Ten Years Deconverted And A New Bible At My Door

[R. S. Martin]

The last ten years, the decade since I deconverted, seems like the shortest of my life but now I come home to find a new Bible at my door. I can't believe ten years have already passed since I chose to accept reality as it presents itself and no longer to stretch myself in vain effort to sense an invisible intangible being who can see and hear me everywhere, not to mention my deepest darkest thoughts. So I wonder who thought I'd want a Bible.

 

When I think in terms of struggles and confusion with family relationships this past decade seems fairly long but still, those conflicted relationships started long before I deconverted. Besides, it feels so GOOD to be released from the unanswerable questions and doubts and fears brought on by religion, to just accept the life we can empirically experience.

 

For many years these forums were a very important part of my life--these and others where I could discuss my niggling and on-going questions, just making sure I didn't miss some critical element in religion and made a mistake. It can take many years for those of us coming out of a strict religion but for me even the fear of hell finally let up so that after ten years I can say it does get better and I will not let this new Bible on my doorstep get between me and my inner peace. 

 

I have not yet destroyed a Bible but I might in the near future. It's a NIV Bible. I already have a NIV Bible and a whole batch of KJVs and some other versions, including German and possibly Spanish. Oh yes, and Greek. Where am I going to store another Bible???

 

The one left at my door is a study Bible but if I want to research something, I go online to https://www.biblegateway.com.

 

I left it out there for the time being, hoping for rain to damage it though for the first time in weeks there's no rain in the forecast. If nothing else, come garbage day, my plan is to rip it apart and put it out for recycling. I realize people do check the recycling boxes and someone might pick it out. But if I stuff the paper jacket in among the newspapers and flyers, I doubt anyone will notice there's a bible in there, and if I further pull out sections of pages and scatter them among the stuff, maybe stuff some in with dog poop, surely it won't indoctrinate anyone. I'm not sure what else to do since I have no access to an incinerator or other legal method of destroying it with fire.

 

Will I actually do it? I dunno. I have a hard time destroying books in general....Maybe I can view it as a test of faith or something to mark my ten-year deconversion anniversary. I've got the best part of a week before garbage day to decide.

[Geezer]

Been miss'n ya R.S. Glad you dropped by. I don't have any idea how to solve your problem, but if you figure something out let me know cause we must have at least 50 or more Bibles in various bookcases around the house. They are just taking up space & collecting dust.

[R. S. Martin]

Yeah, Geezer, it's good to be back. Been missing you too.

[GuyGone]

Why not donate it to a used Christian bookstore (or any used bookstore) that will have it?  Someone will get a cheap Bible, you get rid of something you don't want.  win-win.

[R. S. Martin]

GuyGone, I'm not donating Bibles. I don't want to be responsible for the indoctrination of others. 

 

Been miss'n ya R.S. Glad you dropped by. I don't have any idea how to solve your problem, but if you figure something out let me know cause we must have at least 50 or more Bibles in various bookcases around the house. They are just taking up space & collecting dust.

 

I just got an idea if you've got fifty Bibles you want to get rid of, but don't know if it works. Can books be shredded? I suppose a regular office paper shredder is probably too light but outside the local courthouse I've seen a truck with a name like Iron Mountain that I understand shreds bulk documents. Can you hire or rent or somehow access a heavy duty shredder somewhere in-between the light office shredder and the truck? Just a brain-wave on my part. I don't know what's out there or what you really want to or can do.

[Wittyusername]

I don't like destroying books, even Christian ones and I'm sure there is some vestigial superstition in me about defacing a bible. I would suggest just giving it away as mentioned above.

 

I took a pile of books to the local Christian charity as I did not need all that Max Lucado bs in the house (I only had it in the house as a gift but even back then I could not stand it).

 

Many of us here found our way out of the brainwashing by reading the bible. The best way to create an atheist is to encourage unstructured reading of the bible. Not 'Our daily bread' which picks a verse and tells you what it means. Rather reading Mark in one sitting then reading Luke and having the differences hit you. And rinse repeat every day for a year until the cognitive dissonance becomes too much.

[Lyra]

I have an idea.

 

What if you donate the Bible like the others suggested, but first, write comments in the margins to help the reader realize how stupid it is?

 

Write a few notes debunking the lunacy of the stories in Genesis, for example. And if you see contradictions, write down the notes of what the contradiction is and where you can find it. On things that are flat-out scientifically impossible, write where they can find the proof. There should be LOTS of fodder for this in the crazy stories of Genesis and Exodus, as well as the non-supported elements of the NT. Make the comments with black ink and in small font, so that it won't be quite as obvious to a bookkeeper flipping through the pages. 

 

 

This way, you can actually help DE-convert someone. And for the person who has 50 bibles lying around, that's 50 minds freed! 

