By Daffodil ~ I was raised in the home of a liberal denominational minister and stay-at-home mom . We went to church once or twice a week, but never really talked about faith or read the bible at home. I think my parents expected the church to cover my spiritual learning. Because it was such a liberal church, the only thing I ever got out of it was that there was a god and that he wanted us to be good to each other. Pretty harmless, really, but also pretty useless to my inquisitive mind. My first inkling of a problem was my discovery in high school that our denomination was an offshoot of an offshoot of an offshoot of Catholicism . I knew that unity was a frequent topic of the NT, so it seemed wrong that there were so many denominations and that they split over such unimportant issues like what kind of music to include in worship. At that time I was also acutely aware of the hypocrisy I saw in other Christians . One Sunday morning during a typically mind-numbingly boring sermon,...

NonServiam ~ I 'm a recently de-converted Catholic Christian , and am so glad to have found this site. I was thinking over recently how I was able to believe for so long, and happened to gain a new perspective while reading one of my favorite story collections, Sherlock Holmes . In one of the stories (I'm paraphrasing here), Holmes and Watson are on their way to a crime scene, and Watson has already conjectured a theory as to the motive for the crime, and who likely committed it. Sherlock , however, admonishes his friend, saying: "One should never form a theory before one has all the evidence at one's disposal. Otherwise, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts." I actually put down the book and marveled at how this perfectly illustrated how I remained a Christian for so long. Since I was born, I was taught in Catholic schools that the truth of Christianity and the Bible was fact, and not open to dispute. So even wh...

TraviLX ~ I 've been gone for some time after being a regular visitor on this site, the support and kind words I had from people who shared my own thoughts had really helped ease the burden of dealing with getting away from something that had controlled my life for so long. But, since I was always a big believer in second chances, I relapsed into trying to be a Christian anew, and had a good reason to do so, the woman that I fell in love with. Through difficult times she was having, one thing that never failed with her was that devotion and faith in God. It didn't matter how hard the trial was, or how impossible it seemed - she was always there to say: "I'm being tested and I will find my way through this." I began to believe her, and through my own help and her own trying, things began to look up somewhat for her and I both. It got to the point that I, one night, decided to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. From there, I spoke aloud to God - making a dea...

By Carl S ~ T he self is hell. Aldous Huxley made that observation over fifty years ago. Often, I've had reasons to ponder what he meant by it. Here are some possibilities as to what he might have meant. What worse punishment is more ongoing than that of solitary confinement in prison? The individual is all alone with the Self . This is a type of hell. Some of those incarcerated have been driven mad or committed suicide. This is an extreme example. Now... Consider the hermit, and self-isolated holy men. Lost in their selves, they sometimes return to society with personal bizarre visions, revelations and new religions based on them. Have they "faced" their innermost demons and misinterpreted their own feelings thus coming to the conclusion that everyone has the same demons needing to be destroyed? Have they only deluded themselves and those who are more than willing to ascribe their "revelations" to supernatural experiences? Didn't they convince the...

By Ronna Russell ~ W hile I was busy making bad choices, so was Preacher Dad. While Mom and sister were out of town, PD’s friend showed up. They retired together to my parent’s bedroom. PD saw the look of shock on my face and said, “Oh, it’s just like when you have a friend over.” #1. What friend? #2. I’m not an idiot. Eventually, PD was caught in a gay bathhouse and secretly fired from the church. A story was concocted for the congregation and he moved to L.A. The concocted story was told to us all, including my mother. NO ONE told my mother why her husband no longer had a job even though she was church secretary. PD found work in L.A. and his partner joined him there. (No one was calling him “partner,” but that was the truth.) He would come home for an occasional weekend and pretend to be husband/father. Mom was left alone, trying to make ends meet. No one took her aside and told her the truth. Except me. I can’t remember how the conversation came about, bu...

undercover agnostic ~ W hen I was 16 the real me died. I was dunked under water and symbolically buried in a sacrament called baptism. Why? Because I was born sinful , broken, and evil, like every other homo sapien who had gone before me. The real me, so I was told, hated God, and could never please him because my heart was stony and cold. Every part of my natural flesh, from my first cry out of my mother’s womb, was tainted with transgressions, inherited from humanity’s first parents. I wasn’t a sinner because I had sinned. I sinned because I was inherently a sinner. At the age of five, the indoctrination began. It was drilled into me that I needed a new nature. I needed to be born again. The new me was conceived once I accepted Jesus into my heart at Bible camp. The proof of my new birth happened a few years later, when I obeyed the scriptures and decided to get immersed. While my dirty rotten carcass was left in her watery grave, just as the bloody, broken Jesus was dead in ...

