How and why I left the church

Journal Trolling4Dollars's Journal: How and why I left the church 7

Journal by Trolling4Dollars on Monday September 20, 2004 @02:16AM

I was raised in a fairly unusual way spiritually speaking. My mom was catholic and my dad was raised catholic but converted to the protestant faith in his 20s. I was sent to a catholic school, but my dad made sure we went to a First Assemblies of God protestant church (F.A.G. from here on out) on Sundays. My mom's sister was a Jehova's Witnesses member. She was "in the truth" unlike the rest of us "worldly" people. My aunt and my dad used to have long debates about why their chosen faith was better than the other. To my dad, his being "born again" opened his eyes and made a major change in his world view. He felt it really made him a whole person. On the other hand my aunt said that when she was in the middle of a very dark period in her life, she prayed and asked god for a sign to tell her what to do. Within minutes, there were some Jehova's Witnesses at the door and she accepted this as her answer from god. She's never looked back since. My mom, was pretty much just... catholic. She didn't need to talk about being "born again" or "in the truth" or about any greater enlightenment that she experienced. She was born into a catholic family in South America, raised catholic, and stayed catholic. However, she had some major wars with my aunt and my dad about their religious beliefs and my upbringing. All of these mixed signals sent the message to me that religion is about disagreement, strife, hurt feelings, and at some point lies.

I remember once going to my aunt's house and she decided that it would be a good idea for me to participate in "bible study" with my cousin. I was about four at the time and didn't mind since I figured the bible was "good" in any form. Plus it would also allow me to ask questions about their beliefs since my dad had told me so much about why the Jehova's Witnesses were wrong. So the first question I put to my aunt was, "why does your church use a false bible instead of the true word of god in the King James bible"? She went into an explanation about Charles Tayes Russell and his encounter with god. Then she went of on a loosely related tangent saying that Jehova's Witnesses were really just like jews. They don't believe that Jesus Christ was the son of god and they are awaiting the true savior. They regard him as a nice man but not the son of god. The next question I asked was, "why is Christmas bad for Jehova's Witnesses". To which she replied that all major Christian holidays started off as pagan holidays and that pagans are all devil worshipers. We then read some scriptures from their bible and I pondered her answers. I had my doubts about the Christmas answer and I didn't quite grasp the Charles Tayes Russell answer. I went home and asked my mom about those things and the next thing I know, she's on the phone yelling at my aunt. I didn't see my aunt and cousin for a half a year after that.

Later on I asked my dad about the Charles Tayes Russell answer and the Christmas answer. He told me that Charles Tayes Russell was a liar and a con man and that Christmas is a christian celebration of the birth of Christ. At that point in my life I looked to my dad as being the ultimate authority on all things religious and accepted those answers as complete truth.

At another phase in my spiritual development, I was at the F.A.G. for Sunday services. Since I was a pretty voracious reader at 10 and kind of a news hound, I was very interested in this "news letter" they would hand out each Sunday with "News from a Christian Perspective". It covered topics from Business to Entertainment to Politics. I would kind of tune out the service itself and read this thing every Sunday. Here are some samples of the typical "headlines":

1. Boy found nailed to bedroom ceiling after playing Dungeons and Dragons. Demonic connections suspected
2. Avowed homosexual TV producer Norman Lear wanted to have a gay character in a sitcom. Are the gays after your eyes?
3. Thank god for Ronald Reagan. Let's take America back to it's Christian heritiage!
4. 666 is the most commonly used number in computers. Are computers a tool of the devil? (Hehehe... once I got into Unix and started using chmod, I had a little laugh about this)
5. Star Wars movies push demonic power in sheep's clothing. The force or dark forces?

As you can see, the "headlines" read like Brent Metzler's wet dreams. Of course being only 10, I didn't know any better. Although I took much of what was written in these newsletters as fact, I was beginning to have strong doubts. Especially since the catholics at my school seemed to know nothing about these things.

I was puzzled at how two different religions who both claimed to be christian could be so out of touch with each other on the information front. Why weren't the catholics hunting down the D&D players and trying to save them from mortal peril? Why weren't the catholics concerned that Norman Lear was pushing gay sex on prime time television? Where was the outrage? It didn't make sense to me. To make matters even more confusing, I really liked the kids in sunday school at the F.A.G. more than my classmates at the catholic school. They were friendlier overall. So there it was... I went to mass on Wednesdays and the F.A.G. on Sundays. Two doctrines and a lot of dogma about why the other side was evil.

Then, it happened. One Sunday at the F.A.G., there was a bit of a delay in the start of the service. Eventually one of the deacons came out and announced that there was a bit of an altercation with the choir director. He was one of our strongest (in terms of faith) and most respected members. Apparently, he'd gotten pissed off at the choir and cussed them out in a pretty vile way. This was the little thread that got pulled and unwravelled a whole fabric of ugliness that had been growing at the F.A.G.

