Hello. well i had a groovy experience today....i desided not to go to church because i was in a confused atheistisc mindset.....i was recovering my internal peace today and didn't want to cause trouble in the church.....
but something happened... plot found me.
the pastor called to haraunge me about church attentence and wanted to share his sermon with me in attempt to pursuade me to "be in the right place at the right time" and that place of course was in his meetings.
his message was perfectly reasonable,and no argument from me about his biblical logic and intent except this.....
for me.....my morning experience had been in prayer, and just moments before he called i was praying for him.......my pray was a question to god about how come my pastor poo poos when i have a holy ghost revelation?
why he likes to hear about impressions and visions and spiritual agreement sometimes but stops me form speaking my specific impressions?
and whamo! the pastor called.
(forgive my psychosis i would like to say that is amen-able in my book)
how is it that his call and his massage happened to him this day?
for me the experience was nice i took it as a personal howdy do and confiding in me the pangs of our dwindling numbers.
i asked to interject and witnessed about how his calling to talk to me is an answer to a prayer and that he called me and i was home is the being in the right place and time for us.
he was impervious to reason.
i spoke clear, hopefully........i was in agreement by my perception not one thing he said was untrue for me..only difference was i was living the promise and he is wanting to watch the promise happening in his church.
he is very neigh mental breakdown by my interpretation.
his sermon did actually come out and say the trouble with the church is the people in it........he did pour out his blood today.
it broke my heart
it broke my mind
how do i interpret this........he is within his religion meme and seems to be heading toward insanity.
because he is too disappointed to question himself
that's my take on it anyway....at least that is a stage in the process i have personally been thru and know the pain of.
and otherwise.....if my experience today was merely my subjective reality..........here is what i gathered.......there where less than 30 people today. i gave the pastor a little humor of well at least the people i been praying for are here.
lol
anyway
i felt like the people where apathetic today...i felt like their discouragement was evident.......it was mine i guess. perhaps today my desire to cling died...........well i don't want to be deluded into thinking everyone feels like i do.
but today it seemed to be dripping from the pews and pulpit.
that's the trouble with mental illness........you can't even be sure your feeling the true impression, unless you ask, and you hope what you ask is not nuts..and it totally floors you when the other humans says i KNOW EXACTLY how you feel and you can dump it on them..........and then suddenly they freeze like you just pulled out your tit if you say ..yes that JUST like James told me.........
whose James...oh um.......my imaginary friend....ummm............weren't we just now agreeing to the content of our thoughts a second ago.
....
yeah but you credit your understanding to James and he is not real...
oh....i don't let that bother me.
anyway
(i told the pastor that my heart bleeds for him and if he'd forgive the harshness, i have lost my religion and i have found my faith....and what the church needs is evidence the living Christ within them and we have to admit that something in Christ message got lost over 2000 years. and though it can be found in the bible.. . its right in there...........the holy spirit in you teaching you.)
sure i used his illusion....the boy ain't ready for mine.
i pray for wisdom
i hope i am obedient
i pray mostly that his delicate and hurting mind have a smooth and faithful transition.
i did not like the idea of him having to go thru this pain... it is like dieing.
dieing hurts
something died in me today.
before when i lost my faith in religion........i took the view of it is just another religion and i can find truth relative to other truths in it.
it is not the interpretation of the bible you chose to obey for yourself.......i don't speak about that.
i speak of........the thing that died in me and is not like the first thing that died in me.
the first thing was boo hoo my bible is flawed and not the word of god.
but i kept getting reconverted.
