my struggles with God

[AgapeBible]

This is my testimony. I want to tell it to the world. I am what pastors nickname a 'B.U.I.C.K.', or "Brought up in church kid."
I grew up in the southern Baptist church in Florida in the 80's and 90's, when the church was going through major changes that made it become more modern, open and accepting of different people. Like I said before I also went to a private Christian school from preschool to third grade, in third grade I started going to a public school.


The private fundamentalist Christian school was very strict, they did not have uniforms but a strict dress code, girls always had to wear a long dress or skirt that covered the knees, the boys had to wear nice pants, no jeans, or shorts, and they wore polo shirts instead of t-shirts.


The teachers at that school seemed much more interested in forcing religion down our throats and making us all into good little Bible-thumping Christian missionaries than in giving us a good and thorough education.
This is my testimony. I want to tell it to the world. I am what pastors nickname a 'B.U.I.C.K.', or "Brought up in church kid."
I grew up in the southern Baptist church in Florida in the 80's and 90's, when the church was going through major changes that made it become more modern, open and accepting of different people. Like I said before I also went to a private Christian school from preschool to third grade, in third grade I started going to a public school.


The private fundamentalist Christian school was very strict, they did not have uniforms but a strict dress code, girls always had to wear a long dress or skirt that covered the knees, the boys had to wear nice pants, no jeans, or shorts, and they wore polo shirts instead of t-shirts.


The teachers at that school seemed much more interested in forcing religion down our throats and making us all into good little Bible-thumping Christian missionaries than in giving us a good and thorough education.

 

[AgapeBible]

My first year of going to a public school was really rough because of the culture shock, it was so different. I was shocked by what some of the kids wore to school. There were horrible pictures on their t-shirts, skulls, snakes, sharks, dragons, devils, monsters, aliens, some ugly gross and silly cartoon characters and sexy women in bikinis.

I was sent to the school psychiatrist because I was weird, and the other kids picked on me. I had some trouble with schoolwork, in the private Christian school they gave us so much schoolwork, writing down Bible verses, spelling words, math problems, etc, I had to write so much with pencil on paper that I got a cramp in my hand at the age of seven in second grade! They really piled on the work in that private school, I had the hardest time finishing it, and then of course there was the homework. And I was so young, they gave us a lot of work in kindergarten, we didn’t get to have much fun.

Anyway, in third grade the kids would ask me to do things and make fun of me. I was taught to be obedient. I had trouble with math, and trouble with some of the disruptive kids in the class. I was surprised by how badly they misbehaved. I was sent to the school psychiatrist and she asked me all kinds of questions and did tests. Sometimes I feel like this woman ruined my life, and I wish that I had never seen her. She started the whole psychiatric mess, I suffered so much from those stupid doctors and counselors judging me. This is a very sensitive subject for me, it hurts to talk about it. The psychiatrist asked if I heard voices. I talk to myself internally, I have a guardian angel that speaks to me and dwells within me, and I have a mischievous demon that tempts me, some times God speaks to me in various ways, sometimes audibly, so yes I suppose I do hear “voices” but not crazy ones like that. The woman suspected I had a mental illness. The school told my parents, they were worried but didn’t know what to do. After third grade in fourth grade I had trouble with schoolwork and was slow with it the first day of school. The school found out I had a learning disability and put me in special education classes. The learning disability was connected to my mental illness. The lady who taught special ed, there were different special ed classes in this school, I think this one was called task, it was mainly for students who were slow with their work and needed extra attention and help getting their work done, I had a lot of problems in math and science.

 

[AgapeBible]

This teacher was excellent, truly the best teacher I’ve ever known, I had her for both fourth and fifth grade. She was very sweet and understanding, and used creative and fun methods of teaching. She was the one that first inspired me to write stories. She also encouraged my art.


As for my spiritual life, I grew up going to the southern Baptist church. I heard Bible stories both in the church and in the private Christian school. I learned Bible verses and new what it meant to be saved. When I was four years old I got saved with my mom leading me to say the sinner’s prayer and let Jesus into my heart. When I was six and a half or seven, I was baptized. The pastor was unsure about baptizing a child so young. He wanted to make sure I was saved. I know a lot of people think I was too young to know and understand what it meant to b e a Christian. I remember Christian lessons at the private school. They told us the narrow road leads to heaven and the wide road leads to hell, since we were little kids perhaps they didn’t say heaven and hell, I was about four at the time, either four or five years old, and they should us a picture of two roads, the narrow road led to a shining yellow white light with clouds in heaven. The wide road led down to a dark pit with red creepy flames and black smoke coming out of it.

