Sometimes people stop and ask me when it happened… No not when I had sex (get your mind out the gutter) but when I decided to quit the religious quest of Christian perfection, to stop comparing my life with biblical characters who may have or haven’t truly existed.
I grew up in church. Went to Sunday school, the kinda kid who memorized the books of Bible in
order and read it from page to page ( except for the book of numbers… That shit is boring) I was church “royalty” …my mother and stepfather were ordained ministers (and no i wasn’t the bad preachers kid) . I was in Christian organizations in both high school and college. I was a defender of the faith (beware sinners!). I spoke what I was taught. And it worked…until i desired to know more.
Those that know me….know I’m a writer. I’m a writer of novels about angels. You can’t write anything without studying your topic; and that’s what I did…study.
I studied the Bible for knowledge…not for some emotional inspiration that most people do…and when I did that, my eyes were opened to flaws of the “word of God”. There were errors, obvious human interjections. But that’s a longer story… I somehow justified the errors in my head.
But that’s not what took the cake . For me….the truth about the Christian religion was this…I had to accept human blood sacrifice as okay. Communion, was a ritual symbolic of cannibalism
( flesh eating and blood drinking).And all of this was to redeem me from some enigmatic word called “sin” that somehow originated from two people that have no more historical relevance than any other creation story from any other country.
I had to stop…think.
Why did I need this for soul redemption? Blood sacrifice? What made this religion any different from an ancient religion sacrificing virgins in volcanoes? Why did i need religion at all? So i decided to start over….
I decided to relearn. I didn’t throw out baby Jesus with the bath water but I allowed myself to question the validity of all and everything I thought to be true.
Never stop learning.
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Ok I did not grow up with a religious background. What I have learned has been from people who were. The one thing that bothers me is that I have had several things drilled into my head to the point of believing. Now trying to have a loving caring relationship with a man is all but inpossible. It really ruined how I view same sex relationships. Its been 4 yrs and I still shy away from the idea. It sucks!
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I also grew up in the church, being from the south also, my father was my Sunday school teacher for many years, he almost became a minister himself. And I also always had a problem with that, I would love to hear more of what you discovered also…
But my bigger reason for not wanting anything to do with the church, is the people…I got tired of the “oh we’ll accept you as long as you change” mentality and it’s our way or the highway and you’re going to Hell speeches!
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