(interpretation...delusion...desparation because well there is no other answer that does not involve my own painful dieing)
i could expound on that with many images but that takes me away from what i am having a hard time getting to.
this second thing that died makes me seem to see the emptiness of the words with non deludable starkness.
and i am thinking wheres the ones who are finding their god to be similar to my god, and using the christian frame work to understand him by??????? where are they
they where not in church today by my interpretation.
though i did get a little ranting on with Chris..
anyway again.... i think i have lost my point within all the above.
i have no point
even my grand personal christ complex is not my point.
its like i don't care.........and it is also like who am i to have personal happiness ( if i do have it at all ) or spiritual wisdom masked in any form you wanna speak it if.....general humanity does not speak form the personal heart anyway,
that's one rant......the other is HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW
i am tired of why
i answered all my whys........
now i need to know how.
how do i reach my pastor? how do i live their christian Jesus life and help them realise they can also with out the trappings of brainwashing?
well perhaps my jesus thing is my illusion.i don't want them to have my illusion, i want them to have the god they wanted.
but it is hard to describe and hard to teach and hard hard hard.
it is
it is
and painful
so do ya wanna get started?
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
ex christian partial testomonial
My tesomonial is difficult to reiterate because it has so many levels and backlashes.........i tried terribly hard to keep beliveing even toward seeking the gnostic scritputres but still finding the adherantes unenlightened by the teachings.
please forgive and or deal with my typos later, my message is not rehearsed, and might go off in tangents as life does.
I have deconverted and reconverted and deconverted again for various reasons. i have been seeking god since i was conscious enough to think he might be. i have been seeking truth since ever i heard there was a god. My paretns where atheist/ agnostic mother, and ex-catholic agnostic father.
My mother had grown up an a mildly religious good people family who went to church, and she became active in church and lost faith becasue of the very same reasons brought up by these people. My mother allowed me to make up my own mind and explore anything and at the first i chose chruch......when i was 8 i walked over a mile to go to a small baptist church alone. My first verse was "cast all your care upon him for he cares for you." and that was my god. i had not become a christian till i was 13 after a what seems miraculious happening that seemed pretty damend convincing that jesus god wanted me.
I had called an 800 number after the televalgilist show i thought it was a prayer number but .it was an ordering service. the man on the other end was a christian though, and talked to me , the spiritaully hungery teenager. But he was riskign his job because the ordering serivce was of course not "christian". As god would have it another man from my area called and got that operator and they talked about me and thus i was introduced to the man that converted me and disciplied me a good man, a bit "religious" ferverent about preaching and correcting false docotrine......it was a fun game....
I enjoyed being right and superior. i once borrowed a girl friends book of mormon so i could use it to mark all the things that where wrong with it in hopes that would convince her that my bible was right........(hey i was like 16 cut me some slack...it returned to huant me later when i realsied, shit i could do the same thing with my own text.) i am not sure how long or short to make this story but it is mine. i seriously doubt anyone will find it because their are so many on the site.
After a while i asked questions with no answer and vowed i would be a good preacher and able to handle these questions for others.......shit even in one of my deconversion times i helped a christian with chrsitian counsel and helped a pagan with pagan counsel..it started to dawn on me that wisdom and truth are true no matter who says it. and if god was truth then he should not care where we find it , but that we DO in deed find it.
So my life's quest is to know truth and to know god........my biblical hero was enoch , so i was going to know god. I did not ask much critically for a long while.....the indoctrination works for a long while and the guilt really ropes you in. You read books and books but find no actaul beliver who can discuss your issues. You find "religion" even when i studied buddhsim and hindu and tao i steered right clear of religion and looked for somethign undeniable. For i figured i would find god in something that meets truth. and yes i find that truth MAY contridict........logic may contridict......so i am not going to find god in my own or collective intelligence.
But i am getting away form my story............to my understanding i had reason to belive in my relitive truth and steadly had less reason to belive in the actaul religion,and because i could not find the faithfull. i could not find thsoe growing spiritaully....they could not answer questions they told me let god do it when i wanted to learn to do it for myself. i wanted god the teacher ........jesus in my heart ya know. And to my personal experinces i was gettign what i wanted and enjoying my personal relations ship......then i keep observing other christians and not seeing much of the same happeing in their lives...............but moanings and pleadings for jesus to resucue them and how they dont have time to spend with him....so i am like ok..............
