Just another Jesus Camp kid
By Docaroo/Chris --
I would imagine that many others have had a similar experience with Christianity. Some of the testimonials I've read here moved and spoke to me deeply. The honesty and emotional level changes grabbed hold all of me.
Image by wayneandwax via FlickrHas anyone seen the movie Jesus Camp
? I lived that movie in many ways. Of course the movie fell short while stopping short of teenage years and showing the area of "sexual sin" and how to hate your own body etc... The camp leader lady fills some gaps nicely of how you can end up though.
I started this journey for truth around two years ago thinking it would lead me to a deeper understanding of god, which if I think about is sick in it's very own nature. As if I was so lost that I didn't understand how a talking snake, a burning bush, the brutal torture and murder of a man were beyond my grasp as the key/s to life. If I didn't like it though I could go straight to hell!
I wanted to believe things because I found them on my own and not because they were taught to me from the tender age of three. What has puzzled me somewhat and this may be an indicator to the level of mental abuse I suffered, was the fact that I did not rebel from the standpoint of this revelation. In other words, something was just not right.
I would be remiss by not stating that another catalyst planted the seed for change. I had a paradigm shift in another area of life that started to make me question and lust for truth. A truth that I only suspected may be out there.
"If I was so wrong about this, what about everything else?"
The first "everything else" was my faith/religion. After some brief education, logic and reason became the beginning of my self awareness. How deep was this rabbit hole within me?
Now when I say I was a Christian, I do mean a Jesus Camp child who watched rolling in the isles and speaking in tongues. I was even "slain in the spirit" in my adult years. The abuse of this "life of freedom" started to well up from that hole like a spring of poison within.
"Living water from which I would never thirst from again huh?" I always thought this was beautiful and poetic.The Christian faith is like a living virus that is a self serving poison infecting us with a life of masochism. I am so drawn to the movie "The Matrix" as a parallel to what was really going on within me. There was a prick inside me and something was wrong. Why would I get depressed for no reason, why did I feel so confused when I knew the living god? Why was I such a disgusting sinner for the lust in my heart when I had no physical control over it?
Friends I can tell you thankfully that even though you can't fully get rid of a virus you can treat it with the knowledge that science has given us. I should add to my virus analogy that medical advancements came to be in the face and opposition of faith. The disease can be treated to the point that it's almost forgotten due to it's remission after getting treatment. I say almost because you can't fully get rid of a virus as it lives on undetected. It may not be all bad to forget completely though.
I never want to lose my compassion for others and what they have gone through. (how is it that I now feel MORE love and compassion for my fellow humans?) I don't want to sound like I have lived a life of hell and torture. I have at times yes but I have achieved some great things. Joining the military I count as one of those great decisions which lead me around the world. The desire to become a special ops commando was a great dream in me and I lived that dream. Even then I was simultaneously carrying out conflicting archetypes in my very job description. One being a Navy corpsman (medical) and the other being a trained killer.
Having some success in business and becoming a father was worth leaving the service for. Taylor is the name of my 10-year-old little girl who I have been raising on my own since she was around 4.
Giving these maybe boring details in the hope to illustrate my human experiences and to show some portion of range within it. Religion poisoned so much of my life and the sky captain was always there to mix confusion, theft, and unpurify those experiences.
We do in point of fact live in a "Matrix" type of world where most people are plugged into a fantasy that is so real TO THEM. Encouragement should be realized from living on the side of Neo and Morpheus, the later also being a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses as the god of dreams. Dreams can be special in many forms but religous delusion is intellectually lazy at best. At it's worst you fill in the blanks.
There is a solution to this problem.
All you have to do to receive this beautiful free gift of healing is reach out and take it.
Scientific elegance is explained as something so simple a child can understand but underneath lies complex sophistication. (The Mac Computer comes to mind as an example)
How elegant to realize the cure for a disease is that it NEVER really existed in the first place?
"No Mr. Smith you don't have cancer as the doctor explains to you there is no such thing".... slowing awaking from the old dream of your life into the brand new dawn of your beautiful reality....
