The house built upon the rock has fallen

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

Greetings Everyone,

     Thank you for letting me join your community. I am a new ExChristian and am still kind of…… (For lack of better words) in a state of shock. I hope that I can eventually help in any way possible with the cause. But for now I could use a little help myself. I’ve been reading other testimonies. I apologize in advance for the length of this testimony but I wanted to get as much in as I could.

     I was born and raised in the South East US. Christianity (predominately Baptist) has been a core value in my family for generations. One of my great, great, great grandfathers was a preacher, my great grandfather was a preacher, I have one uncle by marriage who is a preacher, and I also eventually answered the call to preach when I was 24 years old.

      I titled this testimony “The house built upon the rock has fallen” because of the scripture in Mathew Ch. 7. To sum it up there were two men. One was wise and the other was foolish. The foolish man built a house on sand and the wise man built his house on the “solid” foundation of rock. Jesus went on to describe how the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon both houses. He said the foolish man’s house fell and great was the fall of it but the wise man’s house stood because he had built it upon the rock. The scripture goes on to explain how the foolish man built his life in the cares of the world. While the wise man built his life on the word of God.

      I wasn’t perfect and from time to time i messed up even when I was at my best. But for the most part I felt like I had built my house upon the solid foundations of Christ outlined in the bible. The bible said that the fall of the foolish man’s house was great. But I’m here to testify that when the wise man’s house falls it’s more destructive. Because he never saw it coming until it was too late.

     From an early age I was indoctrinated in Sunday school and through church services in Christianity. I call that laying the foundations. When you are told something as far back as you can remember. You are going to believe that it is true. If I told an infant that the sky was truck over and over again, and no one ever told that child any different. He would always call the sky truck. I was told all about the bible, how Jesus came to earth and died so we could go to heaven, how Moses had lead Gods people out of Egypt and into the promised land, how the armies of the Israelites had marched around Jericho seven times and god made the walls of the city fall, and countless other stories like David and goliath and all the miracles of Jesus. As a child they were watered down without all the blood and gore you hear about as an adult. But eventually you get the full story, which compounds the intensity of the story 100 fold.

     I was saved the first time when I was ten years old. We were going to a revival at an old family church. We had went several days, I think it was about Wednesday or Thursday that this happened. The preacher had done a very good Job building upon his messages all week long. He was a fire and brimstone type preacher or a “ah hah!” preacher as I like to call it. Because he got so excited when he preached that when he caught his breath he would say “AHH HAHH!” Later in life, during my early ministry I adopted this trait as well. He had been outlining in detail the descent of man into sin through Adam and Eve, The punishment of sin, And the life of Christ, and that night I believe was when he went into the agonizing detail of Christs death and resurrection. How that it was his love for us that compelled him to do this even though he was innocent.

      It had started to click with me the night before and from the time I walked across the churchs’ threshold that night I had progressively gotten more ill with the guilt that I felt. It seemed that the weight of the world was pressing down upon my ten year old shoulders. After the sermon he gave the invitation, they sang two songs during the invitation and I gripped the pew the whole time. I didn’t want to go to the altar, I didn’t’ want everyone to know that I was a sinner, I didn’t want to have to go to the front, but I did want this horrible feeling to stop. I said to myself that if he played one more song that I would go. He did and I took the hardest steps I ever took in my life. Especially since I had to walk past my mother to get out of the pew.

     After I prayed I felt light as a feather because I felt that all that weight had been lifted and that the love of God was in my life again. I knew heaven would be my home. I didn’t get to follow up on my salvation for very long because my parents started having trouble with my brother in church services because he was autistic. They just couldn’t keep him settled down and as a result we stopped going to church for several years.