By Matt Barsotti ~ I t is that time of year again, and so I am reposting the popular “Taking Easter Seriously” infographic. This 2015 version includes slight enhancements and corrections to the prior version. Many Christians read the Easter stories year upon year, as I did for several decades, yet we never compare them in detail. As a consequence, we often do not realize that they are not telling the same story. There are indeed contradictions in the texts, but it is very important to move beyond “mere contradiction” — the issues with our gospels are far more extensive than that. Comparison against the historical record and assessing the gospels for trends of legend development are probably far more crucial. As with many non-believers, I left Christianity specifically because of the Bible, and because I considered and examined its content very seriously indeed. Perhaps it is time for more Christians to take the Bible and our Easter stories seriously. I am indebted to scholar...

By Klym ~ I just now read that the governor of Indiana signed a bill to give religious people the right to turn away anyone from their business because of their religious beliefs . So, does this mean that if a woman is trying to buy tampons or minipads the business owner will have the right to ask her if she is menstruating? If she answers yes, and the owner is a Bible believer, he can then tell her to get out of his store? Of course, I guess he could encourage her to buy some soap instead, because she is obviously unclean. (I'm using the pronoun "he" to indicate the business owner, but that person could also be a "she".) What a can of worms this opens for everyone. When and where will the insanity stop? Now, more than at any time in U.S. history, it is imperative that "believers" in human rights take a stand. What if someone who does not have the same religious beliefs as you is in the life saving business? Will this give them the right to sa...

By Worried Parent ~ M y husband and I have a daughter in middle school who consistently deals with questions about Christianity. Many students have directly asked her if she is Christian and why not. Inevitably the conversation then moves on to how she is condemned, she will not be saved by God and will be sent to Hell. She even had one of them tell her not to tell her parents that they spoke about Christianity even though he wanted her to join his church. We should not be subjugating children to this form of psychological mistreatment. I want this to stop, now. My issue is that she is being excluded and treated as some kind of pariah just because we have not raised her as a Christian. This really crosses the line of common decency. How have we become so entrenched in such harmful forms of hatred towards those who are in the least bit different from the norm of our American society. I know that was a rhetorical question but I am extremely frustrated, angered and h...

By undercover agnostic ~ O ur honeymoon was awful, even with my rose colored glasses. All of my sexual thoughts, desires, and fantasies that had been bottled up so tightly since puberty, continued to retain their shape of captivity even after the lock box had been removed and my inhibitions had been set free. I was nervous and self-conscious about my body, and about as rigid as an ironing board , partly because I had yet to hear that I was beautiful or sexy by any man, let alone my new husband. And like a budding flower, I couldn’t just open up and blossom without first being swaddled in warm sunlight and doused with gentle rain. But nurturing wasn’t one of Troy’s selling points and his attempt at “watering” my garden often felt like a high compression gardening hose in the face. Just to be clear, this is not a graphic blow job reference, but merely a metaphor to describe my feelings. We never even attempted oral sex until our 29th year of marriage! Anyway, point being, g...

By Valerie Tarico ~ L yrics for the rap song, B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth), include the following line: The white image, of Christ, is really Cesare Borgia . The idea that our modern image of Jesus could be based on a ruthless power-hungry illegitimate son of a pope is startling and farfetched. But it is no more bizarre or fanciful than many other ideas about who Jesus was or what he looked like. And it does have an interesting tale behind it. To understand the Borgia story requires a bit of context. It’s All Guesswork In contrast to what many people believe, we have no authentic physical artifacts confirming the gospel stories, nor descriptions of Jesus from any of his contemporaries. Even the gospels themselves never claim to be eyewitness accounts. Scholars now believe that the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry that have been handed down to us—both within the Bible and outside--were written decades (or more) after Jesus would have lived, by unk...