by TexasOtaku
This story of my long, 10 year deconversion from Christianity to
agnostic atheism (2000-2010) has been a long time coming. It has been
very painful to write this, but my story needs to be told: A tale of
southern old-time religion deceiving a gullible teenage boy;
implantation of distrust, homophobia and misogyny; an emotional
tailspin; changing religions; being sucked in by a cult; to finally
leaving religion and spirituality and accepting myself as a human
being.
I went through three distinct stages of religiosity before coming to
rest at agnostic atheism: fanatical believer who wanted to be saved
(Christianity), fanatical believer who believed he was saved but
needed to improve (Noachism), to fanatical believer who believed that
he wasn't worthy of saving (a cult).
In all three cases, my very identity was attacked and I was
essentially coerced into not being my true self, which is one of the
most distinctive features of organized religion. I was told to give up
what made me who I am in order to achieve: favor from bible god,
salvation, happiness and enlightenment, among other things. I ended up
betraying myself multiple times before I figured out that I had to
stop doing that shit.
There are themes that run through my deconversion story:
1.) Being scared of sex
2.) Suppression of sexuality
3.) Suppression of my true self
4.) Intellectual traps
5.) Searching for an imaginary standard
6.) The seeds of hatred being planted
7.) Mind control through the most evil psychological traps
Although Christianity is only one of three pieces of the puzzle, I
must include my time as a Bnei Noach (see below) and my time as a cult
member, in order to highlight one of the greatest acts of negligence
in Western religion: It does not give you real emotional coping
mechanisms to deal with the toughest times in your life.
I was born in mid 1981 and my story begins just like all the others
born in different years; I went to an Assembly of God church every
Sunday morning as a kid, but I never liked getting up on Sunday
mornings. If I ever did get up on a Sunday morning, it was because I
wanted to play Nintendo. That was all that was relevant to me, along
with cartoons and comic books. I never liked getting up and having to
put on formal clothes (a thing which I am still fairly reluctant to
do, even today).
The adults at Sunday school knew what the kids were into, and would
try to indoctrinate us by leading us away from what we liked as kids.
I vividly remember a puppet show I saw in Sunday school when I was
around 12. Even the pink butterfly puppet looked sad to be in Sunday
school, with its frowning face and sad eyes. It went something like
this:
Sunday School Director: "So, what's the most important thing in life?"
Puppet: "Nintendo" (You should have heard the voice, it sounded pathetic)
Sunday School Director: "No, Jesus Christ is!"
So, the church tried to hook us at a young age. Some fell prey to the
threat of hell and "gave themselves to Jesus" at a young age. The
church had almost got me as a kid, but I was saved from that nightmare
with a specific twist (strangely enough, it was a nightmare that ended
up turning into a good dream). I remember being around 9 years old and
dreaming about judgment day. I was is the store with my family when
suddenly everyone got raptured away except for me. I remember
everything starting to set on fire and the temperature started to
rise, as if the world itself was turning into hell. I remember the
devil appearing in front of me and telling me that I was damned, but
then I remember grabbing him by the tail and smashing him against the
wall until he was nothing but dust and vapor. Then Jay-bus appeared
and told me that since I had defeated the devil, everyone was saved
from hell, and then I went to heaven.
Despite having a very well-admired extended family that valued
education, there were fundie elements in it that permeated down to its
very core; everything was taken seriously and I mean seriously. As a
young pre-teen at age 11, I played The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the
Past and absorbed everything about it. I loved its storyline and would
quote lines from it all the time. I also had a poster of the Master
Sword that I proudly showed to family members and I described it by a
line used in the game: "The Sword of Evil's Bane." An older member of
the family (whom I miss dearly) told me "There's something that really
is evil's bane, and it's called the Holy Spirit." I remember feeling
confused and asking myself "What does church have to do with this
game?" Since I wasn't under the spell of the Jeebus cult yet, I
scratched my head and went about being a kid.
Another instance of this happened when I turned 14, I bought Final
Fantasy 3 (or 6, depending on your point of view) on my 14th birthday
and loved the colorful world of the game and how the characters used
magic. Again, I become absorbed in everything about the game. I was
also an aspiring creative fiction author who wrote and told stories
(incorporating elements from the game into them). I would often join
my great great aunt as she walked up and down our little private
neighborhood road and tell her these stories, but whenever I got
around my great grandmother, she would hear nothing about magic, as it
was "the devil's works." Part of me was still a child, and I was still
really confused as to why magic was considered evil as just a
storytelling element in a work of fiction. Video games fueled my
imagination, and I could never consider living life without hearing
amazing stories outside the bible. For the next 14 years, religion
would try it's hardest to rid me of outside influence (but would
ultimately fail).
NOTE: Don't misunderstand me, I do not hate or blame my family for
being like it is/was. My great grandmother was very religious, yes,
but she was also one of the kindest people I have ever known. She was
well-respected in the community and was someone that was truly dear to
me, even after I quit being Christian. The other elderly members of my
family that I have mentioned, along with my great grandmother, grew up
in a time when there were no computers or video games, and access to
outside information (i.e.- fantasy stories, etc.) was severely limited
or controlled. The most elderly members of my family have passed away
without ever knowing about my abandonment of Christianity. My parents
saw how the world was changing and they did their best to protect me
from the "old-time religion" and its backwardness.
I didn't fall under the spell until the teenage years. Like all other
human beings, my hormones kicked in and I started thinking about women
(and sometimes men, but 99% of the time I fantasize about women.) I
didn't know at the time that it was perfectly normal for many
predominantly straight people to occasionally fantasize about the same
sex, according to what I read from Alfred Kinsey years later. I
remember feeling so guilty as a Christian when I had my first
homosexual fantasy at age 15. I felt so distressed and felt like I was
going to hell. I was under so much stress that I never realized that
there was actually a pattern to my homosexual fantasies! Religion
keeps people in so much of an emotionally distressed state that one
has no way of objectively observing oneself!
