A Pagan Now
Received Monday, January 21, 2002
Hi David - your website's very moving; I shall read some of the ex-Christian books. I too got caught up in the charismatic thing; I was training to be a Bible translator when my father died very suddenly of cancer. I was blamed by my church for not having enough faith to allow God to heal him. I left the church and left Christianity about a year later. At about the same time time a close friend was raped by a member of her church; he reached the elders before she did, told them they'd been having an affair but he now repented, and she was kicked out of the church for fornication. They screwed so thoroughly with her head that she wasn't able to go to the police because they made her think it was her fault.
I spent a few months exploring what I really believed and ended up a Pagan and more specifically a witch, but that's another story. I've healed sufficiently in the intervening years to now become involved in interfaith discussions and e-lists; most Christians deny that I could ever have been a Christian but frankly that's their problem. One of the most helpful books I read was "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan; it took me a few months to accept that I wasn't going to lose my job, get repossessed and end up with cancer because I had deliberately removed myself from God's protection. It all seems so bizarre now but it's so totally absorbing when you're in it that you literally cannot "see" straight.
Regards,
Julie
Hi David - your website's very moving; I shall read some of the ex-Christian books. I too got caught up in the charismatic thing; I was training to be a Bible translator when my father died very suddenly of cancer. I was blamed by my church for not having enough faith to allow God to heal him. I left the church and left Christianity about a year later. At about the same time time a close friend was raped by a member of her church; he reached the elders before she did, told them they'd been having an affair but he now repented, and she was kicked out of the church for fornication. They screwed so thoroughly with her head that she wasn't able to go to the police because they made her think it was her fault.
I spent a few months exploring what I really believed and ended up a Pagan and more specifically a witch, but that's another story. I've healed sufficiently in the intervening years to now become involved in interfaith discussions and e-lists; most Christians deny that I could ever have been a Christian but frankly that's their problem. One of the most helpful books I read was "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan; it took me a few months to accept that I wasn't going to lose my job, get repossessed and end up with cancer because I had deliberately removed myself from God's protection. It all seems so bizarre now but it's so totally absorbing when you're in it that you literally cannot "see" straight.
Regards,
Julie
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