(side tracked point is, it failed for me because it did not produce many love copies of jesus........as a buddhsit student, i taught myself to look at the students who are taking in the teachers message, of course people are idiots but still good teaching has a different result even in fools as lies have in them.) ....i coudd not except the "let god do it" "Have faith" i can't do anyhting for myself....i felt i had a part to play in my taking up the cross dyeing to sin theology.
If jesus told me i had to stop sining i was dman sure gonna find a way to obey that, but the christians did not teach anyone how to do that except, tell them to just let jesus do it. so i looked in to the other religions so see if they might help me obey jeuss better. please, if you edit my scattered tale , leave that......i looked into other religions so i could learn to obey jesus better. buddhism offered me methods.........and by and by yes i found my morality exceeeded god's as recored.
How was it i could be more mercifull than him, how was it that i could understand humans better then him..........how come he never tried teaching us, like krishna.........if i have a personal relations ship then why am i not hearing vocies ...and when i hear vocies how am i to tell which one is god's? jesus heard a voice and paul tells me i am adopted in to da family so wheres my voice...and if a voice answers how can it be tested ? (and iv had a few meditational delusions )..
A person can interpret their lives and faiths any way they want so i asked what elements are they jumbleing...i began to see there must be a problem with human interpretation as a means for truth discovery..........an oppionion can't be trut,. and somethign that is truely true must be able to be agreeed upon by anyone who cares about truth. it is not doctrine or theology but unambiguous or it is not truth. ......
There is no pastor in american i can ask that question to....and it boils down to one word, even i who say logic can contridict still can't belive becasue of the particular contridiction. the faith does not answer to my personal experience.........where as things of many different teachings do and my life is dramatically more blessed......though i still belive in god and the personal relations ship thing , and credit merit that the christ story and its repititions throughout time can be representivive of somethign basically true about the path of any life.
I again go to church, an asembly of god chruch ,that is not koocky holy rollers..........and i focus as best as i can on the person not the worshiper. and do not have much opening to..um witness. Does this make me a hypocrite to both sides am i a double agent?
its ok to belvie in christ, it is not ok to stop seeking truth.
it is ok to not belive in christ, it is not ok to remain in anger because of the lie.
Well i guess i am done..........how do i get a membership on this thing even if i am a hypo christin with an eye to help spiritauly liberate not just mentlaly liberate them??? (naturally i ahve my rationalisations for this but that is a different topic)
—justine mcullen
please forgive and or deal with my typos later, my message is not rehearsed, and might go off in tangents as life does.
I have deconverted and reconverted and deconverted again for various reasons. i have been seeking god since i was conscious enough to think he might be. i have been seeking truth since ever i heard there was a god. My paretns where atheist/ agnostic mother, and ex-catholic agnostic father.
My mother had grown up an a mildly religious good people family who went to church, and she became active in church and lost faith becasue of the very same reasons brought up by these people. My mother allowed me to make up my own mind and explore anything and at the first i chose chruch......when i was 8 i walked over a mile to go to a small baptist church alone. My first verse was "cast all your care upon him for he cares for you." and that was my god. i had not become a christian till i was 13 after a what seems miraculious happening that seemed pretty damend convincing that jesus god wanted me.
I had called an 800 number after the televalgilist show i thought it was a prayer number but .it was an ordering service. the man on the other end was a christian though, and talked to me , the spiritaully hungery teenager. But he was riskign his job because the ordering serivce was of course not "christian". As god would have it another man from my area called and got that operator and they talked about me and thus i was introduced to the man that converted me and disciplied me a good man, a bit "religious" ferverent about preaching and correcting false docotrine......it was a fun game....
