I Tried, I Really Tried...
sent in by xrayman
Despite the fact that I have been skeptical of God existing most of my life, at 43 I have sincerely tried to find God many times. I was an out of control alcoholic in my mid 20's. Many of my best friends also fell into serious alcohol addiction. Gary one of my oldest and dearest friends from childhood finally stopped drinking and found God. Almost over night he became a preachy born again Christian. I really wasn't too fond of his ways, yet he did succeed in putting the cork in the jug. I continued to drink heavily. He always said that Jesus was the way to overcome my addiction. At age 27 I was married with a small child when I finally hit a complete rock bottom. My drinking took me as low as a man could go.
On a March night in 1991, I was alone in my house shaking uncontrollably in a pool of cold sweat, with the DT's. I had been drunk with a friend for a week straight. When the money ran out and the booze ran dry, I had the worst withdrawals any human ever had. My mind and body were in peril. I decided it was time for me to surrender to Jesus. It was my only hope. This was your typical addict finding God story in the making, and I was the main character. I called the 700 club prayer line, and got on the phone with a prayer counselor and asked Jesus to come into my life. I got down on my knees and prayed with all my heart. I wanted to be saved from the misery so bad. Well, as I was praying and pleading with God, I felt...................nothing. Absolutely nothing. No spirit, no uplifting experience. No sense that everything would be OK. Not even a little twinge of evidence that God was with me. I even remember the prayer counselor getting a little short with me, like as in "Hey buddy I've got other calls." Well for the next few days I continued going through the serious withdrawals. I didn't sleep for two nights. It was the worst experience my body had ever endured. The religious experience I had hoped for didn't come close to happening. I have never drank again since that experience, but it wasn't because I was saved by God, it was because I never wanted to feel that way again. Many will say that it was God, but I know better. It was me finally wanting to turn my miserable life around.
Years later I tried to find God again. My wife and I decided to join a local church and get the kids baptized. Once again no matter how hard I prayed, my rational brain would never let me believe in an invisible man in the sky although I tried to fake it really hard on many occasions. I listened to scripture and was always skeptical that it was the word of God. I even have spent hours and hours alone in deep meditation trying to find God on a very personal level, and of course as always, I have come up empty.
For whatever reason my mind has never allowed me to believe a God exists. I am having a little trouble totally letting go, but I really want to totally let go of the baggae of a God. I welcome pen pals to correspond. It's a lonely life being an atheist.
email: xrayman at chartermi dot net
Despite the fact that I have been skeptical of God existing most of my life, at 43 I have sincerely tried to find God many times. I was an out of control alcoholic in my mid 20's. Many of my best friends also fell into serious alcohol addiction. Gary one of my oldest and dearest friends from childhood finally stopped drinking and found God. Almost over night he became a preachy born again Christian. I really wasn't too fond of his ways, yet he did succeed in putting the cork in the jug. I continued to drink heavily. He always said that Jesus was the way to overcome my addiction. At age 27 I was married with a small child when I finally hit a complete rock bottom. My drinking took me as low as a man could go.
On a March night in 1991, I was alone in my house shaking uncontrollably in a pool of cold sweat, with the DT's. I had been drunk with a friend for a week straight. When the money ran out and the booze ran dry, I had the worst withdrawals any human ever had. My mind and body were in peril. I decided it was time for me to surrender to Jesus. It was my only hope. This was your typical addict finding God story in the making, and I was the main character. I called the 700 club prayer line, and got on the phone with a prayer counselor and asked Jesus to come into my life. I got down on my knees and prayed with all my heart. I wanted to be saved from the misery so bad. Well, as I was praying and pleading with God, I felt...................nothing. Absolutely nothing. No spirit, no uplifting experience. No sense that everything would be OK. Not even a little twinge of evidence that God was with me. I even remember the prayer counselor getting a little short with me, like as in "Hey buddy I've got other calls." Well for the next few days I continued going through the serious withdrawals. I didn't sleep for two nights. It was the worst experience my body had ever endured. The religious experience I had hoped for didn't come close to happening. I have never drank again since that experience, but it wasn't because I was saved by God, it was because I never wanted to feel that way again. Many will say that it was God, but I know better. It was me finally wanting to turn my miserable life around.
Years later I tried to find God again. My wife and I decided to join a local church and get the kids baptized. Once again no matter how hard I prayed, my rational brain would never let me believe in an invisible man in the sky although I tried to fake it really hard on many occasions. I listened to scripture and was always skeptical that it was the word of God. I even have spent hours and hours alone in deep meditation trying to find God on a very personal level, and of course as always, I have come up empty.
