Fear and Loathing

By John ~

HEBREWS 6: 4-6

4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have
tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the
world to come, 6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto
repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh,
and put him to an open shame.


The first time I read those words I became convinced it was speaking
about me, and I was terrified.

It happened about 3 years ago, during a time I could only explain as
my brief sojourn from sanity, into the world of uncertainty, doubt,
fear, and misery that I now associate with religious belief.

I've always been slightly obsessive: a mixture of the passion to
understand things and my high intelligence. It's both a blessing and a
curse.

I first heard about Jesus when I was 6 years old from a babysitter at
the prompting of my mother, concerned over my eternal well-being. She
sat myself and my sister on the edge of my sister's bed and told us
about how we were sinners and needed a Savior, and I accepted Jesus
then and there.

Up until that point, I was a happy little kid atheist. Not by choice
mind you, but by default. I had no concern over 'spiritual matters'
and when I first heard about these things unseen my mind and emotions
began their lifelong plummet into the world of uncertainty and fear.

For some unknown reason, the babysitter, I still remember her name:
Thina, added as a suffix to our initial indoctrination the grave
warning: 'if you challenge the devil, you will explode.'

I remember the next day or two of my weekend was ruined, as I sat on a
bench in the park near my house ruminating over the possibility,
afraid to death that if my resilience broke for even one moment and I
said those words it would mean the end of my life.

Torture.

I quickly moved on, being the child I was, and forgot about it.

My young life was not very devout: my mother being a Christian and my
father being a devout unbeliever we rarely went to church. When I was
ten years old we moved to a new city for my father's new job.

At 13 and a new high school student, I remember vividly sitting on my
bed reading the bible at night when that thought came back into my
mind: 'if you challenge the devil you will explode.' Once more I was
plunged into the vague world of religious uncertainty and doubt,
ruminating day and night over the possibility I might at any moment
lose my resolve and be forever shorn into millions of pieces of
teenager-kibble. For weeks and months I prayed to God for strength, I
used bible verses to 'send Satan away' such as: 'If God be for us, who
can be against us' and 'All things are possible through Christ who
strengthens us.' Little did I know the solution to my problems was to
get rid of the religious thinking altogether. At the time, however, I
could not risk my eternal soul at the utter joy of being safe from
explosion over a religious loophole.

This might seem stupid to people, but understand I was a child when I
first heard about this. This unknown realm of religious possibility
was a mental reality for me since the age of 6, and it was impossible
for me at the time to get out of it.

It took me about 18 months to get over it. One day after months and
months of torture, I finally decided to face my fear and I finally
challenged the devil out loud and...nothing happened. Cathartic. A
temporary relief from the agony of obsession that I had been in the
grips of for at least a year and a half, day and night, nonstop, 24
hours a day.

But that relief was short-lived. My mind soon found new religious
things to obsess over. Demonic possession.

If I stopped believing, I was no longer saved and was at the risk of
being possessed. So even though I knew certain things must be true
about our reality, I held firm onto the notion that Christ died and
was raised and that I was saved. That's all that mattered.

A growing pornography addiction and experimentation with marijuana
grew at ages 16 and 17 and culminated in my true religious experience
at the age of 17. After watching the 'Jesus' film and seeing this man
nailed to a cross and for the first time realizing he 'died for ME' I
broke down in shame over my problems as a human being, my lying and
stealing and pornography and marijuana use, and asked him to forgive
me. A rush of peace loving and forgiving spiritual water (only way I
can describe it) flowed through me, and I became a Christian, again.

Shortly after I was baptized and when I went under the water something
inside my heart 'leapt' at the recognition that this was me being
saved, I was very happy for a time and I still have that feeling
sometimes. The best way to describe it is a 'holy fire' in my heart. I
don't know what it is, but that 'feeling' is probably the thing I have
the most difficulty reconciling with my new found agnosticism or
atheism.

Something kept me from going 'deep' into Christianity. I only ever put
my toes in, because of this deep underlying fear at all things
religious. I thought they were all very mystical and to be honest,
extremely scary, and so I sort of kept my distance at becoming too
indoctrinated into it. I don't think I could do it even if I wanted
to. It's just too weird for me, and always was.

So having been saved and having that part of my life handled I went on
to accomplish things in my life and did so for 10 years, constantly
battling pornography addiction, trying to be clean in a relationship
with my girlfriends and often denying them sex because of fear,
battling my ongoing obsession with the potential for me to be
possessed by constantly reinforcing that I was a child of God and such
things were impossible as long as I had the holy spirit inside me.

That is, until about 3 years ago when I came across that verse.
Terrified at having been a nominal christian for all these years and
that I had 'fallen away, never to return' I began to research just
what salvation really was. Much to my chagrin, I found 7 different
interpretations of that verse and 2 Peter 2 from 7 different
theologians, all saying different things. Some said I was never really
saved. Some said I had lost my salvation. Some said I was still saved
but 'backslidden.' Why wasn't there an answer? I ruminated in mental
torture, watching YouTube videos from different pastors on salvation.
I cried out to God for months, every night and day, in pure agony over
the state of my eternal being.


not

really

there

at allAnd I received no answer.

The Christian counselor I saw thought I had some kind of demonic
influence from the drugs I had taken as a teenager that was making me
question my salvation. I stopped seeing him after he gave me a
handbook on how to get rid of that. I never understood how drugs like
anti-depressants and aspirin were OK for Christians to take but
natural drugs like marijuana were not. Even though I didn't smoke
marijuana and hadn't in almost a decade, I could not reconcile this.
It just doesn't make sense.

I thought I had finally gotten an answer from God, at the pinnacle of
my mental fury he had shown me that God did all the work and that all
I needed to do was have faith and I was saved. But how did I know my
faith was enough? I heard different pastors saying that God gave YOU
the faith to believe, and I felt like I didn't really believe it,
otherwise I would have developed more 'fruits' over the past years.
Was I never really saved in the first place? Was I in danger?

And to be honest this is very hard for me to write. That know of
complete terror rises once again inside my heart as I force myself to
tell my story here.

How did Jesus' death save us at all? One pastor on youtube said it was
god's wrath poured out on him instead of us that saved us. So then,
why need him to die that way at all? One said it was his death. Well,
how does one day of torture forgive someone who tortured someone else
for 20 years, like the father who kept his daughter in the basement as
a slave? How does Jesus' resurrection mean anything at all? It just
didn't make sense.

Desperate for an answer I cried out to God, and received nothing. And
after a long time I was forced to admit the possibility that he was

not

really

there

at all.

I began to delve into atheist literature, and every bit of it made
intellectual sense to me. Evolution is actually true. It's not
possible to reconcile the evolution of man with mankind's fall in the
bible, because evolution is dependent on selection pressures, and
those include being tougher, smarter, more logical, and in human
beings' case: more social and more moral for success. Mankind was not
created perfect and chose to fall (the whole fall in Genesis is a
confidence trick anyway), mankind evolved these things. He could not
have been successful if he didn't.

I still bounce between atheism and agnosticism. I still have bursts of
religiosity and bursts of fear and terror over religious thoughts. I
know there are a lot of Christians in the same boat as me. It truly is
horrifying stuff.

I began to see most religious people very ignorant of reality in order
to hold on to beliefs, either because they must hold on to those
beliefs being true because they are afraid, or holding on to those
beliefs because they desperately want them to be true.

And to be honest, part of me wishes they were true as well. The
thought of a loving God and me being together forever and me living
forever is a nice thought. The gospel story is still an amazingly
beautiful one.

But so is Santa Claus.