HELL: Why I Left The Faith

 

Where does the teaching of Hell come from? The Bible, of course!  Or does it? As Christians, we were taught that Hell was created by God as a place of eternal punishment for the Devil and his angels. So after mans “fall” in the garden of Eden, humans who do not accept God’s saving plan via sacrifice in the Old Testament or Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross will be cast into this Hell, sometimes called the Lake of Fire, to be tortured and punished forever and ever. 

I believed this. Much of my motivation for becoming a Christian was to avoid this horrible fate. Understand what this doctrine teaches. Anyone, despite where they were born or what circumstance they are in, even if they have never heard of Jesus, will be cast into the fire to writhe in pain for an eternity. Let the horror of that sink in.  Your mother, father, and children may face this fate. Yet, despite the brutality and unjust notion of Hell, we are told that God is love and we should worship and praise him.   In what alternate dimension does this sound like something a loving God would do?  It sounds more like the erratic nature of a sadistic madman.

As I daily encountered everyday people with real-world problems, I began to question this notion.  These “sinners” were just people, good people who were trying their best to live life. They may have been alcoholics, drug addicts, or mentally ill.  They may have committed crimes to survive in the brutal streets, but they were not evil. So how could a God of love destine these people to such an awful, brutal fate?

The problem with Hell, for me, was more practical than theological.  What does the teaching say about God? What kind of God is this we claim to worship. A God who demands our undying attention and adoration on the penalty of eternal torture.  Is this really a being that is worthy of attention? Hell is a horrible teaching that strikes fear in people’s hearts and forces them to convert.

This is displayed in fundamentalist teaching of The Last Days, The Rapture, the tribulation, and the Final Judgement.  As I mentioned earlier, I listened to Hal Lindsey just before converting to Christianity. He taught that these were the last days we lived in and the events he would describe would be happening soon.  There was also a very popular movie being shown in churches in the 70s and 80s called A Thief in The Night. This was a poorly shot and acted drama of the coming Rapture and 7 Years of tribulation that we were told is predicted in the book of Revelation.  The movie pictures a time when millions of people suddenly disappear as they are taken to heaven to meet Jesus. Those who remain on earth must face the wrath of God for 7 years as the bowls of judgment are poured out upon the world. Those who choose to convert after the Rapture will face persecution and beheading.

Again, we are told this is all clearly laid out in the book of Revelation. However, as terrifying as the events of Revelation may seem, it was the clever design of fundamentalists that pieced them all together in this dark drama.  More likely, the book of Revelation was written as an allegory of the Roman empire and had more to do with the events of 1st Century Christianity than with future prophecy.  FYI the events Lindsey and others predicted were to happen “soon” have never happened. However, this does not stop them from preaching these lies to scare people into believing.  We are told that what is “soon” for the Lord is not the same as it is for us, and “soon” is a relative term.  This seems to have a striking resemblance to many cult's predictions of Jesus returning. When he doesn’t, they simply reinterpret what they have said and keep going.  In extreme cases, religious sects force the end by having their followers commit suicide to go to the next realm. 

 In 1988 Edgar C. Whisenant wrote a small booklet entitled 8 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. He boldly laid out the Biblical reasons why Jesus would come to rapture Christians to heaven between September 11-13, 1988.  Was he dismissed as a charlatan?  No.  This teaching spread through my denomination like a fire in a high wind. While most ministers did not buy into it, the ordinary layperson did.  On that Sunday in September, our little Church in Lakeland, Florida, was packed, and the altar was flooded with people trying to repent before Jesus Split the sky. 

Not to be deterred when it didn’t happen, he came out with another book, On Borrowed Time.  Then a third, The final shout: Rapture report 1989 predicted that the Rapture would occur in 1989. Apparently, his calculations were off by a year. After this failure, he predicted it would happen in 1993. Failed again, and the date was pushed to 1994. Thankfully Whisenant died in 2001.  While many mainstream preachers would disassociate from this teaching, what they do believe falls right in line with this craziness and will continue to produce such nonsense.

