From cultish childhood to fanatical adult, I was crazy about God… until Christianity didn’t make sense anymore.

[FitForA_ghost]

My Story

 

this is going to be very long. Sorry in advance.

 

My childhood was… I guess “abnormal” is the kindest word. I grew up in a small, Christian-based cult. Did I know I was in a cult? No, but I knew my life was very different from other "normal" children. I envied other kids for their freedoms but also feared them. We were so different from them. 

 

Some of the rules we had to follow growing up were:

 

1. No school (homeschool only) - probably to block the voice of reason and normality from our lives. Every child in the church was homeschooled. Furthermore, we did not live in neighborhoods where perhaps we could be influenced by other children. All the twenty or so families in the church lived in secluded locations in the Oklahoma countryside.

 

2. No Christmas trees (pagan)

 

3. No magic (pagan) - including Disney movies, books with talking animals, books about dragons and fairies etc.

 

4. No or very limited interaction with those outside the church. We were friends with the kids in the church. They were the only kids we knew. 

 

5. If, God forbid, a family left the church, we could no longer interact with them. We lost several childhood friends through this.

 

6. Any "sin" at all, real or imagined, was handled with a switch. We would have to go to the bush outside and pick our own switch with which to be beaten. Some families froze theirs in a freezer, possibly to stiffen them for maximum pain; I'm honestly not sure why. The switching left welts for days to weeks. Some of the families were under investigation by DCF for child abuse. No one was taken away, though it probably would have been best for a few of those traumatized babies. One kid was so damaged he developed a terrible stutter. Others were silent with trauma, staring with huge, terrified eyes. One child burst out crying when his parents told him they loved him (because this was what was said to us before we were beaten- something akin to “mommy is doing this because she loves you.”). It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. This small, maybe three-year-old kid crying in terror as a response to the words, "I love you.” The adults in the room laughed like it was funny. As for myself, I learned that not crying helped the beatings not be so bad, so I took it in silence and bore my punishments without fighting back. Fighting back was pointless. I was often beaten for things I never did or things that were perceived as "wrong" but I had no idea why and I’d meant no harm when I did them. No one ever explained why I was in trouble. It was just the way it was.

 

7. There was no children's church or Sunday school. We were forced to sit quietly in a 2-3 hour service. We played on the floor or colored.

 

8. Our books were mostly Bible stories. We even had one about Sodom and Gomorrah! SODOM AND GOMORRAH, people. A fucking children's book. It's one of the most fucked up stories in the Bible! How the hell could I view a God like that as loving and safe? My poor little brother lived in terror of God turning him into salt like he does to Lot’s wife in the story. He would cry at night he was so scared. 

 

9. Being angry was a sin. I remember watching Mr. Rogers, who told me to hit a pillow to let my anger out. My mom told me in response that being angry was a sin and Mr. Rogers was "worldly".

 

10. After church, for anywhere between 3 and 5 hours, everyone stayed to "receive prayer". What this meant was a lot of people falling down, rolling around, growling, laughing hysterically, or just generally being crazy. It was like watching someone blasted on bath salts, only no drugs were involved. Sometimes there were exorcisms. I witnessed people going into trance-like seizures with evil voices coming out of their mouths. These voices made the hair on my neck stand up. I saw people screaming, writhing and foaming at the mouth. I was horrified. I will never forget the screams. These were people I’d known my whole life, by the way, people who were basically surrogate parents to me. I had been to all of their houses countless times and spent all of my free time playing with their children and immersing myself in their families. For me, a small child myself, to witness these extreme transformations in adults I trusted… it’s hard to articulate the level of trauma this caused to my psyche. 

 

One time in particular, I remember this incident with a member of the church named Scott, who was the father of a few of our friends. He was a very nice, funny man and all the children liked him a lot because he was the type to pull pranks and tell jokes to make us laugh. One day he "received prayer" and “demons” began to manifest out of him. It got so intense the kids were sent out of the room, but we all listened at the door as this man screamed like he was being murdered. We were scared, crying, thinking he was going to die. I was eight years old.

 

What I learned from these experiences was that the Devil is bigger than God. Evil is bigger than Good. And God himself is a terrifying being who destroys and kills at random, just waiting for someone to sin so he can turn them to dust (or salt lol). God was not loving. God was horrifying. This skewed image of Good and Evil messed with me my entire life and continues to this day.

