Pi: 3.14159265...

Sent in by Tim B

My childhood was a fairly typical one as far as growing up goes. My parents were hard working middle class folks who weren’t particularly religious. For a time, we did attend an Anglican church where I was able to dress up as a camel for the Christmas pageant or go to the annual church picnic for lots of candy and games. My parents told me that when I was confirmed into the church, I was old enough to decide for myself if I wanted to keep going or not. I looked forward to my Confirmation with glee, knowing I could finally sleep in on Sunday mornings and never go to stupid, boring church again. And that’s what I did.

Then, a few years later, I went to University to study theater arts (I wanted to be a movie star at the time lol). When I got there I started to have a lot of fun doing drugs, dating girls and partying as hard as I could. One of my friends there was a Christian, and he enjoyed partying as much as I did. We became very good friends and ended up as roommates. We quickly earned the reputation of being the crazy dudes who liked to have a lot of fun – and we did.

But of course, his Christianity came up here and there and I began to read the bible a bit, and we would get stoned and have long conversations on god and the meaning of life. To make a long story short, one day I woke up and had a god experience. I felt that god was telling me to stop what I was doing and start to live a godly life. So I went on a truth crusade and basically abandoned all my friends (except my Christian friend) and started over from scratch. I started going to a Pentecostal church in my neighborhood (because they served free food to starving students) and I got a job at a Christian organization. I also got engaged to my friend’s ex-girlfriend (another long story) and almost overnight I was living a very fulfilling charismatic Christian life.

Of course I went nuts buying bibles for my family and telling them they were going to hell if they didn’t repent like me. I got very involved in the “Drama Ministry” at church and basically was engulfed in the Christian life with absolutely no non-Christian friends at all. I got married and my wife and I were happy little Christians living to please God in all that we did.

This went on for ten years. We have moved twice since attending that church (Pentecostal) and have been active members in two other churches, one being a Christian Missionary Alliance and the most recent being Christian Reformed. We both taught the Alpha bible study program and we both lead small groups. We attended retreats, we were baptized publicly (full immersion and in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Smoke), and we both received the gift of tongues. We were avid prayer group attendees, we helped out around the church with odd jobs, and we loved our friends there. I was very much into studying the word of god and I particularly loved Christian history and the early church fathers.

I listened to Hank Haanegraf, Charles Stanley, Ravi Zacharias and a slew of others. I was very much against the prosperity teachings of Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyers, Creflo Dollar and the doofus – Benny Hinn (although I did have friends who loved these guys). I was, for all intents and purposes, a Christian Apologist who was eager to tell the world how to get to heaven. My big frustration in life was that I had never “saved” anyone.

Then one day, last October (2007), I was on a forum that discussed god vs. everything else. Being the smart godly dude that I was, I enjoyed ranting about the sinful nature of man and the righteousness of the church. I read a post that talked about the bible and the value of Pi. I was intrigued and so I immediately looked up the passage. It was there in 1 Kings 7:23 that my life changed forever.

“23Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. “ (NASB).

When I read it, I felt like there was a glass bubble that surrounded my brain and in an instant, the bubble was shattered into a million pieces. I was literally dumbfounded. I had found an error in the holy, perfect, inerrant word of god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In that instant, every argument I had ever had for the reality, perfection and truthfulness of god’s word was destroyed. God made a mistake. Not just a minor spelling mistake or textual mistranslation. This was MAJOR! God’s word said that Pi 3!!??!!.

For anyone who is interested, here is a link that explains Pi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

The value of Pi is approximately 3.1415926535897932384626433832795…on to infinity. It is an irrational number and mathematicians are still to this day calculating its size – so far it’s decimal translation has never repeated itself.

Once the bubble had burst, my eyes were finally opened. “Something like scales fell from my eyes!” 

I began to study all about the errors in the bible (which there are MANYMANYMANY!!!). I could not believe how stupid and foolish I was to have believed all this crap, not knowing it was all a lie! How many debates did I have with non-Christians (who I now call humans) about the smallest detail of Christ’s ministry? AARRRRGGHHHHHH!!!!. For the first week I was in utter shock. I told no one – not even my beautiful god-fearing wife. We had a 4 year old and one on the way. My wife was actually 7 months pregnant at the time. How could I tell her??? I would drive past churches and give them the finger and curse at their stupidity. I would curse myself for being such an idiot, and then I would laugh out loud at my new found freedom. I was FREE! Free from dogma. Free from the law. Free from grace. Free from HELL and free from Heaven! Free from ever feeling guilty for thinking a bad thought ever again! Free from having to convince my family that Jesus was the only way to heaven. Free from giving away 10% of my income every week! And most of all, I was free to sleep in on Sunday for the rest of my life!

I was going to wait till after the baby was born and after Christmas to tell my wife that she was now unequally yoked to a godless heathen, but my gut was in knots and my head was dizzy with all the “shock and awe” I was experiencing. So about two weeks later, I sat her down to have a bible study. In that study I went through ten pages of errors, inconsistencies and false prophesies in the bible to show her that it was not the inerrant word of god, but a human book that borrowed and stole bits and pieces of other cultures and their gods. At the end of the study, she thought I was insane and told me I needed to see a psychiatrist. Again, I really suck at convincing people to believe the same things I believe.

Over the course of the next two weeks, she began to study the bible on her own and really ask the hard questions. She had a lengthy discourse with a pastor friend of ours and was not getting the answers she was looking for. In the end, she came to the realization that the bible wasn’t 100% true and that Jesus was not god. Our marriage was saved, which is a good thing because I really love her and our children.

So I called my pastor to tell him that I could no longer direct the Christmas play or lead the drama ministry or lead small group, or believe in anything the bible had to say. We met to have a face to face talk, and I explained very honestly what happened. He was pretty much speechless. He had some words of advice, prayed for me and made plans to meet again. I have not heard from him since, and we have not been back to church since. We still talk to friends who go there and have no animosity towards anyone.

I am now free from the indoctrination of the bible, the dogmas and religious head games it plays, and above all the utter foolishness that the Christian bible teaches. I love my family more than ever, and I have a new found love for the human race that I had previously condemned to hell in the name of Jesus. I am truly free. And the value of Pi is NOT 3!

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