In a related topic, I was scared into not exploring intimate sexuality
from the sex-ed programs in the South, showing graphic pictures of
STDs (or STIs, as they call them now) and advocating abstinence. I
became abstinent on the spot, vowing never to have sex until I married
a Christian girl because SURELY Christian women would never do
anything immoral. And she would OBEY, as well (an element of
misogyny). Since I was abstinent, my only option left was
masturbation, but of course, I would be "impure," according to the
church. Many of us religious people in my backwoods hometown were also
"conditioned" to assume that all gays had HIV/AIDS.
What made me start to question Christianity - years before college -
was the one unforgivable sin mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke:
Matthew 12:31-32:
"Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men,
but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. "And whoever
shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him;
but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be
forgiven him, either in this world, or in the world to come."
Mark 3:28-30
"Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and
whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the
Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"
because they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."
Luke 12:10
"And everyone who will speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall
be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it
shall not be forgiven him."
Verses taken from http://preacherstudy.com/blasph.html
With changes in my brain that occurred concurrently with the physical
changes that hormones brought, my OCD began to kick in my teenage
years at around age 14. It fixated on those above lines and my mind
kept saying the impious line "Fuck the Holy Spirit" over and over (I
know there are more formulaic and traditional ways to blaspheme, but
this is what my mind chose). I stuttered often and stopped speaking
mid-sentence if any word I planned to utter sounded like any word in
the phrase "Fuck the Holy Spirit." That made for many an awkward
conversation.
One day, my mother was picking me up from school and I started having
another "Fuck the Holy Spirit" attack. I was so distressed that I
started talking to bible god while my mother was distracted. I prayed
to bible god to "Protect me" in a very broken voice, pressing my
agonizing face against the glass of the family truck. "Protect you
from what?" my mother asked me. I turned and said "Nothing" and leaned
my face back up against the window. I spent hours and hours fighting
these obsessive thoughts, and I often had to wait to feel better after
begging bible god to help me and "protect me" from evil thoughts. He
never answered and those waiting times for happiness to come often
lasted for hours. These "Fuck the Holy Spirit" attacks. I remember
sitting in my room when I was 14, listening to the birds outside my
window, hoping for bible god to answer my prayers. I kept trying to
reassure myself that I hadn't blasphemed the Holy Spirit, but would it
have bothered bible god to have immediately cared for me. On Christmas
Eve in 1996, I was baptized in the Baptist church down the road from
my house, but I still didn't feel saved. As I talked with my family in
the cold night air, I felt a severe uneasiness.
When I first started obsessing with blasphemy of the Holy Spirit at
age 14, I asked my mother about it. She was shocked, as my uncle had
asked her the same question at the same age in the very same manner
that I had, with the exact same words (my mother practically raised my
uncle while my grandparents worked their jobs). She told me that as
long as I didn't say what was in my mind (i.e. - "Fuck the Holy
Spirit") with all my heart, then I would be okay. This didn't satisfy
me for some reason, and I continued wondering why that was the only
unforgivable sin.
The "Fuck the Holy Spirit" attacks also paired up with my immense fear
of hell. One night I saw the ending of the movie Ghost and had my
stomach knot up. After the movie ended with the main character Sam
going to heaven (shouldn't he have gone to hell, as well, for playing
a part in the death of two people, even though they were assholes?), I
went into my closet to "pray to the Lord in secret" and cried, praying
that I would be cured of my OCD and not go to hell. This was typical
of my late middle school years and early high school years which were
wrought with formulaic prayer such as "Let me go to heaven" and other
fluffy cookie-cutter Christian American Dream stuff like "Help me go
to a good college." "Help me have a (Christian) wife and children,"
etc. Now, with bible god opting not to show himself, as bible god is
wont to do, life was getting ready to punch me in the figurative face
repeatedly. It wasn't bad enough that I was already bullied in East
Texas schools, I was also being bullied by this evil psychological
system: "If you cross the line (i.e. - blaspheme the Holy Spirit) it's
hell for you." I'm amazed that I am a sane person today.
Not only that, but my very religious great-grandmother, despite being
a very well-meaning person, gave me a fundamentalist book explaining
every way that the human being is evil. That fundie book used science
and bastardized it to try and make it look like bible god had created
everything in a certain way. For example it claimed that bible god
created the water molecule with three atoms (representing the trinity)
and also made it to be life-giving, just like the trinity of bible
god! It made so much fucking sense! With an underdeveloped critical
thinking mechanism, I, being an impressionable 15 year-old teenager in
early 1997, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. This was bad for me,
because before religion had interfered in my personal life for the
first time, I had just gotten into Japanese animation (or anime). It's
full of nudity and extreme violence sometimes, and after I got that
book from my great-grandmother, I started destroying the collection I
had worked a full summer mowing lawns to buy. Fortunately, my parents
caught me in the act and took away the book after making me explain
why I was destroying my hard-earned stuff. They took the book away and
told me that I should just forget everything I had read in it. It was
the quick action of my parents that kept most of my anime collection
intact. One anime, Project A-Ko (the one that got me into anime, along
with AKIRA), was the victim of this purging and another one while I
was in a cult, several years later (see below).
I was so lucky to have progressive-minded parents (who overlooked all
the nudity and extreme violence in anime). By the time I was a
teenager, we had stopped going to church as a family on Sunday
mornings. My dad needed to work to support our family and get us ahead
in life. My mom had been insulted at church by bible thumpers that
kept asking her why my dad had stopped going to church on Sundays, so
she stopped going as well. By this time, I went to church of my own
accord with my "friends" on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. I
thought I would really bond with fellow churchgoers, but there was
always this underlying impression that I would never fit in. I
suppressed that feeling, since I was very much afraid of hellfire.
We'd have sessions when we'd walk around the church, shaking each
others' hands and singing hymns, but all there was was the false
smiles, shallow lifestyle and lack of interest in life outside the
church.
Another thing about Christianity interfering in my anime fanhood was
that I saw everything through "Christian-colored glasses." There was
one title where a character was equivalent of the messiah and died in
a church, with all the Christian symbolism (I think it was called
Kasshan: Robot Hunter). Project A-Ko: Part 4 had a poorly drawn
Jay-bus on a crucifix and those caused me a lot of personal distress
to see Christianity so blatantly "insulted" as I interpreted it. By
the time I was in college, I had been able to shake this off and watch
stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is chock full of Christian
symbolism.
