Skip to main content

A "Dear God" letter

By Danimal (aka Aspieguy) ~

Dear God,

We have had a tumultuous relationship over the years. In spite of being physically abused as a boy and relentlessly bullied in school, I never blamed you for those. Even when I had difficulty making friends and maintaining friendships, I was to blame. I was the one born into sin. I was the one flawed. I could never blame someone who was holy and knew what was best for me.

We never went to church as a family. I didn't learn about you until I was 17 when I was introduced to an Assemblies of God church. There I learned that your worship was vibrant and emotional. I learned about the gifts of the spirit. I also learned about hypocrisy and narrow mindedness. But, we're only saved, not perfect, right?

You and I grew apart from each other when I joined the Army. I was leading a new, exciting life. I really didn't need you much. When I returned to the university, you and I got back together again. I didn't return to Pentecostalism. You lead me to various evangelical churches. Sure, the people tended to be bizarre at times and always narrow minded. But, we are all sinners. Who was I to judge your elect?

I eventually got married, found work, had four children, and eventually joined a United Methodist church. According to most people, you had richly blessed me. It was far from the real truth.
Ever since I can remember, I had difficulty getting along with people. I often didn't understand things people said to me. Because I could never look people directly in the eye, I was called "dishonest" and a "liar". I struggled with all the abstractions in sermons and in the bible. I was plagued with depression and despair. I was told that I was being attacked by Satan because I was "backslidden". Who was I to question Christians who were so much more spiritual than me?

I spent years in counseling. I was on powerful psychotropic medications. I sometimes spent days being nothing but a zombie. I spent time under the care of a psychiatrist. All this time I blamed my lack of faith. If only I was as spiritual as my friends at church were. If only I was a great christian father and husband, you would deliver me from the hell my mind was in. I prayed for deliverance. Even though I received nothing but silence, I still believed you were listening.

God, did I say "friends"? What I really had at church was "fellowship". Those that I thought were friends actually considered themselves "mentors". They believed that I was inferior to them spiritually, I needed their help, God, if you were to really love me.

I was always told that you never send more than we can bear. I believed that until a year ago. I finally had an answer to all my various mental afflictions: Aspergers syndrome, a form of high functioning autism. God, I was crushed. The more I learned, the more I realized why I think so concretely, don't understand abstractions, have limited capacity to interact with others, and have various sensory difficulties. Finally, I realized that you had indeed sent me more affliction than I could bear.

For months I questioned my faith. For the first time, I questioned you, God. As usual, there were no answers. I asked your spiritual people questions, but they began to shun me. I began attending church less and less. I quit singing those songs you love so much. I discovered that I had no friends in church. I discovered, metaphorically, the emperor had no clothes. Many Christians were actually delusional. Your scripture wasn't inspired, but was written by men. Finally, God, I realized you were simply an invention of men, as well.

So, God, it's time to say goodbye. It's time for me to move on so I can work through my autism the best I can. My prayers over the years were directed to a being who didn't exist in the first place. God, you will have company with my discarded myths of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny. I would like to say that I'm sorry, but I'm not.

I know finally that I'm not the plaything of invisible super-beings. I live in a world that is often not fair. A world that formed over billions of years is far more wonderful than anything religion can add to it.

So, God, sayonara,auf wiedersehen, au revoir.

Sincerely,

Danimal

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