By Debbie ~ H ow many times have I started this testimonial? Countless. I'm not sure why, but, yeah, I do know. I tend to have a wordy mouth – on paper. I was so impressed with my whole experience with God, and the Christian faith, and what it meant to me that I wrote a book about it, was offered a contract with Tate Publishing , and then I learned the Truth. After that I put everything on hold. I couldn't earn money from a book about a faith I was no longer passionate about, right? But first, I am amazed how entangled I was in Christianity, the beliefs, the dogma, the rules, etc. I did not grow up in the faith. I was a teenager and was sent to a Baptist School in Savannah, Georgia. There, I befriended a minister's daughter and the rest is history. What I find amazing is how I analyzed my whole life, the whole world even, using the Bible as a guidebook. The most hurtful thing about Christianity is how it makes you admit and believe that you are the scum of the ea

By Herb ~ I haven't written to this site in some time, but I decided to write now because of a problem that just cropped up. My father was a Seventh Day Adventist and my mother was from a Pentecostal type church known as The Church of First Born . Both churches taught a literal interpretation of the Bible. We were to follow whatever the Bible said no matter how ridiculous or senseless it was. To them, the Bible was just a bunch of rules to follow. Because of this approach to following the Bible and obsessive compulsive disorder , I developed a bad case of scrupulosity . I was always worried about what was right and what was wrong and whether or not I had done the right thing to be saved. When I was 26, there was a person at work who was an agnostic. Knowing him and conversations with him about religion and the list of books he recommended for me to read gave me the courage to give up religion. But I still have OCD, so now my religious obsessions have taken a differ

By Mary B ~ I was baptized Catholic; being named after the Mother of God meant life was always going to be a series of falling shorts. Raised as an Evangelical with a side order of Fundamental Dispensationalism , I spent a good portion of my childhood worrying about being left behind if the Rapture happened or that my head would be chopped off by the Antichrist. We didn't attend church because they contained false prophets; we held small services as a family. Apart from a brief sojourn into atheism at the age of 16 – inspired by someone tall and handsome – I kept the faith until I was 30. Emmeno definition: *to remain in, continue; *to persevere in anything, a state of mind etc.; *to hold fast, to be true to, abide by, keep Those years were spent in agony. I never felt good enough or faithful enough or peaceful enough or any of those things I was told or read that Christians were or should be. I never quite reached the mark of a good Christian mother or wife. It was always