[R. S. Martin]

Hmmm. Some good ideas mentioned re why to give it away. Never thought of that. I haven't got a car, so getting it to those used bookstores isn't such an easy option but if I put it to the curb, possibly one of the desperadoes on their weekly searches for treasures in Blue Bins will find it and deconvert, or possibly an evangelical neighbour will see and rescue it in passing. Or my evangelical landlord. I might want to put it in someone else's recycling box so it can't be traced to me. As for inserting those 'study notes,' sounds like a great idea though it can work both ways. If an evangelical 'rescues' it, the notes will help the evangelical institution develop further insulation against atheist arguments. In my ten years of atheism, I've seen it happen--they take a new argument from some atheist professional speaker or just the nonbeliever community in general and think up a new defence against it.

[midniterider]

I think the simple thing to do would be to wrap it in a garbage bag and throw it in the dumpster.

 

Ok a single sentence was too easy...

 

You could also draw a pentagram on the covers and key pages with a Sharpie. Or a combination upside down cross/pentagram. Christies hate/fear pentagrams.

 

You could mention on social media that someone dropped off a bible on your doorstep but that a dog peed on it so you threw it away...which might prompt someone to drop off another one which you could also make up an interesting story about how it got damaged before you had a chance to read it.

[midniterider]

You could mail the bible to Miley Cyrus ...

 

http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/miley-cyrus-burns-bible-on-stage-to-promote-tolerance-t16463.html

[noob]

Hello, R.S. Martin.  This is interesting to me.  I would also have difficulty destroying a book of almost any type.  (Well, I did destroy one that I found in my father's belongings that was extremely racist and violent.)  When I deconverted, I kept a few bibles and other religious books that had some meaning to me outside of the content.  However, the majority of the bibles and religious books that I owned went straight to the second hand bookstore.  I never really considered the fact that they might help indoctrinate someone else.  I just dumped them along with all of the other used books that I no longer wanted. 

 

My first thought when I saw the subject of your post was to wonder who would leave a bible on your doorstep.  That would bother me a lot more than trying to figure out what to do with it!

[R. S. Martin]

 

My first thought when I saw the subject of your post was to wonder who would leave a bible on your doorstep.  That would bother me a lot more than trying to figure out what to do with it!

 

Why is this troublesome? I can think of only one Christian who might drop by unannounced on a Sunday and she said she didn't drop by yesterday. Nor would she try to convert me. I figured she might have put the Bible down while she waited for me to answer the door because it's a bit heavy, then forgot to pick it up when she left. It was on a shelf beside the door, so that idea seemed natural. What didn't seem natural was that she would have had a Bible in hand to begin with. I called and she said she had not dropped by. 

 

Another strange thing is that the Bible is not new, just in good condition. The front page is ripped out, you know, the page you'd normally put your name on if you wanted to make sure you didn't lose it. 

 

I live in an area that is not uncommon for JWs or other missionaries to visit so my tentative thinking is someone like that dropped it off except that it's not new and Bibles of this quality cost quite a bit. Maybe that is why they dropped off a used one. *shrug*

[R. S. Martin]

I think the simple thing to do would be to wrap it in a garbage bag and throw it in the dumpster.

 

This sounds easy enough.

 

 

You could also draw a pentagram on the covers and key pages with a Sharpie. Or a combination upside down cross/pentagram. Christies hate/fear pentagrams.

 

 

I'm not sure what a pentagram is but when I looked it up it seemed merely to be a five-pointed star. That Christians hate or fear those is news to me. When I was in first grade in school, the teacher gave us gold star, silver star, etc. depending on how good we did in our printing exercise. Gold star was best. And all the stars were five-pointed stars and I'm quite sure the teacher was Christian. You can buy them in any dollar store as stickers today, I'm quite sure, especially the blue, red, and green ones. Also the line drawings of these were quite common all my life. Maybe it depends on what brand of Christianity one comes from???

 

Come to think of it, the Star of Bethlehem stuck on top of Christmas trees is a five-pointed one too. I agree that it might originate from pre-Christian traditions but the people who use it today certainly don't fear it so I'm not sure of what value it would be to draw it on a Bible...

[midniterider]

Oh, well if the pentagram doesn't seem evil how about a "666" written in sharpie?

 

Just something simple to make someone religious uncomfortable possessing it. 

[ConsiderTheSource]

Geeeeeee it is just another book.  Would you consternate over a hard cover "Gone with the Wind" at your door?

[mwc]

     Meh.  I burned a bible.  They don't burn well (unless you work at it).  But it's no big deal either.  It's not like there's a shortage of the damn things and destroying a few here and there for cathartic reasons is creating some slippery slope.  Even if we did manage to burn them all we'd still have the electronic versions around so they're not going anywhere anytime soon.  I'm not worried about bibles going extinct.

 

     I burned the bible early on in the whole process and it didn't do a whole lot for me (I can't say it did nothing) but I don't know if I'd bother ten years out.  I really just don't care at this point.  I'd probably just chuck it in a dumpster or recycling and get on with life (if I were worried someone might fish it out then I put it in the sink for awhile then they can have some waterlogged mess).  I sure wouldn't take the time to write notes in it and/or donate it.  My time doing absolutely nothing is far more valuable than that.

