Curiosity killed my faith
Sent in by Eddie
I really don't know where to begin telling my story of de-conversion because it involves too many events over a long period of years. I will try to give the basic highlights and avoid a drawn out boring tale.
I was raised in a Church of Christ home attending services of the church three times a week up until I was 16. My dad had been an elder in the congregation and was basically the backbone of the congregation. He did not believe it necessary to coerce obedience to the Bible, and I was given liberty to not attend after my 16th birthday. I did however, attend on a not so regular basis.
I eventually obeyed the Gospel, as they call it, and married shortly thereafter. I was very young, 19, and eager to please everyone in the family both spiritual and physical. For some 30+ years, for all intents and purposes, I was the model Christian.
I developed the talent of Preaching and was called upon to do so at various times in my own congregation and at distant congregations of the same faith. I must interject here and say, I never really could figure out all the discrepancies in the scriptures when I would come across them, throughout my whole life. I was told not to worry about such things, and to just preach the word. What they were saying was, they didn't want to deal with these so called errors and contradictions and that I should not talk about them. This never set well with me but I obeyed the voices of years of experience and played the good little Christian the way they wanted.
I've always been the inquisitive type and eager to understand mysteries. One day while roaming through the Internet, on the home PC, an article caught my attention, Ministerturnsatheist.org. I began to investigate the site to see just why a minister would suddenly turn from his faith. I found many truths that day and I don't mean from the Bible.
I discovered I was wrong and he was right about most everything I had been taught all my life.
I left the church in February of this year and publicly gave notice of my intentions. To say that it wasn't received well would be an understatement! All hell broke loose. My sibling brother, who is an evangelist, jumped up and told me to consider myself dis-fellowshipped and that there was no need for me to ever come back, because I would just be a hypocrite by doing so.
That burst of anger, on his part, sealed my fate with my blood family that day. You see, practically all my relatives on both sides of the family are Church of Christ members, and according to church doctrine, you cannot have any contact with someone who has been dis-fellowshipped, EVER, from that day forward, UNLESS, they return to the faith repenting.
I'm not one to back down once I have found truth. The truth I found was that the God of that bible is no god at all but an evil tyrant and more times than not he can't even keep his story straight.
It has been an extremely tough year for me since I'm basically a hermit, for all intents and purposes. Living in the heart of the Bible Belt doesn't help matters either. My days consist of work, eat, and sleep most of the time. I do surf the net quite often in search of a really good atheist article or scientific proof against the Bible's lies and stupid ideas and fairy tales.
I'm just a simple married guy trying to hold on to my marriage. You see, my wife is still a member of the church and so is my 23-year-old daughter. It is tough so I take one day at a time and try to stay positive.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uKbUogwKkm3cT_5vhlLlxMvBEb6HLpJ3j-WbkJOb0l2ofcjN6gJBc9VIWAJTyuZ4T2Sh3AmN0uO5-UMdghlmtMOK-v16FU8VIUfKqsWUljV8QZbMKRMuUTCPiedtigQrcKcZ8T-OmipyrUnNbxlZPS=s0-d)
I really don't know where to begin telling my story of de-conversion because it involves too many events over a long period of years. I will try to give the basic highlights and avoid a drawn out boring tale.
I was raised in a Church of Christ home attending services of the church three times a week up until I was 16. My dad had been an elder in the congregation and was basically the backbone of the congregation. He did not believe it necessary to coerce obedience to the Bible, and I was given liberty to not attend after my 16th birthday. I did however, attend on a not so regular basis.
I eventually obeyed the Gospel, as they call it, and married shortly thereafter. I was very young, 19, and eager to please everyone in the family both spiritual and physical. For some 30+ years, for all intents and purposes, I was the model Christian.
I developed the talent of Preaching and was called upon to do so at various times in my own congregation and at distant congregations of the same faith. I must interject here and say, I never really could figure out all the discrepancies in the scriptures when I would come across them, throughout my whole life. I was told not to worry about such things, and to just preach the word. What they were saying was, they didn't want to deal with these so called errors and contradictions and that I should not talk about them. This never set well with me but I obeyed the voices of years of experience and played the good little Christian the way they wanted.
I've always been the inquisitive type and eager to understand mysteries. One day while roaming through the Internet, on the home PC, an article caught my attention, Ministerturnsatheist.org. I began to investigate the site to see just why a minister would suddenly turn from his faith. I found many truths that day and I don't mean from the Bible.
I discovered I was wrong and he was right about most everything I had been taught all my life.
I left the church in February of this year and publicly gave notice of my intentions. To say that it wasn't received well would be an understatement! All hell broke loose. My sibling brother, who is an evangelist, jumped up and told me to consider myself dis-fellowshipped and that there was no need for me to ever come back, because I would just be a hypocrite by doing so.
That burst of anger, on his part, sealed my fate with my blood family that day. You see, practically all my relatives on both sides of the family are Church of Christ members, and according to church doctrine, you cannot have any contact with someone who has been dis-fellowshipped, EVER, from that day forward, UNLESS, they return to the faith repenting.
I'm not one to back down once I have found truth. The truth I found was that the God of that bible is no god at all but an evil tyrant and more times than not he can't even keep his story straight.
It has been an extremely tough year for me since I'm basically a hermit, for all intents and purposes. Living in the heart of the Bible Belt doesn't help matters either. My days consist of work, eat, and sleep most of the time. I do surf the net quite often in search of a really good atheist article or scientific proof against the Bible's lies and stupid ideas and fairy tales.
I'm just a simple married guy trying to hold on to my marriage. You see, my wife is still a member of the church and so is my 23-year-old daughter. It is tough so I take one day at a time and try to stay positive.
Comments