Request from a Christian.

[pocaracas]

I want personal testimonies of how Christians treat atheists, admonishment from families, disownment. etc etc.

You know?...
There are a few of those stories floating around the forum.
I can't remember many, but I'm sure searching around can yield some results...
Here's one: https://atheistforums.org/thread-26473-p...#pid680756

It's a matter of using the correct keywords, in the Search Page

[Dragonspride1995]

Well, a few of my atheist friends on facebook told me to give you guys another shot I will post my testimony. Please bear in mind this is not why you should believe, but it is why I believe.
This is kinda like a journal for me, I update it as I go thats why I like to keep it in the cloud so people can go back to it if they want and read any updates. But here you go

This isn't my whole life story, im trying to keep it concise.

I was born in 1995. To my mother Jody she was married to Tom at the time, but she had slept with my father Joseph, getting herself pregnant. She also had in the past Children from another man, Ely Cody and Amber. Because of her life's choices she relied on drugs and alcohol to get through her daily struggle. She did these while I was in her womb. Which inevitably led to mental and physical problems both for her, and myself.  Because of these problems she had in her life I was going to be taken away by family services with Eli Cody and Amber.

When Jody had me, she had help taking care of me, by Tom's mom Barbara. Who made the choice to adopt me (making me my mothers, and fathers brother, Its montana give me a break lol) And they brought me up under a Christian household, and I made my decision to give my life to Christ at Five years old.

My brothers and sister were not so lucky, they went through social services to a family known as the bakers. There was much physical, sexual and mental abuse leading them to have many of the same problems that my mother had.  

Ron and Barb were called by the holy spirit to move away to  montana on a mission, to spread the word of Jesus Christ, and to help the local Churches. In bozeman we were a part of what is called Rocky Mountain Bible Mission, which was a headquarters of operations for missionaries all over the world. So we moved from a town with a population of over I estimate one hundred thousand, to a town of a population of maybe two thousand. I was about nine at the time.

Once we got there we started to work with local churches, I got intertwined with Awanas and Boy Scouts and grew up your stereotypical Christian childhood. Because of this I was looked down upon, even in the Christian school, I was bullied had chocolate milk dumped on my head. But I made it through grade school. But it paid its price on me, I started gaining weight, hating school, and everything to do with it. Something I still despise.


I moved to public school, and because of my weight and my beliefs I was still bullied so I took up martial arts. And that gave me the courage to carry on. Along with the help of a friend I made in awanas, austin grabel. I ended up dropping out of highschool my sophomore year because I was deep in depression, I had completely rejected society. I had what I thought was the armor of God, I only let humor though, I grew very good at hiding my feelings or what you would call stoicism. But inside I was spiraling deeper and deeper into depression even going so far to contemplate suicide.

During my time with austin we had many adventures together, but we were opposite personalities, he was deep into sports I was deep into video games, but we made it work. One night we were up late playing minecraft, and I saw what looked like a skeleton hand rake across the screen, we looked at each other our faces turned white, and we looked back and there was a transparent skull over the screen. I got what felt like a kick in the gut, but the feeling didn’t go away my spine felt like it was tingling and I felt like I was on fire. A feeling that I didn’t recognise until year later.

I Re-Dedicated my Life to God one night. When I was crying the holy spirit came to me, and I felt like I was on fire once again. All I felt was joy and I know that I am saved, and I want to continue my life working for him. And doing His will.

After 2 years of trying different things I decided to get my HISET wich is basicly a GED, I had a choice of two more years of highschool at the age of twenty or to get my GED, I obviously took the smarter choice and got my GED, I went to the class about 12 days and I had passed all the tests with flying colors,  and graduated second of my class.

After about a year my dog died, and I got in contact with a woman named darianne, she was 21 at the time and I was 20, she showed me empathy, and we started going to Church together,  She was living with her parents at the time, and had a past of sexual abuse from older men. Which gave her what I would call a mental block, very similar to what I experienced from my time in school, we got closer and closer, however she was going through a divorce with a man who had left her to join the military, during their relationship he had some spousal abuse, much that I won't get into but gave her religious grounds for divorce. This was when I came into the picture, because of my past I could sense her pain and we fell into love. But we promised we would not date till the day she planned to go through the divorce. A day that her parents had lied about. They saw her as the mentally retarded child. And treated her very poorly, she started to rely on me for emotional support and spent much of her time on a skype call from her phone and the way they treated her made me furious, I was ready to charge in their and do things I will not admit. This drove us closer, and we ended up necking, kissing or what some may know as making out, she got a hickey her parents saw then forced us apart. We had planned to get back together after the divorce on valentine's day, on that day she left me.

