My soul looks back and wonders how I could have believed all that craziness.

"Believe that you receive it and ye shall have it," the man said. It was written. so when the prophet Kenneth Hagin came to my church, I went up for prayer, fully expecting that when he laid his hands on me, the power of god would flow through his hands and my ears would pop open and I'd be able to hear a gnat piss on cotton. I expected my eye sight to be so clear I could see the boogers up an ant's nose.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened, so I made excuses.  My faith was the problem. Maybe what I thought was faith wasn't really. Maybe there'll be a delayed effect. Maybe I'm doing something to hinder my faith. Maybe I put my faith in the man instead of in god. Maybe everything except this stuff is a bunch of crap.

I was indoctrinated in the Word of Faith movement. Then I went to a Christian university with heavy Calvinist leanings. Trying to reconcile the teachings of these two divergent denominations nearly drove me insane. I became afraid of death. Not my death, but the death of those around me. I didn't trust god to keep people alive unless I prayed for them with faith.I  didn't have enough faith for a routine healing. How was I going to have enough faith to stay the hand of the Grim Reaper? Besides I didn't know what to pray for. I prayed for one uncle and another one died.

If what I experienced weren't clinical panic attacks, they might as well have been. After a while, I got tired of putting myself through so many emotional changes.  It would still be decades before I gave my  "personal relationship with Jesus" the deep six, but all this laid the foundation for me to question a religion that promised the world but delivered explanations.

Everyone who gets scammed by a con artists...be it religion or a phony real estate deal...walks away saying "how could I be so stupid."

It's easy.  In both cases you were worked over by professional crooks.

Good job getting out of there, Rhonda

Don't feel bad about having believed it, religion is designed to fool and emotionally blackmail people, otherwise it would just die out

Yeah, don't feel bad.

I chuckled at the insect references

It's important to recognize that our brains are wired for emotion. It isn't even physiologically possible for us to examine something with pure logic without going through an emotional filter. Some of us have more control over that filter than others, it seems. We are not creatures of pure logic though; we have our limitations.

(May 9, 2015 at 1:36 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Everyone who gets scammed by a con artists...be it religion or a phony real estate deal...walks away saying "how could I be so stupid."

It's easy.  In both cases you were worked over by professional crooks.

That might be the nicest post of yours I have ever read.


To Rhondazvous:

It is also easier to con people when they are young and impressionable.  Everyone starts off naive and dependent, ignorant of the ways of the world, and one typically learns to trust those who protect and raise one.  Think of all of the children who are suckered into believing in Santa and all sorts of other nonsense.  Pretty much anyone can be conned, and pretty easily, too, if we are talking about when the person is young and impressionable.

So, you being conned when young does not make you more inherently foolish than people generally are.  You just lack a superhuman ability to always know the truth, like everyone else.

I'm not striving for Miss Congeniality, Py.

Min:

(May 9, 2015 at 1:36 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Everyone who gets scammed by a con artists...be it religion or a phony real estate deal...walks away saying "how could I be so stupid."

It's easy.  In both cases you were worked over by professional crooks.

You never lied. they saw me coming.

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(May 9, 2015 at 1:42 pm)Neimenovic Wrote: Good job getting out of there, Rhonda

Don't feel bad about having believed it, religion is designed to fool and emotionally blackmail people, otherwise it would just die out

"Emotional blackmail." There you go!

(May 9, 2015 at 3:44 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I'm not striving for Miss Congeniality, Py.

It was intended as a compliment, not as something else.  You demonstrated genuine compassion and understanding.  Is that a bad thing?  I don't think so, whatever anyone else might imagine.