MY JOURNEY TO FREEDOM AND LOVE

I was a fully committed evangelical christian for over 13 years.

Raised by an atheist and an agnostic, I struggled with a longing for spiritual direction. My friends had all been baptized, some catholic and some protestant. I was “nothing,” spiritually “lost,” and, I feared, probably going to hell.

My grandparents took me to the Shrine of the Little Flower, a towering, well-known catholic church. I was scared to death. The ceiling appeared to be a mile high and the organ music was menacing and very loud. I cried the entire time we were there.

I attended a Halloween party that was held at my friends’ protestant church. For “fun” they had set up a dark corridor of “horrors.” What I remember about it is that at the end, still in the dark, they rubbed raw liver (the real stuff) on your face. It was smelly, bloody, and sickening.

As I got a little older, I began trying to read the bible. I always felt excited and hopeful when I made an attempt. But soon I felt angry, confused, and disillusioned. The bible told of a god who was petty, demanding, controlling, violent and cruel. This is the conclusion I would always come to after reading about god cursing mankind, demanding devotion, directing killings and the flinging of blood, and leveling consequences for disobedience that were spectacularly out of proportion to the offenses. My brain and heart would just kind of “short circuit.” I was all geared up to read about a loving god and instead read about the cruelest, most demented being I could imagine. The disillusion was traumatic and yet there was a nagging suspicion that the bible was true. Therefore, I was on the outside of truth and salvation. I was going to hell.

My fear of hell and difficulties with the bible led me to try out offbeat bible religions such as jehovah’s witnesses and christian science. I liked the fact that they believed that traditional christian religions were misinterpreting the bible. If they were right, maybe I had a chance. When I do something I do it. I read their supplemental holy books, attended their services, and practiced their principals.

Each time I devoted myself to a new bible religion, I became disillusioned. The principals didn’t work, the people were common and their interpretations of the bible did not explain-away a cruel and demanding god. Each time I left a religion I “came back to my senses.” This is what it felt like. I began thinking rationally again and would realize that I had been thinking and behaving foolishly. Each time I left a religion I still had a nagging fear that maybe the bible was true and that I was going to hell. However, I was willing to risk it. I could never bear the idea that I and my “cronies of the moment” were going to heaven but most people were going to hell. Most bible religions believe this and with good reason; the bible teaches it.

I pursued non-biblical religions such as eastern religions and the new age philosophies. I found the people in these religions to be equally common and the practices to be equally fruitless. Let me clarify something. I do not mean to imply that “common” people are lacking anything. I love humanity, common humans, and I consider myself a typical, common person. However, all religions promise a transformed, transcendent life. I have seen no evidence of this in any religious/spiritual group. Therefore, I do not believe these religions teach truth (not that there is no truth in their teachings, but that any truths are co-mingled with untruths making them twisted and unreliable).

I lived without any religion for a while and I was moving toward a more rational way of living when my brother, who I have always adored, became a christian and began trying to convert me. I asked him to let me be but he kept at it. I loved and respected him so much that I believed that it was only fair to consider his evidence. He loaned me a book entitled Know Why You Believe. It contains some very good arguments for the truth of the bible and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I found the evidence overwhelming and became a believer. I became an evangelical christian like my brother. I was excited to finally be saved. I had never lost my fear of hell. I was also excited to get a bible in common English and began to read it. I started with the new testament. I had trouble with some of the passages, but the evangelicals always put a new twist on how to look at these passages. They were always able to answer my objections and I was thrilled that I could finally understand and accept the “truth.”

I became a fully devoted follower of Jesus. I changed my career, habits, views and lifestyle. I spent all of my time obeying and serving god.

I hit a bit of a wall when I began reading the old testament. There he was again, the cruel, angry, demanding (my way or the highway), bloody, murderous god I had always found in the old testament. Also, I had expected to see tons of references (prophecies) about the coming of Jesus. I found none. I was angry and disillusioned once again. But this time, the evangelicals were able to override my rational arguments with the biblical “truth” that because mankind has a sin-nature, we cannot see the truth accurately. If I think god is wrong then I must be wrong. Even christians still have a sin-nature and this nature twists things; right is wrong and wrong is right. They assured me that god would help me to see the truth if I would only pray, seek him, obey him and continue to read his “word.” I was convinced by all of the “evidence” that the bible was true and that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. I didn’t want to go to hell. I wanted to love god and live my life in a true and meaningful way. I hung in there.

I prayed more, read the bible faithfully, gave lots of money to the church, devoted my life to god, convinced others to become christians, answered other people’s objections to difficult passages, and ran every thought and decision past god to see if it was what he wanted. I looked forward to the time when god would give me peace and help me to love him with my whole heart. I prayed for about three hours every day.