In 1995 the End Times teaching was revived in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. This book series was well written and far outshined The Thief in the Night movie. Though the content and theology were precisely the same.  However, they failed cinematically when the movie Left Behind came out, featuring the terrible acting of Kirk Cameron. So they tried a reboot in 2004 with the walk-on performance of Nicolas Cage, which was little help to the movie.  It’s a Christian scare tactic theme that won’t die.  People are compelled by the idea of the world ending, and good-meaning Christians are more than ready to scare the Hell of people. 

The real problem with this end-times prophecy teaching is it comes more from the dispensational theology of the late 19^th century than it does from the Bible.  I became starkly aware of this when I decided to do a Wednesday Bible Study on The End Times. I wanted to make a several-week series following the “Biblical” timeline of end-time events. The problem was that there wasn't much material when I went to the Bible. I had to pick verses from Revelation, Thessalonians, and the book of Daniel and then try to piece them together.  I had to violate every rule of Biblical interpretation I had ever learned.  Not to be deterred, I just followed the outline of the Left Behind book.  I presented as gospel truth what was really nothing more than the imaginative fantasy of Tim LaHaye.  I determined to never teach this subject again. I also learned that the Bible did not give a clear timeline of events, and the idea of any future prophecy was suspect at best; at worst, they were absolute fabrications.

The back ally of my Detroit home was dark and littered with the remains of refrigerators, old tires, bent metal pipes, and just plain old trash. As I moved my garbage cans out for the trash collectors to pick up the next day, I saw John sitting on the grimy pavement leaning up against the chain-link fence of the neighbor's yard. John lived there, kind of. They didn't actually let him in the house. So he had to sleep in the backyard. He was probably in his 50's but looked much older. His face was worn like an old chewed-up rag, a scraggly beard covered it, and his curly greasy hair hung down over his ears; it hadn't been washed in months. His nose was like a small basketball on the end of his face, lumpy and hung off-center; a bright red ran across his cheeks. Whiskey nose, they call it. It was Rhinophyma, a severe nose swelling condition often seen in alcoholics though the actual cause is unknown.  

John had obviously been drinking. He was always drinking. I decided it was time for me to witness to him and try to lead him out of his life in the darkness of sin to the light of Jesus. John affirmed that he believed in Jesus. Everything I asked him about, he agreed with. I was getting perturbed. How can you live in this open sinful life but say you trust in Jesus? I decided to push harder and pressed on the issue of drinking, letting him know this was a sin that Jesus could free him from. He responded with the fact that Jesus drank. Alcoholics always brought this fact up, and I hated it. He was using Jesus to justify his sin. I noticed I was getting angry. I don't like it when I get angry, so I backed off and just began to ask him about his life. 

John described his life as an 18-year-old boy who went to Vietnam. He told some of the horrors of war, the stench of dead bodies, the children he saw killed, and coming home with nothing and nowhere to go. He had started drinking way back then, and life had only worsened. Some 30 years later, his own family still didn't want him in the house but would allow him to sleep in the backyard like a stray dog. So he pitched a tent and made that his home. 

John's story struck my heart like a lightning bolt to an oak tree. My conscience was split with the realization that I had no idea what it was like to have lived such a difficult life. My cozy middle-class upbringing had never known a day of difficulty. Who the hell was I to be casting judgment upon this man? Who was I to be calling him a sinner? What was wrong with us (Christians) who have assigned this man a place in Hell simply because he was addicted to alcohol? What would I be doing if my life and been through what he went through? I could not escape these thoughts nor pull the knife out of my conscience. 

What is this concept of Hell? Where does it come from?  Christian talk as if it’s all about love, grace, and forgiveness but make no mistake, the concept of Hell weighs heavy in all their thoughts and is the motive for much of their action. 

