My eyes were opened, my heart was opened, I was no longer Christian

sent in by Anonymous

I am not sure where to start this tale. Perhaps the best place to start should be around third grade. Although I went to a public elementary school, one night a week, I went to religious education at the local church. Many of my friends from school were there as well, so it wasn’t a very big deal. A few years of this, I was trying to stay home more and more. I would hide away, until it was too late to attend. The classes were taught my mean old church ladies (Dana Carvey’s impression was dead-on) and teenage boys from the local Catholic high school. We weren’t given bibles, instead we were given colored workbooks that paraphrased biblical stories (or so I thought) and showed pictures of Jesus and the apostles fishing, eating, having a good old time talking about their god. There were multiple choice questions at the end of each unit, such as:

Which best describes Jesus Christ?
A) Wonderful
B) Son of God
C) The path to true happiness
D) A mythological representation of one, if not many historical figures, deified solely on paper by extrapolating metaphors from the Torah, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Greek myth, and various other sources.

The correct answer is: A, B, and C. If you answered D, you are going to Hell.

After confirmation, we were given confirmation gifts from the church, bibles! Do you know what most people did with them? Nothing! Do you know what I did with mine? I read it. That’s right, one of the worst things you can do to assure yourself that you are following the message of Christ. Turns out Christ said absolutely nothing about abortion or same-sex marraige

It became very important to me at this point in my life to do good for others. I joined two community service organizations, one was through the church youth group and the other was through my high school. The church group met weekly, we talked a little, mostly playing basketball or watching movies. Once a month we helped with a charity church breakfast. Once a month we helped in a food drive. No one seemed all that interested when it came time to help. With the secular group, we were constantly doing food, clothing, and toy drives. We would volunteer at the Special Olympics, we would volunteer to spend a day picking up garbage. During one Thanksgiving food drive, one woman was so grateful, she said that no one had ever done anything like this for her, and that we were angels. I do not believe in angels, but I do believe that people are capable of a great amount of good if they choose to do so.

At this point my faith in MY church was waning. I was still a Christian technically. I never believed in creation, I understood that having children come into this world where there is no one able to care for them is not a moral thing to do, and the whole thing about god not liking homosexuals was a bunch of crap to begin with. However, what about the whole rising from the dead, taking away sins? That was still valid, right? So I found out a few things, which I will put into a nutshell for you.

1) Romans used crucifixion as means of torture, not an effective means of execution. According to Roman and other historical documents, it took at least three days for someone to die from crucifixion.

2) In the Philippines, there is a man who is literally crucified every Easter to show his devotion to his faith. There is surprisingly (or not surprisingly if you have taken an anatomy course), very little blood spilled.

3) The bible is plagiarized, but the sources were conveniently omitted. If you’ve browsed through this site, you can probably name some off of the top of your head.

4) People will invoke the name of a god to further their cause. The Hebrews, the Christians, the Muslims, the ancient Greeks, Romans, Celtics, Incas, Falliwells. Every culture believes god loves them best, that makes it ok to kill others until they believe what you want them to believe.

5) No one, absolutely no one on this Earth can possibly know what happens to you once your life functions cease.

So, that is an abridged version of my story. I was never involved in an oppressive church, I live in a relatively liberal area. I simply came to a logical conclusion about life by looking at the facts.

Everyone should.