Deconversion a Year Later: Email to Online Christian Pal

I've been a lot happier since deconversion and feel like I can enjoy life now with out life being a long list of rules and edicts, and one thing that made me happier, was being free of the idea that I always had to worry about being "perfect" and could just be me. Being freed of the narcissists freed me from toxic religion and yes the two are intertwined.

I had a Christian online acquaintance of some years,  I wrote this email too. They were into heavy conspiracy and bible prophecy like me, but remain within fundamentalist Christianity. They were shocked I deconverted but stayed civil with me. They came to me first asking questions, and I decided to have an open and honest discourse. We parted ways at the end but things were kept civil.

It was interesting to write how and why I left to them and new thoughts about God.  In his system of religion, he told me in the nicest way possible he believed I was going to hell but I understood, after all I had believed the same as him before. Writing this email exchange back and forth definitely helped to solidify some thoughts further. Some parts of this email have been edited or changed for clarification. I have included only what I wrote him.

"There's other problems with Christianity too, that I have faced, the very notion of a God needing a blood sacrifice to forgive sins is wrong. I hope this doesn't upset you. I believe now this is the tenets of an ancient barbaric culture instead of truth and reality. I believe everyone has the right to their beliefs. Someone like me definitely understands personally the attraction Christianity holds for people since I was in it myself.


I studied my way out with intense bible study, and more. Guess that's the best way I can explain. There was so much injustice in the bible that went against my conscience. Read Ezekiel 9 where babies and children are ordered to be killed by Yahweh. In Samuel 12, God has David's wives raped for punishment for his murder of Uriah.  More and more I came to the conclusion it was man-written, and the God formed inside had the positive yearnings of man like love and caring for others, he also had negative qualities as well--capriciousness and the desire to be worshiped. Why wasn't slavery outlawed in the Ten Commandments or rape? These things bothered me more and more.

Prayers never had answers, the whole religion became one of false promises. I am happy I stood up for justice, against war and against Trump on our shared Christian websites, but I was pretty alone in all these things. I got caught up into the conspiracy though, be careful of the path I took.

I can now see my cognitive dissonance all over our Christian websites. I wrote posts about how the religious right abused the poor, and told other Christians to "follow Jesus's teachings about the poor not the religious right's". I really was a closeted liberal trying to be a born again Christian.

The more I examined Christianity, conspiracy, bible prophecy and what I had been led to believe the whole thing was collapsing for me. I started questioning that something was wrong with the whole OPERATING SYSTEM. I was looking in other words for a religion that did not exist. It was not pure or standing for human freedom. The Bible became more of a confusing, contradicting mish-mash. The more I studied it, the more I questioned it. It obliterated reality, it did not describe it. The classic battle between science and religion raged in my mind.

I deconverted facing myself in a mirror, realizing I could not love a God that horrified me. It was like a villain. It was mean. While Jesus showed kindness and compassion, and I probably will have a soft spot for many of his teachings shared in the New Testament outside of the warnings of hell which hopefully were later added, Yahweh was not a very nice character. Even Jesus is turned cruel in Revelation when one is told in Revelation 14, that there will be so much violence on earth from God's wrath, that rivers of blood will flow.

In another area of life, I was writing about abuse, namely severe narcissistic abuse. I had gone no contact from my own narcissistic family including a mother who I believe to be a sociopath. I lost every family member. With growing trepidation, I realized the Christian God treated people just like my abusers. This included demanding perfection, Stockholm Syndrome threats--"Love me or burn in hell" and other attributes. I always felt like I was walking on eggshells in a religion that did nothing but remind me of constant imperfections and failings. This article summed up many issues I had with God.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/is-the-christian-relationship-with-god-healthy/

Also please google Theramin Trees on YouTube, and watch his videos
especially the one regarding "worshipping narcissists" and "Creating
sickness"I am not technically an atheist but an agnostic now. I do still ponder various forms of theism. The Christian God because too limited, too much of a human creation to me with it's vindictiveness and genocides in the Old Testament. Jesus's sacrifice was an evolution out of other ancient pagan religions that demanded blood and human sacrifice. This  is far more obvious in Catholicism then Protestant and evangelical churches. As you know I am ex-Catholic as well, and we were taught to really believe we were drinking Christ's actual body and blood.

http://historicalhoney.com/8-ancient-cultures-practiced-ritual-human-sacrifice/

http://formerfundy.blogspot.com/2009/10/human-sacrifices-and-death-of-jesus.html

Reza Aslan who wrote the book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth believed that Jesus was an actual human being who fought against the opressions of Rome, that had divinity and legends added to him later. One thing described in that book that stands out to me, is how Aslan makes it clear, that Christianity the religion was born out of the crisis of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. With Jesus, I look at the decent teachings and imagine a man teaching those as a good moral teacher like others, we have had on this earth and realize so much could have been added by the church system later to consolidate power and money.