After that I went back into my downward spiral, but this time it drove me to God. I felt his presence, but I did start to pray for death. I felt what is the point of living in this world when it is so crazy. So I started to look for other things to take my mind away from the pain, and I found politics, and dived deep into religion. I started to learn about occult practice and realised that I was in a hotspot. Everything from wiccan practice to a satanic cult of azeroth. That had attacked a local church I went to.

Before valentines day, I was hanging out with a member of my youth group at my pastors house, and somehow demonology came up. He was a converted wiccan, he believed and practiced magic. We started talking to him and his eyes went black, he went into the fetal position and his voice went very low. He was possessed, Both my pastor and his wife lept into action, they started immediately praying, and talking to him. He cried out for Jesus, and we started praying. I felt like I was on fire again. The power of the holy spirit was at work. Then their was what felt like a shock wave went off on my friend. The demon was banished to hell. And my friend gave his life over to Christ. And that was the first experience with what I knew was a demon. I knew that I was a weapon of the holy spirit.

Tuesday August 16th I heard about a black mass taking place in oklahoma, I got a feeling in my gut that I had not felt for a long time. My spine felt like it was tingling. I was being driven by the holy spirit to action. I sent a email to the main prayer group of rocky mountain bible church then I called local pastors and went to my own church and prayed with the pastor's wife. Then I went to a christian's house and asked them to spread the word. The next day I had learned that their was a massive march on the black mass, Christians had shown up and prayed, there was low attendance. And their was an earthquake the next day. The holy spirit had answered our prayer.

This is my testimony, my life's story, it will constantly be updated as I live longer and gain more experience. But I shall live for Christ, and continue fight against evil. And allow him to work through me as his servant.

---

Thankyou, And it is nice to meet you. I had thought I made this abundantly clear.

---

To fully admit my bias, On one hand, Christians are shunned from society. Especially the public sphere. There is a bit of the Bible modern Christians seem to forget, it is the Fruits of the Spirit. And when they come online in places like this anonymity gives them a Big head. Furthermore "Cults" like the westboro baptist church with their "God hates Fags" don't help relations much. A Lot of times when I am debating atheists or even just talking over theology it seems that they have never had a good experience with a Christian. And the stories they tell don't exactly give me a good taste in my mouth either. Maybe I want to wright this book to make it easier to evangelise, I don't know. That's why I'm not sure if I am going to write the book or not. But for now I see a problem. Christian Bigotry and pure vitriol. I see a corruption in the church. And it makes me... well angry. The message you guys are getting, and the message we want to send does not seem to be the same. And it needs to be fixed. To be honest, I have seen this during the american election at plain work. There is a gigantic schism between what is perceived about a person or a group. And what they intend, or the meaning behind what they are trying to send. It may be just tribalism at work. But I think both sides would benefit of just some good discussion. With the book I'd like to show my side that you are not a bunch of satanic monsters looking to steal their Children away from them. And your side that we are not all bad.

---

Well im glad you guys don't have a fantasy to act out Julius Caesar. But that's not why I was going to leave. Some times the anonymity of the internet makes it harder to have real discussions.

What do you mean by "real" discussions? 

You really type and hit submit a claim and we are really going to tell you what we think of that claim. 

If you came up to me and claimed "The Cubs won the Superbowl" what would you have me say to that "That's nice" or "I agree". No, if you claimed that my answer is going to rightfully be "bullshit". 

Do you even want to consider that there has never been anything called a God or god or gods? Do you even want to consider that humans merely make them up? Or did you expect us to simply roll over, because that is not what we do here.

Except its not a claim, that is my testimony, my life story. It's not up for debate, and honestly if you don't believe it I don't care. That is not the point of the thread. I only posted it to forge a connection within this thread because I am asking for personal experiences.

[Nay_Sayer]

Whats a Cbristian ?

[Cyberman]

A species of cdesign proponentsist.

[Brian37]

What do you mean by "real" discussions? 

You really type and hit submit a claim and we are really going to tell you what we think of that claim. 

If you came up to me and claimed "The Cubs won the Superbowl" what would you have me say to that "That's nice" or "I agree". No, if you claimed that my answer is going to rightfully be "bullshit". 

Do you even want to consider that there has never been anything called a God or god or gods? Do you even want to consider that humans merely make them up? Or did you expect us to simply roll over, because that is not what we do here.