Christianity permeated into many aspects of my life. I took my bible
to school all the time, despite the many warnings of my parents not to
do so. My high school class ring had Christian themes engraved on it.
I read the bible in my free time instead of playing video games. As a
matter of fact, sometimes I had to force myself to read my bible,
which is completely unnatural! I used to say "Lord be with you" all
the time to people when leaving their presence, but most of all it not
only made me feel bad about my occasional homosexual fantasy, but it
tried to attack my heterosexuality. I was always told to avert my eyes
when I saw lustful images by the fundies, and one time, there was an
incident in which my dad snapped at me for not looking at women in
bikinis on a TV show we were watching. He said "Son, I'm worried about
you, " and was really concerned that I was gay (my dad, though
progressive and not a homophobe, sometimes worried about me being gay
when I was a teenager, as I suspect many dads are).
I very soon got over that after both my parents found out I was at
least watching anime with lots of female nudity. They also told me
that it was okay for me to watch dirty shows on channels like HBO and
Showtime at night, and that they trusted me to do the right thing when
it came to sexuality (they had talked to me about sexuality in
addition to the sex ed I got in high school). I have the freaking
coolest parents ever. Posted Image
I tried my hardest to be a progressive "cool" Christian like the very
few I have encountered in my life. I tried to keep the best principles
like "Love thy neighbor" and be progressive in the manner of "Sex is
okay and natural," but... Okay, here I make a very nerdy sci-fi
comparison here. If any of you have read (or watched the film
adaptations of) 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two, you will
know exactly what I'm talking about. HAL 9000, the computer that
controls the spaceship Discovery in these two books/films receives two
conflicting sets of orders.
From the HAL 9000 Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000
"The novel explains that HAL is unable to resolve a conflict between
his general mission to relay information accurately and orders
specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and
Poole the true purpose of the mission. With the crew dead, he reasons,
he would not need to be lying to them. He fabricates the failure of
the AE-35 unit so that their deaths would appear accidental."
From the 2010: Odyssey Two Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia....10:_Odyssey_Two
"The crew are worried that HAL will have the same neuroses on
discovering that he will be abandoned yet again..."
"Neuroses" is a fitting word for what was happening to me when I had
the conflicting orders of progressive Christianity, which gave me the
right to cherry pick the good stuff out of Christianity and what I
heard from fundie Christianity, which told me that I had to follow the
bible to the letter or risk hellfire. The fundie part would have won
had my parents not stepped in and found me destroying my anime.
I could also never understand the people that walked away from
Christianity while I was a "devout Christian" while I was struggling
with my "neuroses" of fighting between what my parents told me about
sexuality and what fundie Christianity was instilling in me about it.
One day, I was trying to "spread the gospel" and was talking with a
girl who seemed of "loose morals." She told me that she was Christian
at one point, but the she broke loose and now had sex as much as she
wanted, as was now "wild as a buck ." I remember literally cringing
from fear in her presence, as if I were about to burst into flame.
Christianity has a way of singling a lot of people out who try not to
be hypocrites. After I took a personal vow of abstinence for bible god
(after being scared away from sex with those grotesque pictures of
STDs) and dreaming of that one day I would find a good Christian girl
to consummate a Christian marriage, I found out that my best friend
and a local church girl were dating and having sex all the time. I was
like "WTF? Why do they get to have sex? They're hypocrites!" My best
friend abandoned me for a while, just to hang out with his
"girlfriend" in the mornings. I remember being so lonely while
watching couples hang out and people snickering at me for being a
Christian who waited to have sex. I felt like there was a spotlight on
me sometimes that screamed "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S A CHRISTIAN
VIRGIN!" It seemed like everyone in East Texas was living a double
standard, and I was right. They pretended to be righteous to save face
in public! It was okay as long as they were Christian! No wonder
people from East Texas are so twisted (in a bad way)! That word
"neuroses" comes to mind again.
My hometown was full of fundie ideas from everywhere. There's a
pentecostal church that believes that it's the only group going to
heaven. My Christian friends in high school came from all
denominations; one of them was in another pentecostal church that
believed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was as simple as saying "It's
simple for the Holy Spirit to do." (O_O) I can't even begin to
describe how many fundies per capita were in my hometown. With high
school graduation, I left most of those people.
When I started going to college, I immediately joined the Christian
organizations there and tried to find someone to date, but to no
avail. I had a crush on this one girl that was so intense, but she
never returned my feelings. Then later, I realized that most of the
Christian girls I wanted to date were either all taken, or so shallow.
They never wanted to get serious with me. It all seemed like they were
going through the motions of college and living their cookie-cutter
Christian lives.
By the end of my first year in college, I was an emotional wreck due
to the constant intrusive thoughts of "Fuck the Holy Spirit." I
constantly worried about ending up in hell. I wondered ¨How can Jesus
forgive all, if there's just one unforgivable sin that's so easy to
commit?" I kept wondering why that one thing was unforgivable, while
everything else was okay to be forgiven for. What was so special about
the Holy Spirit that blaspheming it was unforgivable? Why did Jesus
never give a reason for it?
Finally, on the morning of July 1, 2000, I woke up around 5:15 and my
OCD almost immediately began to fixate: "Fuck the Holy Spirit" "Fuck
the Holy Spirit" "Fuck the Holy Spirit" "Fuck the Holy Spirit" "Fuck
the Holy Spirit" my mind kept going on and on as I bit my tongue.
Then, at 5:30, I had decided that enough was enough: If I was
condemned and bible-god was not going to help me, no matter how grave
my suffering was, then I would check out the non-Christian world and
take my chances, damnation or not. If I was to be damned with no help
from bible god, I might as well enjoy life before I went to hell.
What had transpired was the first set of weights, shackles and binding
elements of religion falling away. It would take another 10 years for
the rest to fall off.