Scientists have discovered that there are a trillion galaxies, in the knowable universe and this is just the area where our telescopes and radio technologies can reach, so the Christian god became too limited to me. I still consider the possibility of there being a God, though he or she or it, may be beyond human understanding. One atheist vlogger, Darkmatter2525 on youtube, did a video where he had two religious people and an atheist die, and show up in front of God. He had his "God" character state to the Christian, "So you want to believe I torture people!?" and the God figure is very upset. What part of humanity even went so low as to even think of a place like hell, that didn't even exist in the Judaism of the Old Testament?

I've seen a lot of evil in this life as you know. Even then, with my life on the hard setting compared to the American lifestyle, millions have had it far worse. A concentration camp victim even once wrote, "When I see God, he will have to apologize to me". I used to worry about something, I'd pray for money for a bill or help with something else and then think of the people starving in our world or who had everyone they knew blown up under a bomb and think what makes me so special? It all felt like whistling by the graveyard, begging for the game of chance to spare us. There can be a certain classist narcissism in segments of American Christianity like when a middle class housewife brags of praying for a parking space and finding it. One wonders then about the ones praying to stay alive of terminal cancer or of those who have lost children, and it seems to all be a confusing muddle. Intervention to me, because a joke., While I had loving people come and help me in this life, many times, God seemed indifferent to many people. Thoughts and prayers devoid of action, didn't help anyone.

I understand what drives all this, people want a God that cares. Deconversion boards are full of people who tell stories like, "I just wanted God to show love or that he cared". People want rescued from the endless horrors this world offers. Humanity suffers from the giant pressure of knowing of their own personal demise coming one day and perhaps this has sparked off a madness of sorts. Add to this the grief of losing loved ones and wanting to see them one day, and this is one reason religion has kept such a strong hold.

The story that some people ate an apple or "had sex" [The Gnostic's theory about the Garden of Eden] or attained human consciousness with "knowledge of good and evil" where humans moved from animal to human consciousness in the story of Adam and Eve to describe why humans need to be punished so severely no longer cut it for me. God could forgive without blood, so yes, I asked if the Christian god was a positive force or not or if it even existed or was merely a human creation. So I am not an atheist but an agnostic who dreams of a better God, or "Source" as my fellow UUs call it. I do not think Christianity is valid anymore in describing the nature of reality. The Being that drowned million of babies in the OT in the flood or threatens with eternal torture is not kind and compassionate. I believe this is a very human creation. I have returned to the Unitarian Universalist Association.|

 Satan is the comic book nemesis to keep the whole machine running. Good and evil dictate that some is wrong with a religion especially in fundamentalist Christianity where most burn, and most human beings end up in the worse circumstances possible. So much pain and horror are then unleashed. Here I will recommend a book for you by David Quinn called Ishmael. I read the first but plan to read the whole series. I realized Christianity and other religions were built on the nation-state's desire for a strong-man-God to match the strong-men of the newly growing civilizations that came with the invention of agriculture. Reza Aslan in his book, God: A Human History makes it clear, that God and religion massively changed after the invention of agriculture.

Evil sadly is enabled in religion and reality is distorted to the point of harm. .In my case to recover from the narcissistic abuse, I had to learn to define reality and deal with what was actually true instead of what I wished to be true. This impacted all of my life.  Being handed magical thinking and distorted reality especially in fundamentalist Christianity, did me a great disservice. It taught me to live in denial, and ignore and not confront what happened to me. It was like a lullaby that lured me to sleep, giving my narcissists far more power and control over me, as my religion told me to be submissive, accommodating and forgiving of abusers. I was told to be passive, to be accepting--none of them accepted me, to forgive and forget and told never to talk about the negative which by the way had the reverse affect of worsening depression and negativity and blocked me from the good. Just like my narcissistic family told me to deny reality, sadly my fundamentalist religion did too. In my case, I had to wake up on both fronts and deal with what was true.

While there are good and kind Christian people and some are in my life, I saw a lot of evil enabled in Christianity. With scapegoats,and abuse victims, I noticed without fail, that their abusers were the ones to be forgiven and redeemed even without repentance and the abused were often the ones told they were wrong for making a stand. I started questioning the idea of perfection and a started to ponder why would a perfect God expect imperfect beings to be measure up to his standards? It seemed unfair and that seemed narcissistic as well. I would ask questions like, "Where is the love and compassion as humanity is just put under a giant threat of burning in hell?" and also came to the conclusion, "I don't want cold, cruel and scary gods who demand I be perfect or perfect by proxy--Jesus, to be accepted and loved.