      They did eventually start going back to church when he got older, I was a teenager and of course like most teenagers I was going through my rebellious stage. But I went to my mom and dad’s new church with my girlfriend at my mother’s request. We have always had a close relationship and I am admittedly a mama’s boy. But during the sermon the pastor said something that a Christian let alone a pastor should never say. I imagine that homosexuality was a hot topic in the news in the political arena at the time. I know now that he was probably angry about it. But that still doesn’t excuse what he said. During the sermon he stated that, “all gays needed to be lined up and shot”. Now even though I didn’t agree with the way of life. I knew that a Christian wasn’t supposed to wish death on anyone. It infuriated me to the point that I turned my back on the Christian faith until I was 22. During that time I experimented with Wicca on a solitary practitioner level. Just buying what books that I could on the subject and learning from there.

     When I was 22 I had my next salvation experience. I visited my Aunt and Uncle who was a preacher one night. He made me feel welcome and is a very funny, charismatic man. I had a lot of fun that night listening to him and his friend, who was also a preacher, do skits revolving around the funeral home they both worked at. When I left he gave me some of his group’s gospel tapes and asked me to listen to them. Also the next day I watched a video of his group, which he also preached in. All those foundations came to the forefront in my mind and once again I was that ten year old boy in need of salvation.

     The next day I asked Christ into my life again and promised from that day forward I would do all he asked of me. I joined the church my aunt and uncle were members of. Started studying the bible everywhere I went. I had a bible at work, I had a bible at home, and I had the bible on cd for the trip back and forth. I traded in my heavy metal music for southern gospel. I went to church on a regular basis and if I wasn’t at work and there was a church function I was there. Eventually I felt that I was being called to preach. I answered that call when I was 24.

     I began to build my ministry. I started a weekly radio ministry at my uncles radio station, I did some street ministry, I went to nursing homes to preach, and preached at any church that would invite me. And yes I did consider myself an “ah Hah” preacher during this time. Later on I moved my membership to a church closer to home and started working with the youth. I was the awana commander at that church which was probably the highlight of my ministry. But it was in that church that I saw the destructive power of differing interpretations of the bible. The church was split right down the middle on a few issues that I thought were somewhat…… petty I guess. I didn’t really see why it mattered so much that they would openly argue in church services. There were times that the children acted more like adults than they did.

     It was around this time that I came across another Christian faith. (The Church of God of the Gospel Assembly) which was a church that branched off of the (union assembly) if anyone is familiar with them. They presented their beliefs with such conviction and so much scriptural evidence that they got me hooked. The difference in doctrines also made me feel like several of the beliefs I had had since a child in the Baptist church had been lies. Which was the first time that my foundations had been shaken since rededicating my life to God several years before. By this time I was about 29 years old. The tension in my church came to a head and the church fell apart. I took this as a sign it was time to move on. So I completely converted to the Gospel Assembly.

     The beliefs between what I was raised to believe and what I had been shown to believe were so far in contrast that I never did quite recover from that shock. From that point forward I began to question more and more beliefs that maybe I was wrong about. Sometimes even those of the assembly. But I couldn’t deny all the evidence that was drawn from the bible that I had never seen presented that way before. It wasn’t like they used one scripture to prove a point like I was used to in the Baptist church. NO when they proved a point they would bring out scripture after scripture from Old Testament, New Testament, and revelations. I began to study the word from the perspective of the assembly feeling like a baby again trying to figure things out. I went on trial to become a Bishop in the assembly. After a year the elders of the church laid hands on me and I received my ordination.

     Later I became assistant pastor at one of their churches. I continued to preach but never with the fire and confidence that I had before. I couldn’t stop the flood of questions after that. If I had been so wrong about the bible before….. What else was I wrong about? After a few years our church dwindled down and wasn’t doing very well. We had some older members pass away and never really gained any new members. If we did, when we would start preaching on the more controversial beliefs of the assembly that didn’t coincide with popular Christian beliefs, we would usually lose them.

     I had gradually went down a spiritual spiral to the point that I was starting to drink from time to time which was something I hadn’t done in a decade, and strictly forbidden by the church. My wife and I were having problems among other personal issues going on in my life at the time.

