Gloria

She's an attractive and very bubbly late 20 early 30 something who works with me at the restaurant. She's been there for a very long time, but only now works a couple of nights a week as a second job. She's usually only stationed in the lounge area, a prime real estate area that only those who have been there a long time can usually count on.


I've been in the lounge for the last couple of weeks as I was asked if I wanted a somewhat stable position there as the closer on two week nights. I accepted and on Wednesday nights, I am sharing the area with Gloria.


I've heard her talk about God a few times. She actually does mention it quite a bit now that I think about it. Last night, we were getting our butts kicked as we like to say and in a teamwork moment she said something about God and added:


"You're a believer too, Alice, right? I can tell."


I felt like a deer in the headlights and just kind of smiled and nodded. We were too busy for me to do anything else. But I felt awful.


Once things died down, I pulled her over to the side and said,


"Gloria, I lied to you."

"What about?"

"I'm not a believer, I was.  It's a very long story, but I lost my faith a short time ago."


As a tear tried to make it's way out, she hugged me and said she was sorry to hear that I had had some tragedy (she assumed) that took away my belief.

"Why did you lie?"


"I don't really know, this is the first time a believer has asked me since it happened and I just kind of panicked."


"It's just that you seem so much like what a woman of God would be, I just assumed."


I told her that was very nice and asked if we were okay and she said of course we were and we hugged.


I will not lie about this, I will be true to myself and to others.

Hebrews 11:1

I spent yesterday morning at Indiana Wesleyan University reading this deconversion story. I found it last week through a comment on another blog and I was so looking forward to just having some time to read it.

The irony of reading about the loss of faith in a Christian organization...


Anyway, my son had to go there to take his ISTEP practice test. One downside of the whole online school thing, they can't take the ISTEP online, so I have to take him up there two more times next week.


I saw one of the teachers wearing one of those rubber wristbands that just had printed on it:


Hebrews 11:1


I'm ashamed to admit I had to look it up, it has been sometime since I've been in the book.


Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. (ASV)



If I had kept the blind faith I had in my earlier walk, I may not have ended up here. It was in the honest searching out of my Christianity that undid it. I needed everything to make sense and trusted that God would allow that to happen with enough honest study and prayer. It was like picking at a sweater thread until it was all unraveled.


In the story I'm reading, the author states that many people find a stopping place on that slippery slope that keeps them from full descent. I did not, I could not.



I know a few deconverts who blog, quit, restart, blog, quit, restart and I am now seeing the same cycle in me. I've told my story, it's time to move on so I think, but I keep being drawn back to wanting to talk about it.  Discovering that something so deep and central to the very core of your being, something that you were once so sure held the very reason for life itself is not true is a kind of mind blowing that is very hard to completely describe. You wonder how you ever could have believed it.



So in bringing my story back to the blog, I hope it can be a help to others who cannot find that stopping place either and know they are not crazy, never saved, deceived by the devil or too fundamental.  They are not alone.

Lent

 I wanted to share this entry from a blog I was just led to recently.



Ashes of Yesteryear




....Out of the ashes rises the phoenix. This year, as we enter the season of Lent, I enter it with a light heart, with freedom from guilt (masquerading as conviction) and self-degradation....Life is good. My soul is still.



Reading her bloggings during past lents and now, I totally understand how she feels. 



While cleaning a table at work Friday night, the Who's I'm Free played on the musak...

and I had to smile.

A Bit of Blog Business

I have spent some time this afternoon republishing things from my first blog that I had imported here. It was inspired by a visit I made to another blog recently where she had kept up all posts during her Christian life and later deconversion.


I have said before that the whole entire old blog was the documenting of  the deconversion, sort of, I just didn't realize it at the time....


(I'll put it in the denial and bargaining phase.)


Anyway, the good, the bad, and the ugly of all my past writings, blatherings, woman stuff, photos, and the like are back up.


If you follow me in a reader I am so sorry as you may get a whole bunch of posts today - I hope not.


Also, I am bringing The Story back to this blog since I do think it is important, not only for me, but for anyone that comes along that feels the same way.


That is all.