I did not find peace. You see, I could not love a god who was sending most people to a place of eternal torment. Pastors and christian apologists did their best to try to make some sense of a loving god torturing most people forever, and sometimes they even satisfied my objections for a while. Inevitably, however, their rationalizations would lose their ability to satisfactorily reconcile a god who calls himself loving, compassionate and merciful with the fact that he’s going to torment almost everyone for all eternity. I could not love him. I could not raise my heart and my hands in worship. I felt torn apart and horrified. I believed the bible to be true, but I could not fully give myself to it or to god. I believed that I was an unsavable person. How could I be saved if I could not love god? How could I be saved if I hated God? Hated? Yes. I tried to suppress it; it was terrifying to hate the being who controlled everything including my fate. I asked him for forgiveness time and time again. I begged, I tried harder, I talked to more pastors and read more books. Nothing worked. I prayed with ABSOLUTE SINCERITY. I saw myself as the problem.

I prayed about this for about 10 years. I was physically ill, depressed and broke. I was becoming non-functioning. I was going down for the count, so I sought treatment from a good therapist. I needed a safe place to sort things out.

I kept wondering why god hadn’t answered a simple, sincere request for me to stop obsessing about hell and love him with my whole heart. He had the power. I was asking for a good and godly thing. I was humble. I was repentant. I was sincere. Why? I could not come up with one good reason. People said it would take time. It had been 10 years and it was only getting worse. Why? I needed an answer. Eventually, I got one.

I began to think that the bible must not be true. I devoted myself to god and biblical principles for 13 years and nothing in my experience validated the truth of the christian life as laid down in the bible. The teachings proved fruitless and the promises proved false. I was experiencing cognitive dissonance and needed to resolve it. I began looking for evidence that the bible is not true. I found more than enough to resolve my cognitive dissonance.

The bible is indeed full of contradictions. Christians use twisted logic to try to resolve these contradictions. They start with the belief that the bible is inerrant and that if they find an error, they are wrong. They believe that their twisted human nature cannot distinguish right from wrong, so they must find and use any twisted logic available to resolve every error in the bible.

The bible is not true because its promises do not hold up with time and experience. I am not merely basing this on my own personal experience, I have spoken to hundreds of christians who were also confused and disillusioned because they are not experiencing nor observing what the bible says to be true. Of course they blame themselves and try to keep going in hopes that someday they will experience the peace, joy and love the bible promises. They continue to seek god’s will for their lives, and their lives continue to be a painful mess. People hop from one church to another (and are criticized for doing so) in order to try to find a church that shows some evidence of transformed lives. They find people that are arrogant, rigid, hypocritical and demanding. They find common people who believe their way is the right way.

The bible does not stand up to moral scrutiny. In it, god says, “do not kill,” and then has his people slaughter people by the thousands over and over again, not to mention he personally kills thousands over and over again. The bible shows god instituting incredibly harsh judgements for minor offenses. Even us lowly plodding humans understand that consequences should be in proportion to the offense. The bible depicts a narcissistic god who demands love and worship on the one hand, and hurts, kills and threatens humans on the other hand. Then he says that we are too twisted to see that he is good and we are evil, so we better love and serve him or he will torture us forever. I could give many more examples of the bible being a morally twisted document, but I would rather demonstrate this by proposing what it would be like if there was a god who was loving, compassionate and merciful.

I will be basing my description of such a god on my understanding of the psychological, emotional, physical and relational needs of human beings and my understanding of what it means to love and be loved.

If there was a loving God who created men and women, surely this being would be androgenous, because men and women would be a reflection of this creator. I would not want to refer to this being as “it”, so I have developed some androgenous pronouns for this discussion. He/She = See. Her/Him = Shim (rhymes with him). His/Hers = Shis (rhymes with his).

If there was a loving God who was the creator and sustainer of the universe, wanted Shis creatures to be good and loving, and was interested in having a loving relationship with Shis creatures, I imagine that things might look like this:

God would be physically apparent as a person because See would know that humans find it hard to believe in and relate to a being who is intangible.

God would create men and women equal, with equal value and equal rights. All peoples, all races would have equal value and power.

God would teach us about the beauty of love and goodness, and encourage us to lead lives that reflect these qualities, telling us that this will make our lives happier, healthier and more fulfilling. God would tell us that See loves us and wants a relationship with us, and then be available to each of us for whatever time it takes to develop and maintain a close, loving relationship.

God would tell us that we are free to accept and love Shim and that we are free to reject and/or ignore Shim. There would be no penalty for rejecting Shim besides the natural consequences of missing out on a wonderful relationship with an extraordinary being.

