Skip to main content

They almost pulled me in. Or, my life as a temporary Christian

By triedtobeone ~

I grew up in a non-Christian household, thank goodness. However, in my early school years (K-6), I was given the opportunity to go to private school. It happened to be Episcopal. Since no one on my mother's side of the family had a religious bone in their body, I can only assume I went there because it was a good school and no one thought it would do me any harm.

Every morning before class started the entire school would head to church for 45 minutes, with a Mass on Thursdays which included confession and communion, confirmations, etc. Then, off to classes and home at the end of the day. The church was beautiful -- stained glass windows and all of the bells and whistles one would expect to see. I don't ever remember us reading bible passages, although I am sure we must have. There were bibles in the pews.

Although my school mates would tease me, I could never bring myself to go to confession. Even at that early age I could not understand how if god knew all and saw all, why would I have to confess my sins? Really, how many sins can a 11-year-old have? I did not understand what sin was anyway, and I sure was not going to tell the Pastor who was also a teacher in the school that I lied or that I had a crush on a boy. God knew, why did he have to know too? After sixth grade I moved to public school, because it was less expensive. The only thing different was that I had received a better education so I was ahead of the rest of the 7-8th graders academically.

Occasionally I would be visiting relatives and would be dragged off to some church or another on Sundays -- Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal -- by people that otherwise never went to church or read bibles. Even before the age of 17 I always felt it was hypocritical to go to church on Easter or Christmas when all the rest of the year god was ignored.

I lived my life just the way I wanted. God was not in the picture; I never referred to god, never prayed, referred to nature's will rather than gods will, never really associated or spoke with folks that were bible-thumpers... There was no need to do so.

Fast forward to age 43.

I met a man who I fell in love with, and although he was not religious, he believed in god, read his bible daily, and searched for the truth. His bible was full of notes written in the margins and underlined in red. I still have it as it is the only piece of him I still have left. I wanted to know what he knew. He explained god to me so differently than anything I had ever heard and explained bible passages to me in a very clear way. I finally convinced him to take me to his church.

I was welcomed immediately, it took me a few months, but I finally found out that this was a Pentecostal based church. I loved hearing the messages the they taught, loved the excitement of the holy spirit touching everyone, and the fellowshipping with others. This was a small intimate church with no more than 20 people, it was 75 miles away, and I went twice a week for bible study and church for three years. I really got into studying the bible and letting the bible interpret it's own meaning. I was starting to believe in god. As time went on, I found out that we had sister churches in the area but due to disagreements in various doctrines, there was much separation between them all. This left me with an uneasy feeling. After all, if we are a church based on the biblical principals, then how could that happen? None the less I continued to go because I wanted to understand god and the great plan for mankind.

What I was taught the most was to "study to show yourself approved." The more I studied, the less I liked about everything and the more contradictions I could find. While our Pastor and another dear friend in the church were more than willing to answer every question I had, they were only able to answer them using bible verses and their own knowledge. I was always unsure and did not have the faith that those around me had answers (and I suspect that they knew that and never let on), but I understood what I read very well (or at least to their expectations). I tried hard to convert others to this message -- my family and friends -- only to be cut off from them. I was on my way to becoming a good Christian.

One day while studying/reading, I was discussing with my boyfriend my biblical education which my mentor in church was giving me. He was furious with me because I did not understand it the way he did, and he beat the crap out of me. I knew then that I would never be a good Christian (or a bad one, for that matter). Although the church members told it just was god answering my prayers, I know it was nature taking her course.

A few weeks later I told my mentor in church that because of all the "studying to show myself approved" I found that I no longer believed the bible was the true word of god. I have not heard from her or any members of the church since.

Damm, they almost got me hooked.

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