Hola
Offline I'm an SOB.
That's son of a baptist.
I was born and raised in a fundamentalist church with my dad as a pastor.
When I was in my early 20's I was very religious, Campus Crusade, etc.
I finally broke free in my mid 20's after doing a lot of research and thought.
I've never felt more free or more natural.
My brother has a double Masters in Divinity and something else from Liberty University (yeah that's right Falwell's school)
and is a pre-doctoral student at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Yeah we get into it a lot =) but to their credit they didn't disown me or anything like that.
It does make me sad that my brother who is other wise a brililant and logical person has this huge
spot of denial when it comes to religion.
"Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such."
Homer Simpson
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Oh and btw.
Sterculius is the lesser roman god of agriculture assistant to Saturn. Specifically the god of manure.
Irony ftw.
"Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such."
Homer Simpson
Welcome!
I am glad to hear your family hasn't kicked you to the curb or anything
Isn't it amazing what a black hole that "spot of denial" is ~ it is even more frustrating when the person seems to want to learn and has average to above average intelligence.
Have fun here, jump right into conversations!
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Wow, you were in Campus Crusade for Christ and broke free? Quite a journey! Congratulations on breaking free. What do you think about your life and what you believed when you look back on a time in that? What helped you break free?
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Well, it's been a long time ago now.
I'm 38 now so i've been free for about 15 years now.
I look back on my life and times in religion and I have mixed feelings.
In one sense I look back on that time of my life with regret at not having enjoyed college more.
It's ok though because I've made up for it since then.
I feel as though I was born into religion and brainwashed early on so I never had much chance to think about
what I was doing. It's almost like you're kept busy with this activity or that to keep you occupied and not thinking.
Finally I moved out of my parents house and also saw more of the hypocrisy behind the scenes
in religious organizations. That was my first wakeup call. Then I started to examine what I was really believing and what
the true basis of it was. After reading many arguments of many religions and philosophy I had that moment of breaking that Nietzsche talks about in Human, All Too Human. It's a scary moment to discover that your entire life has been based on
lies. Well, after the initial panic passed I felt overwhelming relief. I never looked back. I regret wasting the time I'll never get back but to me regret is a useless deal so I don't beat myself up about that too much. I'm just glad I came to the truth. I know many folks who have never gotten out.
I look back on what I believed and honestly it's just silly. I'm also shocked by the disgusting and dishonest tactics used by CCFC and other christian organizations to convince people to convert using spurious logic, etc. Basically, I believed in creationist, fundamentalist, judgemental nonsense.
Now, I have a common sense view of ethics, morallity, and reality.
"Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such."
Homer Simpson
Welcome!
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
hey, man, i was in crusade too! i went on summer projects to slovakia, worked on STINT in slovakia for two years (met my wife through it, actually, and now i live there), and was even on staff for about a year until i couldn't take their bullshit anymore and quit.
truth be told, even as a christian i found crusade weird and cultish. luckily i was on a catalytic campus with no staff, so i pretty much lived college life how i wanted. i drank, had casual sex--it was wonderful. and no, i never felt conflicted about it all. i was admittedly a pick-and-choose christian.
honestly i joined STINT more or less as an expedient. i wanted to travel and see more of europe. sure i wanted to "share christ," but i never pressured anyone in the way crusade wants you to. i was one of those black sheep staff members who gets "talked to" all the time. that's probably why i didn't last long. i was a graduate of a very liberal religion program with a faculty of top-notch experts in their fields, so i remember being outraged at having to take those laughably stupid IBS courses. one of the things i got "talked to" for was constantly asking the "professor" deep theological questions and arguing with him. he didn't even have the guts to confront me, instead he sicced my "coach" on me.
hey, have you ever read the cartoon "which circle"? it's written and drawn by an ex-staff member and an ex-student leader and it's a HILARIOUS parody of CCC. anyone who's ever been involved with cru knows it's spot-on. even while i was on staff i loved it.
so anyway, ROCK ON! we're finally free of the bill bright bullshit!
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Yeah I know all too well. I went on a stateside summer project in Wildwood, NJ and I remember going down for spring break to Daytona beach to witness to the heathen. Yeah that was a week I'd like back
I saw some wild crazy crap that made me quit as well involving someone who was supposedly demon possessed and an exorcism.
After seeing that I started majorly questioning things because to me it was obvious the guy was just off his meds.
Oh well, glad it happened. Freaked me out in a lot of ways and started me asking questions of my 'handlers' that they couldn't answer either.
Eventually the campus was de-staffed and I got on with my searching in peace. Upon graduation I never really looked back.
"Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such."
Homer Simpson
Welcome!
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.