God would limit the freedom of people who were violent and destructive. They would be prevented from hurting others, but also loved, helped, and given the opportunity to grow and heal so that they could have complete freedom again. We have learned that the way to help people to become good is to provide them with love, education, psychotherapy, positive role models and appropriate consistent consequences. (You cannot make people good through fear, abuse and conditional love. [This has been shown clearly by the way people parent, and how their children turn out.] You can sometimes make people more obedient this way, but not genuinely good, loving and free. Why doesn’t the god of the bible know this? Are today’s psychologists and parents wiser than he is?)

God would help us to grow in a desire to love by example i.e. by Shis own nurturing and encouraging behaviors toward us, and by instituting fair and meaningful consequences for destructive/unhealthy behaviors. When we received consequences, we would also be reminded that we are loved, and See would spend time talking with us about who we are, what we want, need and feel, and offering help in areas where we are confused, struggling or in pain. God would give every person the health, intelligence, wisdom and care that they need in order to make good decisions and develop loving relationships. We would all be equal in health, beauty, strength, intelligence, and talent but we would all be unique in our appearance, style, preferences, dreams and goals.

God would be so beautiful, kind, compassionate, merciful, intelligent, creative, fun and interesting that people would be utterly attracted to Shim. Love and even worship would come naturally and be a wonderful experience for Shim and for us.

God would teach us how the universe works and would help us to explore it. God would also encourage us to explore and appreciate ourselves, and to grow in love, knowledge and understanding, and would help us to do so.

This God would have created a world with no death or illness. We would all be vegetarians. Humans and animals would live forever with one another in harmony, love and peace. The earth would never get too crowded because there would be many planets within reach that would all be suitable, unique and wonderful for humans and animals. We would be taught and encouraged to treat the earth with care and respect, and to continue to explore the galaxy to find other worlds to inhabit.

God would provide more than enough food and shelter for everyone. The climate would be suitable for optimum health and enjoyment of our planet. People would help each other out of love and enjoyment, not out of a sense of duty.

God would help and encourage every person to be true to who they are, and to share the gift of themselves with others.

God would prevent natural disasters such as floods, draughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and comets/asteroids colliding with the earth and all of the planets that are inhabited.

God would promise to keep us safe, well and cared for in every way, and would keep this promise at all times, for this is the way of love.

As I write this, I know that it would be impossible for me not to love this God. I wish that this God existed, but this God does not exist.

If there really was a loving, all-powerful God who wanted to create a universe of life and love, then that God could have done it. The universe would resemble what I have described (I think many of us might agree with this based on what people like, love, want and need). If I, a mere human can conceive of a universe and a plan for creating good and loving people who freely love God, then why couldn’t god?

Bible believers say that its because people had to be given a choice to sin or they wouldn’t be free. Once one person sinned we all became corrupt. As corrupt beings, we needed all the fear, pain, killing and blood in order to have the chance to “freely choose” to love god. (Of course if they don’t “freely” choose to love him they will be tortured eternally. The bible says that most people will not choose to love him so most people will be eternally tormented.) Wouldn’t most people (if not all) choose to love God freely if See was the loving God I have described? Can anyone truly love someone who threatens them, causes them to live in fear, and sends their loved ones to a place of eternal torment? I know that I cannot.

I have spoken to many people about their true feelings about god. In my experience, few people actually love god in a passionate, heartfelt way. Most “love” god with their minds because they have been taught that they should, and others because they are afraid not to. These people delude themselves into believing that the god of the bible really is good and loving in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary.

I was an evangelical christian for 13 years. I totally devoted my life to god and biblical principles. In the end, I was depressed, confused, and terribly disillusioned. The “wisdom,” and promises in the bible proved to be false. Eventually I was able to see that the bible is full of contradictions, hypocrisy, and a god who is a cruel, hateful, narcissistic tyrant. As I came to the realization that I was no longer a christian, I was still coping with the fear that I might be wrong and that I (and most of my loved one) was going to hell. Now I understand why this fear was so hard to shake. It was simply that so many people around me believed in hell. It is a part of my country’s mythology. Also, it is a VERY POWERFUL THREAT. Suffering without end forever and ever with no hope of escape is as awful as it gets. Those two aspects of hell kept it alive and well in my brain. Thankfully, I now understand that it is nothing more than a cruel myth designed to frighten people into submission. I am not going to hell. You are not going to hell. No one is going to hell. I am free.

A loving God does not exist. Fortunately, neither does the god of the bible. We are all free. Be free. Don’t live for an unknown eternity, live for now. Enjoy each day as if it were your last. Make the world a better place for your children and their children. Live well. Live life to the full. We may not be loved by a god, but we are alive in a universe that is wondrous and filled with people who love. Love them. Accept their love. And may your life be a marvelous adventure.

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