 

Hell was also a constant shadow over my life. I have yet to shake the fear of it, even now, as a 38 year old agnostic. I asked Jesus into my heart basically every day because I was scared to be sent to hell, but I never felt like it “worked.”

 

I remember one time a commercial came on the radio with a joke; a guy asks God what he needs to do to get into heaven and God says something like “call this number and get your first massage free” or whatever the hell they were selling. I remember I said out loud, “I wish it was that easy to get to heaven.” My mom got upset with me and said, “It’s much easier than that! Making a call is harder than what God asks us to do!” I disagreed.

 

I had my first real crisis of faith when my mother began to wake up to the fact that we were in a cult and wanted us to get out. My dad didn’t think we were in a cult, so they began to fight about it constantly. For my mom, it came down to either leaving the church as a family or she would leave my dad and take us kids with her. I admire her now for this decision and the clarity of mind she managed to have despite everything, but as a 6 year old my chief concern and biggest fear was that they would get a divorce. This was the first time in my life I remember fervently praying while also knowing that God was going to do whatever he wanted, whether it would crush me or not. I realized for the first time that God literally did whatever the hell he wanted to people. People got cancer, prayed and begged for healing, and still died. People lost their belongings to fires and thefts. Good, Christian people got their lives destroyed just as often as everyone else! It was the first time I realized I couldn’t depend on God, no matter how much I begged him for help. I simply had no reassurance that he would actually help me when it came down to the wire. God was a wild card, completely unreliable. It shook my childlike faith, and I never recovered from the realization that I simply could not trust God to do what was right by me.

 

We started going to Christian school when I was about 9 and my mom was having trouble homeschooling all 3 of us kids. My parent’s marriage came out of the fire intact, and we left that crazy church and began going to more normal churches, but I was still steeped in fundamentalist Christianity. The Christian schools I attended were just as ridiculous as everything else I’d ever learned. I remember one of their arguments against evolution was about how the women in China used to bind their feet for thousands of years, yet all the baby girls continued to be born with normal feet. THAT was their argument about why evolution didn’t work. Sigh. 

 

Yet during all of this time I still fervently believed in Christianity. I just never felt like a true Christian and was worried I wasn’t really saved. Everyone always said I was supposed to be filled with God’s joy and peace when I was saved, but I never felt joyful or peaceful, so what was I doing wrong? 

 

When September 11th happened, I was fifteen and sure that the world was ending. I asked Jesus into my heart once again out of sheer desperation over the certainty of my upcoming demise, and this time something happened. A feeling of intense joy and peace swept through me. I felt like this was it! I’d finally “gotten it”!

 

I will say I did change radically and immediately. I truly fell in love with God, and I would even sing love songs to God that came on the radio. This experience convinced me for years, even up to just recently, that Christianity HAD to be real. I simply couldn’t explain the drastic change in my heart any other way. My behavior changed, my taste in music, everything. It was all about God literally overnight.

 

This continued on for several months until a new anxiety began to overtake me: the unforgivable sin. I had no idea what “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” was when I came across this little loaded gun of a verse during my Bible reading one day, but it bothered me to no end that there was a sin God WOULDN’T forgive, no matter how sorry you were or how much you begged for forgiveness. When I looked up the word “blasphemy” in the dictionary I deduced that it just meant bad thoughts about God. And surprise! As soon as you start trying to NOT think a bad thought about God (or anything, really), you DO! So the thought that I’d committed this unforgivable sin drove me to near hopelessness, and I started holding God at a distance again, unsure if I could really trust him to not throw me into the pits of hell the second I died. I was also bothered by the fact that I’d never been baptized, since the Bible is vague on whether or not this is a requirement for salvation, so I made a deal with God that if I was ever offered the chance, I would do it. 

 

Things remained this way until my second year of college. During this time (my teenage years) I was in an abusive relationship with my first boyfriend, severely depressed and self harming, and my parents also become drug addicts and alcoholics. My world was a total shit show, and God was no where to be found, as per usual. 

 

My little brother went to a Christian summer camp when I was 20 or 21. I was still living with my parents while attending college, and he was 17 and in high school. When my brother returned from that camp, he was a different person. He was genuinely kind, no matter what harsh words I said to him. He was happy, glowing practically! At night, when he used to play video games in his room, now I could hear him playing his guitar and singing worship songs to God instead. 

 

My brother’s transformation made me once again think about God and making things right with him. Obviously my brother was happier now, so why not give it a second chance? After maturing a little I no longer believed I’d committed the unpardonable sin by accident, so I had no excuses. I was miserable, my home life with my addict parents was hell on earth, and I was still in an abusive and dangerous relationship with my boyfriend. My life was shit and I needed help coping with it. 