To understand what Christians believe about Hell, one need only look at the sermon given by the famous American Theologian Jonathan Edwards and his sermon on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God.  The sermon is alive with passion and rich with metaphor and visual imagery.  It is perhaps the best Christian work on the subject of Hell as he weaves together the prevailing concepts of God’s wrath with scripture strewn cleverly across its pages.  In descriptive detail, he displays the Bible’s concept of God's wrath and the Christian idea of a Hell of eternal torment.  Consider some of the significant points and imagery he invokes. This is what is in the mind of the Christian and how the Christian sees the common sinner. Behind their smiles and proclamations of Jesus' love lies a sinister belief in the utter depravity of their fellow humans.  I could no longer, in good conscience, look at people through such a lens of disgust. Listen to the words of this famous sermon and realize this is at the heart of Christian belief:

 "They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God’s using his power at any moment to destroy them."

 This is the Bible's picture of humanity preached by evangelicals and fundamentalists. They DESERVE to be cast into hell.  By the mere fact of being born human, this God stands ready to cast all into Hell.  The only way to escape is to bow in fear and submission and hope that God chooses you to be one of his Elect.  Jesus is pictured as the fire escape. But do we ever stop and really think about this?  What a horrible concept. Listen to Edwards again:

 

"The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood."

 

Edward’s pictures God has an archer ready to unleash his wrath and be drunk with blood. He is an angry God, and he is angry at you.  I dare say you were not taught this picture of God in Sunday School.  However, I think that Edward’s accurately pictures God as Christians perceive him.  But is this a being worthy of your worship and unconditional surrender? Listen again:

 

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire;"

 

Edwards famously pictured God holding individuals like a spider over a burning fire who deserves nothing less than to be dropped into the inferno. 

This is the motive that was beneath everything we did as Christians. We went to the inner city to rescue poor sinners from Hell.  Sure, we did things like offering food, clothing, and help with education, but these things were only done so that we would have the opportunity to preach Jesus so that they could be saved from this type of Hell.   This is all that matters in the myopic vision of the Bible Believing Christian.

My encounter with humanity gave me a different perspective. Rather than depraved humans deserving of Hell, I encountered hurting people who were products of their environment and victims of the reality of their experiences.  Apparently, I had more care and concern for humanity than their supposed creator. 

The Wizard of OZ And God

 

Between 2002 and 2004 Ariel Castro kidnaped and imprisoned Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina "Gina" DeJesus. They did not escape until May 6, 2013. They were beaten, chained, and repeatedly raped for years. They prayed daily for relief and release. Their parents prayed. Their neighbors prayed. Churches in the area prayed. Silence was the only answer.  

Where was God? If he answered those prayers, it took him a very long time, over ten years. If God exists, there are only two possible explanations for his lack of intervention. Either he was unable to help them or unwilling. Both seem like horrible possibilities and not very God-like. The Greek Philosopher Epicurus stated the problem plainly:

 "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

 

I went into ministry because I wanted to help people. I care about people's well-being, and I continue, to this day, to work in a people helping industry. Apparently, I cared more than the omnipresent, omniscient God of Christianity.  I could not continue to have a notion of a loving God who cared for people but allowed horrible things to happen. I could no longer logically justify this notion any longer. 

Oz, The Great and Terrible 

Consider this familiar scene from The Wizard of Oz. 

The Lion thought it might be as well to frighten the Wizard, so he gave a large, loud roar, which was so fierce and dreadful that Toto jumped away from him in alarm and tipped over the screen that stood in a corner. As it fell with a crash they looked that way, and the next moment all of them were filled with wonder. For they saw, standing in just the spot the screen had hidden, a little old man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face, who seemed to be as much surprised as they were. The Tin Woodman, raising his axe, rushed toward the little man and cried out, "Who are you?" 

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," said the little man, in a trembling voice. "But don't strike me--please don't--and I'll do anything you want me to." 

Our friends looked at him in surprise and dismay. 