I enjoyed being right and superior. i once borrowed a girl friends book of mormon so i could use it to mark all the things that where wrong with it in hopes that would convince her that my bible was right........(hey i was like 16 cut me some slack...it returned to huant me later when i realsied, shit i could do the same thing with my own text.) i am not sure how long or short to make this story but it is mine. i seriously doubt anyone will find it because their are so many on the site.
After a while i asked questions with no answer and vowed i would be a good preacher and able to handle these questions for others.......shit even in one of my deconversion times i helped a christian with chrsitian counsel and helped a pagan with pagan counsel..it started to dawn on me that wisdom and truth are true no matter who says it. and if god was truth then he should not care where we find it , but that we DO in deed find it.
So my life's quest is to know truth and to know god........my biblical hero was enoch , so i was going to know god. I did not ask much critically for a long while.....the indoctrination works for a long while and the guilt really ropes you in. You read books and books but find no actaul beliver who can discuss your issues. You find "religion" even when i studied buddhsim and hindu and tao i steered right clear of religion and looked for somethign undeniable. For i figured i would find god in something that meets truth. and yes i find that truth MAY contridict........logic may contridict......so i am not going to find god in my own or collective intelligence.
But i am getting away form my story............to my understanding i had reason to belive in my relitive truth and steadly had less reason to belive in the actaul religion,and because i could not find the faithfull. i could not find thsoe growing spiritaully....they could not answer questions they told me let god do it when i wanted to learn to do it for myself. i wanted god the teacher ........jesus in my heart ya know. And to my personal experinces i was gettign what i wanted and enjoying my personal relations ship......then i keep observing other christians and not seeing much of the same happeing in their lives...............but moanings and pleadings for jesus to resucue them and how they dont have time to spend with him....so i am like ok..............
(side tracked point is, it failed for me because it did not produce many love copies of jesus........as a buddhsit student, i taught myself to look at the students who are taking in the teachers message, of course people are idiots but still good teaching has a different result even in fools as lies have in them.) ....i coudd not except the "let god do it" "Have faith" i can't do anyhting for myself....i felt i had a part to play in my taking up the cross dyeing to sin theology.
If jesus told me i had to stop sining i was dman sure gonna find a way to obey that, but the christians did not teach anyone how to do that except, tell them to just let jesus do it. so i looked in to the other religions so see if they might help me obey jeuss better. please, if you edit my scattered tale , leave that......i looked into other religions so i could learn to obey jesus better. buddhism offered me methods.........and by and by yes i found my morality exceeeded god's as recored.
How was it i could be more mercifull than him, how was it that i could understand humans better then him..........how come he never tried teaching us, like krishna.........if i have a personal relations ship then why am i not hearing vocies ...and when i hear vocies how am i to tell which one is god's? jesus heard a voice and paul tells me i am adopted in to da family so wheres my voice...and if a voice answers how can it be tested ? (and iv had a few meditational delusions )..
A person can interpret their lives and faiths any way they want so i asked what elements are they jumbleing...i began to see there must be a problem with human interpretation as a means for truth discovery..........an oppionion can't be trut,. and somethign that is truely true must be able to be agreeed upon by anyone who cares about truth. it is not doctrine or theology but unambiguous or it is not truth. ......
There is no pastor in american i can ask that question to....and it boils down to one word, even i who say logic can contridict still can't belive becasue of the particular contridiction. the faith does not answer to my personal experience.........where as things of many different teachings do and my life is dramatically more blessed......though i still belive in god and the personal relations ship thing , and credit merit that the christ story and its repititions throughout time can be representivive of somethign basically true about the path of any life.
I again go to church, an asembly of god chruch ,that is not koocky holy rollers..........and i focus as best as i can on the person not the worshiper. and do not have much opening to..um witness. Does this make me a hypocrite to both sides am i a double agent?
its ok to belvie in christ, it is not ok to stop seeking truth.
it is ok to not belive in christ, it is not ok to remain in anger because of the lie.
