Adama wrote:Winston wrote:Great questions. I had a much deeper struggle with my Christian faith though, during my teens. It was a slow recovery after i deconverted from it. I posted my story online. Many people have found my story moving and touching, including Christians.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Christian_Story.htm
For the next few years, little by little I gradually developed the courage to read books with ideas from other religions and New Age beliefs as well. For a while, each time I picked up one of these books, the words "Satan" and "blasphemy" would come to mind, but I as I learned more and became more confident in my new knowledge, those fears lessened and eventually diminished.
You kept at it until that part was shut. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up. This may have been when your mind became alienated from God, Winston. You were getting warnings, multiple warnings that what you were getting into was both Satanic and blasphemy. Yet you kept it up until those reminders of God just went away. All this is after you already accepted that Taoism is of Satan based on your previous Christian beliefs, yet you embraced it anyway.
Then Winston really believes that Murphy's Law is caused by artificial, alien intelligence, or many gods, or karma.
It was all weird to me and my Christian world view taught that Satan was behind these kind of things. But I thought oh well, being a Christian never helped me through those 2 hellish years anyway, so why not give Satan a chance at helping me?
You blamed God when you should have blamed yourself.
I couldn't get around the house or do normal things without performing rituals to cancel out bad thoughts over and over again.
There is no Christian ritual like this. When you performed this ritual, you were asking for exactly what happened to you. Performance of ritual is worship, but you did not perform it in service to God. That's how you got in trouble. You thought you were serving God. You were serving someone else. Just as chanting, yoga and meditation all invite those same things to happen to others.
Why should I have blamed myself? For what? For 2 hellish years in high school? I did nothing to cause them. I was in a toxic environment and nothing helped me. I felt God had abandoned me. It started in the summer of 1987. After I went to Taiwan, when I came back I felt different. I couldn't get back on fire for the Lord. I think what tore me apart was telling my relatives they were going to hell if they didn't accept Christ and feeling like a fool for it afterward. I could not reconcile a good just God with one that would send people to hell for all eternity, to suffer eternal torment without end. You know it makes no sense. Why would God want to torment anyone for an eternity? It sounds like the ultimate control by fear.
Plus I felt accepted in Taiwan whereas in the US, it was all toxic. No one liked me for me. No one cared about me. It felt alienating and I didn't know why. I could only blame myself, because that's what everyone does when they feel alienated.
Then my church and youth group started sucking in 1988. The people had changed and the new people seemed racist and made me feel excluded. It felt more and more cliquish. So I didn't even have a good youth group or church anymore. I felt like they just tolerated me and didn't really care for me. No true friends. I didn't know why though. High school environment was toxic. No one liked you for you. Yet you didn't know how to blame the environment, only yourself.
So everything went down hill sophomore year in 1988. Then in junior year in 1989, it got many times worse. All my friends ditched me and the school work became harder than before, yet I had no energy to do it. All I had was loneliness and alienation. I couldn't concentrate on harder schoolwork while being depressed. So my grades plummeted. That's when the OCD rituals got much worse. Two years earlier, my OCD rituals started out of nowhere. Then in 1989 they got much worse and took up hours of my time each day. I hated it. It felt like hell. The dark side of my life had arrived. I didn't know how to handle it. God wouldn't help. How is that my fault stupid Adama?!
Those rituals I did were part of OCD, had nothing to do with religion. Did you misunderstand Adama? Do you know what OCD is? Are you even an educated man? Or do you only know the Bible?
When the big earthquake of 1989 hit California, I lay there too depressed to move or care about it. I was hoping the roof over me would fall down and end my life so I could be out of my misery. It was that bad, yeah.
Eventually I dropped out of school and went to a rehab center in the hospital, which was filled mostly with druggies. I didn't really belong there, but my parents didn't know what to do with me. I enjoyed the hospital though. It had a nice swimming pool, volleyball, good food in the cafeteria, a nice hotel like room for me, arts and crafts, recreation room where I kicked everyone's ass at chess, a positive environment, etc. I enjoyed it there. It was friendly and I was living in luxury. I was sad to leave.
Then I went to another high school to get a fresh start, but just a few classes. No one bullied me there since they were from poorer families. After that I went to Taiwan for a year in 1990. There I felt accepted and free of the toxic vibe in high school. And had some friends too. So I was able to evolve and grow to be what I am. I became a vegetarian too. It helped clear my head. I began to be filled with ideas in my head, like a writer. Being out of such a majorly toxic environment like high school helped me heal and grow a lot. I was in the worst environment and the most incompatible environment in high school. That's murphy's law, always being placed in the most incompatible environment. I never experienced any bullying in Palo Alto and San Jose. If I had stayed there, none of this would have happened probably. Not all schools have bullying you know. Some don't. I don't know why.