     I took a step back and looked at Gods people around me. And I was able to see all the pain and anguish that some were going through. I thought of my own children and how I punished them when they did wrong, but when they did well they were rewarded. I began to ask God since he was our heavenly father why we were not treated the same. I began to get angry with God. Whenever I would confide in one of the other leaders the answer was always something to the effect that God was trying my faith. But I also knew that if I was a sinner in the same situation that it would be said I was being punished and God was trying to get my attention.

     When I was 33 the church I was assistant pastor at closed and I decided that in the state of mind I was in I wasn’t fit to preach until I sorted things out. I stopped going to church and continued to question my faith in God. I prayed for God to show me the answers I needed to get back on track. Like the man that had spoken with Jesus concerning his son in Mark 9:23 I asked God to help my unbelief.

    The answers I was looking for never came. I’m 36 now and since then my wife and I have focused on our marriage and each other. Things had started looking up for us and until recently the plan was to eventually get back into Gods Good graces. Things really started to fall apart when my son basically told me that he was atheist and that he felt the bible was a “bunch of bs”. I wanted to do my best even though I wasn’t in the best situation myself with God to show him the truth behind Gods word. I know he is a very logical young man so I would need to support Gods scriptures with evidence. I thought to myself, “what better way to do that than to relate it to archeology”? after all it is 2017 and we have a wealth of knowledge at our finger tips on the internet.

     I remembered the story of exodus and how a massive amount of people left Egypt and wandered in the desert for 40 years. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would have left tracks and by now they had probably retraced all their steps. To my dismay, I was dreadfully wrong. It didn’t take me long to find out that there wasn’t any evidence of it. In a panic I kept googling for a few days trying to find something and the only thing I found was about a few wagon wheels at the bottom of the red sea. That wasn’t enough to prove the type of exodus the bible spoke of. In fact I finally found an article that stated archeologists had given up the search for evidence of a biblical exodus because it had become a fruitless effort…… Fruitless!!!!!! OVER A MILLION PEOPLE WANDERING THE DESERT AND NOTHING WAS FOUND?!?!?!!? I felt that a spear had been stuck into my own side. Even Jesus said that you would know them by the fruit that they bore and the bible wasn’t bearing any physical fruit!

      This wasn’t the final blow though. I found another article written by Jewish scholars stating that the biblical exodus was probably over exaggerated and that it was only the small tribe of the Levites that had wandered in the desert. They were a supposed late coming tribe to Israel and when they came the land had all been divided up. So they gave them the job of the priesthood and the task of performing the duties in the temple and to god. Since they didn’t have any land they were given 10% from all the other tribes. The problem was there was a big controversy because the Levites worshipped Yahweh and the Israelites worshipped EL. They eventually came to a decision that the two were actually one and the same, from that point forward they used the names interchangeably.

      So I started searching for ancient EL beliefs, and found out that ancient EL worship mythology included a whole pantheon of Gods and Goddesses just like in Greek mythology! This little tid bit of information brought down the wrecking ball. My house that I had built upon a rock for over a decade had become weak but now it had been completely obliterated. I’m still picking up the pieces as this has been very recent. I feel like everything I believed about my existence on earth has been stripped from me. I’m going through a series of mixed emotions that the only way I can relate it to you, is it’s like the stages of grief. I’m trying to get through it but I’m having trouble getting out of the depression stage. I keep trying to attain acceptance but there is just still that heaviness in my heart.

     But I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Because I’m starting to realize that it wasn’t a house that I had built upon the rock. But a prison cell. Now I’m starting to see I can travel the rest of my life without the confines of religion holding me back. I’m just trying to get past the rubble that’s left around me. Eventually I will be able to move on.  I hope that this public testimony is my first steps in the right direction.

Thanks for reading, any positive advice is appreciated.