I wandered the Internet and started reading about other religions at
around 6:30 AM. Shortly after I dropped Christianity. I became an
apostate just around a month short of my 19th birthday; lo and behold,
"Fuck the Holy Spirit" went away almost immediately. I became a "Bnei
Noach," which is Hebrew for "Child of Noah," followers of the seven
laws of Noah:
From the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Noahide_laws
1. Prohibition of Idolatry
2. Prohibition of Murder
3. Prohibition of Theft
4. Prohibition of Sexual immorality
5. Prohibition of Blasphemy
6. Prohibition of eating flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive
7. Establishment of courts of law.
Bnei Noach are basically worshipers of the Abrahamic bible god in a
heavily modified form of Judaism for non-Jews. The opinions and
commentary on the "sinful nature" of masturbation seemed to have
changed since I last was a Bnei Noach in 2003, but certain Bnei Noach
believed that masturbation is evil and counted as a sin under the
fourth law. As of now, rule 4 only applies to incest, adultery, and
homosexuality (HA! Like homosexuality is a sin!). I leaned toward the
other side of Noachide opinion and let my lustful side out, since I
was free of Christianity. My passions poured forth unbridled. I had 6
months of guilt-free masturbation and thought I would work my way into
a relationship until February 2001, when a personal nightmare of mine
began to unfold which I won't talk about, since that would greatly
extend the length and make my testimony into a book.
Noachism, as it's called (along with many other names), brought with
it its own set of rules. It was a lot less strict than Christianity.
To worship g-d (I wrote bible god's name like the Jews do to prevent
his name from being defiled) was the number one priority. I had wished
to talk to the local rabbi about what exactly constituted idol
worship, but the secretary who took calls for the rabbi said she had
heard of the Bnei Noach but told me not to bother with speaking to the
rabbi. It was among the most devastating things I had encountered as a
Bnei Noach, and it hurt so badly. My fundie Chrisitan programming
began to take over again, but this time it had rewritten itself into
my Noachism.
One day, I couldn't bear to keep the secret from my parents. I left a
letter where I knew my mother would find it while I went out to have
fun. It bothered me thinking what my parents would do once they found
out I was no longer in "the flock." I came home at night to my mother
waiting for me. She hugged me and told me she would love me no matter
what I was, and that she didn't believe that I was going to hell. My
dad still loved me unconditionally when my mother told him. Again, I
have the most awesome parents, ever. Posted Image
Unfortunately for me, despite having the best parents in the world,
three things combined in the above-mentioned nightmare to keep me in a
religious stupor for nearly another decade:
1.) My critical thinking skills were not fully developed.
2.) Being sheltered in religion, I had not learned real emotional
coping skills for dealing with hardships.
3.) I had (and still have) a vivid imagination which could calculate
endless scenarios, which led to a mental and emotional downfall.
Fortunately, I now have it under control.
These factors, combined with the real world, were about to
sucker-punch me so hard that the emotional damage was nearly
irreparable.
Beginning in February 2001 and continuing through December 2001, my
nightmare grew from a tiny event to a full-on emotional crisis. My
wild imagination spun out of control from a series of personal events
and left me in an even worse emotional state than Christianity had
left me. Being a Bnei Noach, I asked "Why does god let bad things
happen to good people? I did everything right and I'm his loyal
servant. What did I do wrong?" I would get so upset for the bad
situation I was in that I wrote in my journal and begged bible god to
answer me. I don't have my old journals with me at this time, but I
wrote something along the lines of:
"Don't you even care what's happening, g-d?" "Sometimes I think g-d
doesn't care about me."
I prayed and begged to be delivered, but no answer came. I read about
the story of Job and all his trials and tribulations, but it still
gave me no comfort. I wanted to ask the rabbi so many questions, but
her secretary was rude to me and never told me when she was available.
I also felt that if I walked in on a Sabbath day that I would really
be bothering people. I was also keeping my Noachism a secret from
parents at the time, so I couldn't make up an excuse to leave.
The questions kept building up. "If God is to make me suffer for an
unspecified period of time, how long would I have to wait?" It seemed
really cruel of bible god to repay loyalty that way. Poor Job had a
lot of pain inflicted on him on a fucking bet! Pain and suffering
inflicted by Satan! With the permission of god! What the fuck kind of
sadist is bible god? Did he get pleasure in watching me suffer after I
followed him and helped to protect his people? Mind you, these
questions are rhetorical, as I no longer believe in bible god. I had
just one question: "If bible god allows suffering in order to teach us
a lesson in order for us to grow, how does he expect us to grow if all
of us don't see the context or don't even know that we need to grow?"
Think about that for a while.
I lived in Austin for a while during part of the time I was a Bnei
Noach. I wanted to get an Associate's Degree in Japanese from Austin
Community College (so I could get into UT Austin's Asian language
program), but my depression was just too great. I was jobless in
Austin and looked for work to sustain myself there for around 9
months, as I tried to please bible god by doing anything I could to
regain his favor. My fundie programming struck again. One day, I
decided that I should "give up my idols" and surrender myself to bible
god's will, devoting myself only to him. I took 75% of my anime DVD
collection and almost half my manga collection to a used bookstore and
sold them. I thought to myself at that moment "Now bible god will pay
attention to me and I can finally get a job and continue my language
studies here." That was to never be, I ended up finding a job, but it
was only temporary and I hand to end up moving back to my hometown in
late 2003. I felt like a failure, even though I had quit believing in
bible god by the time I made the decision to move back. I was an
emotional wreck yet again, because I had still not learned any
emotional coping mechanisms.
By mid 2003, I stopped believing in the Abrahamic bible god
altogether. Had the secretary not been so cruel to me, would I have
remained a Bnei Noach? Probably for much longer than 2 years and 9
months.
NOTE: I hold nothing against the Jews and do not blame them for my
falling away from Noachism and I do not blame them for the second
"purging". It was my Christian roots that blackened my time as a Bnei
Noach.
Again, I wandered through religions, and since I had my wild
imagination and strong emotions (along with the fact that I still had
no real emotional coping mechanisms), I was vulnerable and set up for
an even more dangerous position: being in a new age cult.