 

My parents, who had returned to the cult church of my childhood at this point (but without us kids) told me about an upcoming baptism they were having. Never one to go back on my word to God, I quickly agreed to be baptized to fulfill my vow to God. 

 

The day of the baptism was chilly, fall weather, and it would take place at someone’s house in their pool. The water was Titanic freezing as it enveloped me. When I came up, everyone prayed for me out loud, telling me “prophecies” about my life. The supposed prophecies were all good things, and I felt my heart softening toward God again. Maybe he really did love me and care about me. Once more, the peace I’d felt when I first got saved returned to me. 

 

I was a Christian again. This time, I vowed, I would never slip away from God again. I was in this 100%. I was “on fire” for God and would hold nothing back from him. I wanted to do it right this time, all the way, all the days of my life.

 

I began going to church again and became a total fanatic. I can’t describe it any other way. I was a fanatical Christian. It consumed all my thoughts and actions. I was solely devoted to being the best Christian I could be in every single area of my life.

 

The only good thing that came from this time was that I was able to get out of my abusive relationship with my boyfriend because “God” gave me the strength. Though he continued to stalk me until I got married to my now-husband, I was free of him and the worst of his mind games.

 

My home life continued to get worse, however, but I had God to lean on now. I truly believed he was listening to me and would do what was best for me. I still couldn’t trust him 100% to help me when I really needed it, not since that realization I’d had as a child, but I devoted myself to trying to rid my mind of doubts anyway.

 

One day shortly after the baptism and my re-dedicating my life to Christ, I was sitting in front of my computer when out of nowhere a single thought hit me like an arrow through my heart. A crisp, bright, stunning thought: “What if none of this is true?”

 

A black, cold fear that I had never felt shot through my body at the mere consideration of the thought. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this thought was the beginning of the end of my faith in Christianity. It had hit some kind of crucial supporting beam in my faith, and the whole tower was doomed to collapse because of it. It took more than a decade to completely destroy the whole thing, but this thought was the catalyst that brought down Christianity in my life.

 

Doubts plagued my relationship with God and with other Christians after this. My Christian friends reacted to it one of two ways: they found my doubts disturbing and abandoned me, or they tried to talk me through it. My husband became one of the talkers. In fact, that’s how I fell in love with him. We would talk for hours, well into the early hours of the morning, about God and what it all meant. His faith seemed unshakeable. And therefore, he seemed safe. A safe hiding place from what I feared the most: losing God.

 

We married, moved to Florida, and I continued attempting to live the Christian life. In the countless sermons I sat through, the countless podcasts I listened to and the countless books I read, every Christian seemed to agree: in Christ, we have an abundant life.

 

But my life wasn’t abundant.

 

I knew it wasn’t about wealth. Prosperity gospel had never even touched me; I’d known from the beginning that Christians were supposed to suffer in this world, not get comfy in it. No, what that verse meant was that I would have an abundance of peace, joy and faith. An abundance of friendship and intimacy with God. An abundance of love from a “perfect” father in heaven. 

 

And yet, I was more miserable, more stressed and more burned out as a Christian than I’d ever been back in the days before my conversion. God had never delivered me from my anxiety, my depression or my doubts. In fact, he made them much worse! If he was my father, I never heard his voice or felt close to him or even felt like he cared. No father would treat his child that way, and God was supposed to be the perfect father! I was supposed to have an abundant life, but my life was in shambles constantly… and most of it was because of God.

 

Everything I did or stressed about, it had to do with God. The thoughts I thought (and constantly policed), the actions I did (couldn’t ever lie or run a red light or stay home from church), the choices I made (What show to watch? Who to befriend? What job to take?) it literally ALL revolved around God, and it was exhausting and depressing. I was, quite frankly, sick of it.

 

The biggest thing was that I was sick of being sorry and having to pray for forgiveness for normal, human things, like being pissed off in traffic or masturbating or telling a white lie to spare someone’s feelings. I was sick of ALL the policing I had to do over my thoughts and actions just to supposedly please this God who never seemed to give me the time of day in return. He demanded perfection (LITERALLY! The Bible says the exact words, “Be perfect.”) and I could never live up to it. I was burnt out. I was done. I was sick of it all. If God and I were “partners”, parent/child, husband/wife or whatever other metaphor you want to use, then I was doing 98% of the work in our relationship and God could not be bothered to meet me even halfway. Hell, he couldn’t be bothered to meet me AT ALL! No relationship could possibly survive this way! If God had been a human being, I wouldn’t have put up with his lack of effort in our relationship for even a week, let alone a lifetime! Yet here I was being expected to not only banish this frustration from my thoughts but actually convince myself God was the perfect parent and I was the one screwing it all up somehow!

