The change I can't believe in

By J Smith

The year was 1993 and my mom talked me into a Billy Graham Crusade. I
remember my mom pushing me at the end to go down and accept the lord;
I refused. Later that year I got myself into some trouble and ended up
in jail for a weekend. At that point in my life I needed a change. I
called my mom and told her I was ready to go to church with her. She
was over excited to lead me to her charismatic church on Sunday
morning. What happened after that has been 19 long years of change.
Confusion, guilt, shame, arrogance, and my new found judgmental
attitude was not the change I was looking for.

At the beginning of my journey it was just like buying a new car,
fresh, clean, and exciting! I couldn't get enough of reading the bible
and going to church. The promises were out of this world! I would
drive down the road and shout "Jesus loves you" to people on the
sidewalk. I tithed, prayed, studied, and fellowshipped just like every
new Christian does at the beginning. I felt like I was floating on a
cloud! The floating started to fade after two years into studying the
bible, because I realized something was wrong with this charismatic
thing (tongues was faked, miracles were always something internal that
no one could really verify, prophecies were everywhere and few if any
ever came to pass, and everyone just kept on believing this phony
stuff without ever questioning it). Great, let's go to a reformed
Calvinist church and get the "real" truth. After five years of
crawling through theological mud, at three different Calvinist based
churches, and condemning everyone who wasn't a Calvinist I walked away
from it. For the next ten years my family and I moved from church to
church seeking out the elusive church that had the truth. Two years
ago I threw my hands up in the air with two BIG giant fingers pointed
to the sky. That's right, I flipped god the bird. I have spent the
last two years trying to make sense of all this. I have scoured the
Internet, talked to Christian and non-Christian alike, read books on
church history, the canonization of the bible, Evolution, creation… I
sit here today so screwed up in my mind I can hardly function in life.
"Seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened" really? I
sought hard, and knocked a lot, but the more I did the more I fell
away from the faith realizing there was no one listening to my
prayers.

One of the main reasons I walked away was Christians themselves. The
examples I see from them are for the most part enough to make me throw
up in my mouth. Sure, there were some decent examples, but then I see
that in Atheists and other non-Christians as well (Shhh, Christians
don't realize that there are non-Christians that live moral lives and
love people more than they do). My brother's family was laid to waste
by Christianity. One kid ran away, one went to jail, and the other one
was forced to marry someone she didn't want to because of a
"prophecy", and now their divorced with three kids. I am still dealing
with Christian neighbors that are absolutely destroying their kids.
Their kids come to me in tears so that they can live at our house
instead of theirs. I was told they wished their parents would die so
we could adopt them. Before you Christians say, "Oh those parents are
in the wrong church", no, they go to a local bible believing
non-denominational church where everyone wears big smiles. My dad is a
Christian and the most judgmental man I know. To him all homosexuals
and democrats should be put to death, and the bible says so.
Leadership in churches is nothing more than a power grab and mind
control game. There are some decent leaders trying to do what is
right, granted, but many are control freaks who only care for
themselves and their doctrine. If you don't believe me go to a church
and take a stand against what they believe. Every Christian has an
opinion, none of them have answers. I am sick and tired of hearing,
"real miracles happen over in Africa", "if you just ask the Holy
Spirit he will lead you into all truth", "you have a faith issue",
"you're in sin, that's why your prayers aren't being answered", and my
all-time favorite: "Satan is leading you astray". Christians have
canned answers for everything. Over the years you build up this
repository of answers to any skeptic's questions. On the surface they
sound good, however, if any thought is put into them you will
immediately expose them for what they are, "excuses".

The bible itself is mass confusion, thus the thousands of different
denominations within Christianity. I for many years believed the bible
to be the inerrant word of god, hook, line, and sinker; you could not
convince me otherwise. A strange thing happened one day. I asked
myself why if dinosaurs lived with man do we not find dinosaurs and
man buried in the rock layers together. Surely they were all buried by
the flood and killed together and therefore should be found together,
civilizations, dinosaurs, dogs, cows, humans. Why? My research led me
far and wide. The bottom line is the earth is not 6000 years old, and
dinosaurs did not live with humans, thus the Genesis story is nothing
more than that, a story. Christians are easy prey to brainwashing by
the likes of the Creation Research Institute and Answers in Genesis. I
was at a natural history museum last year and there was a Christian
mom and dad in the dinosaur exhibit. The dad said, out loud, "Boy I am
glad we didn't let our kids in here to see all this old earth
Evolution crap". A few years back I would have been the one saying
that. I looked at him and realized he didn't have a clue what he was
talking about, just regurgitating what he has been told or read
without ever looking into what evidence science has to offer. It is
absolutely sickening to hear Christians working their pie hole out of
complete ignorance. What is even more sickening is I did it for 17
years. At one time I believed the flood of Noah destroyed the world
and god preserved life on the ark and all these "millions of dead
things buried in rock layers around the earth" were there because of
the flood. A simple study in geology and fossil order debunks that
myth. A man living in a fish's belly for three days and nights,
talking donkeys and snakes, mysterious hands writing on walls, men
riding chariots of fire into heaven, the sun stopping in the sky for a
day and on and on it goes. All easily believed and yet absolutely no
proof of any of it other than ancient texts. Yet, evidence staring
them right in the face for an ancient earth and evolution, and they
laugh at it calling it from Satan. It is easy to see why people would
sacrifice their lives for Jim Jones, David Koresh, and the Heavens
Gate crew. The most powerful people in the world are those standing
behind pulpits on a Sunday morning; they can destroy lives with a
word.

