A Hard Road Home

[NeverAgainV]

I had that exact experience. You are so correct that it felt like the "born again" moment. I thought all the same things you mentioned.

 

It was an exact moment in time that I will never never forget where I went, "Holy crap! It is all a lie! Everything my live was based on is a lie!" For me it was at the point when I was reading about all the ancient god-myths, Mithra, Horas, etc. I had already gone past the questions of evolution, scriptural literacy and the rest. But I thought, well at least if Jesus actually existed I have something left. For me that was the final piece of the puzzle and there was no going back.

 

But I was very surprised by this exact moment in time and feeling in my gut. After all the study, reflecting, staring off into the distance thinking about life and reasoning, there was this moment! BAM! Almost like a switch flipped and it all fell in a matter of seconds. From that point on everything was different and everything started to make sense. I had to figure a new way to proceed after 56 years of life in the Christian culture. It has been an exciting, refreshing, clarifying journey. Even the rough moments with wife, family and friends have not swayed me.

 

Anyone else have that exact moment experience?

Kind of...I think my deconversion was slow then one day I realized it was bullshit. that night I took a walk outside shook my fist at heaven & said "I hate you bible god! you're cruel, you have no compassion..!!! I won't worship any god like you!!!" After that I kind of stunned myself not really believing that I had actually verbalized it out loud.

 

The steps for me were

1. seeing the pastor teach ridiculous bullshit from the pulpit when in the real world there are REAL problems
    
   
2. I hated that in the church the focus was doctrinal & all of the friggen arguments & divisions between people because they disagreed on bible interpretation...surely if there is a "god" it wouldn't think that is a good thing to waste ones life arguing & putting wedges between people. I did NOT see any "prince of peace" in the jeezus of the bible cult...bible god was presented as, a narcissistic jerk who would torture & kill for small infractions of just being human....
    
   
3. THE BIBLE was the final straw. I knew a LOT of what was in it, but now I was looking at it critically instead of just accepting it "at it's word" no friggen way...the bible was not any "good book" I fully began to realize. this included studying about slavery in the antebellum south & how it was justified using the bible, the killing off of the native americans & treating them as less than human....on & on I saw that the bible has been the cause of many cruelties, superstitions & suffering in this world. I began to hate it...
    
   
4. Christians themselves...self righteous, judgmental cruel assholes, most of them anyhow. The nicest christians I knew were Catholics, who were considered nominal christians at best in the eyes of the cult
   

There's more but I think overall that was the progression for me, but when it hit....I was kind of dumbfounded at how I had been so deceived. It also hurt because when I became a "true believer" I was so so so sincere...& my sincerity & naivete was completely abused & taken advantage of. I ended up being involved in something that the opposite of what I thought.

 

I guess that's why I have such a bad attitude towards the bible...I try to show compassion on believers, but they still get under my skin. They DO have a choice, it's hard as hell to escape but it CAN be done.

 

that was long sorry...

[Akheia]

But I was very surprised by this exact moment in time and feeling in my gut. After all the study, reflecting, staring off into the distance thinking about life and reasoning, there was this moment! BAM! Almost like a switch flipped and it all fell in a matter of seconds. From that point on everything was different and everything started to make sense.

 

Anyone else have that exact moment experience?

 

I think I had a lot of little experiences like that which finally added up to a Blinding Flash of the Obvious. Like a lot of little mini-strokes, I guess.

 

* The church was quiet and there was a sonorous, swaying sensation in the sanctuary; everybody was murmuring and it was like being at the ocean. SUDDENLY a woman stood up and began babbling incoherently, shouting at the ceiling, waving her arms, and the skin all along my collarbones crackled electric. A few moments later she sat down and there was silence again, just the murmuring of a thousand voices, and suddenly it hit me: she had spoken gibberish; that was no language. There could be no translation of it. The sudden pregnant silence afterward felt like being at a party and wondering who was going to take the first plate of food and be the pig. Then, as if forced to do so, a man stood up and recited some serious-voiced generic bullshit about how God wanted to give us a revival or something, and we all cheered and people all around me began speaking in tongues again. I was stunned to feel nothing at all, and indeed to feel like he'd just said that because SOMEONE had to be the pig.

 

* A preacher told us to pray really hard for something or other and everybody complied, arms raised, shouting in tongues. I got this clear and absolutely certain realization that we were all just talking to the ceiling, to our imaginary friend. There was nobody listening. And if there were someone listening, what kind of asshole god would require us to pray for something he presumably, being an all-powerful and all-benevolent god, would want to do anyway? I was stunned by this as well.