You see, in February 2004 my religious/spiritual curiosity got the
better of me again. I was interested in astral projection and other
spiritual topics. As a consequence, I got hooked into a new age cult
(which I won't name) which basically said all religions have a hidden
path to salvation. Basically, it was the same rigamarole that
Christianity put me through, only that they took advantage of my more
developed logic and were very sneaky, withholding knowledge from me
that they knew about human sexuality. They preached that lust was the
root of all evil, and that to end this endless loop of suffering, a
human being had to bring his or her sexual urges under control. It
used mainly Buddhist principles and terms, saying that I had to detach
myself from this material world and threw a bit of elements from other
mainstream religions into the mix. It was at this time that I learned
real Buddhist-type coping mechanisms in the form of mindfulness
exercises and I started to slowly climb out of the emotional rut I had
been stuck in since February 2001.
When they found out that I was a very lustful person, they used that
to their advantage, saying that I had to suppress my sexuality and
re-channel it for "divine purposes". They even said things like like
the Mormons do, stating that masturbation leads to homosexuality, even
if your fantasies start out being about women (akin to what I read
about the Mormon kid in the article here at ex-C:
http://new.exchristi...of-tyranny.html). And since I had (and still
have) the occasional homosexual fantasy, I took this as a revelation
that their "spiritual path" was the true path to salvation. This was
the catalyst for me to get fully suckered into the cult for 6 years.
Later, I read about Dr. Alfred Kinsey's research on human sexuality
and how it's normal for quite a few predominantly straight people to
be gay every once in a while (to varying degrees). This cult I was in
said that once one reaches a certain degree of homosexuality, he or
she can never obtain salvation in that "karmic cycle," and that one
would have to suffer in hell before being reincarnated in order to try
and reach salvation again. Their description of the spiritual "point
of no return" made me paranoid about my own behavior. Not only that,
the cult began to dominate every aspect of my life. They took over far
worse than Christianity ever did, but it was a slow process.
After buying the cult literature in mid 2004, I remember reading about
having to embark on a long "path to enlightenment" which entailed
having to give up all my material attachments to the world in order to
attain peace. "Detach yourself from the material world!" it cried as a
constant theme. I remember after having read that "ultimatum" that I
cried in my bed for what seemed a long time. But after having read
about lust and recalling how out of control it was in the first
several months after I had converted to Noachism, I reasoned that it
was my lust that had caused that personal nightmare and "punishment"
to befall me, along with my addiction to anime. Though, something
never felt right. I could never put my finger on it, but I was walking
into that trap from those logical loopholes, ready to be duped a third
time.
Basically, I had to try and say goodbye to anime and manga (again).
This time, however, it wasn't because it was just an evil influence on
me, like Christianity tried to convince me, or because I was trying to
gain favor of bible god (like the fundie programming that continued to
run in the background of my Noachism) but now it was because I was
attached to something, and that kept me from being one with divinity
and having inner peace. Every time I went over to a friend's house and
watched anime, I couldn't detach myself from it. Every time I heard
there was a new series coming out, I was able to not watch a new one
only half the time, but the other half of the time I had to watch it.
I thought I could go cold turkey, but I kept coming back. As the
cult's grip tightened on me, I watched less and less anime, but I
still couldn't stop watching it completely.
And using the flawed thinking that homosexuality was abnormal, the
cult told me to look for any abnormal behaviors; for example, a man
having feminine mannerisms. Any fantasizing about the same sex was an
indicator that I was on my way to being attracted to the same sex in
the way I started out being attracted to the opposite sex. To act in
any way like a woman would be an indicator that a man had passed the
spiritual point of no return. I froze my shoulders and arms when I
walked in order to see if my hips were swaying, and my parents
noticed. I didn't tell them what the cult had told me, because I
feared that they would take the cult's materials and block my path to
spiritual enlightenment. I would lie to them and say something like
"My back hurts." They bought me a lot of orthopedic stuff to help my
back, and part of me felt bad for making them spend money like that.
Whenever I went to class and my classmates and professors would
notice, I told them the same excuse. It took me while, but finally got
this behavior under control. In order to prove to myself that I wasn't
becoming "gay to the point of no return," I bought lots of nude art
books with photographed models of nude women and I read manga by one
of my favorite authors, Ken Akamatsu, who is quite the pervert Posted
Image .
The cult always had to tell everyone that it wasn't a cult, that there
would be visible results of the "path to enlightenment." Later, after
leaving the cult and analyzing religion, I found that Christianity
claims visible results, as well, such as the power to speak in
tongues, etc. I tried my hardest to meet the cult's demands for
"spiritual enlightenment," but I could never measure up to this divine
standard (I don't want to really talk about the cult's specifics about
divinity). The cult claimed it never wanted to control people, either,
just like Christianity claims, as well.
It was during early 2006 that this was happening and I found myself at
one of the strangest crossroads of my life. The cult was telling me to
stop looking at lustful materials in order to keep myself from
"turning gay," but I couldn't stop looking at the feminine form in
order to prove that I wasn't gay (even though there's nothing wrong
with that). Subconsciously, part of me was saying that this was all
wrong, and that I should continue trying to be myself. I did exactly
that, reading a manga called Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu. It is a story
about a young man who becomes the manager of an all-women's dormitory
and redeems himself in society (by getting into Tokyo University)
while having all these fun adventures with the women. Looking back on
it now, I can see that reading manga and watching anime gave me far
more comfort than the cult's promise and idea of salvation. I remember
one particular day in February 2006, reading Love Hina while rain hit
against the window of my cold room. I was happy to know that I was in
the same position as the main character was: in the process of
redeeming myself in society (I was still 2 years away from my
bachelor's degree). The comfort was in me being human. I was doing
what any ordinary person was doing: reading in the comfort of my own
room while eating warm chicken strips on a cold winter's day: nothing
could beat that! Posted Image
But unfortunately, the cult's grip was getting stronger on me. The
leaders presented me with rules such as not drinking alcohol and
dietary rules. I had to assert these to my parents without being too
aggressive, lest they found out the workings of the cult's framework.
I had to keep them in the dark in order to begin "detaching myself"
from the material world. The cult also had a disciplinary system in
which if you stepped out of line, there was no salvation for you.
Sound familiar? It was just like blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
Christianity and religious cults have a "no salvation for you if you
break this simple rule" policy. It is one of the two most evil forms
of religious mind control, along with suppression of sexuality.
I began to obsess over whether or not I broke these disciplinary rules
in the cult. I was also struggling with the guilt over sexuality and
kept finding that I couldn't fully suppress it, despite giving their
so-called "techniques" to control the urge. I found myself
masturbating again and again, never getting free of the "temptation"
to masturbate. The longest I went without ever having an orgasm was
about 6 weeks, and that period of time ended in a wet dream. My lack
of masturbation also caused me health problems in my reproductive
system: the veins around my groin and my testicles began to hurt due
to the sudden lack of use. They had begun to swell and it made me have
to wear a jockstrap for a while, to ease the pain. When I went to the
doctor's office about the pain, he was baffled as to how this
condition could appear.
I had also just gotten into buying anime at that point again, and my
collection of DVDs, graphic novels, wall scrolls and figurines was
again subject to a "purging," just like when I was a Christian! So
there I went again, repeating the same thing, under the guise of a
different "religion," but I justified this destruction of something
that makes up part of my identity for a totally different reason!
Fortunately, my conscience was just strong enough this time to keep me
from purging my collection to the extent I did the first time, so my
parents didn't notice. I also scratched and destroyed my anime DVDs
and then finally got rid of them. Whenever my friends would ask me to
borrow them I would say another friend had them, and I kept everyone
fooled.
Let me tell you about a day of purging in late 2008. My parents had
gone to Louisiana to see my sister and left me to watch the house. I
had begun putting my anime figure collection in a closet of mine a
couple of years earlier as part of my "As a man, I put away childish
things" part of my quest to rid myself of anime once and for all. I
had replaced the posters and wall scrolls with flags of my favorite
countries; a shell of the personality that had been slowly gutted by
religion over the past few years. My walls would have not even had
those, had part of my conscience not screamed loud enough: "This isn't
right! Your parents will notice if everything disappears at once!"
I gathered many of my graphic novels by my favorite manga authors,
most of my wall scrolls and my figurines and put them on the burn
pile. Then, I did the most heart-wrenching thing ever; I took the gas
can out of my father's lawnmower shed and poured gasoline all over
them. There was no turning back now. I lit a piece of paper and threw
it on the pile, watching everything explode in a huge fireball. As the
flames grew calmer, I watched as one of my favorite anime characters,
Nodoka Miyazaki's (from Negima! Magister Negi Magi), smiling face be
burned away on the front cover of a graphic novel (here's a pic of the
volume http://homepage.mac....ina/negima4.jpg, she's the purple haired
girl on the right). I watched as the pages of Love Hina, that
beautiful story of human redemption and life, turned to ash and fly up
into the sky. My figures burned completely and the wall scrolls
disintegrated instantly. I stifled my conscience, telling myself that
I was "free from temptation." Nothing could have been further from the
truth, as there was no temptation to begin with.
After that bonfire, part of me felt like I had murdered my best
friends with my own hands. If you could have looked at me afterwards
and projected a figurative phenomena on me in the form of a physical
one, I would have been covered in blood. Ever since I was a kid, I had
several big things in my life: my loving immediate family, my best
friends, video games and the characters from cartoons and anime. My
family and friends were my real-life comforters while cartoon and
anime characters were like sacred, close friends to me; who were
always there for me at the drop of a hat, whenever my family and
friends were too busy. They still are somewhat, despite the fact that
I'm almost 31. I am grounded in reality and can interact with real
people, but many people in society still judge me as immature, just
because I like animation. When you consider the fact that I was
bullied and hardly had any real friends as a kid, it's no wonder that
I saw cartoon and anime characters as my friends. I am fully capable
of interacting with real people now, after being out of my poisonous
home area for so long, but I still really love anime and it gives me
comfort after all these years. I hope you find me crazy or judge me as
abnormal, anime was my only defense from the poison.
The cult tried to break the bond I had with my friends (and it
succeeded with some of them). I stopped seeing my friends who watched
pornography. There were two friends I had with whom we discussed what
we had watched (like single guys do Posted Image ), and one of these
people was someone I had been friends with since second grade. The
other one was someone I had met in college and we had really hit it
off, as he liked anime as much as I did. I completely cut off
communications with them by early 2008, and I regret having done that.
I really wish that I could sit down with them and explain what had
happened, though I think they suspected it around the time I stopped
talking to them. I felt so righteous having had to lie to them in
order to protect myself on the "path to enlightenment." I feel like
such an idiot for having swallowed that bullcrap. The cult was never
able to break the bonds I had with my family, and I'm glad it never
succeeded in that venture.
By early 2009, I was torn between two worlds. I kept getting hounded
by the cult members who kept saying "You cannot serve two masters" (a
favorite line from the bible). I was hurting on the inside. Every time
I watched anime, I felt so alive and happy, but the cult said that
euphoria and happy feelings would lead to another downfall like I had
in 2001. I had worked so hard to climb out of the initial depression,
so I was afraid of another downfall. Despite my best efforts, I kept
having occasional bouts of depression, brought on by several elements.
The cult had fed me bullcrap that the older days (ancient times all
the way though the medieval period) were better, and I longed in vain
to live like people did in the "purer days." The cult also had a date
set for the apocalypse, and as each day and year ticked away, I felt
like I had not progressed and I felt like I was going to get left
behind (I don't want to talk about the specifics of their "end of the
world" shit). In late 2009, I finally moved away from my poisonous
hometown and started a steep road to recovery, albeit with the cult's
long arm of influence extending to my new city (and I think up my ass,
as well). I noticed that I felt more hope and I really started to
watch anime again.
I have one thing to say to the religious crowd that made me feel
miserable all of these years: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me
twice, STILL shame on you! Fool me a third time, then there's still
shame on you all the same."
One nagging thing that always sat in the back of my mind as a cult
member was "What if I never reach enlightenment?" and in early 2010, I
started to question even my cult's beliefs because of that. Then
finally, in November 2010, I broke free of that cult at the age of 29.