I would imagine that many others have had a similar experience with Christianity. Some of the testimonials I've read here moved and spoke to me deeply. The honesty and emotional level changes grabbed hold all of me.
Image by wayneandwax via Flickr? I lived that movie in many ways. Of course the movie fell short while stopping short of teenage years and showing the area of "sexual sin" and how to hate your own body etc... The camp leader lady fills some gaps nicely of how you can end up though.I started this journey for truth around two years ago thinking it would lead me to a deeper understanding of god, which if I think about is sick in it's very own nature. As if I was so lost that I didn't understand how a talking snake, a burning bush, the brutal torture and murder of a man were beyond my grasp as the key/s to life. If I didn't like it though I could go straight to hell!
I wanted to believe things because I found them on my own and not because they were taught to me from the tender age of three. What has puzzled me somewhat and this may be an indicator to the level of mental abuse I suffered, was the fact that I did not rebel from the standpoint of this revelation. In other words, something was just not right.
I would be remiss by not stating that another catalyst planted the seed for change. I had a paradigm shift in another area of life that started to make me question and lust for truth. A truth that I only suspected may be out there.
"If I was so wrong about this, what about everything else?"
The first "everything else" was my faith/religion. After some brief education, logic and reason became the beginning of my self awareness. How deep was this rabbit hole within me?
Now when I say I was a Christian, I do mean a Jesus Camp
child who watched rolling in the isles and speaking in tongues. I was even "slain in the spirit" in my adult years. The abuse of this "life of freedom" started to well up from that hole like a spring of poison within."Living water from which I would never thirst from again huh?" I always thought this was beautiful and poetic.The Christian faith is like a living virus that is a self serving poison infecting us with a life of masochism. I am so drawn to the movie "The Matrix" as a parallel to what was really going on within me. There was a prick inside me and something was wrong. Why would I get depressed for no reason, why did I feel so confused when I knew the living god? Why was I such a disgusting sinner for the lust in my heart when I had no physical control over it?
Friends I can tell you thankfully that even though you can't fully get rid of a virus you can treat it with the knowledge that science has given us. I should add to my virus analogy that medical advancements came to be in the face and opposition of faith. The disease can be treated to the point that it's almost forgotten due to it's remission after getting treatment. I say almost because you can't fully get rid of a virus as it lives on undetected. It may not be all bad to forget completely though.
I never want to lose my compassion for others and what they have gone through. (how is it that I now feel MORE love and compassion for my fellow humans?) I don't want to sound like I have lived a life of hell and torture. I have at times yes but I have achieved some great things. Joining the military I count as one of those great decisions which lead me around the world. The desire to become a special ops commando was a great dream in me and I lived that dream. Even then I was simultaneously carrying out conflicting archetypes in my very job description. One being a Navy corpsman (medical) and the other being a trained killer.
Having some success in business and becoming a father was worth leaving the service for. Taylor is the name of my 10-year-old little girl who I have been raising on my own since she was around 4.
Giving these maybe boring details in the hope to illustrate my human experiences and to show some portion of range within it. Religion poisoned so much of my life and the sky captain was always there to mix confusion, theft, and unpurify those experiences.
We do in point of fact live in a "Matrix" type of world where most people are plugged into a fantasy that is so real TO THEM. Encouragement should be realized from living on the side of Neo and Morpheus, the later also being a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses as the god of dreams. Dreams can be special in many forms but religous delusion is intellectually lazy at best. At it's worst you fill in the blanks.
There is a solution to this problem.
All you have to do to receive this beautiful free gift of healing is reach out and take it.
Scientific elegance is explained as something so simple a child can understand but underneath lies complex sophistication. (The Mac Computer comes to mind as an example)
How elegant to realize the cure for a disease is that it NEVER really existed in the first place?
"No Mr. Smith you don't have cancer as the doctor explains to you there is no such thing".... slowing awaking from the old dream of your life into the brand new dawn of your beautiful reality....
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