 

* Listening to my then-husband talk about his evil, wicked past before his conversion and realizing that almost every word out of his mouth was a total, baldfaced lie. No, seriously, it was lies from start to finish. I looked around at all the people shouting "AMEN!" and nodding and waving at the ceiling and suddenly wondered who else lied. That led me to realize that not a single one of the miracle claims I'd ever heard, from the limb amputations' restoration to the little kids speaking "in perfect Aramaic," had ever been demonstrably and objectively verified, but even more insidiously, not a single one of these bizarrely wicked life stories had either. Considering how important these self-reported spiritual resumes were, why didn't we investigate and verify them so we knew if they were truthful or not? Stunned me rigid.

 

* In a history class at my university, seeing how similar Christianity is to its contemporaneous mystery religions--resurrected god-men, Judean prophets, mystical talk of the end of the world, the whole nine yards, and wondering why Christianity won and these exactly similar mystery cults did not. It's no small thing that Christianity is so desperately similar, but it is odd how Christians know so little about the context of the time yet accuse non-believers of getting things "out of context."

 

A lot of stuff like that. None of them were powerful enough on their own to deconvert me, but there came a day when I'd had a few too many of these religious mini-strokes and woke up one fine Sunday like today and refused to return to church.

[TrueFreedom]

But I was very surprised by this exact moment in time and feeling in my gut. After all the study, reflecting, staring off into the distance thinking about life and reasoning, there was this moment! BAM! Almost like a switch flipped and it all fell in a matter of seconds. From that point on everything was different and everything started to make sense.

 

Anyone else have that exact moment experience?

 

I think I had a lot of little experiences like that which finally added up to a Blinding Flash of the Obvious. Like a lot of little mini-strokes, I guess.

 

 

I had a few as well and few different moments when things really seemed to sink in, but that one night when I was able to accept the truth was like a born again experience.

[Newlife]

You are so fortunate to have your wife with you. I left the church 18 years ago and to this day, as incredible as it may sound, she has never even asked me why I left. She knows I was having a problem with the doctrines and such but beyond that she has never asked why I would make such a drastic decision.  The reason it was a big deal was because we believed we were the one true church and leaving was like spiritual suicide.

[TrueFreedom]

You are so fortunate to have your wife with you. I left the church 18 years ago and to this day, as incredible as it may sound, she has never even asked me why I left. She knows I was having a problem with the doctrines and such but beyond that she has never asked why I would make such a drastic decision.  The reason it was a big deal was because we believed we were the one true church and leaving was like spiritual suicide.

Wow, Newlife. I'm sorry to hear that. Have you tried to talk to her about it?

[mymistake]

 

.

 

One evening, as I was spending time in private study, it finally sunk in: “Oh my God! It’s all a lie! I’ve been living in a cult fantasy world! What am I going to do now?” It was freeing but also very troubling. It was a bit of a relief. It felt a lot like “growing up” and also a lot like being “born again.” But what do I tell my Christian wife? What do I tell my Bible-believing friends and family? What do I tell my partners in ministry and the people who have been looking to me for Christian leadership? I can't just keep pretending!

 

I had that exact experience. You are so correct that it felt like the "born again" moment. I thought all the same things you mentioned.

 

It was an exact moment in time that I will never never forget where I went, "Holy crap! It is all a lie! Everything my live was based on is a lie!" For me it was at the point when I was reading about all the ancient god-myths, Mithra, Horas, etc. I had already gone past the questions of evolution, scriptural literacy and the rest. But I thought, well at least if Jesus actually existed I have something left. For me that was the final piece of the puzzle and there was no going back.

 

But I was very surprised by this exact moment in time and feeling in my gut. After all the study, reflecting, staring off into the distance thinking about life and reasoning, there was this moment! BAM! Almost like a switch flipped and it all fell in a matter of seconds. From that point on everything was different and everything started to make sense. I had to figure a new way to proceed after 56 years of life in the Christian culture. It has been an exciting, refreshing, clarifying journey. Even the rough moments with wife, family and friends have not swayed me.

 

Anyone else have that exact moment experience?

 

I had the exact same experience when I became an atheist.  I know the exact moment it happened - Nov 25, 2011.  I suddenly realized that it looks like nobody is watching over me because nobody is watching over me.