 

I think, deep down, this is the struggle of every single Christian, but they fear putting it into words. They fear losing it all. But I guarantee, they know it’s not working. If they were given a truth potion and asked about their “abundant life” and “relationship” with God, these complaints would come tumbling out of their mouths. But the stakes are too high to admit this, even to themselves. So they go on.

 

Well, as for me I couldn’t go on. Not anymore. 

 

And I decided I wasn’t going to.

 

Deconstructing from your faith is a long, excruciating and oftentimes hopeless, lonely fight for your sanity. After years of deconstructing my beliefs bit by bit, the threshold of my pain had long since eclipsed my ability to endure it, and I began planning my own death. I should probably mention at this point that I’ve been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and have struggled with it since I was twelve. I was also in therapy during this time with a truly remarkable and amazing therapist (who did happen to be a Christian but never judged me or my honest thoughts). So, there was some mental health stuff going on that also led to this breakdown, but I ended up in the mental hospital, literally driven insane by this religion. (I am fine now, by the way, on medication and doing pretty well.)

 

The first thing I deconstructed was faith in the Bible. Let’s face it, there was no way on earth that it was a “perfect” and “divinely inspired” book. I’d long ago decided that the craziest stories in the Old Testament were metaphorical, but if those stories weren’t true, how could I trust that the stuff about Jesus was? How could I know if ANY of it was true? Nope, the Bible had to go.

 

The second thing I deconstructed was believing in hell. This was a hard won battle. It came down to a couple things. First, infinite punishment for a finite crime is simply not justifiable by any argument. Let’s take the worst person you can think of- Hitler for example. Even if you sentenced Hitler to endure the torment of EACH of the victims in the Holocaust 10 times over, a more than fair punishment for such a horrific crime, that STILL wouldn’t equal eternal punishment. Even Hitler doesn’t deserve ETERNAL torture. No one does! Why? Because we don’t live forever! Hitler’s crimes were finite. There was an end to them. Yet according to the Bible there isn’t an end to his punishment? It doesn’t make philosophical sense in any way. How can justice against any sin, even the worst I can imagine, equal being tortured forever? No rational court would ever consider such a thing! No moral human would accept it! Infinite punishment, by default, simply CANNOT be equal to a finite crime. The two concepts cancel each other out.

 

The second thing is, how are we going to be happy in heaven KNOWING that there are human souls (maybe some we loved on earth) being eternally, forever tortured in hell? I know I couldn’t just prance around heaven with this nightmare looming in the back of my mind. No version of me, EVER, even the sinless version in heaven, would be able to accept this as “justice.” Because it isn’t justice. It’s cruelty. It’s gross.

 

I refuse to believe that I am a better person than the God I serve. If I am morally superior to the God I serve, I can no longer worship that God. How can I be more merciful than God himself? And yet if hell is real I am, because I find the concept of hell repulsive and unfair. It doesn’t make any sense! I can’t worship a God who is LESS moral than me! I can’t accept a God who isn’t a better parent than me, yet I would never send my children to an eternity of torture because of something they did in their ONE lifetime on earth! Even if it was literally the worst thing anyone has ever done in the history of our planet. A finite crime will never be able justify infinite consequences for it! Never! Does this make me better than God? Then why worship him?

 

So hell had to go. And if there’s no hell, why do we need Jesus? Why do we need his sacrifice? 

 

You can see how it all crumbled very quickly from there. 

 

Right now I guess you could say I’m agnostic and wanting to believe in something. I’m crazy about the paranormal and listen to and read a lot of stuff about ghosts and unexplained phenomena, and I do hope there is something after death. But I don’t want religion. I don’t want to follow any rules except the rule of compassion and love for others. So that’s where I stand. I’m sorry this is so long, but writing this was really therapeutic for me even if no one reads it. 

 

 

 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

39 minutes ago, FitForA_ghost said:

I can’t accept a God who isn’t a better parent than me, yet I would never send my children to an eternity of torture because of something they did in their ONE lifetime on earth!

