Skip to main content

Borderline Father

By Anonymous ~

While I was just a tiny lad,
It was only truth that could come from Dad.
He loved me and tried to keep me from harm
This dangerous world, so much to disarm.

Father to SonImage by KellyB. via Flickr
He was a pastor with insight from God.
A spiritual man without a facade.
He was the one that I looked up to,
For direction in life and all that he knew.

“It’s not just life that we have to fear,
Life after death is all too near.
If you don’t believe the right things,
Tortured you will be with a fire that stings.”

I was afraid to die every night,
Unable to sleep and full of fright.
What if I am not saved at all?
It’s not like I could give God a call.

“You are a sinner, have fallen short,
Of the Glory of God, and you’re like a wart.
A wart that God needs to have cleansed,
So bow your head and make amends.

Only with the right beliefs can you escape,
An eternal punishment and your default fate.
Trust in Christ or end in Hell,”
That’s one way for a good quell.

But Dad, what about those who have never heard?
Are they going to Hell too? That seems absurd.
“Son, these questions we can not know,
But don’t lose your faith, or let your doubts show.”



I’m confused about why God made himself die,
Couldn’t he just have forgiven my sins? Why?
I thought He was an all loving and all powerful God,
If he can’t do what I would do then this all seems very odd.

“Your pride is showing, a dangerous vice.
Satan’s tool. Don’t question God twice.
You cannot understand the Lord’s mysterious ways,
Planned from the beginning of time, and worthy of praise.”

You’re right, I should never question God nor His plans,
Just trust and obey, for I cannot trust fallible man’s.
So I’m either all good, or I am all bad.
It’s the way things are for me as a lad.

I saw horrific things as a small child.
Demonic forces driving people wild.
Casting out supernatural beings was the thing,
My parents decided to do on a fling.

This was evidence that the devil was real,
That evil exists, and it could take over with zeal.
The only way to be safe from demon possession,
Was to be on God’s side, without question.

When my sister acted out as a young girl,
My parents yelled at her and would hurl,
angry words of shame and guilt,
“What is your name? And what have we built?”

I could never face the fear,
Of being rejected by those I held dear.
So I believed, with no other real choice,
Ignoring the inner, wee small voice.

You know what Dad? I’m done being afraid.
Whether I’m acceptable to you is your choice to be made.
Either take me for who I am, warts and all,
Or damn me to hell, it is your call.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

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

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

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

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