Dark Bishop

[yunea]

Hi DarkBishop, welcome to Ex-C. Thanks for sharing your story. Your words convey very well the shock of realising that none (or almost none) of it may have been like you thought for so long. It can be absolutely terrifying! It's been three years since my initial moment of shock and I can tell you it was very traumatic.

 

Don't worry about helping others yet. Your presence and testimony itself are helpful already - it's always good to get former preachers and evangelists here. But please look after yourself for now and please ask us any questions that you might have. This is a very helpful community with plenty of shoulders to lean on if you need it. And there's nothing wrong with needing it after such a dramatic change in your life. 

 

The stages of grief are perfectly understandable, and I think you should allow yourself some mourning and not try to rush to happiness. However, if you get really stuck feeling down and can't move on, I recommend you look for some counseling. There are therapists who are experienced in treating people who have escaped religion and cults. 

 

Hope to see you writing more, the testimony wasn't too long at all!  

[LogicalFallacy]

 

Dark Bishop, welcome to Ex-C

 

You are among people who understand what you are going through. It is amazing how similar our moments of realization are.

 

Your moment was regarding the exodus, my first moment was regarding the archaeology of Kind Davids time and how there was little to support the tales of King David. I thought that could be right, went on to research the exodus, evidence for the flood etc... turned up nothing. It was, as you describe, truly a moment of shock.

 

You might be interested - in this thread we are discussing the origins of the gods of Israel - El, Elohim, Yahweh. What you mentioned about them explains why in the Torah it refers to God and Lord but using El and Yahewh.

My advice would be to read the topics in General Christian Theological Issues, The Lions Den, and the Science forums - they are where we generally get down and seriously discuss stuff. Feel free to start topics of your own and ask questions - I have learned so much and come so far in the four months I've been here. So many helpful people... I might need to do some boot kissing

 

1 hour ago, DarkBishop said:

“all gays needed to be lined up and shot”.

 

Hmm sound similar to my ex church teaching of homosexuals will be burned - not to dissimilar. 

 

Looking forward to seeing you around

 

LF

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

Thank you both for your kind words :-) I am happy to be in a community with people who understand that this isn't an easy thing. I haven't told any of my Christian friends or family, except my wife and oldest son. I may stay in the closet for awhile about this unfortunately. I'm not ready for the ridicule from close family and friends who just wont understand.

 

And I will definitely check out those links logical. It really is interesting how we both came to this conclusion by looking for evidence for the bible.

 

DB

 

ps. Is there any way to edit my post? I saw several typos when I reread it that I would like to correct.

[LogicalFallacy]

DB, the Edit button should be down the bottom of the post left hand side one line under your last line. However, I think you have to post 5 posts, maybe 10 before you get editing rights and stuff... for a slight OCD person like myself who triple reads his posts it was infuriating.

 

I'll correct posts that I posted a week ago if I find errors (I still miss stuff though!)

 

There are certainly patterns as to how Christians start becoming ex Christians - researching archaeology and science is high on the list.

 

BTW I calculated a conservative daily estimate of water required for the 2 million Hebrews + much livestock - it came to over 27 million liters per day. Short of that, in the desert, livestock and humans would have died en masse in 3-5 days... some water miracle was needed... I can think of some countries today that need that!

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

Logic,

    Remember they had water. Moses smote the rock and it brought forth water. maybe they just threw that thing in the water trough and let everyone and thing drink from it, LOL. Im really starting to wander how i didn't think to research these studies sooner. Guess I will have to give blind faith the credit for that one.