Well, obviously you've never had a child eat your apple after you told them not to.  You can't possibly imagine the horror, the sheer betrayal, of such a horrendous deed.   

 

Also, I use humor when my emotions get triggered by reading someone's story and reliving my own childhood as a result.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I've heard it said there is no hate like Christian love. The torture that you describe brought back memories of a campus "ministry" in my town called Maranatha that had become very invasive and controlling and was eventually disbanded. They drove one of my friends into a mental breakdown. Another memory I had was of a missionary cult I promoted for years, where they would still go out preaching even if sick (to do otherwise would be giving into the devil), and if they ate something and threw up, they would have to eat it again so they wouldn't shame the natives who fed them. 

 

Your experiences were far more extreme. Subjecting kids to the insanity that cults have is the worst kind of childhood, a non-stop abuse and twisting of reality to keep them from questioning. Then that wonderful voice of reason that broke through! Part of you could see through it and wanted out. That's so amazing! Welcome, and I hope we can be helpful. 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

In my life I have heard many childhood horror stories, and yours is one of the saddest I have heard.  It is absolutely amazing that you survived childhood as well as you did.  If there is a fortitude gene, you were definitely born with it!  

 

You are good at writing.  Keep on doing it.  This fellow Okie (who is glad to have left there in 1968) is glad you are on board.  

[AnonSan]

20 hours ago, FitForA_ghost said:

And yet, I was more miserable, more stressed and more burned out as a Christian than I’d ever been back in the days before my conversion. God had never delivered me from my anxiety, my depression or my doubts. In fact, he made them much worse! If he was my father, I never heard his voice or felt close to him or even felt like he cared. No father would treat his child that way, and God was supposed to be the perfect father! I was supposed to have an abundant life, but my life was in shambles constantly… and most of it was because of God.

 

Everything I did or stressed about, it had to do with God. The thoughts I thought (and constantly policed), the actions I did (couldn’t ever lie or run a red light or stay home from church), the choices I made (What show to watch? Who to befriend? What job to take?) it literally ALL revolved around God, and it was exhausting and depressing. I was, quite frankly, sick of it.

 

The biggest thing was that I was sick of being sorry and having to pray for forgiveness for normal, human things, like being pissed off in traffic or masturbating or telling a white lie to spare someone’s feelings. I was sick of ALL the policing I had to do over my thoughts and actions just to supposedly please this God who never seemed to give me the time of day in return. He demanded perfection (LITERALLY! The Bible says the exact words, “Be perfect.”) and I could never live up to it. I was burnt out. I was done. I was sick of it all. If God and I were “partners”, parent/child, husband/wife or whatever other metaphor you want to use, then I was doing 98% of the work in our relationship and God could not be bothered to meet me even halfway. Hell, he couldn’t be bothered to meet me AT ALL! No relationship could possibly survive this way! If God had been a human being, I wouldn’t have put up with his lack of effort in our relationship for even a week, let alone a lifetime! Yet here I was being expected to not only banish this frustration from my thoughts but actually convince myself God was the perfect parent and I was the one screwing it all up somehow!

 

 

You definitely went through a lot of terrifying experiences being raised in such a controlling, legalistic, and abusive environment in the name of "Christianity." Similar to you, I felt so policed, micromanaged, and controlled by my family and peers from my former church cult because we were expected to follow and never question the Bible (and the church founder's teachings). Reading your thoughts above, I definitely resonate with the constant guilt and exhaustion keeping up with the church's sense of "right or wrong" and its one-sided relationship with this so-called "Christian" God. Such claims in eradicating our depression, anxiety, and personal defects by being faithful to Him evolved into false promises, emotional slavery, and delusional metaphors in many, if not, all Christian denominations and cults. 

 

As @Weezer mentioned, your writing is very good and there is a great a need to articulate such complicated experiences into words. I left my family's church institution for good because of an ex-member also wrote her experiences with such clarity, accuracy, and details that the general public needed to know of its undisclosed corruption. We really appreciate sharing your story that not only unveiled the very corruption of Christianity, but also help many others who may be questioning their fundamentalist upbringing in this forum!

 

 

[FitForA_ghost]

On 3/5/2024 at 5:23 PM, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Well, obviously you've never had a child eat your apple after you told them not to.  You can't possibly imagine the horror, the sheer betrayal, of such a horrendous deed.   