The Christian religion doesn't work for me anymore. Some have found love and meaning in it but for me personally it no longer worked. I found the God of the Bible cruel beyond measure. I also had the personal revelation of when I went no contact from a family that scapegoated me for decades, Why did I belong to a religion that honored scapegoating? While Jesus had good teachings, I wondered about the entire system of atonement and the good and kind son, being forced to submit to an oppressive father demanding blood and extreme obedience. Why were humans stuck in this parental paradigm of oppressive fathers that were owned submission unto death? Also the idea of Justice in Christian theology, made no sense to me either. The price shouldn't be blood for ANYTHING. That is brutal animal like desires. No enlightened being of any worth or conscience would demand
blood. We consider mob bosses who demand vendettas or blood for pay-back to be sociopaths. Why shouldn't we expect better of our God?

Some people have questioned the idea  of God and explored it deep, even asking if a god or Gods, could be some super-advanced alien intelligent life. How would we know? Star Trek even conceived of "Q" an alien being that had no limitations.  Christianity's definition of God became too limited for me.  The only conclusion I could come to is that the Christian God is a human creation since it has so many negative attributes of humans, positive ones of course appear as well. One question to ask yourself too, "Can this God even truly understand human suffering when it does not understand human limitations?" Even Jesus inside had to know he would rise again, being spared the worrisome thoughts about future non-existence or where he would end up. Some liberal theologians say God became human {Jesus} to learn empathy for human beings, but then why wasn't hell closed down and the system changed then? Yes I know this can be complex. The idea of blood atonements stopped making any sense to me and is a negative outcome of complex human history.

I believe a "Creator" God is possible, but a God that created trillions of galaxies is going to be something greater, better and more complex then a limited Christian god that demands blood sacrifices and gets upset over some people wearing two kinds of fiber at the same time or other sins as detailed in the bible. If such a God exists, the god of a trillions of galaxies and other life in the universe, it would not be petty, it would not be demanding blood atonements. Native tribes believed in a "Great Spirit", the Skihs have their version of God too. There are other religions that believe in a God outside of the blood atonement/sacrificing Abrahamic religions.

While I do believe a Creator God of some sort is possible, I do not see this God as intervening due to the nature of this planet. I do not know the reasons why or why not. In the UU, I can explore different facets and theories about the divine. Some atheists are at the point they cannot believe in a God at all. I have seen this quote before.

“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?”
― Epicurus


Another point I want to make, I realized as I went deep into Christianity, I could not be happy knowing millions in hell were burning. My husband never converted, you see. I am glad he never did now but at the time, I thought if he goes to hell, I could never happy.  Only a tyrant would separate a couple in love over beliefs.

We used to make jokes with each other, as a Christian, I would say get saved and get in the easy way, but he would joke you can come rescue me, a la that movie "When Dreams May Come." This brought questioning to me too. There was too much that didn't make sense here, and too much that was absurd.  I thought "Who was I being saved from?" and "Who was causing the original problems?"and questioned a religious system that wanted to rule me by fear.  When I was a Christian, three non-Christian close friends of mine died and according to my churches, they were now roasting forever in torture, I had witnessed to them all, so they heard the gospel, so no get out clauses there. The cognitive dissonance became unbearable. How on earth could I love a Being who was so eager to hurt the ones I loved. What was I to think?

If I died, and this stuff was true and I somehow ended up in heaven--yes I know you believe I am going to hell now for sure---and there was even one person I loved roasting in hell, I am the type of person who would push down the barricades no matter what it took to rescue them. For my husband, who I love beyond words the same would apply. If your God does exist, and it sends me to hell over all these thoughts and beliefs, well then it is better I am not with it anyhow."


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Well that was the core of the email. I am a far better off person a year in. It helped clear my mind so much. Some of us who do deconvert, have lingering fears, that our religious indoctrinated in us, but I know this will get better as time goes on. My life in my UU fellowship has been a happy one. I want religion to be a positive force in my life, that no longer divides me from people. Fundamentalist Christianity is very harmful on a multitude of levels. We were taught it was a "sin" to question our beliefs even which keeps many people in a lot longer. I know there's more positive forms of Christianity and some will say that I did encounter the most toxic, and that is true. I was a Catholic too, and left that church as well earlier in my life. I no longer believe in the religion as a whole but I hope I can get some Christians even to think about toxic elements in their churches and religion that are bringing harm to many people. With religion, one wants beliefs that are life giving, not life harming. One should ask yourself whatever your beliefs, if they are bringing more love and kindness into your life or not.

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