For whatever reason my mind has never allowed me to believe a God exists. I am having a little trouble totally letting go, but I really want to totally let go of the baggae of a God. I welcome pen pals to correspond. It's a lonely life being an atheist.
email: xrayman at chartermi dot net
Comments
Been down that road and it is a difficult path!
My family for the most part leaves me alone, after my mother cried!
My wife wanted me to allow our children to grow up with jesus and heaven/hell because that is the dominate culture in our society. I could not allow my children to become mindless, brainwashed christians. I tell them the truth behind religion which is its history. The history reveals all, but christians are too blind to see!
Whatever you decide, good luck.
Your personal account would have been a nice one to add to my article debunking the work of Christian apologist, Josh McDowell.
In "Evidence That Demands a Verdict," McDowell mentioned the testimony of a "redeemed drunkard" who testified that he was saved from alcoholic addiction by a "power" he identified as none other than "Jesus." (How many redeemed drunkards, I wonder, would it take to prove the historicity of the resurrection?)
Apparently McDowell is unaware that alcoholics who quit drinking are a dime a dozen. You can find them not just among evangelical Christians, but among Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Transcendental Meditation practitioners, herbal healers, Scientologists, Eckankar followers, at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and in secular groups like Drinkwise, Moderation Management, Rational Recovery Systems, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, Self Management And Recovery Training (SMART), Women for Sobriety/Men for Sobriety. Members of all such groups have experienced life-changing behaviors for the better. Any organization that demands responsibility and focuses on setting goals and eliminating grossly destructive behaviors has "success" stories to tell.
My mother's second husband was a totally reformed alcoholic and one of the friendliest kindest most cheerful people I ever had the pleasure to know. He had been an alcoholic for over a dozen years, and after joining AA became a dedicated member of that group for over a dozen more. He liked to sing songs ranging from Broadway tunes to hymns in church (when the occasion arose). But he did not believe in the superiority of any church's doctrines. He believed in a "Higher Power" (as they say in AA) and rarely discussed religion.
Sadly, I bet there are also alcoholics whom no groups are able to "redeem" or reform. I bet some of those alcoholics were devout Bible-believing Christians in their youth, or they got to "know Jesus" as their "personal savior" after they began drinking, but relapsed back into the bottle. Failures do not make for inspiring success stories, so you do not hear about such people very often, except in someone else's success story, who mentions how the sight of a "hopelessly messed up" friend or relative who died of some addiction, "inspired" them to quit.
By the way, there's a group of ex-minister/seminarians, ex-Christians with a big blog, titled, Debunking Christianity, that you might find interesting.
Has anyone cataloged the varities of stories at exChristian.net by subject matter and denomination? Former addicts who gave up both their addictions to chemical substance abuse and organized religion would be an interesting category.
Cheers!
Edward T. Babinski
and Krishna, who's mother was a virgin,was crucified between two
theives.All these existed before Christ! (Dionysis was the crucified christ Jesus was probably plagerized from).
The life of the late evangelist A.A. Allen is proof that one can preach Christ and drink himself to death at the same time. I believe his last months were living in a drunken state in a run down hotel room making audio evangelistic tapes for his radio broadcasts while in a drunken state:
A.A. Allen
Asa Alonzo Allen (1911-1970). Prominent, flamboyant and controversial Pentecostal "healing evangelist" of the 1940s-1960s. Allen made many outrageous, unsubstantiated claims of miracles.
From The Faith Healers by James Randi
On June 14, 1970, listeners in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines were hearing a recorded message from A. A. Allen on his radio program saying: "This is Brother Allen in person. Numbers of friends of mine
have been inquiring about reports they have heard concerning me that are not true. People as well as some preachers from pulpits are announcing that I am dead. Do I sound like a dead man? My friends, I am not even sick! Only a moment
ago I made a reservation to fly into our current campaign. I'll see you there and make the devil a liar." At that moment, at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, police were removing A. A. Allen's body from a room strewn with pills
and empty liquor bottles. The man who had once said that "the beer bottle and gin bucket" should have been on his family coat of arms was dead at 59 from what was said to be a heart attack but was in reality liver failure brought about by acute alcoholism. (p.88)
If a person can get to a place where alcohol hurts more than it helps, they can quit. Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists and any other none "Jesus" religions can and do put depressed people on a spiritual journey and often apart from any god in the sky.
