Skip to main content

Atheist Needle in a Hay Stack of Christians

By Jasiel ~

OK. Here we go. I am really not sure how long this is going to be, but I guess I’ll go with the flow. So here’s my testimonial:

Needle In A HaystackImage by t_buchtele via Flickr
My name is Jasiel (pronounced J.C.L). I am 18, and I am an Atheist. I live in Central Florida and I’m surrounded by TONS of Christians. The reason why I became an Atheist was because I started to have doubts (not surprising).

I was VERY active in my church youth group. I played the drums in the youth band and prayed over the group every now and then. But one day my pastor said something that literally sent a shiver down my spine. He said because we weren’t spreading the Word enough, “Billions of people die and get sent to hell.” Now of course I was like “Oh, my god I need to start going out and sharing the word quickly before so many people go to hell.” Then it dawned on me… "Isn’t it cruel for a God who created man because he was lonely to send so many of them to burn in hell? Millions of them didn’t even get to hear about you." And then another question popped into my head: If God was so great and if he could do miracles, why can’t he just convert the non-believers himself? I asked my pastor that same exact question, and of course he said “Because Satan dwells among us.” So when a human being converts another to Christianity, does that mean that we are more powerful than “God?"

My doubts were starting to scare me because I felt as if I was the only one thinking these thoughts in a church over 3,000 members strong. I also felt scared because I knew I was on to something. I knew that I was slowly discovering that something was a little fishy about this Christianity stuff. I was on a hill in a car stuck in neutral. My friends and my youth pastor would push me up the hill (mission trips, youth retreats and such) but then I would come rolling back down to earth after we came back.

I was still unsure whether or not I was an Atheist. The one event that finalized my decision was -- and don’t make fun of me -- was when I got rejected by a girl I really liked. We talked every day, for the whole day, 6 months straight and she said I could start dating her in May (yeah…I know…odd). We hung out a lot at the movies and different restaurants. I’m from Trinidad and I’m dark skinned. The girl I was talking to was white and her ENTIRE family was white/country/conservative. Her family knew about me because I visited her house a couple of times. They were nice to me but I knew it was a cover. Then the moment came when we got into our very first fight (cute I know….not). It was about something stupid, but it was purely MY fault. I apologized over and over again. Her family seized the opportunity and convinced the one girl I truly liked that I was a cruel person. They also got it into her head that she should work on her relationship with GOD first. REALLY??? She’s super Christian, home-schooled, country, and conservative. I’m pretty sure she needed to get away from God for a while. But anyways, she told me basically what her family told her to tell me and she finally said the statement that made me cringe. “I feel like I need to build a better relationship with God before I start dating someone.” I was distraught and angry. I immediately went into a depression. During this time, I thought, and thought some more. I realized how easy it was to convince a Christian to do what you want them to do, as long as you use God in your persuasion. For some odd reason, that made me think of the Bible, and how old it was, and how it could have been changed and tampered with to keep rule over society.

Then came the dreaded day that I told my parents I was a “non-believer.” I wasn’t actually planning to tell them at all. But when the moment came, I had to. This happened in June. We were finished with our family meeting, and my brother started arguing and ranting on and on about me trying out for the College drum line when I should be more focused on school instead. Now I was REALLY pissed off and started using the phrase “Jesus Christ” a lot. THEN my parents AND my brother got REALLY pissed off and started yelling at me because of my “blasphemy.” They literally had me in tears. I felt outnumbered and helpless. I could do nothing but cry. I sat down on the chair, looked up at my parents, and with my face dripping with tears I stuttered “Mom... Dad... I don’t believe in God anymore.” The anger on my parents face disappeared and turned to shock. After a long pause my dad said “Jasiel, that’s a big statement you just made.” I said “Yes, I know.” It was the only thing I could say because I was still in shock. My hands were shaking and my lips were trembling. I went straight to my room and buried my face in my pillow. I thought it was over until my parents came into my room. My mom said “Jasiel, tonight is the night that you accepted Satan into your life.” Then my brother blurted out from his room “You are a reject!” And in my anger and frustration I said “no I’m not!” And right after I said that, my dad said “Yes you are.”

You guys have no idea about the amount of anger that built up within me after he said that. I’m being rejected because I thought outside of the box? No. That was unfair. I took a deep breath and started screaming “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!” over and over again until I felt light headed and could cry no more. After all of that, you know what my mother said? She said “look, Satan has already possessed him.”

The days that followed were painful, my mom always asked me “Where are your atheist friends?” and “I have to get away from you or else something bad will happen to me.” My brother, who was and currently is very involved in church, started poking fun at me and arguing with me about how Christianity is right and I was stupid.

Things have died down since this whole drama happened. Actually it hasn’t. Instead of verbally hurting me, my parents are mentally hurting me. They force me to dress up and go to church with a bible. I have to sit with them and read the passage the pastor is preaching on. When everyone stands up to read aloud the bible verse, I must stand up and read aloud too. They think forcing me to go to church is going to convert me back to that cult? I think not. At every church service I feel so much anger. I feel anger towards God and anger towards the pastor who is shoving stories and falseness down 2,999 peoples’ throats. A wave of anger moves through my body when the congregation says “amen” after the pastor goes on a charismatic rant ending with “Jesus”. A wave of anger rushes through me when I see the people in front of me putting their hands in the air, praising an invisible god. And lastly, a wave of anger and sadness storms through me when I see young children, ages five to 10, go up and “confess that Jesus is their Lord and Savior.”

So here I am: I’m a 18 year old kid, an Atheist surrounded by Christians, forced to live a life of hypocrisy, and I am desperate to get out and find a new life.

I really didn’t think my testimony would be this long. I hope it was worth reading.

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

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

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

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