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.
"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.
The god who allows children to be raped out of respect for the free will choice of the rapist, but punishes gay men for engaging in mutually consensual sex couldn't possibly be responsible for an intelligently designed universe.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