In Taiwan, my mom went to a Taoist temple and did some rituals on me prescribed by the priest there. She felt that I was possessed, and still does today. She seems fixated on demonic or spiritual possession by dead souls for some reason. Even after the spell, the priest said I'd get better, but she was still fixated on the concept of possession. Even still is today. She told me that multiple psychics, including one taxi driver, said that I was possessed by dead souls, so it must be true.
You need to understand the real story Adama. Not just see what you want to see and accuse me like an asshole. Geez. There is no fricking way you can blame anything on me. Everything went south for me in 1989. I did nothing to cause that. I always go with the flow.
Regardless, when I came back to the US, my OCD had diminished a lot. I was able to function again, without any meds. Simply being abroad away from the toxic environment of high school, helped a lot. Psychologists should take note of that. With a clear mind, I was able to see the discrepancies and paradoxes in the Bible, which bothered me for a long time, and realize that it can't be true, there MUST be another answer. I felt SURE of it. That's when I felt FREE and CONFIDENT finally to step away from Christianity and seek other answers and not take it so seriously as absolute truth anymore. I just KNEW that there had to be other answers. That's how I was able to overcome my fears of "heresy" as Adama would put it, whereas Adama clearly has not become free, he is still attached and living in fear of his religion.
Did you read the "boy in Africa scenario" that I thought about on the plane, which finally freed my mind? If not, here it is again:
"There's something very wrong with Christianity here. I've known this a long time but was always afraid to face it. But since I value integrity of thought and a clear conscience, I might as well be honest now and face it no matter how blasphemous it may be. Now, I know that according to Christian teaching, billions of people out there in the world are going to go to hell because they're sinners and don't even know it. But why is it their fault when they don't even know it and were born with it? Sin to the Bible is any imperfection that we have, but since we were not born perfect no one can ever be perfect, so then why is it righteous to send them all to hell for an eternity for something they were born with? That's like sending Zebras to hell for being born with stripes! It just doesn't make sense no matter how hard you try to justify it. Now let's put myself in the place of a nonbeliever. Suppose I was a boy in Africa some time in the past who had lived and died without ever hearing the Gospel. This means that no matter how good or bad or anything I was, I was guaranteed to go to hell anyway not only because I was never saved, but because I was born a sinner as a result of the Fall of Man and never even knew it? This means that I would wake up someday before the judgment throne of God about to be thrown into hell for something I never even knew existed, which was sin. After being thrown into hell, I would be tormented for billions and trillions and zillions of years and beyond without end. All for something I never even knew existed. This would be the fate of billions of people who had lived and died throughout history without being saved! Now if I were that boy in Africa and had that fate, would I feel that that was fair in any way at all? To be honest, I wouldn't feel that that was fair in the least bit. In fact I would feel that that was 1000 percent unfair!!!!!! Something is definitely wrong here. Something is inherently not right about Christian theology. I am absolutely SURE about that! There's no question about it. There MUST be other answers out there somewhere that makes more sense than this! And I fully intend to find those answers from here on!"
At that time I knew that these thoughts I was having were blasphemous to the Christian faith, but since I was so SURE that there was something inherently wrong here, that certainty gave me the courage to continue to think these things through. That's when my search for truth, meaning and answers began.
Btw, my OCD is not really standard OCD. It's more like an obsession with perfection and non-interruption. You see, when something happens that I don't expect, like a sudden sound or itch on my body, it BREAKS my mental flow and once broken, it's like a string is cut. I can't get back to the flow of what I was doing before the interruption. So I engage in rituals to take me back in time to before the interruption so I can visualize it not happening in the first place, so that I can try to regain the flow again that was lost. It's very nervewracking and psychology has no name for it. When I told psychologists about this they had no name for it, only theories of possible combinations of mental disorders.
But what I have is actually common with deep thinkers and writers and philosophers. Arthur Schopenhauer mentioned it in his essay "On Noise" about how all deep thinking writers complain of noise bothering them a lot, more so than the average person, because somehow, deep thinkers cannot tune out noise like an average person can, as though they lacked some filtering mechanism inside their head that others have. I don't know why. But I doubt it has anything to do with demonic possession.
Also, it tends to be very minimal when I'm happy. But when I'm unhappy or depressed, like I get in Taiwan and USA, then it gets worse. So my mood and happiness level affect this weird undefined disorder a lot.
Anyway, try to understand my situation for what it is, not what you want it to be according to your religious beliefs Adama.
