At the tender, young age of eight my emotions and my developing character were as soft and malleable as they would ever be. My parents slowly but surely subjected me and my siblings to the basic tenets of moderate christianity. For the next ten years I would bounce back and forth, devout one year but straying the next.

It wasn't until a series of events involving me leaving home at seventeen (over a dispute about drugs) and renting an apartment with a friend, then finally seriously wounding myself in that apartment, that I ended up back under the roof of my parents with a heart that was lonely and afraid and relieved to be home due to the irregularities and discomforts of relying upon ones self at such a young age.

This time around it was I who instigated it. I told my parents I would like to complete my grade 12 year in the Christian school my younger siblings attended. They gladly registered me. Following that year I enrolled in the bible college that my church offered (my church was a church, school, high school and college in one). I spent two years in that college doing everything that "moderate fundamentalists" do. I cared. I believed. I ministered and prayed and read my bible. I memorized 600 verses of scripture. My doubts were "merely" my mind, not my spirit. I had to press in for God. Yay.

I dated a girl from that college for a few years before we married and I am still married to her presently. Actually we're expecting our first baby winthin the month! But anyways... Over the few years we dated, I was being re-introduced to the real world as I had never known it. I had spent the last two years in a bible college (if you can call it that.. it was more of a "live-in, indoctrination-fest-so-that-pastor-can-have-many-mindless-fundy's-after-i-graduate" type of thing!) using all of my time and energy for my church. I was in a bubble. It was easier to believe in God when everyone else around me did, too. In fact that is putting it too mildly. The positive reinforcement of the mob was a crucial factor in how long I ignored my mind and silenced my doubts because Christianity had to be true and my doubts and fears would all be explained one day (ha, ha, yah right). The strange things in the Bible that seemed to contradict each other or the things that didn't line up totally with the beliefs my church held - these were all misunderstandings. The Bible is the inerrant Word of God, is it not? Obviously it is not.

I had never experienced God's silence alone before this. I was frightened and disillusioned. No more bleeding Bible peers to salve my leaking boils of doubt with circular, Christian rhetoric. I lived alone for a while in an apartment in a small community in my city of Winnipeg. I was only going to church once in a while and I never listened anymore anyway. My reason had already invaded full force and this time I let it happen. I had broken up with my longtime girlfriend. I had lost touch with a lot of friends and family. I had a great job and a car but that was pretty much it.

I only spent about seven months away from my ex-girlfriend. We did our own things for a while. By the way, I can't leave out the fact that this girlfriend of mine still claimed to be devout in her beliefs and in love with God when we broke up. But I learned afterwards that these steadfast things of the Spirit were not enough to keep her from the slimy tentacles of satan's ugly world! I found out she partied more than I did (what the f**k!?) and abandoned God in the things she did more than I had (if that can be measured) though her family was none the wiser. What a trip! Christian hypocrisy knows no limit.

It's hard to put all these feelings and circumstances in a coherent order that explains my current position best. I'll put it as simple as I can. Me and my girl got back together after these seven months in isolation during which I read a lot (I am now a die-hard Anne Rice fan even though her stories are so very spiritual and contain a lot of religious jargon, however they are captivating and beautiful) and did some partying that I might not have done had I still been a "taken" man although I never deviated and my grief kept me abstinent. I was overjoyed when my former lover called me one day out of the blue and it was a mere matter of days before we were together again for good.

To make a long story short, she still held to her beliefs in the face of the things she'd done and been through whereas I had never been further away from "God" in my life. I kept it to myself. We were engaged after six months. I didn't actually learn that she had transgressed the sexual laws of God during our hiatus until after we had gotten engaged and bought a house together. This is where the last of my few remaining illusions shattered. She, though I loved her and I still do, was the last link in the chain for me.

All of my reasons for being a secretive unbeliever up to that point were more or less separated from me as an individual in that they were "big-picture" issues. For example: suffering, though it touched me, was universal and it was not the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The general hypocrisy and self-seeking nature of people regardless of religion (but sometimes, oddly enough, more common among Christian circles) was another thing but no one I cared about had really wounded me thus far - so this was not an issue either. The downright stupidities of the Bible had me doubting the most I'd ever doubted, but that was nothing new and it was honestly something that I'd become accustomed to ignoring, anyways. But when I found out that my fiancee was indeed human and not the angel that the book of Proverbs talks about in its thirty-first chapter, that was the end of the road. I didn't leave her. The night I found out I merely kissed her and went back to the apartment to be alone and calm down and just relax. However, something snapped in me. I'm not bitter or resentful. I'm not ignoring an extant god because I've been hurt (as so many pastors love to say). I'm not taking my shot at vengeance and I'm not even in league with the devil and his conspiracy to subjugate the Almighty and steal all of His sheep for a cosmic barbecue because I don't believe in the devil either! Hell-alujah! I'm just more honest with myself and I esteem highly now the things the intuitive benefits called skepticism and doubt render in my life. I am simply honest. Intelluctual honesty is acid to non-thinking, fundamentalist Christians. I am the embodiment of a good boy gone bad and I have never felt better and more in touch with myself. All I needed was a kickstart in the right direction...

I needed a slap in the face. And I needed it close to home. All I can say now is that I got it. And it really hurt, but with my pain and the inevitable shattering and loss of all my illusions I have gained a liberty that is unlike anything I've ever known. I don't forgive people for hurting me because some faggot Alpha-Dog in a dress (or even the "mighty lion of the tribe of Judah" for all of you solicitors of the image of the "mighty King Jesus" - gag me with a wooden spoon) up in heaven told me to. I love and I can forgive (however these are now options, not commands with the threat of eternal punishment) because it's just a natural thing for me to do.

I have been reading a lot of anti-religious propaganda lately. Very good stuff. I realize that it can often be just as fundamentalist as Christianity or other forms of dogma, however I am comforted by the fact that the ideas and theories I embrace are now objective, honest and finally lacking that element of nonsensical, stuttering, hypocritical, sickeningly cliche-ridden bullshit that so lovingly graces Christianity and all other "excluisive" cults.

On a side note, my wife is still a Christian! It's kind of funny how I'm not anymore but she still is! You know, the bible says that Christians aren't supposed to be unequally yoked and then it goes on to use metaphors that illustrate Christ's desire for his children to be intolerant of their doubting counterparts. But my wife loves me incredibly. Why isn't she absolutely horrified by my defection, I often wonder? How am I not the antichrist now that I'm an atheist and how is she not in utter fear of me doing half the parenting of our coming daughter?! I guess that's one more badge on the hypocrisy sash of Christian achievement. Only obey the doctrines and rules until they interfere with your own plans... but make sure you're saved or you will burn in hell for all of eternity while Christ continues to cherry-pick at the right hand of Almighty Dog (spelling intentional).

My story ends here. Don't waste your time on religion. And for the love of reason - don't leave Christianity just to join Islam or some other addle-brained suspension plan for the mind. Do your SELF a favor and be content with the world around you and all of it's questions, mysteries and wonders. Don't waste your faculties on trying to answer questions that either time or nothing will ever answer. Cut all that bullshit out with Occam's Razor and movew on with real life. I'm glad I did.

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