It turned out that he had a drinking problem and anger management issues. He was also carrying on an affair with one of the women in the church. Later it was revealed that several affairs had been going on there. I was disturbed by this because as much as I already disliked going to church, at least this place was a refuge from the dichotomy of my catholic experience during the week. The dichotomy where we were taught to be loving to one another yet the kids tried, literally, to murder each other. More on that later. So now I was in crisis. It was a silent crisis because my own parents were having problems of their own that seemed to be stemming from their religious differences. At this point my mom didn't want us to go to the F.A.G. anymore, but my dad would still go on his own. I kind of missed my friends there, but I was relieved to not have to sit through boring services anymore. My mom and dad had huge weekly fights about religion and I started to sour on it.

After seeing the fighting between my mom and dad, and my dad and my aunt, I began to think that this is not what a kind and decent god would want. So... all three of these religions must be the "wrong path". At this point I started to seek out other answers. I opened my mind to the possibility that other religions (even the non-Christian ones) may be the answer. Growing up in a largely Jewish community, I got a chance to find out what their views were. Of course, I foolishly assumed that I could "convert" to Judaism just as many people converted from catholicism to the protestant sects. Making this confession to a few of the jewish kids in my new (public) junior high school brought howls of cruel laughter. Nope. That wasn't the answer either. Although I respected the jewish kids for their tendency towards stong intellect, I noted that they could be as mean as the catholic kids.

Going back a bit to my catholic school experience, I have to make note that I later found out that the school I went to was where a lot of the local mobsters and cops (!) sent their kids. I didn't know it at the time, but it explained a lot later. When I said that kids literally tried to kill each other, I am completely serious. I remember one instance where a group of kids chased me up to the third floor and cornered me while their leader prepared to push me out of a third floor window. I was lucky because a nun caught them before they could finish what they were doing. We all got in trouble for being on the third floor during recess. No matter how much I attempted to explain what had happened the adults didn't care. These days, I chalk it up to possible racism since the school was mostly Irish and I had darker skin and hair and both the adults and the kids treated me like a second class citizen. There were about four black kids in the school out of about 400. I remember one of those kids being grabbed by a small mob who attempted to push him out into traffic on the main road nearby. He didn't do anything to provoke this other than being black. He was a nice kid, but if he's got issues with white people these days, I don't blame him one bit. Even I have issues with white people and for all intents and purposes I'm a "white man". Yes, it was a fucked up place and is the reason why I'm not catholic and will never send my kid to catholic school.

So... catholicism wasn't the answer. The Jehova's Witnesses wasn't the answer. The F.A.G. and basic protestant christians weren't the answer either. What did I do? I created my own personal religion. I called it "The Church of the Self". It was based on christianity, but I dropped a lot of the illogical things. Things like the requirement that you go to church. I figured, why? If I can sit down right here and speak to god, why do I need to do it in a building at a specified time? I also dropped the concept of "tithing". I figured, if Jesus threw money grubbing bastards out of the church, why should the church itself go money grubbing? Then I started to explore some of the new age concepts out there. I made new friends in public high school who then introduced me to being agnostic, or even atheist and sacreligious. I had a friend who would shake his fist at the sky and taunt god making threats to "rip off his head and shit down his neck". Oddly enough that same person is now an extremist conservative catholic (as in someone who put's pictures of aborted fetuses in his car window) who is studying Judaism. I also lost my fear of the occult and began studying satanism and demonology. Not because I believed in that crap, but because I wanted to know both sides of the story. One of the greatest disservices that most chritians do to their kids is that they DON'T let them find out about the other side for themselves.

I was facinated to find out that the word "pagan" is derived from "paisano" which roughly translates to country man or "man from the country". When the catholic church was having it's nice little holy war against anyone who didn't financially support the church, they started persecuting the people who lied their simple lives out in the country. These people had their own practices and were not interested in the catholic church. So the catholics took the best approch to defeating your enemy. Make your enemy out to be demonic. At this time the paisanos worshipped the god Pan. Pan was supposed to be a nature god along with others who helped keep the world in balance and the crops coming. Not too threatening really. But the catholics distorted Pan into this evil demon and started killing anyone who would not support the catholics. The term paisano morphed into pagan over time and connoted ties to anything that was anti-christian. It still carries that stigma to this day for most people except for the new brand of pagans out there. This happened even though the christians were the aggressors. Pretty neat, huh?

Today, I have my own feelings on religion and spirituality which I will not shre with anyone other than to say I am completely opposed to all forms of organized religion. I see them as a control measure to keep the dumber monkeys in line and something that is not healthy for the continued progress of mankind.

Anyway... I as wondering if anyone else here had similar experiences and how you resolved your dillema

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