 

          mwc

[Lyra]

This is starting to remind me of the movie "The Babadook."

 

The heroine gets freaked out by the haunted book, so she wraps it in paper and throws it out in the dumpster in front of her house.

The next day, she gets creepy knocks (three normal ones, then no one is there, and then BOOM BOOM BOOM) and the book shows up on her doorstep again, full of new supernatural content that's even more disturbing then the first time.

She panics, dumps gasoline on it, rips the pages out, and burns the whole mess on her grill.

[R. S. Martin]

Lol, Lyra, that's quite dramatic. I finally got rid of it but not in that dramatic fashion. Two men from the evangelical church next door were fixing the roof of my building this morning. (That church owns this property.) It occurred to me then that they've got a whole church full of Bibles and one more won't hurt so I asked, "Does your church use this kind of Bible?" I explained that someone left it on my doorstep but that I already have a whole drawer full of Bibles, meaning I don't have room or need for one more. The one guy looked at the cover and said they do, to put it on the step, and thanked me. 

 

It occurs to me now that if they were the people to put it there in the first place, it backfired. I wasn't thinking of that when I offered it to them.

[Lyra]

Nice job! Congrats on your bible-free life: yayyy.

 

Even if they DID leave it there, it's not like you did/said anything offensive. You didn't tell them how much you didn't want it and posted online for how to get rid of it, lol. Having a drawer full of bibles is a polite enough excuse.

 

Also, I really doubt that someone thought "Oh no, he/she might be an atheist, so I'd better leave this bible out to set them straight." It was probably more along the lines of the door-knocking scenario described above. (The visitor one, that is. Not the babadook one.)

 

If somebody DID have an intrusive mindset about bible-stalking, I'd imagine that kind of thing would come from a meddling family member, like a pushy parent or ex who lived nearby. But it doesn't seem like the likely explanation.

[midniterider]

This is a nice one....

 

[R. S. Martin]

That's impressive, especially the ending. Thanks for posting, midniterider.

[Voice]

R. S., One time I disposed of a bible with your same concerns, though less concerned about anyone tracing debris back to me. It was a simple task. It being a paperback, I removed the covers and put them in one garbage bin, then put the interior content into the recycle bin. Take them out on different pickup days and you're done. It's the same thing I do when cutting up credit cards. Divide and dispurse.

I guess to make it less obvious that there's a book in the recycle bin, for the content section you can divide it into 3 or 4 smaller sections so it isn't one single mass.

It's nothing to fret over.

[R. S. Martin]

Thanks for the suggestion, Voice. That was actually one of the ideas I was playing with, since I've disposed of cards the same way. But as stated in an earlier post, I gave it to guys from the church next door since I figured one more bible in a church full of bibles will make no difference and giving it to them will cost me the least effort. 

[PurpleStarGirl]

 

Many of us here found our way out of the brainwashing by reading the bible. 

 

I still struggle with religious issues, considering that I live with someone who is Christian and has pushed his views on my sibling and myself. He would see me reading a Bible as me converting to Christianity and I don't want to give off that impression. I also have reading comprehension issues due to learning disabilities and what I've read of the Bible confuses me because it doesn't make any sense.

 

In regards to the topic of this thread, I once got rid of a Bible I had by simply throwing it in the trash while I was cleaning and getting rid of junk that I had accumulated. Unfortunately I still technically own two more and can't get rid of them because my name is on the leather covering.

[midniterider]

 

Many of us here found our way out of the brainwashing by reading the bible. 

 

I still struggle with religious issues, considering that I live with someone who is Christian and has pushed his views on my sibling and myself. He would see me reading a Bible as me converting to Christianity and I don't want to give off that impression. I also have reading comprehension issues due to learning disabilities and what I've read of the Bible confuses me because it doesn't make any sense.

 

In regards to the topic of this thread, I once got rid of a Bible I had by simply throwing it in the trash while I was cleaning and getting rid of junk that I had accumulated. Unfortunately I still technically own two more and can't get rid of them because my name is on the leather covering.

 

 

If it helps you feel any better I grew up in an agnostic home where my parents were rather anti-Christian. There were two King James bibles on our book case for pretty much my whole childhood that nobody ever opened. They had no magical effect on me. (The Christian girl I was dating later on, did).

 

So possessing these books doesnt necessarily have a negative (or positive) effect on someone just by being in the home. But if you find yourself stressing over it you definitely could get rid of it.  In the case of your bible with the personalized leather cover you could bury it under stuff in the garage or in a closet and then forget about it. If it's still bothersome maybe you could tear off the cover with your name on it and cut it into little anonymous pieces. Lots of little pieces that could not be reassembled. Really though, nobody is going to bother rearranging the pieces to see who threw their bible away. Would you waste your time doing that? I wouldn't.  The same goes for just wrapping the whole thing in a trash bag and tossing it. Nobody is going to be wandering around in the landfill unwrapping garbage bags. But if you're concerned about that then throw toss an uncooked chicken breast in that trash bag with the bible. When it spoils, people will definitely leave your trash bag alone.