Except its not a claim, that is my testimony, my life story. It's not up for debate, and honestly if you don't believe it I don't care. That is not the point of the thread. I only posted it to forge a connection within this thread because I am asking for personal experiences.

No, that is merely your claim of what you perceive. The problem with our species, and I am not being mean here, the problem with our evolution as a species is that it is far more often that is notoriously flawed. "Personal experiences" are just that. That is your story, but only 1 on a planet of  7 billion. 

Are you looking for other theists here, there are plenty, but as far as listening to atheists, at best you will get stories about how we were where you were at and why we left. I wouldn't suggest you get easily offended here, you won't enjoy your stay. I would suggest you consider that we might know something you don't know.

[Dragonspride1995]

Whats a Cbristian ?

you know perfectly well its just a spelling error.

[Brian37]

Whats a Cbristian ?

you know perfectly well its just a spelling error.

I have ADD myself and am a horrible speller myself. I try to pay attention to the red underlines as much as possible. That was a mere joke on their part. 

Your bigger error which most of the world does in every religion, is thinking that a deity or club is required for life to exist.

You might want to consider that humans are a result of evolution, not magic. That our planet and universe are a result of a "what" and not a "who". 

Our planet has had 5 mass extinction events in it's 4 billion years. Of which what you see today is a mere 1% and 99% of life has gone extinct since the start of evolution. 

Our sun is on star of billions in our galaxy. A galaxy so big it takes 1 ray of light at the speed of light 100,000 years to cross. That is in a 13.8 billion year old universe with 100s of billions of galaxies. 

It would seem to me quite a ton of waste to for an allegedly perfect and all powerful being to do all that and place us here late in evolution only 200,000 years ago, then to wait to only 10,000 years ago to give us the gift of the first writings and cities. Then even up until today  fight over which religion is right.

Your spelling error is the least of my concerns personally. Your logic however is far more concerning to me, considering most humans like to mix their beliefs with politics, and that does affect me.

[AFTT47]

DragonsPride1995,

You seem to be convinced that atheism is a result of atheists being treated badly by Christians. That might be true in some cases - it certainly doesn't help your cause - but for the most part, atheists are atheists because they have critically examined Christian claims and come to the logical conclusion that Jesus = Santa Clause for adults. It has nothing to do with the behavior of "bad Christians". As I said, that doesn't help your cause but the elephant in the room is that the claims of Christianity are batshit insane. That is the primary reason for the existence of atheists. Your claims of Jesus have all the credibility of The Great Pumpkin in the Peanuts Halloween show.

Some Christians are indeed assholes but they are not the primary movers of atheism. Atheism exists (and is growing) because no religion makes credible claims. You're all spouting crap equivalent to The Great Pumpkin. It's that simple.

[Dragonspride1995]

DragonsPride1995,

You seem to be convinced that atheism is a result of atheists being treated badly by Christians. That might be true in some cases - it certainly doesn't help your cause - but for the most part, atheists are atheists because they have critically examined Christian claims and come to the logical conclusion that Jesus = Santa Clause for adults. It has nothing to do with the behavior of "bad Christians". As I said, that doesn't help your cause but the elephant in the room is that the claims of Christianity are batshit insane. That is the primary reason for the existence of atheists. Your claims of Jesus have all the credibility of The Great Pumpkin in the Peanuts Halloween show.

Some Christians are indeed assholes but they are not the primary movers of atheism. Atheism exists (and is growing) because no religion makes credible claims. You're all spouting crap equivalent to The Great Pumpkin. It's that simple.

No this is not the case. I'm trying to write a book based on the personal experiences atheists have with Christians. IGHT everyone, lets say this one more time, This book has nothing to do with theology, it is meant to clean up the church and hold my fellow Christians to the same standard I hold myself too. And they hold others too. I will now be ignoring future posts like this one.

Now to respond to your opinions. Great on ya mate, you are entitled to them

[chimp3]

Now to respond to your opinions. Great on ya mate, you are entitled to them

Why would I or anyone else on this forum want to participate in your book? If I wanted to write a book about christian behavior towards atheists I am capable of doing so.

---

@dragonspride1995: 

Your time on this forum is too short to judge whether your behavior towards atheists is exemplary. But , in my opinion Catholic Lady and neo-scholastic are two Christians to model after. Catholic Lady for her spiritual optimism and nonjudgemental personality. Neo-scholastic for his consideration of atheists ability to debate on a collegiate level.