Well i guess i am done..........how do i get a membership on this thing even if i am a hypo christin with an eye to help spiritauly liberate not just mentlaly liberate them??? (naturally i ahve my rationalisations for this but that is a different topic)
—justine mcullen
sigh
Well my mind has kinda flip flopped again and i realize that if my link works someone from the ex christian site might check into my head and fancy me simply a confused christian............esp compared to the mush mash i wrote for the site.
Well to err and be deluded is human.......and having re read my post i can see my inconsistency............lay you ten to one your not all that consistent yourself.
But let me clear up my end.... at the time i wrote that i desperately wanted my version of Christ to play a good and non hypocritical representation of what i think people want to mean or what it means to me to be Christian. But since then i have been researching various topics......... the bible, the atheist network, the christian response, ...... personal responses.....ect.
i have been manic about my studying, and came to understand i don't believe, and what i am doing is to place all my highest ideals in the name/form of Jesus. When, while i was a studier Shiva, my little imaginary teacher was him...i became christian so my other wise called voice of reason changed names not messages.
Some Christians would say that means i was not converted. but they where not in my head when i was exercising obedience to taking each thought captive to the obedience of Christ i guess in the end of it all , i have to admit i am not a christian but i call myself one. And it is also due to the desire to communicate life with other humans and around myself the only context for talking philosophy is with in a bible/christian one.
i have a drive for some social-intellectual contact though the social happens far more than the intellectual. And the former blogs where an attempt to speak something true with in that Christ format. and then also it Can be asked me..........am i cherry picking from many religions?, am i "finding" what ever i wanted to find? perhaps i am.
i know myself well enough that when a thing starts to stink of delusion it may be time to change my mental underwear. and for me, the past week of research has got me stinking
.........why cant i let go of the form and embody the TAO in my action............why the need to relate something to someone in dogmatic language that can only be understood in personal language? so people who would cast me off quickly i can smell my own shit too. i am not finished with my journey are you finished with yours? my interpretations cant be truth either. Realization came about after reading a very convincing study on if Jesus was as he is written he is a paraphrenic.
That got me thinking about the voice in Moses head......and the one in Hitlers... the one whom the faithful accredit their good praise and prayers to. And the one in mine for that matter..luckily for me the voice in my head is not interested in world conquest, conversion or damnation and evil
......they are most interested in wisdom and understanding.......it may be my form of psychosis is harmless ......i don't even mean to convert you to my voice i would though seek you find your own and if you don't have one that ok too... there is plenty of truth in the world for you, may you find a good way may your mind and soul enjoy it.
( yes yes nature has it that life is cruel and painful so be it, acceptance covers a multitude of trauma)
anyway why should i confess my own mental illness to you? Because them Christians make me look bad...........lol i find it convincing that Jesus was a psycho...........perhaps my good ol buddy Ezekiel back there was too..........and that is disheartening because it leaves the question of well if they where men of god and god appears in psychotic ways then there must at least be a "correct" crazy mind.......... ew...........i wont entertain that garble mess of thinking.........it was short lived.
Fact is, we are each live within our own experiences. Some people can't stand themselves, some people take pills, some people escape by various means. i took the might as well find a way to view one's life that is glorious of the good things and noble of the fair things and understanding of the confused things...............and what ever other fortune cookie saying you can think of. why cant we all get along, because we don't fucking want to.
Collectively we wake up in the same world day by day heading toward hell because collectively we preform the same hatred and actions as we did yesterday. if you want truth you have to find it for yourself and so what if it is fashioning another form of the same religion....or cherry picking the good human stuff form the religion rules shit...........the thoughts are not original, people before thunk them and they were good.
Perhaps the good thoughts can be chosen.
Perhaps humanity is so angry they will chose the bad thoughts
.......perhaps we can't even tell anymore..........but what we should be doing is not telling them anyway but trying to tell it to ourselves alone, and show it to other in expression. and so i blog to the world. amen.
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