The fact is, when one is burned out by a section of their life of drugs and alcohol and their body is shutting down, what else can one do but to either change or die.
Call it "god" of self determination... both seem to work and boil down to that if help has a social support context, it's religion; if not, it's self determination.
Best,
Harry (former seminarian, now atheist, whose testimony appears in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists)
P.S., just returned from the Blood Connection in my home town where I spent an hour giving red blood cells and having the plasma pumped back into my arm. I am told that my blood will save someone’s life. And, if it was someone injured by doing something stupid (such a driving while intoxicated and wrecked), I have (in effect) given my blood so they might have life...and, since they did not die form their “sinful” act of driving while intoxicated because of my blood, then my blood atoned for their “sin” via giving them life. This is just what the “Gospel Tracts” I fine at the bank ATM and other public places said Jesus did for us; he shed his blood for our sin. The theological term here is “Vicarious Atonement” where one sheds one’s blood for the life or “sins” on others (“others” in that they told me my blood or my blood products would be used to save the lives of many people). Before you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, remember I used to be a Baptist preacher plus six years in colleges and seminaries. Back in 1997 the supervisor where I work told our then secretary that he would not have a “Damn atheist as Man of the Year!” So he gave the “Man of the Year” award to a Christian on the staff (so much for the separation of Church and State). Now look! The Christian that my supervisor gave “Man of the Year” to was fired, my supervisor died, and old “atheist” Harry is giving blood to save the lives of others.
--Harry McCall
Sure, that's a possibility; one of many.
Thurokmeir: "...Not liking the answer a Christian offers is no reason to deny it and it's validity."
That depends on what you mean by "not liking" the answer. If you mean because it makes one uncomfortable, or that it isn't the answer one was looking for, then I would agree with you. But then, I don't see anyone here rejecting Christianity for those reasons, so your argument would be a straw man. If, on the other hand, by "not liking" the answer you mean finding that the answer is arrived at through faulty reasoning and/or faulty premises, then I disagree with you. Those are *precisely* the reasons that one *should* deny the validity of an argument. And, guess what... That's why we reject such arguments.
Thurokmeir: "...But as far as logic will take you, you will not get something from nothing (Big Bang Theory)."
Is it your claim that "you can't get something from nothing" is logically provable? If so, please provide a sketch of your proof. If what you really meant was that it's an empirical fact,then I'd like to know what you base that on. Your personal experience? In either case, how confident are you that your assertion is correct?
Thurokmeir: "For those who care, I DO hate that which atheism entails. Sin."
But "sin" is only meaningful with respect to your purported deity, if by that word you mean a failure to act in accord to her stated wishes and/or law. If your deity does not exist, then "sin" is a fictitious construct. So, you left at least one crucial ingredient out of your entailment; that your god exists.
"Jesus died for us even the sinners."
There are some problems with this statement. First, according to christian theology, Christ did not die for those who do not "receive" him. If he had died for everybody, then we would all be "washed clean" of "sin." The problem here is that the world is not "free of sin," according to christian theology. No "sin" has been "cleansed." Unless you believe that it is "in the eyes of God," only, that we are "sin-free." If so, we have another problem: We should all go to heaven, not just christians, being "blameless" in the eyes of God. There goes fire and damnation (couldn't believe in it anyway!)
Second, when you say, "even the sinners," are you referring to non-christians, or to everybody since we are all "sinners," again, according to christian theology. If the latter, then why use the word "even" in the statement?
If this is over your head, I'm sorry about that. We use our brains here.
That's like... well... a father and mother getting together to have a child, knowing for a fact, that their child will be born with painful affliction, and live with that suffering for all eternity.
Well, at least that makes sense, if a christian believes their god is omniscient, and omnipotent.
Skeptic: "Why would God give us theology that honest, intelligent people are unable to accept?"
Believer: "He wouldn't"
Skeptic: "Then why do so many honest, intelligent people not accept it?"
Believer: "Well, obviously, they're not honest and intelligent."
Skeptic: "And how did you reach that conclusion?"
Believer: "Because they don't accept the word of god!"
Skeptic: [Smiles at the blatant circularity of the reasoning, waiting for the believer to catch his mistake.>]
Believer: [Smiles at the cleverness of his own argument, oblivious to its circularity.]
Skeptic: [Thinks "What an idiot, he doesn't get it."]
Believer: [Thinks "What an idiot, he doesn't get it."]
But your issue is that His Name is not Jesus, you're calling on a name He is not known by. His Name is Yahushua.