The bible is riddled with contradictions. Yea, I know all the
arguments for the "supposed" contradictions, because I believed there
were none at one time also. It is unbelievable the tap dance that
Christian Apologists have to do to reconcile contradictions. I started
looking at these contradictions and then finding the answer to them on
apologist websites. I found out that most of them had different
answers to the contradictions, and they all believed they were right.
I can't take it when an apologist says, "all we have to do is show
that there is a possible answer and the contradiction is resolved".
Are you kidding me? Hell, anyone can come up with a "possible" answer
to any contradiction. "The guy is black - the guy is white" Well
there's a contradiction, he can't be both! Christian answer: The guy
that appeared to be black was actually a white guy standing in the
shadow of a tree during a full lunar eclipse on a blue moon Tuesday,
and he appeared to be black, "no contradiction". After going through
hundreds of these contractions and seeing the answers presented, I
threw my arms up the air. My question at this point was why would god
so confuse people with his "written word" that no one knows how to
interpret it correctly, and no one can really figure out the truth of
it? Why is he hiding behind a word that confuses everyone? It is like
a bunch of rabbits all running in different directions? I heard a
Christian say that god purposely designed his word for confusion so
that the message would spread around the world! WTF, they have an
answer for everything!

One of the main reasons I walked away was Christians themselves. The
examples I see from them are for the most part enough to make me throw
up in my mouth. For a Christian/theologian to say that we have an
inerrant bible is a JOKE. I know, now the war cry is, "the originals
were without error, the bibles we have do have copyist errors". What
part of the word "errors" don't they understand? Better yet they are
never told there are errors, because I never once heard it in 17 years
of church going. Christian leaders do not share this with the flock,
or they wouldn't have their steady stream of $$ coming in. Oh, by the
way, does anyone have an original gospel so I can examine it to see if
there are no errors? Just reading through the book of Matthew (or
whoever wrote it) one can see how he so twisted the Old Testament
wording to become a fulfilled prophecy for the messiah. Hell, even
Matthew couldn't figure out how to interpret the Old Testament!
(NIV)Mark chapter 1 verse 2, "as it is written in Isaiah the prophet",
clearly the rest of the verse is from Malachi, and verse 3 is from
Isaiah. Some honor student recognized this when writing the
manuscripts that were eventually used for the King James Version of
the bible and said, "as it is written in the prophets". He saw the
error and corrected it. Is this what we are to believe is the "Word of
God"; they just wily-nilly correct it when needed to hide errors? How
much more of this has happened over the centuries without our
knowledge? The bible is riddled with problems, but when you're looking
at it through inerrant tinted glasses, it is perfect. My eyes are now
open to how much religion, cults, and the like are so deceptive and
brainwashing. I believed this stuff with "all my heart" for many
years, now I am ashamed to have fallen to such man made brainwashing.
I can hear the Christians reading this now, "You just never had a
personal relationship with Jesus". You are greatly mistaken, I did
have a personal relationship with him, but he was never on the other
end. Now I hear the Calvinist, "You were never one of the elect to
begin with". Answer; if your god condemns people to eternal fire just
because he desires to and never gives them the opportunity to be
saved, I don't want anything to do with such a monster. Now I hear the
seeker sensitive Christian, "Just give Jesus a chance and he will love
you like you've never been loved before". REALLY? He said he would
never forsake me, but here I am. He said nothing can separate me from
the love of god in Jesus Christ, yet here I am. Do I need to continue?
You have all the answers don't you Christians? Don't you? Just wait
till your writing your letter for this website, and then you won't be
so damn arrogant about what you think you know.

Where does this leave me? I'm pissed off and frankly don't give a damn
anymore about religion of any kind. Christians can leave me alone and
stop making my life a f'ing misery. I'm sick of hearing their
judgments on mankind; I'm sick of seeing children be ground to dirt
because of religious zealots; I'm tired of being told there is one
truth and one way when that road is filled with delusion, dishonesty,
and manipulation. I want my life back, but fear that all these years
of brainwashing are permanent and cannot be eradicated out of my mind.
There will always be a fear of mind numbing screaming in an eternal
fire. I can sweep it under the rug, throw it out the door, ignore it
and say I don't believe it, but the fact is it will always be sitting
back there somewhere haunting me for the rest of my life, if I don't
recommit myself back to lord and go through this nightmare all over
again. Can someone please give me a poisoned cup of cool-aid, a
compound to move to in Texas, or a comet to live on before I go out of
my mind? That may sound a bit sarcastic but this shit has really
screwed me up.