning everything for the past year or so. I seriously dread going to church every Sunday now. I'd rather have my teeth pulled then listen to their crap an hour each week.

 

I do have excuses to leave my church when I feel the time is right. My sister is halfway out the door as well. When she leaves for good, I'm following right after her.

 

Definitely come out on your own time. I wish I could have done that. I can't remember if I mentioned it in my first post but I was outed by my mother. It's gotten better but I wish I'd been more ready.

[spherr]

 

Definitely come out on your own time. I wish I could have done that. I can't remember if I mentioned it in my first post but I was outed by my mother. It's gotten better but I wish I'd been more ready.

 

Outed by your mother...ow thats gotta stink! Another complicated thing with my story is I'm also gay. I'm out of the closet everywhere in my life but church. So they all think at my church I'm some happy little straight Christian man. Oh, if they only knew what was true, some of them would be shocked!

 

Thats also another week I could leave...come out and announce I'm gay, and say I don't want to go there anymore cause they're homophobic (which they are)