[TABA]

Hi Dark Bishop, and welcome to the 'dark' side!  I think that you will actually find this place to be filled with light, the light that comes from Reason and from the support and love of fellow travelers.  You will find lots of support here.  So many people have come here over the years and introduced themselves in their first posts, standing amid the rubble of their faith, the dust still swirling around them. They have all been welcomed with open arms.  Many of them are still active here years later, and many can tell you of their surprise at the peace and happiness they have found after turning their backs on Christianity.  I know I can.  Although the deconversion process has been relatively easy for me (I was a rather lukewarm Christian, so maybe I was never a 'real' Christian at all, haha!), I know that is not typical, and I have seen the stages of grief that many go through.  In fact, after seeing how so many, like yourself, went from a deep, passionate faith to the inability to believe any longer, and to see some Christians try to rationalize it by claiming they were never truly Christians at all, well that not only makes me angry but in fact further discredits and undermines the religion for me.

 

Childhood indoctrination is such a powerful, evil thing.  It is only now, in my fifties, that I feel like I have almost fully reversed my own, but you have gotten an earlier start and you have already taken the first, biggest step by declaring yourself an ex-Christian.  Many of us here have talked about how it seemed our minds began reprogramming themselves after we stepped across the threshold.  In time you will look back and be amazed at the things you once believed, and wonder how any rational person could have believed such things.  But we were not rational people -at least not fully - when we were under the influence of the faith virus.  

 

I am happy that your son is not a believer, both for his own sake and also the role he played in leading you toward the exit door.  I trust he will be an important ally in your journey forward.

 

I sure hope we will hear a lot more from you.  There is no orthodoxy here and no question or comment will shock us.  I'm so glad you are here!

 

 

[Margee]

6 hours ago, DarkBishop said:

 

     Thank you for letting me join your community. I am a new ExChristian and am still kind of…… (For lack of better words) in a state of shock.

  Because I’m starting to realize that it wasn’t a house that I had built upon the rock. But a prison cell.

 

Welcome to Ex-c Dark Bishop. Thank you so much for sharing your testimony with us. I can relate to so many things you have said. You have found a place where hundreds of us have come to the same conclusion as you and that is the fact that christianity is a lie. It surly is 'sinking sand' and not  the 'rock' doctrine that we thought. And it's shocking to find this out when you believed so strongly. Keep reading and posting. I was in a state of shock for a long, long time. I couldn't believe how I allowed the world to pull the wool over my eyes. I was so depressed when I joined this site a few years ago that I did not know if I could fight this battle of decoverting and possibly discover that there wasn't a personal god. This is a post I wrote very shortly after I joined. It will show you the state of mind I was in. 

This is 'My Please Forgive Me'' Letter' that I also wrote when I first arrived here. I show you these  so that you will know you are not alone in this. http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/44259-please-forgive-me/

 

I hope you will stay for awhile and share your journey with us. I am sure we can all help you through it. I couldn't have made it without Ex-c. The devastation of learning that you have been lied to is horrifying. There  is a lot of information out there on how to deprogram your own mind from brainwashing. I read and read those articles day and night. They helped a lot. 

 

I am so glad you are here with us. Keep us posted on how you are doing my friend. Someone is always here to help and guide you. There is hope living without god. It takes time and it can be a bumpy road but you will get comfortable as you form new world views.

 

((hug))

 

 

[Margee]

Here is a great 5 minute video on ''Stupid Design'' by Neil Tyson. You may find it very interesting. 

 

 

[Geezer]

Welcome DB. Leaving your faith is a journey not an event. Overcoming years of indoctrination takes time, often lots of time to get that garbage out of your head. Loss of friends & social structure should also be expected. Sadly, family issues are also common. Leaving your faith isn't easy, but it definitely is worth it.

 

Sites like this one are helpful for support during your journey. Lots of good information available here as well as like minded folks. Liberal Christians often acknowledge that the Bible is a collection of myths, legends, & folklore with a lot of Jewish midrash mixed in. Christianity should properly be labeled Christian Mythology & I've actually got a few Xians to admit that.

 

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

Margee, 

     I had already read your please forgive me post and found it very touching. Believe me I can  relate to your frame of mind when you wrote that. I had prayed many of the same things before coming to this point. I couldn't help but wander why with all the current confusion concerning scripture why he didn't make an appearance to set things straight. 

