How did I become a Christian? When I was eight years old, my parents took me to a church retreat. At the church there were probably 20 other eight and nine year old children. Our parents had dropped us off and left us in the trusted care of the Minister and the Youth Minister. For three hours, they showed us film strips about the rapture. People were getting thrown in Prison, getting their heads cut off, unable to hide, and being forced to take the mark of the beast. At the end of the three hours, the minister stands up and gives a short sermon asking if there were any children who wanted to receive Christ into their heart as their Lord and Savior and, of course, 20 crying children had their hands raised. I've never been so scared in my entire life. I still have nightmares about those movies.

I remained a good Christian, attending church regularly and praying every night. I began to question Christianity in my teen years, and had all but left except for a few small ties. Ties of fear and ties of hope.

College was when the real questions started coming out. I majored in Political Science and you can't do that without learning a LOT about the Catholic Church and their corruptions. It's not far-fetched theory...it's historical fact. Catholicism was the main branch of Christianity at the time and this is where much of the teaching comes from. The Bible wasn't even printed until 1677 and this was in response to Martin Luther (not Martin Luther King) who brought communication of God to the person instead of person-priest-god as part of his beef with the Catholic church in his 95 Thesis. Aside from all the other observations that have been made on this site (idea of God of Love being incongruent with scriptural representation of vindictive maniac), I could also see how the Catholic Church (and they were a twisted bunch back then) could twist what the bible said in such a way that they still retained control over the population. What ruler wouldn't want to have a populace pay taxes,

All I hear is that God is Love, but I read the Bible and it's frightening to me. It's hard breaking free of it, too, when it's been so thoroughly scared into you. But no, the idea that Ghandi would not be allowed in heaven makes no sense. With so many different religions on this planet, it is also hard to conceive of a God who would cast so many into hell simply because they had the ill-fortune of being raised into another religion that promised to be the one and true way, but turned out not to be wrong after all.

Thank you for this site. I feel significantly less alone.

If for no other reason, than because Bush claims to be a Christian. O.k. I'm not going to get into that.

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