Thanks to all for your kind words. I escaped from Teen Challenge about a month ago. The institution claims the doors are wide open but they make it psychologically difficult for anyone to leave before the year is up. I spent 8 months in the program, but had nowhere to go until I started fundraising for the organization and was able to make just enough incentive money for a bus ticket back to familiarity. That was the only way to make money there since they don’t allow anyone to work. I went door to door to southern California houses or outside of a store asking for money for the ministry. If you make $81, you get $3 for yourself and it increases by $3 for every $7 you make above $81. $193 raised will max you out at $20. I’m just not that good at selling what I don’t believe in so I wasn’t the best of fundraisers, but I managed just enough to make it back to where I called “home” on a Greyhound ($170). I just didn’t want to be homeless in a strange city.
When you express a desire to leave, staff tries to talk you out of it, professing that you made a “commitment to god” to be here a year and that the “pull of satan” is calling you. They drag their feet in doing anything to help you leave. By the time 8 months in the program had gone by, every peer in the program had fallen prey to the delusion they were under and you were a pariah if you expressed any disbelief in anything in the Bible. The church that sent me to San Diego would not help with a ticket back until you complete the program.
Anyway, I made it back to my home town and am staying with a couple of friends. Unfortunately, one of the friends is a Bible thumper (I am listening to Joel Osteen right now on TV as I write this. Ha! It just never ends, does it?). I am a voracious reader. When I had a “normal” life I used to go through 2 books a week, and had a personal library of over 4000 books. One of the things I absolutely resented about Teen Challenge was the fact that secular books were simply not allowed and could be considered a dismissible offense. As soon as I got back to the Springs I went to the library and checked out Dawkins’ “God Delusion,” Hitchens’ “God is Not Great,” and just finished Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith.” Just for good measure, I got the new Stephen King book too. I had to get myself deprogrammed.
I haven’t “talked” to anyone about what happened to my wife. This is why maybe I may find a forum like this cathartic. In Teen Challenge I found the hypocrisy astounding. “Advisors” there would tell me to “pray about it” and that she is “in a better place.” The Bible, however, the very book that they base their lives on, does not indicate that she is in a “better place.” In fact, she being an unbeliever, would now be burning in hell. I found it interesting that none of the advisors would say this directly, instead simply danced around the issue. Sam Harris says “religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.” This sort of “moderation” may not be ignorance, but either a lack of guts to tell me to my face what they thought was the truth, or simply a reluctance to believe in their own doctrine. Teen Challenge is associated with the Assemblies of God branch of the church, and we had many Pentecostal preachers come to our church, which was required 8 times a week sometimes. They were not known to be Christian “moderates.”
So, I am here again looking for a meaningless, low paying job again surrounded by a world that is mostly deluded with fantasy, mythology, and superstition. I hear Mcdonalds is hiring. When are they not?
I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, or any of that. I actually have quite a sense of humor and find much of life to be simply hilarious. My attitude can be mostly summed up by the look Jim (Jon Krasinski) from “The Office” gives the camera when idiocy occurs around him.
When you express a desire to leave, staff tries to talk you out of it, professing that you made a “commitment to god” to be here a year and that the “pull of satan” is calling you. They drag their feet in doing anything to help you leave. By the time 8 months in the program had gone by, every peer in the program had fallen prey to the delusion they were under and you were a pariah if you expressed any disbelief in anything in the Bible. The church that sent me to San Diego would not help with a ticket back until you complete the program.
Anyway, I made it back to my home town and am staying with a couple of friends. Unfortunately, one of the friends is a Bible thumper (I am listening to Joel Osteen right now on TV as I write this. Ha! It just never ends, does it?). I am a voracious reader. When I had a “normal” life I used to go through 2 books a week, and had a personal library of over 4000 books. One of the things I absolutely resented about Teen Challenge was the fact that secular books were simply not allowed and could be considered a dismissible offense. As soon as I got back to the Springs I went to the library and checked out Dawkins’ “God Delusion,” Hitchens’ “God is Not Great,” and just finished Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith.” Just for good measure, I got the new Stephen King book too. I had to get myself deprogrammed.
I haven’t “talked” to anyone about what happened to my wife. This is why maybe I may find a forum like this cathartic. In Teen Challenge I found the hypocrisy astounding. “Advisors” there would tell me to “pray about it” and that she is “in a better place.” The Bible, however, the very book that they base their lives on, does not indicate that she is in a “better place.” In fact, she being an unbeliever, would now be burning in hell. I found it interesting that none of the advisors would say this directly, instead simply danced around the issue. Sam Harris says “religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.” This sort of “moderation” may not be ignorance, but either a lack of guts to tell me to my face what they thought was the truth, or simply a reluctance to believe in their own doctrine. Teen Challenge is associated with the Assemblies of God branch of the church, and we had many Pentecostal preachers come to our church, which was required 8 times a week sometimes. They were not known to be Christian “moderates.”
So, I am here again looking for a meaningless, low paying job again surrounded by a world that is mostly deluded with fantasy, mythology, and superstition. I hear Mcdonalds is hiring. When are they not?
I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, or any of that. I actually have quite a sense of humor and find much of life to be simply hilarious. My attitude can be mostly summed up by the look Jim (Jon Krasinski) from “The Office” gives the camera when idiocy occurs around him.