      I just read your sense of it all post. You had many more years logged in as a believer than I did. I can imagine how bad it must have been. I still haven't let go of the thought that their may be something........ but I don't think that something is any God or Goddess. The closest I could find to how I fe3l now was pantheist so I put that on my profile.

      That was a long time ago. I'm glad you have come so far. I hope this transition is fairly quick and I really do like this group. I already feel better just being able to talk to people who understand what I'm dealing with. 

 

And thanks for the hugs ?

 

DB

[sdelsolray]

DarkBishop,

 

Welcome to the community here at Ex-C.  I am impressed with your clear thinking, deep introspection and intellectual honesty.  Those traits/skills will take you far.

 

At the risk of seeming too instructive but with the hope of simplifying things for you, I would like to propose two ideas/concepts/methodologies for you to consider:  Internal Growth and External Behavior.

 

Internal Growth:  You started this process in part years ago.  It involves application of your curiosity and intellect to learning about subjects that generally have nothing to do with religion.  Indirectly, development in these subject areas will help you evaluate and understand more fully the religion of which you were part as well as the indoctrination to which you were exposed.  These subjects require certain thinking skills, usually called critical, rational or free thinking.  An initial task, therefore, is to inventory your rational thinking skills and to study and practice them to shore up any identified deficiencies.  You would do this before (or at the same time) you study the subject areas.  Your inventory task should include identifying how well you understand (i) logical fallacies, (ii) deductive and inductive reasoning, (iii) scientific method and (iv) cognitive biases (confirmation, expectation, attribution, among others).  These "thinking tools" will help immensely in your study of the subjects.

 

As to the subjects, they include (in no particular order) history, astronomy/cosmology, anthropology/archeology, biology/evolution, philosophy, among others.  Once you have gathered some working knowledge of some or more of these subjects, you should be able to tackle the Christian religion itself by studying scholarly based religious history, textual criticism of the Bible and comparative religion.

 

External Behavior:  Besides childhood indoctrination by trusted adults, you were/are exposed to peer pressure from family, friends and others who were and remain similarly indoctrinated.  I needn't go into the nature of that pressure as you seem quite aware of its presence and character.  For many, even if they have obtained significant Internal Growth, difficulties arise with familial and social relationships once it becomes known that you no longer believe the particular religious dogma involved.  This has little to do with the frontal cortex of your brain (which is involved with the Internal Growth), but deals with the more primitive limbic system in your brain.  Fortunately, you don't need many tools to handle this effectively.  Maintaining a moral high ground, being intellectually honest, avoiding codependency/enabling and being able to handle the emotional pain will go a long way towards helping you through your journey.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Welcome, DarkBishop, and thanks for sharing your story.

 

Like you, I also shifted my theological views as a Christian because of what I found in my biblical studies. Eventually those same biblical studies led me to the realization that Christianity itself is mythology and the Bible is not a reliable source of information.

 

Finding out that the worldview that I'd always held was a big, fat lie was very difficult to deal with. I felt like the ground had been yanked out from under me and I was in a free-fall with nowhere to get a foothold. I suspect that you have similar feelings right now, and I can testify that it gets better with time.

 

Good luck as you work through all of this and move from dark bishop to enlightened freethinker. Enjoy the journey ahead of you....

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

Update:

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed all the links, topics, and comments from all of you. Ya'll have been very helpful getting me through these initial stages of my de-conversion. I am currently reading one of Ehrmans books on kindle concerning biblical forgeries. I'm actually enjoying studying the bible again but from a different perspective. Thanks to all of you. I look forward to expanding my understanding on the various topics outlined on this site. ?

 

Dark Bishop

 

Ps. I'm also enjoying listening to my beloved heavy metal music again with a guilt free conscience. 