"I thought Oz was a great Head," said Dorothy. 

"And I thought Oz was a lovely Lady," said the Scarecrow. 

"And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast," said the Tin Woodman. 

"And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire," exclaimed the Lion. 

"No, you are all wrong," said the little man meekly. "I have been making believe." 

"Making believe!" cried Dorothy. "Are you not a Great Wizard?" 

"Hush, my dear," he said. "Don't speak so loud, or you will be overheard--and I should be ruined. I'm supposed to be a Great Wizard." 

"And aren't you?" she asked. 

"Not a bit of it, my dear; I'm just a common man." 

The four travelers of the yellow brick road stood in awe of the great Oz.  Their journey had been based on faith that this great wizard would solve their deepest existential problems. Yet through accident the veil is torn down to revel that the Oz, the Great and Terrible was just a small wrinkled man who possessed no power at all. He was “just a common man”. 

When veil of religion was torn down for me I could see clearly that there was no great God overseeing everything. People imagine God as what they want him to be.  We make God in our own image. Dorothy thought the Wizard was a “Big Head”. The Scarecrow thought the Wizard was a “Lovely lady”. The Tinman thought he was a “Terrible Beast”. And the Lion thought he was a “Ball of Fire”.  They all conceived of the Wizard as what they wanted him to be. But their visions of his greatness were dashed to pieces by the reality of his commonness.

Believers in God do the same thing. They imagine God as they want to believe him to be. To some He is Love, to others he is Justice, benevolent father, punisher, warrior, or whatever springs forth from the well of one’s own psyche.  How you view God says more about what’s going on inside you then what God is.  In reality God is just the invention of common men.

It’s an interesting sociological study that the way people view Jesus directly reflects their own culture.  White people, who have predominated Christianity, view him has a white man with blue eyes.  The African American community has a black Jesus. In Mexico paintings of him strongly resemble Spanish descent. 

I had adopted the God of white, middle class American conservative Evangelicalism.  He was a God who loved everyone and if you put your faith in Jesus you could avoid him from throwing you into Hell forever and ever, which you actually deserved. He was omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere at once), and omnipotent (all powerful). 

When I faced the reality that God could not and would not do anything about the most horrific acts of tragedy to the most innocent of people I saw behind the curtain. Oz, The Great and Terrible was just a common man. Worse, this God didn’t exist at all. 

If you want to explore these issues of suffering deeper, I would suggest you read the book by Bart D. Ehrman God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer.   Ehrman is a New Testament Scholar and addresses the question from a scholarly point of view. 

The Dilemma of Doubt

I sat at my cherry wood executive desk. My genuine leather New American Standard Bible with Hebrew and Greek references lay open. It was well worn from years of use. Pen lines underlined vital verses, and yellow, green, and orange highlights marked text with deep meaning. My Greek encyclopedia, commentaries, and other study tools littered the wide desktop. In a few hours, I would stand before a congregation of people who wanted to hear The Word of God, the Truth, and the meaning of the Scriptures. I was the one who would deliver that message.  

I felt a twinge of doubt. Just a little at first. Is this really "The Truth"? Is this the absolute final Word of what God had to say to the people of earth? Was everyone who didn't believe this going to Hell? I wanted to believe this was the true Word of God. I had believed that since my conversion. But as I have lived life and experienced other people and places, it just didn't seem that simple anymore. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe I was wrong. Part of me believed, but another part, a new part, did not think it was so cut and dry. The conflict pulled at me like a game of tug of war at a church picnic. I found myself believing two opposite things at the same time. Is this possible? It is, and it has a name. It's called Cognitive Dissonance. It is an extremely anxious feeling.  

You experience cognitive dissonance when you learn new information that conflicts with your previously held ideas, values, or beliefs. When this happens, you will do everything you can to resolve the contradiction and reduce the feeling of anxiety. Typically, we will look for ways to confirm our original ideas. Unfortunately, this leads to another psychological phenomenon called confirmation bias. 

To understand cognitive dissonance, consider this example. Let's say you like eggs and were taught that they are good for you, but one day you learn that they lead to high cholesterol.   You don't like this new information because you love eggs. You start to research all the ways that eggs are good for you. This makes you feel better, and you can keep eating eggs. Now you have avoided all the information about how eggs are bad and only looked at the information about how they are good for you. That's confirmation bias. Now let's say you continue to hear about eggs causing high cholesterol, so you began to read more recent research. You become convinced that new research into eggs is very accurate, but you still like eggs. Now every time you eat eggs, you have a guilty feeling. You know you're harming your body, but you like the damn eggs. When this feeling, the cognitive dissonance, gets too strong, you abandon eating eggs, your anxiety is lowered, and you feel better about your choice. (FYI, I’m not suggesting eggs are bad. It’s an open debate. It’s just an example).

The more widely I studied the Bible and compared it with other belief systems I began to be confronted with the idea that Christianity, as I was taught it, may not be entirely accurate. This began to produce a great deal of anxiety. I had dedicated my whole life and career to Christianity. I sought to reduce these anxious feelings about God and the Bible by studying harder and reading more works by influential authors and scholars, but I had to be fair. I had to read what the opposing views were as well. I often found those views as compelling as my traditional views. These varying views on God and the Scripture had good reasons, logic, and research.   

I could no longer maintain the belief that I was right and everyone else was wrong. I didn't abandon my faith at this point, but I did open up my mind. I no longer looked at others as wrong and myself as right. Instead, I looked at it as having different points of view. The Spiritual Journey has many roads, I told myself. I was able to justify this and reduce my cognitive dissonance with the words of Jesus himself. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." It is the God within that matters, not the facts and details about history, places, or people. This gave me an openness to all people. It allowed me to see people with compassion and understanding rather than a need to convert them. I simply needed to love people.  

This was life-changing. It worked for me for a while. But the claws of cognitive dissonance would continue to scratch at my soul.

It wasn’t just this intellectual conflict that would lead me to abandon the last 20 years of faith it would be the encounter with the realities of life, with people of other faiths, and my own internal struggles that lead me to escape the chains of faith.  

9-11-2001 Where I Was

 9 11 2001. A Tuesday.  21 years ago.  Michaela, my youngest child was just 7 months old.  My three other children where in school. I was working for a hospice as the Chaplain. 

We just finished a team meeting. Walking into the lobby the news was playing and a crowd of employees had gathered around intensely watching.  The first plane had already hit the north tower. It still seemed like it was a horrible accident. Like a small plane had crashed. Then out of nowhere the second plane slammed into the south tower, There was an audible gasp in the room as we all realized, without saying it, that this was a terrorist attack. I instinctively said allowed "Osama Bi Laden."  We remained glued to the TV as the towers burned, as individuals jumped to their death.  I stood shocked, in a state of suspended animation.  I felt as if I was in a dream, in an alternate reality. I really couldn't process the enormity of what was happening. I watched in terror as the south tower collapsed and then the north.  The world changed before my eyes.

What happened immediately after this is blank to me.  Looking back now I hear that most people left their jobs, rushed to their children's schools and took them home.  I didn't know what to do. There was no directive from our leadership. At least not that I was aware of. So I stayed at work. I had patients to visit but I was in a state of confusion, my mind was in a mental fog. I drove to the nursing home where a patient of mine, an elderly man, was living. He had dementia and mostly slept. I sat at his bedside and watched his TV for the next several hours in a state of shock. 

So much of what happened that day is a blank. As if I was going about my routines on auto piliot, moving and acting but not thinking, not feeling, stunned,  all emotions blunted. 

In the next days the silence was deafening. I lived just a few miles from Detroit Metro Airport and the sound of jets overhead was a part the daily landscape.  With all the aircraft grounded it was like living in a post apopolytic world.  

Life for me would return to normal over the weeks and months but in a strange way the world would never be the same.  

Maybe I'm in a Cult

 In the Christian world, anything that is not “traditional Christian” is a “cult”. Any
other religion besides Christianity is a “false religion.”  This goes hand-in-glove with the idea that “Christianity” is the only true religion.  Anything that claims to be Christian but does not subscribe to “orthodox” beliefs is considered a “Cult.”  This is a very loose definition of a cult. It basically says that anyone that is not “us” is a “cult.”

Sociologically, a cult is a religious group that exercises control over its members and forbids certain activities. It may center around a central personality like Jim Jones.  It’s good to remember that Jim Jones started out in a very typical community Pentecostal church. He was active in local politics, helped the poor, fed the hungry, and he even briefly pastored an Assembly of God church.

The reality is that fundamentalist and evangelical churches have many of the hallmarks of a cult.  They insist that they are the only ones with the truth. They have a scripture that is claimed to be supernaturally given by God. They also have the only true interpretation of that scripture. They use fear to motivate people. Fear of divine punishment, fear of eternal Hell, fear of being shunned by the church community. They begin indoctrination at very early ages and engage in programming members in their belief system by the constant rhetoric of the pulpit that often takes place 3 times a week.  If you hear a consistent message 3 times a week for years starting from childhood, you will be programmed to believe whatever is stated, and it is very difficult to break that level of programming.

When I became a Christian at 17, I attended church 3-4 times a week. I watched Christian TV every day. I read the Bible daily and consumed Christian literature.  I consumed all of this without questioning the validity or being presented with any opposing arguments.  I was taught that all the other regions were false, and if they claimed to be Christian and didn't believe what we believed, then they were a cult.  

Well, Maybe I was in a cult.  Looking back, now that I've left Christianity, it seems obvious that there is absolutely no difference between the cults of the world and evangelical Christianity.  Though they may not always exert physical control over their parishioners, there is certainly psychological control and emotional manipulation.  When you hold the threat of eternal punishment over people, you are using fear to control them.  When use the church system to enact "church discipline" and bring "correction" to members whose behavior you disapprove of, then you are manipulating their emotions.  It's time we recognize evangelical Christianity for what it is; a cult.  

N.T. Scholar | Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen?

 Bart Ehrman, Professor and Scholar of the New Testament, talks about his debate on "Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen?" and other Biblical Topics. 

Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a former Evangelical Baptist Minister.

He approaches theological questions from a scholarly historical framework.  

Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Lies I Believed | God and Politics

It’s hard to admit you have believed a lie. It’s difficult to realize you have been deceived. We all like to think we are beyond believing lies and are humiliated when we discover we have not only believed lies but spread them to others.  Like the carrier of a virus that, once infected, infects others. A human host of destructive ideas.

My next several posts will be on the Lies I believed, the lies Christianity taught me. It is my confession and my repentance. It is my apology to those whom I led into the darkness of deceit disguised as the light of truth.

God and Politics

I become a born-again Christian on April 29, 1983.  I was quickly fed a steady diet of Christian politics from TV evangelists like Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell.  Before this, I had never even thought about politics, but now I was told this was a Christian's sacred duty to try to bring the nation “back to God.”  Apparently, we had previously been with God, but not anymore.  I wasn’t sure what happened between America and God, but I was on God’s side now.  Jerry Falwell had started his Moral Majority Crusade and was pushing to get evangelical Christians involved in politics at every level.  On the second Tuesday in November 1984, at 18 years old, I cast my first political vote for the Church's choice. The man who would restore morality to America. Ronald Reagan.

I was taught that the Republican party was the party of moral values, family Values, prayer in school, pro-life, creationism, and restoring America to the Christianity it had left behind. It was unclear when America abandoned God, but apparently, it was somewhere in the 60s when sex, drugs, and rock and roll came along. When prayer was taken out of school and abortion legalized. These were all things that God hated, or so I was told.  

The answer to America’s illness, to her “sin,” was to elect righteous men and women to office who would then be able to change laws that would force people to do what was “right.” Then God would be pleased and bless our nation. And somehow, everyone would be happy, even those that disagreed, because they would see the error of their ways and find Jesus in a great revival.

It was clear that the Republicans were God’s chosen party, and if God has a political party, you can rest assured so does the devil, the Democrats.  I mean, Demon is almost in the name.  These liberals were killing babies and supporting all kinds of sexual immorality, teaching children about sex in schools, and they were making people irresponsible by giving them social handouts.

These were the LIES I believed.  Lies preached to me from the pulpit in the name of Jesus.  I wanted to please this new God of mine,  so I took it all in. I was going to be a warrior for Christ. 

The truth I wouldn't discover for some 20 years later was more nefarious.  The facts I were to discover were that those who claimed to have the moral high ground had secret lives engaging in the "sins" they railed against. Their love for fetuses' in someone else's womb was betrayed by their disdain for children of poverty. They refused to vote to fund social programs that would help innocent children while blaming impoverished parents for irresponsibility.  Their talk of love for humanity was hidden hatred for those who loved in ways they disapproved; their hate sprang out of the cauldron of bigotry as they proclaimed AIDS as a judgment of a loving God. A disease that decimated tens of thousands of individuals. Their cold, callus, uncaring concern for their neighbor was preached with ease as the distorted idea of the grace of God.

All this was done with a smile and a "Jesus loves you."  I was a compassionate and caring person by nature.  As a child, I would not kill a spider, and my heart would break at the sight of others in pain. I had a deep sense of empathy.  It took the lies of Christianity to teach me to see people as deserving objects of God's wrath that would cause them to suffer unimaginable pain.   Something about this never set right.  When I finally saw this for what it was, I was ashamed to have promoted these Ideas as a Christian and a Preacher.

Since forsaking these lies, I have restored compassion in my life.  I can see and care for people as they are without any judgment.  The naive ideas of Christian morality are a cloak of hated for what one doesn't understand.  I prefer to truly love my neighbor as myself and see people as human beings deserving of care and compassion and not objects of a capricious God's whims. 

Understanding the Experience of The Holy Ghost | Alice Greczyn's Experience and Research

 What is it that people experience when they say they "Got the Holy Ghost" or were "Slain in the Spirit."  Some think everyone is just faking, but there is more to the story. Listen to Alice Greczyn, who grew up under the umbrella of the "Toronto Blessing."  

I experienced this "movement of the Holy Spirit" at the Pensacola outpouring, which occurred simultaneously with the Toronto Blessing.  I have been "Slain in The Spirit." As a post-believer, it is good to have a rational understanding of what happened.

If you've ever been in or seen a Revival Service, you find Alice's presentation enlightening. 

Snake Handeling Faith

What do you think of snake handling and drinking poison? These believers do it to prove their faith. Yet they are saved by medical science. This may seem extreme but "regular" Christians embrace ideas in the name of faith that are just as foolish.
 

Haiti in Chaos: Where is God?

 

If the all-powerful God could help any nation, it should be Haiti. Every denomination has its missionaries scattered across the island. Churches, chapels, and Bible studies proliferate as the people of faith seek to save the people of the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. The Gospel is preached from the capital city to the lowest village. Former President Jimmy Carter, a devote Christian and founder of Habitat for Humanity, has spent countless time building homes and negotiating politics on this small island.    

In 1985 I went on a mission Trip to Haiti with my Evangelical Baptist Church. We landed in Port Au Prince, the island nation's capital, and were ushered into an airport flooded with people. The heat was oppressive, I held back vomiting at the stench of body order and urine, and there was no air conditioning to give relief. Stepping outside, I was met with culture shock at the level of poverty and lack of basic services.  Obviously from America, we were flocked with people begging for money or anything we might spare. The local missionary warned us not to hold anyone's baby as they would quickly hand the child off and disappear in hopes that we could bring them to America.  

