- Sep 21, 2006
- 38
- 6
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Episcopalian
- Marital Status
- Single
- Politics
- US-Libertarian
Hello there. My name is Stephen, and I'm a registered Bright. I was raised in a Pentecostal church -- affiliated with the UPCI. In this church, "feeling God" was paramount. Everyone did it. If you didn't feel God, then something was terribly wrong with you. That only happened to the worst sinners. You had to work to be that damned. Like the preacher who murdered his mother for drug money, or the preacher who decided to become a Baptist after 30 years of preaching Acts 2:38. (The prescence of a Baptist church across the road had nothing to do with that little story. Nothing at all! 
)
Feeling God was rather easy; all you had to do was praise Him. Psalms 22 says that He "inhabits the praises of His people". I was raised in this church. Being a young child, I believed what my parents told me, without question. But there was a problem: I praised God and felt...well, nothing. I was sincere as I could be. And I was this way for years. Eventually I claimed the Holy Ghost, which marked you as partially saved (you had to be immersed in water in Jesus' name to be fully saved). But "claim" is the operative word there, for all I had done was repeat the same thing over and over until someone told me "You're saved".
I "backslid" -- hit puberty -- and was determined to be saved. We were having a revival, and I prepared. I prayed. I fasted. I read the Bible and spent all day listening to Christian music. And that night, the preacher came to me. We prayed. He declared I had the Holy Ghost. I said I hadn't. He told me not to tell him "no", and prayed for me again. Quite exhausted from all of the emotion (Pentecostal services are..um, VERY emotional. Shouting, running into the walls, rolling on the floors, swinging from the chandaliers...you name it, they do it or threaten to.), I told him that I had heard myself that time.
But it was a lie. I lied to myself, and lied to everyone around me. I wanted to believe it, and so did they. And for a while, I did. And they still do. But in 2004, all of the doubts I had about my "salvation" came to fruition, and I realized: I'm lost. So I went to God. I repented. I thanked him for letting me see the truth, that I was lost. But I felt nothing. I got prayed for, for a renewal of the Holy Ghost. But...nothing.
And for a while, I went to church highly saddened. I was lost, but God wouldn't talk to me. He had never talked to me. What had I done that was so wrong? Service after service, I left depressed and angry. Depressed because I was lost and God would have nothing to do with me, angry at my helplessness.
Eventually the anger was directed toward the God who created me, only to ignore me -- who by his ignoring me, was sentencing me to a life of misery and eventual damnation. I lost hope, and envisioned an empty life. But there, in my darkest hour, I found hope.
I found open in that silly little icon that is my "faith' icon here. The "Happy Human", it's called, the symbol for humanism, and the official symbol of the American and British humanist associations. I'm a humanist. And when I looked up "humanist" in the dictionary, I discovered that I had been a humanist for all of my life. My love for learning, augmented by my own experiences being relentessly bullied in school, and made me into one. I had been a theistic humanist all that while, and while I knew some of my beliefs irritated people, I couldn't very well change them; they were part of me, a fundamental part. I was a humanist like I was American; it was me.
And so, discovering my true self-identity, I came alive again. Hope and purpose had once again become part of my life, to my great relief. And for the past two years, I've grown, as a humanist. I am no longer a theistic humanist, however. After a lifetime of looking for God and finding nothing, I have deemed the point moot. If there is a God, and Christianity is correct, then I am damned. But I did all I could to avoid it. I am not an athiest, nor am I really an agnostic. If pushed, I'd call myself an apathetic agnostic. When it comes to God, I'm now indifferent.
But I have retained a bit of sentiment for Christianity. Not for the yelling, screaming preachers who verbally abuse people, but sentiment for the better parts of Christianity. I'm a humanist, and I harbor nothing but good will for people who share a love for humanity and the desire to see it prosper in peace and health. For the vast majority of you who post here, that love for humanity includes Christ. For me, it doesn't -- I can only believe in God if I can feel him, because simply doing what my parents tell me is a dog that won't hunt.
To end (sorry for the length, but I kept it as short as I could. My letter to my former pastor was around ten pages so, and the letter to my parents a lot longer!), I wish to explain the "not so new" part. I came hereand wondered what the humanist icon looked like. I hoped it was the Happy Human. I attempted to sign up under my usual name, and found out it was taken.
"...some cheeky sod took my name," I thought. I had been using that name for six years. It's actually derived from a Christian song. I looked up the profile, and....it was me. From four years ago. I was suprised; Oneness Pentecostalism isn't exactly a fan of the Nicene Creed. It was very weird to see my own profile from what seems to be a different life. I tried to log in, but it's been four years. My password has kind of slipped my memory. Then I tried doing the "forgot your password?" dealie, and it hasn't worked the three or four times I've tried. So I figured I'd register under another name I liked to use, see if I could get the name situation settled (I'm pretty attached to it), and see if I could view my old posts.
Then, I figured I'd establish a friendly dialouge between myself and you guys, maybe hang around and post in the open forums. I do have a question: what are blessings? I noticed you have to have a certain number of them to have an avatar or a sig. Most forums use a postcount system to determine that. My old name has 1,000 blessing. Why are you guys blessing me if I haven't been active for four years?!