[TABA]

12 minutes ago, DarkBishop said:

Update:

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed all the links, topics, and comments from all of you. Ya'll have been very helpful getting me through these initial stages of my de-conversion. I am currently reading one of Ehrmans books on kindle concerning biblical forgeries. I'm actually enjoying studying the bible again but from a different perspective. Thanks to all of you. I look forward to expanding my understanding on the various topics outlined on this site. ?

 

Dark Bishop

 

Ps. I'm also enjoying listening to my beloved heavy metal music again with a guilt free conscience. 

 

Glad to hear your experience here has been good, dark one!  You've been a welcome addition to several discussions since you showed up.  I'm sure the Ehrman book will be profitable for you. What a difference it makes when we can study and evaluate evidence and follow it wherever it leads, without having boundaries set in advance by some theology!  Also good when your conscience can be informed by your own experiences and opinions without being overruled by a set of writings from a totally different era in human history...

 

[Abrooks2007]

DarkBishop:

 

Glad to see that you're going through the early stages of grief with the end goal of freedom in mind

 

I left my faith completely three years ago on April 14.  I finally realized, after one final experience in the confession booth, that what I had been doing is to allow other people to do my thinking for me, and, in essence, dis-value evidence to the contrary because it threatened MY version of reality.  Albeit my version of reality wasn't reality at all.

 

It will take some time to, as you say, gather the pieces.  But I think you'll, like me, be able to form a new paradigm of spirituality...or perhaps choose no spirituality, which is fine...that will make you feel more content and as happy a human being as you ever were.   Me, I am content with embracing the more Buddhist version of spirituality without the impediment of some psychotic, self-contradictory, egotistical "god" being involved.  If you look in the Old Testament...God was crazy. :-P

 

Take it one step and one day at a time.

 

-Andrew

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

19 minutes ago, Abrooks2007 said:

It will take some time to, as you say, gather the pieces.  But I think you'll, like me, be able to form a new paradigm of spirituality...or perhaps choose no spirituality, which is fine...that will make you feel more content and as happy a human being as you ever were.   Me, I am content with embracing the more Buddhist version of spirituality without the impediment of some psychotic, self-contradictory, egotistical "god" being involved.  If you look in the Old Testament...God was crazy. :-P

 

Take it one step and one day at a time.

 

-Andrew

 

Andrew,

      Thank you for the kind words. I'm doing pretty good so far. The more I learn about the actual truth of the bible the more I'm confident in my decision to deconvert. 

      I'm glad to hear you found your niche in another belief. I know most here have become athiest but I, like you, still believe there is something out there. I don't know what it is but I hope I'm able to retain the hope for something after this. I know it won't be a mansion. Which honestly I never wanted a mansion lol. 

      Your right God was a bit looney in the OT. But the concept of "hell" in the new testament was a pretty twisted idea to dream up as well. ? so either way I'm glad I'm out of his "good graces" He can take his hell and shove it lol. ? I used to be so afraid to question God thinking it was something wrong with me. It's really a whole new world when your able to look in on religion from the outside. 

 

Best regards,

           Dark Bishop

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

16 hours ago, ThereAndBackAgain said:

 

Glad to hear your experience here has been good, dark one!  You've been a welcome addition to several discussions since you showed up.  I'm sure the Ehrman book will be profitable for you. What a difference it makes when we can study and evaluate evidence and follow it wherever it leads, without having boundaries set in advance by some theology!  Also good when your conscience can be informed by your own experiences and opinions without being overruled by a set of writings from a totally different era in human history...

 

Thanks Back Again,

      I'm just glad I realised all of this now and not later. I still have many years I hope to live out from under the oppression that is Christianity. I really meant it when I said I realised my house I was supposed to be building was actually a prison. I think back on all the decisions I made, all the things I denied myself, and all the time I spent doing "Gods" work when I could have been doing something I would have enjoyed more if I had known what I know now. But I guess at the time it was what I wanted to do. So I guess that's OK.

 

Dark Bishop