A Rant about Teen Challenge

By paganvegan ~

I attended Teen Challenge for five months. If you are a person who responds well in situations where you are continuously inundated with dogma, never resting or being given time to reflect or experience time away from anything which does not involve being in the midst of people, sounds and never ending activities while being repeatedly subjected to the same rhetoric over and over while simultaneously losing your ability to think and reason for yourself, then TC is for you. They break you down, attempt to strip you of your identity and then substitute it with their own.

It is a typical dick move cult brainwash tactic. They also claim a 90% success rate year after year after year. Here's how that works...100 people show up and 90 drop out. 10 remain and 9 of them actually succeed. Voila! 90% success rate.

There is also a veiled not so subtly veiled threat of something to the effect of a chain letter type manipulation tactic which promises "great rewards and God will open doors type promises for those who remain, but whoa to those who defy the will of God and choose otherwise by leaving. Are you sure you are willing to take that risk?"

Also, I was told to consider that I was wrong for taking anti-psychotics which I need to manage symptoms of schizophrenia. They did not prevent me from taking these but they did, however, use guilt tactics which led me to do so anyway telling me that I was relying on the wisdom of man and science instead of trusting in God to heal me.

After awhile I began to wax psychotic believing that the voices I was hearing were either from God or Satan depending on how I was able to match the nature of their content with whether or not it was congruous with what I was being taught. "Hmm, what would Jesus say?" Good voices are from God. Bad voices are from the Devil. The bad voices are telling me that this is a bunch of shit and that I need to get the f*ck out of here now because he wants to f*ck with me now that he is aware of my awareness of Jesus.

The battle ensued.

I must therefore be very special to God because the Mr. Meany has decided to take an interest in me. How very intense and special is this? Obviously, was because of "hidden sin." Enter another dick move cult tactic. I must now, therefore confess everything with a counselor. "Have you ever sucked a dick or meditated and shit like that?" (I'm paraphrasing) "Why yes, yes I have. That's it! I'm sorry God. Things will be much better now, I'm sure, since I got that horrible demon off my che.

F*ck you Teen Challenge.

Then, there was the revival service. people rolling around and gibbering like lunatics in the name of Jesus and just having a grand ol' cathartic enjoyment of mass hysteria. These people are so repressed, it's probably actually healthy to cut loose now and again, but call it for what it is. Preferably, I'd rather dance naked and drink beer around a bon-fire beating a bongo drum with my engorged throbbing penis.

Comments

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

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog