The price is worth it
sent in by Cad
Jesus didn't die for my sins; I didn't give him permission.
I attended three church services a week for over 20 years, and have read the Bible at least ten times, with about a quarter of it memorized. I told myself I had experienced a relationship with Jesus, but really it was a relationship with my ego.
It all became suspect when I realized the God I worshipped was worse than Hitler. I couldn't imagine an all-powerful loving God allowing a Hell for billions of people. How many Christians can ponder torturing a total stranger for days, much less eternity?
Then I suspected God couldn't give a rat's ass as to whether he was worshipped or not. I looked around and realized that worship was really a sexual outlet for my repressed friends. If you look at people while they worship, their faces are terribly erotic, mixed with a yearning quality that borders on orgasmic.
Finally, I realized that anthropomorphising God required infinite hubris. The Christian apologist Paul Tillich once said that argue that God exists is to deny Him. Real spiritual belief, as I understand it, is counterintuitively natural--an oxymoron on par with quantum physics. Do I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again? You bet--as a metaphor only. His story is a great symbol of how the ego must be sacrificed in order for true awareness to emerge.
Now, I no longer fear Hell. I feel the glory of existence flowing through my heart, embracing everyone I see with love. Just like Huck Finn, Billy Budd, Jesus Christ, and hundreds of other literary characters, in order to get to heaven, I had to be willing to go to hell. The price is worth it.
Irving
TX
USA
Joined: 6
Left: 30
Was: Evangelical, Charismatic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Non-Denominational
Now: Buddhist
Convterted because: Fear
De-converted because: No fear
email: caddycomp at gmail dot com
Jesus didn't die for my sins; I didn't give him permission.
I attended three church services a week for over 20 years, and have read the Bible at least ten times, with about a quarter of it memorized. I told myself I had experienced a relationship with Jesus, but really it was a relationship with my ego.
It all became suspect when I realized the God I worshipped was worse than Hitler. I couldn't imagine an all-powerful loving God allowing a Hell for billions of people. How many Christians can ponder torturing a total stranger for days, much less eternity?
Then I suspected God couldn't give a rat's ass as to whether he was worshipped or not. I looked around and realized that worship was really a sexual outlet for my repressed friends. If you look at people while they worship, their faces are terribly erotic, mixed with a yearning quality that borders on orgasmic.
Finally, I realized that anthropomorphising God required infinite hubris. The Christian apologist Paul Tillich once said that argue that God exists is to deny Him. Real spiritual belief, as I understand it, is counterintuitively natural--an oxymoron on par with quantum physics. Do I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again? You bet--as a metaphor only. His story is a great symbol of how the ego must be sacrificed in order for true awareness to emerge.
Now, I no longer fear Hell. I feel the glory of existence flowing through my heart, embracing everyone I see with love. Just like Huck Finn, Billy Budd, Jesus Christ, and hundreds of other literary characters, in order to get to heaven, I had to be willing to go to hell. The price is worth it.
Irving
TX
USA
Joined: 6
Left: 30
Was: Evangelical, Charismatic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Non-Denominational
Now: Buddhist
Convterted because: Fear
De-converted because: No fear
email: caddycomp at gmail dot com
Comments
How do we dispell the myths, and lies, before humans destroy each other?
Apparently a belief in an imaginary god and savior is more valuable than human life itself!
Look at Israel and Lebanon, can a real believer in any god stand there and watch as they shoot missles toward each other and kill innocent children and civilians?
Shit No!!!
Look at how many people with a belief in a Bible god, have been killed!
Look at how many people with a belief in Allah, have been killed!
Look at how many people with a belief in savior on a stick, have been killed!
Not one belief in any god is worth one human life anywhere on this planet!!!
Humans are the sickest species on this planet, a false belief in a make believe god, makes them mentally sick.
How can we stop the madness and human sickness????
How do we stop a mental disease called religion, when more than half of all people do not even know they are menatlly sick????
What can we do and soon before all humans destroy each other because their god is more real than anyone elses????
Won't the real God please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?
You reminded me of a discussion I had a long time ago. I asked a christian friend if it was possible that the bible verse abot "He who believeth in me shall not die" had more to do with accepting jesus's teachings than with having faith in his divinity. That the real point of christianity was to try to be a better person, not just worship a better god.
He didn't get it, but I think you do.
Tigg
No. He will not stand up. I don't believe the judeo-christian god exists, but the way I understand it if hypothetically he does exist, he most certainly takes some degree of pleasure in all the sorrows and tragedy of the world he created. This is the only conclusion that I can draw when comparing his character as portrayed in the bible with reality, historically speaking.
Therefore, any all powerful, all loving and all knowing "god" who needs to see thousands of severed heads lined up and male foreskins thrown at him in order to appease him and calm his furious anger truly reveals him as the malevolent human creation that he is.
Remember February of 1993 when a young 3 yr. old was taken from a
Shopping mall in Liverpool, NY by two 10-year-old boys? Jamie Bulger
walked away from his mother for only a second and Jon Venables took his hand and led him out of the mall with his friend Robert Thompson. They took Jamie on
a walk for over 2 and a half miles, along the way stopping every now and again to torture the poor little boy who was crying constantly for his mommy. Finally they stopped at a railway track where they brutally kicked
him, threw stones at him, rubbed paint in his eyes and pushed
batteries up his anus. It was actually worse than this...
What these two boys did was so horrendous that Jamie's mother was
FORBIDDEN to identify his body. They then left his beaten small body on the tracks so a train could run him over to hide the mess they had created. These two
boys, even being boys, understood what they did was wrong, hence trying to make it look like an accident.
This week Lady Justice Butler-Sloss has awarded the two boys anonymity for the rest of their lives when they leave
custody with new identities. We cannot let this happen. They will also leave early this year only serving just over half of their sentence. One paper even stated that Robert may go on to a University. They are getting
away with their crime.
They disgustingly and violently took Jamie's life away - in return they get a new life.
I loved your Tillich quote--that is a new one for me. An otherwise intelligent person has to spend years in college and seminary before he can blither that way. As the years pass, I find that my reaction to xianity is neither anger nor mockery, but rather a baffled silence.
nvrqoinqbk, I have had a thousand arguments about "god is all good; god is all powerful; evil exists" and, as a rule, the xian can only muster some excuse about free will. He thus misses the point. When we say "the problem of evil" we are talking about the suffering of the innocent. A just god would not allow the innocent to suffer. Murderers and rapists, perhaps, but not the innocent.There is no way around this. The xian religion asserts--as the bible teaches--that god punishes the wicked. He also punishes women, children, babies, and livestock, e.g. 1st samuel 22, and that is but one reference. To rephrase my tillich remark, it takes years of xian training and indoctrination to grant such horrors our assent. I withdrew my assent years ago.
I know you were being fascetious. I just wanted to get a jab in there. You make good points.
In my mid-twenties I sang in a worship band. The swaying of the hips, the intensity of the emotion were a way to express my sexuality in the guise of looking like a fervent Christian. I remember the worship leader told me to watch the height of my shirt because there were complaints from the congregation that when I raised my arms in worship, my belly button became exposed. I think I secretly got off on that.
Even out of the band and in the congregation, I felt that same catharsis, and could see it in others who would jump, jiggle and flail their arms and hair like Janis Joplin. It's an outlet - who are they kidding.
I know for sure that romantic music gives me the same high as christian music did.
So, Dan. You make an interesting point.
I know that this site is intended as a kind of support group for former Christians, but a lot of present Christians must come here and read the comments. Seeing Jesus degraded in a sentence won't make many de-converts. In fact, some of them might be moved by the essays, and then become defensive again when they read that Jesus is a "Savior on a stick."
Yet more real-world evidence that there is no indwelling holy spirit.
So "Savior on a Stick, Savior on a Stick, Savior on a Stick." And, BTW, his mother wore army boots.
Cad, thanks for your post and welcome to the world of reality.
You never addressed any of Donalds questions, yet your main concern was who he may have offended!
That's your agenda isn't it John? You want everyone to circle around you and hold hands and worship an imaginary god and let innocent people continue to be killed in the name of Jesus or Allah, so long as we do not offend anyone, thats the problem with you bleeding heart jesus freaks!!!
Why should I respect anyones beliefs? Anyone that thinks their beleiefs are so absolute that they are willing to kill others to prove that their God exists.
Screw beliefs forever!!!! Grow up John!!!!
We already have the answers were just not accepting them.
Glad you could join us,it's freedom money or religion can'y buy.
It is wonderful to hear someone speak of the messages in the bible they way they are meant to be understood. I am happy for you!
>in savior on a stick, have been
>killed!
For years now I've referred to him as "the dead guy on a stick" :)
Debating Christians is good for ex-Christians. Seeing the weakness of their arguments is encouraging. IMHO, there's no reason to be repulsive.
I do get angry when fundies question my ethics. I like having them show up here and stick their foot in their mouth, so I try to be nice and keep them coming back.
There's 22-23 chromosomes pairs in the human body, in each of them, there's 3,000,000,000 DNA nucleotide pairs. The functions for each nucleotide is......
What I'm trying to say is that God is beyond our comprehension. While we're thinking "why this?" and "why that?" God already had a purpose. If for example you broke a leg from falling off a ladder, you will likely be heading to the hospital. Once there, the surgeon will have to make an assessment and plan on how he'll operate your leg. In order to fix your leg, he will need to cut open the area to make the proper process. If he doesn't, the leg will start bleeding internally, infections will begin, the leg will start swelling, and your life may be at stake. When the operation is finished, you won't immediately be back on your feet, but you might have to use crutches, assistance from your family members, and/or physical therapy. And with the Doctor's orders, you might not get your cast off for a month or two.
To the point...God has plans for all of us just like the surgeon. The surgeon had a plan, to reach the broken bone he had to first hurt you by cutting in you. But his intention was to make you better...and that's why he sowed your leg back up when he finished.
Physical therapy and your friends are the friends in life that keep you going, that will support you in your hard times. And when the time comes to remove your cast, that will be the time when you can walk on your own. You see, God had a plan before we even knew how He would operate our pain and struggles.
Therefore, you will not see a God that will present Himself to stop such wars (just so that you can believe) or prevent deaths of many martyred Christians, but instead you will receive the reward of pain-free future when you have faith in Him.
Prayers going out to you all.
In every argument I have every heard for the existence of god, the apologist drives off a cliff somewhere, making an absurd leap that would be laughable even to the most ardent apologist if deployed in any other context. Thank you, ferry, for the incomparable precipice you just went careening down.
Inside my computer is a small chip that has several hundred million components, each harnessing the strange properties of quantum mechanics to route electrons in precisely-controlled packets millions of times per second and... What I'm trying to say is that aliens from the galaxy zoogon have been making crop circles in Nebraska since the early 1970's. (My reasoning is probably more defensible than yours.)
That may be what you are trying to say, but what you are actually saying is "Things in nature are so complicated that I can't understand them. And, since I don't like not understanding things, I'll imagine a god exists that does understand these things, that his name is Jesus, and that he will give me eternal life in a wonderful place called heaven. That way way I'll feel all warm and cuddly inside."
Ferry, while you pray, I'll continue to hope you learn how to live life without leaning on an imaginary world.
Problem. God, as generally understood, is omnipotent. Therefore, to help someone, god wouldn't be obliged to hurt them at all.
To draw a better analogy, imagine a surgeon who has the technology to instantly and painlessly repair a broken limb, yet, arbitrarily decides to forgo this wonderful new procedure in favor of doing things the painful way.
Now, that sounds more like your god, my boy.
Yet you, of all people, "comprehend" that. Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.
"To the point...God has plans for all of us just like the surgeon. The surgeon had a plan, to reach the broken bone he had to first hurt you by cutting in you."
Any good surgeon would use an analgesic or anesthetic. Your god sounds like an incompetent hack or an outright sadist.
"Therefore, you will not see a God that will present Himself to stop such wars (just so that you can believe)..."
Belief is not the issue, Ferry. Human suffering, specifically preventable human suffering, is the issue. Your god appears to fit into one of the following categories:
- Impotent, unable to prevent or stop wars.
- Indifferent, treating humans like lab rats and watching us bash one another silly, but not intervening to maintain the façade of "free will".
- Actually in favour of wars. (The Bible itself seems to support this viewpoint.)
- Nonexistent.
"...but instead you will receive the reward of pain-free future..."
Yes, that's my understanding of death too. Not so sure what faith has to do with it, as that too dies with our bodies and brains.
Seeing that God knows past, present and future, he already knew about the fate of those poor kids when he set about making that pair of monsters, didn't he?.
And if we worship that God, we'll have a future of pain-free bliss. Yes, that makes perfect sense- especially to the grieving parents of those dead children.
"To the point...God has plans for all of us just like the surgeon"
---
Ferry,
I'm sure you're correct here, and god's plan for ME is to show as many folks I can, that he/she/it does NOT really exist, except in some human minds.
How am I doing so far with your god's great plan for me?
ATF (who thinks any 'plan' by god would take away that free will stuff most xtians say we have)