Skip to main content

Irreconcilable Differences

By Carl S ~

When we first met, I was with others who swore to your kindness, lovingness, caring. You impressed me to no end; I fell in love with you. But you had a past no one cared to notice and which I had to find out about on my own. In spite of all our time together, you haven't changed. I can't remember a time when we discussed and saw eye to eye on an important matter. It had to be your way or else. You never treated my intelligence with respect.

There never was a "we." While I gave up everything for you, I had to keep lying to myself, hoping I'd be acceptable as I am, but I could never be good enough for you. It wouldn't happen, was not to be. Your attitudes are set; you weren't about to change your attitudes as long as your systems successfully kept us under your thumb. It was always about you. When I came, battered, before your arrogant friends, they defended you, telling me, "You must have provoked him," or "What did you say or do, what kind of attitude did you take to offend him?" They told me my suffering was for my own good because you loved me and wanted me to become a better person. You and they said I was stupid and refused to understand and accept your wisdom.

But why did you make my innocent children suffer physically and mentally? Why is that your modus operandi, your answers to questioning, to punish, punish and lay down ultimate threats? You thought you had rights to do this. What about our rights? You call that "love?"

I cannot forget the days when homosexuals disappeared overnight from our neighborhood; then the gypsies were taken away, as well as the Jewish families, all those beautiful children, never to be seen again. Did you know what would become of them? What about the women of Bosnia raped by soldiers, and those hacked to death in Rwanda? Your answer was, "Trust me. It's for the greater good." You let your own children suffer and die for that “reason," while others scurried about trying to prevent their agonies and deaths.

And all the time, I heard the same refrain repeated: "Your puny mind can't understand, but some day you will." But I do understand depraved indifference, negligence, and willful impotence. "Merciful" and "compassionate" are just labels stuck on you to hide what's behind. A man once told me, "Even if he should kill me, yet will I love him." I do not accept a sadomasochistic relationship, a battered wife relationship. I won’t live under such intolerable circumstances. You kept testing me with the candy-coated poison of hope, and I kept hoping things would change, as you would say, "for the better."

I sickened of your playing games with people and playing tricks on us; threatening me and threatening the kids. I refuse to have my kids accepting you as a role model, copying you. And what kind of a father tells his children to harm and even kill each other?

Trust you? I had to get out, to save myself and those I love, as much as possible. My conscience and senses and my longing for freedom told me, "You'd be better off without him." And I am. I ignore you as I look at all the suffering in life, and try to alleviate it when I can, even with humor, which you never have. No one can tell me I must love someone I can't. Find someone else to stroke your ego.

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