Calling Good Evil and Evil Good

If God loves us unconditionally why the limited time offer? Why the do it my way while you're still alive or else? Thomas got a sign while alive, but when the rich man saw Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, he got a Ha! too late. Where's the compassion, where's the mercy?


The fundamentalist concept of hell is just that. Calling evil good.


One can call it separation (but it's not, if God is everywhere, then he's there, too, watching, condoning your suffering).
or outer darkness (I create light and form darkness)
or whatever, but it's still the same.



The worst fate imaginable.




And he could stop it anytime he wanted. His hands aren't tied, showing us each individually without a doubt wouldn't stop free will. This whole idea has really been on my mind lately, especially when on a couple of occasions being sweetly threatened with the eternal doom.


It's insane. And a god that would do this is insane.



I don't understand how an otherwise normal and compassionate and sane person can actually believe that most people, including people they know and love are going to suffer this fate at the hand of the god that they profess is perfect love.



It's insane. And I'm saying it out loud.




It's calling Evil good.



(I know many of you out there don't believe in hell, I'm not addressing that here).




Think about it.

Historical vs. Mythical Jesus

In the comments section of my last post Bob asked,

Are you saying that Jesus did not exist or that the stories in the gospels are embellished accounts of his life?

I have to say that I haven't come to any conclusions about this totally, but over the past year or so in trying to piece a lot of things together, I did discover the idea that maybe Jesus was just another myth. A couple of things popped out at me here and there that led me to search this out, but I'll get to them later.


I found that there are more and more scholars beginning to wonder this as well. I'm keeping an open mind about this as a seeker of truth.



Here is a lecture by Richard Carrier and his theory. Granted, I haven't done all the homework myself, but I do here and there little by little as time allows.

To me, a mythical Jesus would explain quite a bit, but like I said, I'm still keeping an open mind about all of it. 

Healing

There is several churches on the way to my son's school when I take a certain route. There is a huge Baptist place that has caught my eye lately. I think it is because it is next to a tiny Baptist church and the juxtaposition is kind of funny. They're both named Mt. something.


As I was driving back from dropping him off the other day, I noticed that there were about 25 or 30 handicapped spots at the big Mt. that I could see easily from the road. My first thought was, they must have a whole lot of people there in need of these spots, in need of healing.


It struck me next that this is certainly not a great testimony. I have always had a certain amount of strange awe for the faith healers, maybe because they are not afraid to take the words of the bible at their face value and claim what it is Christ is supposed to have given his disciples. Here these spots were right in front as if this were the grocery store or football stadium- any other normal place.


However, I know many people see it differently, and it's not my intent to argue figurative vs. literal interpretation of the scriptures.



It just looked strange to me.

Myth

I know what it's like to know that I know something. The experiences were unmistakable (at the time). And I now know what it's like to know that I didn't know anything at all.


Sometimes I just don't know what to do with all of this. Do I keep writing about it in order to make sense of it all to me and connect with others or do I just let it go and move on?



Something that intrigued me while researching all of it toward the end was the idea that Jesus never was a historical figure at all. Really, we have no way of knowing for sure and there is quite a lot of buzz about it in some theological circles in which I keep one foot in still. I watched a youtube yesterday that puts forth the very idea that there was no historical Jesus. While it is a bit conspiratorial in nature (no, it's not Zeitgeist), it was interesting nonetheless. I don't anymore just take what some "expert" says on this or that topic, and I really don't have time to do all the homework myself, but it seems like something that isn't going away.




They also mention that one of the biggest splits in the early church was that of the literalists (Jesus was an actual person) and gnostics. Toward the end of my Christianity, the more I read Paul's letters the more gnostic they sounded. In fact, I used to have many a heated discussion with a certain reader about Paul being a false apostle.




But at the end, the video speaks of the beauty of myth in our lives and how it has always been there and probably will continue to be. How even if the story of Jesus is just that, how it can give our lives more meaning and inspire us to crucify our lower natures and strive for noble, heroic, and selfless lives.


I can understand that.



As I now live without the god I've known, I enjoy inspiration in all kinds of places and strive to be that higher self even now. Something within us still hopes for more than this mortal vale,  Maybe that's why the theme of dying and rising again has been so often repeated throughout the ages.