By the way: compliments to your web team. Usually when I hit ctrl-B or ctrl-I to format my text, it doesn't work. Here it does. Thank you. That's so much easier than having to type in a code or take the time to click something. Also, the way text looks when I'm typing; very neat. Most forums I go to have the default font size to appear much larger than it is, but here the opposite is true. It encourages me to talk more, and I don't need the encouraging. As you can see, I can ramble on quite well. :lol:
)Feeling God was rather easy; all you had to do was praise Him. Psalms 22 says that He "inhabits the praises of His people". I was raised in this church. Being a young child, I believed what my parents told me, without question. But there was a problem: I praised God and felt...well, nothing. I was sincere as I could be. And I was this way for years. Eventually I claimed the Holy Ghost, which marked you as partially saved (you had to be immersed in water in Jesus' name to be fully saved). But "claim" is the operative word there, for all I had done was repeat the same thing over and over until someone told me "You're saved".
I "backslid" -- hit puberty -- and was determined to be saved. We were having a revival, and I prepared. I prayed. I fasted. I read the Bible and spent all day listening to Christian music. And that night, the preacher came to me. We prayed. He declared I had the Holy Ghost. I said I hadn't. He told me not to tell him "no", and prayed for me again. Quite exhausted from all of the emotion (Pentecostal services are..um, VERY emotional. Shouting, running into the walls, rolling on the floors, swinging from the chandaliers...you name it, they do it or threaten to.), I told him that I had heard myself that time.
But it was a lie. I lied to myself, and lied to everyone around me. I wanted to believe it, and so did they. And for a while, I did. And they still do. But in 2004, all of the doubts I had about my "salvation" came to fruition, and I realized: I'm lost. So I went to God. I repented. I thanked him for letting me see the truth, that I was lost. But I felt nothing. I got prayed for, for a renewal of the Holy Ghost. But...nothing.
And for a while, I went to church highly saddened. I was lost, but God wouldn't talk to me. He had never talked to me. What had I done that was so wrong? Service after service, I left depressed and angry. Depressed because I was lost and God would have nothing to do with me, angry at my helplessness.
Eventually the anger was directed toward the God who created me, only to ignore me -- who by his ignoring me, was sentencing me to a life of misery and eventual damnation. I lost hope, and envisioned an empty life. But there, in my darkest hour, I found hope.
I found open in that silly little icon that is my "faith' icon here. The "Happy Human", it's called, the symbol for humanism, and the official symbol of the American and British humanist associations. I'm a humanist. And when I looked up "humanist" in the dictionary, I discovered that I had been a humanist for all of my life. My love for learning, augmented by my own experiences being relentessly bullied in school, and made me into one. I had been a theistic humanist all that while, and while I knew some of my beliefs irritated people, I couldn't very well change them; they were part of me, a fundamental part. I was a humanist like I was American; it was me.
And so, discovering my true self-identity, I came alive again. Hope and purpose had once again become part of my life, to my great relief. And for the past two years, I've grown, as a humanist. I am no longer a theistic humanist, however. After a lifetime of looking for God and finding nothing, I have deemed the point moot. If there is a God, and Christianity is correct, then I am damned. But I did all I could to avoid it. I am not an athiest, nor am I really an agnostic. If pushed, I'd call myself an apathetic agnostic. When it comes to God, I'm now indifferent.
But I have retained a bit of sentiment for Christianity. Not for the yelling, screaming preachers who verbally abuse people, but sentiment for the better parts of Christianity. I'm a humanist, and I harbor nothing but good will for people who share a love for humanity and the desire to see it prosper in peace and health. For the vast majority of you who post here, that love for humanity includes Christ. For me, it doesn't -- I can only believe in God if I can feel him, because simply doing what my parents tell me is a dog that won't hunt.
To end (sorry for the length, but I kept it as short as I could. My letter to my former pastor was around ten pages so, and the letter to my parents a lot longer!), I wish to explain the "not so new" part. I came hereand wondered what the humanist icon looked like. I hoped it was the Happy Human. I attempted to sign up under my usual name, and found out it was taken.
"...some cheeky sod took my name," I thought. I had been using that name for six years. It's actually derived from a Christian song. I looked up the profile, and....it was me. From four years ago. I was suprised; Oneness Pentecostalism isn't exactly a fan of the Nicene Creed. It was very weird to see my own profile from what seems to be a different life. I tried to log in, but it's been four years. My password has kind of slipped my memory. Then I tried doing the "forgot your password?" dealie, and it hasn't worked the three or four times I've tried. So I figured I'd register under another name I liked to use, see if I could get the name situation settled (I'm pretty attached to it), and see if I could view my old posts.
Then, I figured I'd establish a friendly dialouge between myself and you guys, maybe hang around and post in the open forums. I do have a question: what are blessings? I noticed you have to have a certain number of them to have an avatar or a sig. Most forums use a postcount system to determine that. My old name has 1,000 blessing. Why are you guys blessing me if I haven't been active for four years?!
By the way: compliments to your web team. Usually when I hit ctrl-B or ctrl-I to format my text, it doesn't work. Here it does. Thank you. That's so much easier than having to type in a code or take the time to click something. Also, the way text looks when I'm typing; very neat. Most forums I go to have the default font size to appear much larger than it is, but here the opposite is true. It encourages me to talk more, and I don't need the encouraging. As you can see, I can ramble on quite well. :lol:
