Skip to main content

My slow deprogramming

By BornAgainNoMore --

I grew up in a family that proclaimed "Christian values and morals" and required regular church attendance from me and my sister, although neither parent ever attended. We were a "typical" upper middle class family living the American Dream in sunny South Florida. Behind the scenes, the story was very different. My father emotionally and physically abused my sister, emotionally abused my mother and emotionally and sexually abused me for years.

Man of GodImage by merfam via Flickr

Both my sister and I left home as soon as possible. Both of us adopted an agnostic view toward god and lived productive lives. I met and married a wonderful man, an agnostic. When I had my daughter, for reasons I still don't understand, I felt compelled to send her to church, but didn't attend myself. I think I wanted her to get all the information and make her own decision regarding religion. It was not a topic discussed in our home; more of a non-issue.

After sixteen years, we retired from his government job to a small town in the Bible Belt. Here, during construction of our new home, I met a man who was a Church of God ordained minister who was a full-time builder. To make a long story short, this "man of god" convinced me that god was real and that he (the minister) loved me -- despite his marriage and family. We began an emotional and sexual relationship that lasted fourteen years. I left my husband of sixteen years because I couldn't stay with someone I no longer loved.

Eight years ago, his wife, who was aware of our relationship, left him and married another man. The "preacher man" and I became a public item, at last. I was told by him that marriage was eminent because he couldn't be in a sexual relationship with someone outside of marriage. But he never stopped having sex with me, just kept telling me that I was "growing in my faith, but still needed to work to be better" in order to be an "anointed preacher's" wife. I struggled to be as "holy" as I could. I did bible study, church five times a week, pilgrimage to the "holy land", group prayer, women's groups, etc.,etc., etc. As each year went by, I was "getting better" but still not at the religious level I needed to be at to become his wife.

And I was becoming increasingly confused by the huge holes I found in the entire concept.

I had a liberal education and an active mind that didn't just follow like sheep. I questioned. I inquired. I was told that Satan was trying to stop my growth and I needed to pray more. For every logical question, I was treated like an infidel, a traitor, a "tool of Satan". I began to see myself as worthless and shameful.

I constantly asked my "man of god" how he could have sex with me and still be anointed. He had many answers but it all came down to "god's grace in our lives." And we continued to have sex.

The unraveling began when I found out, quite by accident, that he had been asked to leave two churches before this one because he had sex with numerous underage teens and single as well as married women in his congregation. I began to question people outside the church who had known him for many years. I began to find out about a constant stream of women that he had seduced then dropped. These women were not in the church. They were women he picked up online, women he built homes for, women he met at business meetings. The Church of God leaders were well aware of his sexual addiction. They gave him a "year of silence" both times then sent him back into the church to seduce more women.

I began to watch his cell phone bills and intercept phone messages. Over a period of four years he had seduced over 100 women. I didn't have a clue. I confronted him and we began couples counseling with our pastor to survive this hurt. During this time I was completely brainwashed by my pastor who kept telling me that it was my fault. My faith wasn't strong. My doubt was the reason that the "preacher" wouldn't take me as a wife. In short, I was good enough for him to sleep with for fourteen years, just not a good enough Christian to become a wife. I continued to study, to pray, to fast. Anything to bring me closer to god. To have him work his miracle in me. It never happened.

After two years of counseling, and another year off due to the church silencing him, my "preacher" took a position as weekly minister for a Christian women's drug and alcohol program. I warned him that I would report him to the church if I found out that he was seducing these women.

It only took eight months before he was in bed with several of the women in rehab as well as sleeping with a couple of the program staff. I reported him to the church and they put him on a year of silence and sent him to a female counselor. After seducing the counselor, he now has fulfilled his year of silence and is now treated like a staff member at our church. He continues to seduce and destroy any woman who he can get into bed.

The church allows him to continue because he is an extremely good con man who brings much money into the church. To them, the 60 or so women a year that he emotionally destroys don't matter compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars he bilks from the congregation each year.

After a year of leaving the "anointed preacher" and the Church of God,I am still picking up the pieces of my life. Trying to leave behind the evangelical cult mind fucking I received. Trying to feel worthy and special again. To stop believing that I am demonic because I don't believe in their imaginary friend. I have had to let go of all my church friends as they only want to indoctrinate me back into the fold every time I speak to them. When I tell them that I no longer believe they all tell me that I will go straight to hell. Such nice thoughts from such godly people.

It truly is much like the cult deprogramming that I have read of. It will take a long time to get myself back to a healthy place both mentally and sexually. To live my life without constant guilt in everything I do.

Christianity is the greatest evil that has ever been visited on man. I have never seen such judgmental, racist and ignorant people gathered together under one "membership".

I will keep my 10% of my income, thank you very much. If I want to be fucked in the ass, there are people out in the real world who would do it for free, I am sure.

Thanks for listening to my rambling rant. It really helps to just put it all down on paper.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE FRIGHTENING FACE

By David Andrew Dugle ~ O ctober. Halloween. It's time to visit the haunted house I used to live in. When I was five my dad was able to build a big modern house. Moving in before it was complete, my younger brother and I were sleeping in a large unfinished area directly under the living room. It should have been too new to be a haunted house, but now and then I would wake up in the tiny, dark hours and see the blurry image of a face, or at least what I took to be a face, glowing, faintly yellow, high up on the wall near the ceiling. I'm not kidding! Most nights it didn’t appear at all. But when it did show itself, at first I thought it was a ghost and it scared me like nothing else I’d ever seen. But the face never did anything; unmoving, it just stayed in that one spot. Turning on the lights would make it disappear, making my fears difficult to explain, so I never told anyone. My Sunday School teachers had always told me to be good because God was just behind m

The Blame Game or Shit Happens

By Webmdave ~ A relative suffering from Type 1 diabetes was recently hospitalized for an emergency amputation. The physicians hoped to halt the spread of septic gangrene seeping from an incurable foot wound. Naturally, family and friends were very concerned. His wife was especially concerned. She bemoaned, “I just don’t want this (the advanced sepsis and the resultant amputation) to be my fault.” It may be that this couple didn’t fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation. It may be that their choice of treatment was less than ideal. Perhaps their home diabetes maintenance was inconsistent. Some Christians I know might say the culprit was a lack of spiritual faith. Others would credit it all to God’s mysterious will. Surely there is someone or something to blame. Someone to whom to ascribe credit. Isn’t there? A few days after the operation, I was talking to a man who had family members who had suffered similar diabetic experiences. Some of those also suffered ea

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Reasons for my disbelief

By Rebekah ~ T here are many layers to the reasons for my disbelief, most of which I haven't even touched on here... When I think of Evangelical Christianity, two concepts come to mind: intense psychological traps, and the danger of glossing over and missing a true appreciation for the one life we know that we have. I am actually agnostic when it comes to a being who set creation in motion and remains separated from us in a different realm. If there is a deistic God, then he/she doesn't particularly care if I believe in them, so I won't force belief and instead I will focus on this one life that I know I have, with the people I can see and feel. But I do have a lot of experience with the ideas of God put forth by Evangelical Christianity, and am confident it isn't true. If it's the case god has indeed created both a physical and a heavenly spiritual realm, then why did God even need to create a physical realm? If the point of its existence is to evolve to pas