 

Also, I use humor when my emotions get triggered by reading someone's story and reliving my own childhood as a result.

lol humor is always appreciated! Thank you very much

[FitForA_ghost]

On 3/5/2024 at 11:45 PM, Weezer said:

In my life I have heard many childhood horror stories, and yours is one of the saddest I have heard.  It is absolutely amazing that you survived childhood as well as you did.  If there is a fortitude gene, you were definitely born with it!  

 

You are good at writing.  Keep on doing it.  This fellow Okie (who is glad to have left there in 1968) is glad you are on board.  

Thank you! Where in Oklahoma are you from? I lived in Norman until the move to Florida and I miss it every day! 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

4 hours ago, FitForA_ghost said:

Thank you! Where in Oklahoma are you from? 

 

Born in Okemah, grew up in Broken Arrow.  Norman seems to be a nice town.  Been by there many times on I-35, and a cousin lived there for decades.

[Hierophant]

Thank you for sharing your testimony, I could have written this myself. I had all the same thoughts you did during, between, and after Christianity.

 

On a side note, reflecting on it this side of Christianity, I find it insane people who believe in the traditional view of Hell have children. Having kids with the knowledge they could end up in eternal Hell is absolutely crazy and selfish to me. I doubt they ever give it that kind of thought, but Marcion and the Shakers had their head on their shoulders when it came to having children.

[TABA]

33 minutes ago, Hierophant said:

I find it insane people who believe in the traditional view of Hell have children.

Yeah, this is hard to understand.  I think it’s a case of people not truly believing what they think they believe.  They may tell a pollster or fellow believer that they believe in Hell, but their actions suggest otherwise.  
 

In a similar vein, most Christians are strongly opposed to abortion, even while they also believe that aborted fetuses/embryos/babies all go to Heaven.  If they really believed that, they would be fans of abortion instead of bearing children who are quite at risk of not being saved.  Fortunately for the species, the evolutionary urge to procreate overrides the theology.  #CognitiveDissonance!

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

1 hour ago, Hierophant said:

Marcion and the Shakers had their head on their shoulders when it came to having children.

Who's this? And what was their policy on having children? 

(are they from around here?) 

[Hierophant]

On 3/29/2024 at 6:59 PM, moxieflux66 said:

Who's this? And what was their policy on having children? 

(are they from around here?) 

Marcion was a theologian who argued that the God of Jesus was different than the God of the Jews. This God, used Jesus as a sacrifice to ransom people away from the Jewish God, the creator of this world. Marcion thought this God was not judging or would punish people. More to his theology, but that is a highlight: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Marcion

 

The Shakers were a group of Christians who practiced celibacy and believed sex had a part in original sin. They were named the Shakers because they would "shake" and move about in religious expression.

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

5 hours ago, Hierophant said:

Marcion was a theologian who argued that the God of Jesus was different than the God of the Jews. This God, used Jesus as a sacrifice to ransom people away from the Jewish God, the creator of this world. Marcion thought thus God was not judging or would punish people. More to his theology, but that is a highlight: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Marcion

 

The Shakers were a group of Christians who practiced celibacy and believed sex had a part in original sin. They were named the Shakers because they would "shake" and move about in religious expression.

Thank you. I will read up on this and get back to you! 

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

11 hours ago, Hierophant said:

Marcion was a theologian who argued that the God of Jesus was different than the God of the Jews. This God, used Jesus as a sacrifice to ransom people away from the Jewish God, the creator of this world. Marcion thought thus God was not judging or would punish people. More to his theology, but that is a highlight: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Marcion

 

After reading this article, I have more questions than answers.  I would imagine they have probably been answered repeated here in this forum. So if you have a thread that addresses any of this, especially any you wrote, please include a link. 

 

Otherwise....the article says Marcion was a figure from 140-143 CE that was excommunicated from the Roman Church? Didn't think there was a Roman church (Catholic) until after Constantine around 325? . Obviously I missed some earlier church history here...

[ABabyBoyAtHeart1977]

I am so, so sorry about the hardships in your life. I, myself, can relate. I would love to share with you my life story. 

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

31 minutes ago, ABabyBoyAtHeart1977 said:

I am so, so sorry about the hardships in your life. I, myself, can relate. I would love to share with you my life story. 

Welcome! I am glad you are here! We'd love to hear your story (there are many here) in our Testimonies forum and if you'd like to introduce yourself to the whole gang here, we have a forum for Introductions too! Otherwise, feel free to post anywhere you like and read some of our fantastic members' writings! We have a feisty discussion going on now you might have noticed and we love all input. Once again, nice to meet you! I am Moxie