The religious stupor was no more...
My spiritual curiosity began to fade as I questioned everything. I
started to masturbate on a regular basis again, and the pain in my
groin and testicles has mostly gone. And guess what? I still have
fantasies mostly about women, and I've figured out that I have
homosexual fantasies at most, three times per month. How can I be so
sure of and secure in my heterosexuality despite my door swinging the
other way around two to three times per month? Because whenever I
picture myself living with someone in whom I can confide and be
intimate with, it's always a woman. The rest is just bicuriousity.
Even though my spiritual curiosity slowly began to fade, I still read
books by Buddhists until I saw basically the same language that the
cult used. "Detach yourself from the material world!" the book cried.
I then said "Fuck it all," put the books on spirituality away and
decided this:
"There may or may not be an afterlife, so I need to live my life like
it's the only one I've got and do as much good as I can because people
would want to be treated well."
Now I look upon Western and Eastern religions - even organized
spirituality - with suspicion. I have been too burned by all sides.
"Sacrifice your own wants before God?" No thanks! "Detach yourself
from the material world?" No thanks! As far as I know, the material
world is my only point of reference! How can I detach myself from it?
To detach yourself from the material world is to make yourself a
boring-ass douchebag with whom no one wants to interact! How about
this advice instead all that religious, self-righteous, dehumanizing
horse shit above?
"Get what you want out of life without being overly greedy and
trampling over other people in the process."
In other words, "Be yourself and don't be an asshole."
Let me offer a version of the Atheist's Wager
(http://en.wikipedia....ist's_Wager) in my own words: "What if
this is the only life you have? I'm not saying it is, but would you
rather waste your life pursuing the unrealistically high standards of
a god or chasing enlightenment instead of making life as comfortable
and/or right for yourself and others?"
Think about it. Many have pursued such things without seeing a lot of
fruit from it in their lives. Sure, there were some great people like
Gandhi and Mother Teresa who lived very fulfilling lives with little
material possessions; but for the majority of us, it's not necessary
to be a saint or martyr or give up the entirety of who we are to feel
good or fulfilled in life. I have read heart-breaking stories of
members of my former cult dying - sometimes in abject poverty and
misery - without having ever "attained enlightenment" in a
substantial, tangible manner after all the time and money they poured
into trying to obtain "divine favor". I will never follow another
religious or spiritual doctrine like I did in the cult ever again,
even if it's from a mainstream Eastern religion. I don't want my life
to be wasted like that, as it's bad enough that I wasted my 20s with
the cult.
After so much reflection I ask this series of questions: How many
lives and talents have been squandered because of religion and cults?
How many lives have been wasted under those searching for hope of
salvation from bible god and jay-zus or seeking enlightenment through
a cultic group? How many lives, like mine, have been partially
squandered by seeking answers in places where there are either none or
where they are so obscurely placed that a lifetime of effort would be
barely worth it - if there are any? How many talents have been
considered "against god" (from scientific minds) or "impure" (from
artistic minds).
Just a bit of loving kindness towards a stranger can go a long way.
There's no need to give up everything in your life or detach yourself
from your identity or the material world to a large extent to be a
good person.
There's too much room for abuse in religion: Eastern and Western. Even
with the much more relaxed attitude in Eastern religions such as
Buddhism, the simple line "Detach yourself from the material world"
has so much potential for abuse. People like the members of the cult I
was in and even some potentially fanatical practitioners of Eastern
religions can take this too far and commit the same crime as many
denominations of Christianity does: suppressing sexuality. I advise
anyone who's studying and practicing Eastern religions to be careful
and never let them get to your sexuality. To control human sexuality
is to control the human being and is the one of the two worst kinds of
religious mind control, along with unforgivable sin. My attitude is
much more tolerant of Eastern religions, but I am very weary of those
who say they must detach themselves from everything. I run in the
other direction every time I hear something like that, because I have
been scarred too many times to take that kind of bait again.
There is a tiny bit of spirituality left in me, but it's rooted in the
death of a friend in early 2011. That is the only spark of spiritual
curiosity I have left in me; it's so personal and what happened during
the events surrounding my friend's death (the span of a week) gave me
much more comfort and spiritual richness than all those years with me
as a religious person combined. As of late 2010/early 2011, I will no
longer lend a serious ear to any religious authority, because if you
give any religious authority an inch, they'll take a mile! Religion
and spirituality (at least at any massively organized, impersonal
level) is a poison for logical human beings, making them ashamed and
afraid of their own human nature.
It really pains me to write this, but the worst tragedy of all is that
here I am, nearly 31 years old; still scared of sex and still a
virgin, all thanks to Christianity and spirituality in general. I am
so afraid to start or have a relationship with anyone because I'm
still scared of STDs, even though I want to have a relationship and
have sex! The graphic images of genital warts, herpes, and syphilis
are still burned into my mind, nearly 17 years later. I fucking hate
that! The South Park episode entitled "Proper Condom Use" sums up how
sex ed is today! The fundies really try to stick the STD shit to you!
I will never forgive Christianity (or religion) for that! They used
STDs to make me scared of sex just like Pavlov's dog! It's going to
take a long time to get that out of my psyche. FUCK YOU, CHRISTIANS!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU!
Second, the religious life I led kept me from having real-world
experience in every department except religion! I was, during my
teenage years, told that if I followed religion, that bible god and
jay-bus would hand everything to me (and maybe go through a little
"test" here and there). Thanks to that, I missed out on living my life
as a teenager and as a twenty-something.
The only good thing that has happened is that the homophobia is almost
entirely gone. I have gay friends and I am also secure in my adulthood
identity as a heterosexual, but I still feel a lot of shame when I
have an occasional homosexual fantasy. But at least I have learned not
to fight it when those moments do come. The cult I was in was the
worst with its homophobic rambling. I'm so glad that I had emotionally
matured enough by the time I was in the cult to not take their
homophobic rantings at face value. I could never fully believe that
gay people were evil and deserved the kind of treatment they received.