In the evening, we made our way through a maze of buildings.  We went in and out of alleys, ducking our heads through low passageways until we finally came to a small room that had been set up as a chapel.  People sat shoulder to shoulder on old wooden benches with no backs, and the preacher stood in the front behind a small podium.  The people rocked back and forth, shouting, "Amen!" as the preacher proclaimed the saving power of Jesus.  A young man fell to the floor, screaming and shaking as people gathered to pray for him. We looked to our missionary guide for an explanation of what was happening.  "He's possessed by a demon," The missionary told us. The service went on for hours.   

The next day we headed out in an old Jeep to the backcountry, where we would spend a week putting a roof on a one-room church made of stone walls that swayed with the breeze as if ready to fall over.  As a new Christian, I was inspired by this work.  These are indeed the people whom God would want to help.  The experience would motivate me as went back to America to pursue a life of full-time ministry.  I would pray every day for the people of Haiti.

So what has happened to Haiti? My expectations as a young Christian were that with all the prayers, humanitarian work, and missionary endeavors, God would surely bring peace and prosperity to the land. No one needed it more.

Fast forward to today, 2022.  Haiti is worse than ever. Their president has been assassinated, and gangs are ruling the streets.  Earthquakes have devasted the cities that have virtually no infrastructure to repair the damage.  Where is the God we preached so passionately about? Does he not care? Or has he no power? After all these years, with the power of prayer and missionary zeal, Haiti has only worsened.

Haiti has disappeared from the headlines of the news. Worse, it has disappeared from the headlines of the American Evangelical Church, which is focused on its "cultural war" and crying of its "persecution" as people leave the faith in droves.  The Church has forgotten because it never really cared as it focused on "souls" and forgot the person. Despite what I had been taught, neither the church nor its God had any power to change anything. 

If help comes to Haiti, it will NOT be through the church. Haiti is proof that the Christian God is impotent.  If help comes to Haiti, it will take the work of the international community of nations that decides that people who have no money, oil, or exports to benefit the world are worth our help.  Yet the international community has largely forgotten this small island nation as it focuses on the war raging in Ukraine and the scandals of a former American President.

What will happen to Haiti? 

Book Review | DE converted: A Journey from religion to reason by Seth Andrews

 

DE Converted is the Story of Seth Andrews leaving his lifelong commitment to the Evangelical Jesus. In the book, he chronicles the process it took him to deconvert from the faith he had been indoctrinated with since childhood.  He would come to question the faith his parents diligently instilled in him. After a life as a successful Christian broadcaster, he left his faith behind and became an Activist for Atheism. He founded the highly successful Thinking Atheist PodCast that broadcasts to thousands of listeners.  How could someone make such a drastic change? Read the book and discover his journey out of religion to embracing reason as a way of life.

Personally, I was struck by the similarity of his religious experience with my own.  Being a similar age, I could Identify readily with the Christian Culture of the '80s, '90s, and 2000s.  From the Christian music artist to the Christian Fads, it brought back tons of memories from my Bible College days at Southeastern College in Lakeland, Florida.  I, too, felt disgusted at Evangelical ministers' response to the attack on 9/11as they proclaimed it as a result of God's wrath for abortion and homosexuality.  I, too, could no longer defend a God who said he was love and demanded worship but could not rescue the most innocent from suffering. With great clarity, Seth Andrews lays out the emotional and intellectual challenges he faced that eventually led him to abandon the Christian faith and all faith in favor of a more reasonable explanation for life, suffering, and the pursuit of happiness. 

I highly recommend DEconverted for anyone who has ever struggled with reconciling their faith with the reality of the world around them. I would also recommend it for Christians who want to understand how people can reject Jesus after being a committed Christian. Seth Andrews lays out the reasons without bitterness toward his former religion or those who continue to practice. It is simply his experience, but it is an experience shared by many, myself included