I became like one of those cherry-picking Christians who pick and
choose elements from the bible (like the rejection of Leviticus' lines
against homosexuality, yet following other basic good Christian
principles like "Love thy neighbor"). I ignored the worst homophobic
teachings of the cult and felt progressive yet "phony" at the same
time. One time, my gay friend was outed by his fundie parents, and he
called me, asking for my help to move him out. I immediately obliged.
Later on, he told me hid fundie parents spouted bible verses at him
all the time. When my fundie family caught wind of this, they cheered
his fundie parents on. My mother also related this story on a forum.
It turned out that one of the admins was gay and he sent my mother a
moving email, asking her to "Tell your son that he is a beautiful
person." After hearing that I felt so good to have protected someone
in need, but bad that I had to hide the homophobic elements of the
cult from my gay friend. It was among the worst feelings I have
experienced in my life.
The misogyny is entirely gone, as well. I have long since rejected the
notion that wives should be obedient and stay at home. I can now only
hope that I can find someone who is just as intelligent as I am (if I
can get the reflex fear of STDs out of me).
I am probably one of the few (or several, or many? Correct me if I'm
wrong) ex-Christians that is fortunate enough to still have the
support of their parents. My immediate family knows and is keeping my
irreligious status from my grandparents and my bible-thumping aunts
and uncles, the latter would probably quit speaking to me ever again
if they found out. It really wouldn't matter to me if my aunts and
uncles cut me off. I will try my hardest to hide this secret from the
fundie members of my family until my grandparents are gone. I have to
tell religious people who aren't in the know that I go to church in my
university town, which keeps them at bay and off my back.
Thinking back on my uncle, I wonder how he would have turned out had
the Internet existed back in the 80s? If he had had access to the same
information as I did, would he have become an ex-Christian as I did? A
lot of fundies (like these folks on Conservapedia
http://www.conservap...line_of_atheism) like to state that godlessness
is on the decline, but I beg to differ. With the Internet, many people
have a lot of information and can more easily cut through the web of
lies and deceit. Sometimes, I'm curious to ask my uncle about how he
got through his ordeal of blasphemy of the Holy Ghost without the
benefit of the Internet, but I'm afraid that it might blow my cover. I
probably won't risk it until my grandparents are gone. I love them too
much to blatantly or even accidentally risk blowing my cover to put
them through the pain I know they would go though if they found out
that I am an agnostic atheist.
And also unfortunately, I think that Christianity might have damaged
my life in yet another way after leaving the cult. My best friend whom
I've known since third grade deconverted last year shortly after I
left the cult. I remember that one of the last words that he said to
me before he cut off communication with me was him talking about the
no masturbation policy of the cult that I had told him about. Shortly
thereafter, he quit talking to me, and part of me fears that he might
have joined the cult (or a very similar group). I was so busy after I
had left the cult that I hardly had time to tell him about leaving it
and how liberated I felt. In a very small way, Christianity is
probably very responsible for this. I hope that I can see him again
someday and find out the answer to this mystery.
But despite the fact that I can talk with many ex-Christians now, I
see myself as alone in the world, despite the fact I still have the
support of the people who matter most to me. I live hundreds of miles
from them, with no one to come home to. The situation I find myself in
now reminds me of the lyrics from a Green Day song:
"I walk a lonely road… I walk alone."
The only things that keep me sane are my hobbies (anime and
photography). I will never let anyone tell me that I myself am
inherently evil or that anime is an evil corrupting influence on me
ever again. Without the coping mechanism of bible god or any other
imaginary being, all I really have left is myself and what makes me
who I am. The beauty of art (in the form of anime and other styles,
such as classical Greek and Roman paintings) gives me far more comfort
than the mythology of religion. I like Renaissance painters, as well,
but because Christianity had a huge influence on them and their works,
it kind of takes a tiny part of the "cool factor" out of them.
So, let's recap the three main stages of my religious life:
I was born into a Christian family with very progressive parents
(thank goodness), but I was beset on all sides with fundie family
members and in a fundie church, topped with being surrounded by even
more fundie churches. They almost got me as a kid, but didn't succeed
in ensnaring me until I was 14. Christianity made me feel bad about my
perfectly healthy heterosexuality (and the very rare homosexual
fantasy) and almost destroyed a part of my identity with a fundie
publication that tried to bastardize science by combining it with
Christian dogma to prove the existence of bible god and that also
tried to make the case that I was inherently evil, along with the rest
of the human race. Christianity also kept me in a mentally unstable
state with its blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and I suspect that this
was put into Christianity to keep people in line. It is one of the
worst forms of psychological torture and religious mind control out
there, keeping people constantly worried that one day they might cross
over the line. Little did the authors of the bible know that the more
you try to hold grains of sand, the more that escape from that tight
grasp; I was one of those grains. If Jay-bus had explained why
blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was unforgivable, maybe I would have
stuck with Christianity, but I highly doubt that, as I questioned
everything.
Next, I became a Bnei Noach. Under Noachism, I felt much better about
myself and I felt liberated for the next several months until early
2001, when personal misfortune befell me. I then began to question the
whole nature of bible god and kept wondering why he allowed suffering
even when his servants were loyal. I also wanted to talk to the rabbi
at the local synagogue in order to ask her questions about bible god
and suffering, etc., so I could find peace, but the secretary there
kept me from meeting up with the local rabbi and learning more about
being a Bnei Noach, so I never really got and real, in person support
while I was one. Then in early 2003 I left Abrahamic religion
altogether, thinking bible god to be absurd; but not after getting rid
of my "idols" in another religious purging hoping to gain favor from
bible god to make the pain go away, but to no avail. This was the
shortest stage in my religious life, cut short by my fundie
programming, which caused me to sell out my anime again.
In the third stage of my religious life, thanks to Western religion
not providing me with the proper emotional coping mechanisms, I fell
prey to the worst kind of religious group: the new age cult. By the
time I had left Abrahamic religion, I was still open to the concept of
there being divinity. I wandered through so many religious ideologies
and learned about new stuff like astral projection, etc. and when I
finally came upon the ideology of the cult, I was so desperate to
belong and try to become at peace with the divine. I got suckered in
with their very deceptive logical loopholes based on the subtleties of
human sexuality.
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