This did not make sense to me at all. Why would God want so many people to perish? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t it be easier to go to heaven and harder to go to hell, since hell is so horrible why would God want so many people, His children to suffer so much for all eternity? But I didn’t think to question at so young an age, I just accepted what they taught me and kept my thoughts to myself.


I was a good kid, not just because I was raised to be one but because I wanted to be good so I could please God and go to heaven and be a “star” in heaven, they told us that if you led a good life and told other people who knew nothing about God about how much Jesus loved them and encouraged them to get saved, you would earn a gold crown with stars on it in heaven.


Bu the Devil knows my weaknesses. I like fairytales and fantasy stories and I wished magic were real, and wanted to learn magic. I read about fairies, fairy godmothers, good enchantresses and sorceresses, ‘good’ witches. I thought it would be fun and cool to be a good witch or sorceress, and I could use my magic for good and have adventures with it, make life easier with it, cure diseases and feed the hungry and poor, end world hunger, make shelters for the homeless bring about world peace, etc. I did not realize magic and witchcraft were forbidden in the Bible and such power belongs only to God and not meant for sinful, weak, corrupt wicked man who abuses power.

So I had a child’s worldly secular view of magic and not a Biblical one. I wanted to be a white, or good witch. I read the Bible verse, “You shall not allow a witch to live.” and it hurt me and confused me, even if a witch is evil and of the Devil, wouldn’t it still be murder to kill her or him? How does killing those who refuse to worship Yahweh solve any problems? I read about how witches supposedly worshipped the Devil and sold their souls to him in exchange for power. Christians in the past believed witches were servants of the Devil whose goal was to harm and corrupt Christians and the whole human race, to corrupt and destroy the world and make it more evil. That was why in the Middle Ages and Renaissance thousands of women, men and children were accused of witchcraft, most of them innocent, perhaps some had indulged in some minor pagan superstitious practice like divining the future or making potions or using old folk medicine with ritual charms and chanting, minor idol worship or pagan folk practices superstitions done for healing the sick or to help them conceive children or protect them from something, maybe a curse on an enemy, which is bad, but not really outright Satan worship, most were falsely accused. The accused witches were tortured and burned to death at the stake, by so called Christians.

I read that even protestants persecuted witches, they hanged them instead of burning them. Like I said, the people killed for witchcraft in the old days were usually not really witches at all.
There is also the crusades, where Christian knights slaughtered Muslims and other inhabitants of the holy land, the Middle East, to control Jerusalem. And wars between Protestants and Catholics, cruel Puritans in power in England that had several human rights abuse violations, Christians in the 19th century could be abusive to children while raising them strictly to fear God, like in Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens books.


I gave up on being a witch, seeing on how witches served Satan. But I was thinking why people could be so mean and call themselves Christians. Torturing someone and burning them to death is evil, no matter what that person has done. And in the Bible there are laws requiring the violator to be burned to death as punishment.


As a teenager I went astray a bit. I read difficult passages in the Bible, the genocide of Canaanites in the conquering of the promise land. I was shocked by the bloodthirstiness of God ordering the Israelites to wipe out every living thing in the Canaanite cities, to kill all the women and children and animals that would usually be taken captive. The reason for this was because they were heathen idol worshipers who sacrificed their own children to their heathen gods. I felt that God should have spared the Canaanite children, I mean surely the heathens would not sacrifice all of their children, if they did that they would die out because there’d be no one left to continue the generations and race. I imagine their living children must be terrified, “Please don’t sacrifice me, Mommy and Daddy.”
I guess the children would have to be killed for fear they’d end up like their parents and bring sin to the Israelites and influence them to worship their idols and practice human sacrifice. I read about petty and cruel unfair laws given to Moses, there’s more than just 10 commandments, and about the stoning of a man gathering wood on the Sabbath.


Then there were verses in the New testament that I think are sexist, the one in Corinthians about women keeping quiet in church, and about head coverings, wives submitting to husbands. The great world disasters and plagues god planned to pour out on sinful humanity in Revelations, the lake of fire and brimstone that is hell is pretty scary, and the thought of a relatively good person going to hell just because they are not Christian is very disturbing and upsetting.

As a teenager, and an adult these things in the Bible upset, disturbed me and caused me to doubt the truth and rightness of
God’s word. Like Jacob I wrestled with God, the Bible, my conscience, my pride and my own way of thinking that demands its own way, the Devil encouraged these doubts to make me think God is not good, that the God of the Bible is a selfish petty jealous angry vengeful bloodthirsty prejudiced tyrant whose laws are too strict and unfair, impossible to follow, and He inflicts terrible cruelty on His son so we can be forgiven, he is like a child abuser and then if anyone refuses to accept Jesus they are sent to hell.


I know this is a lie, except for the part about people refusing Jesus going to hell. God is good, loving, kind compassionate merciful, patient wise all-knowing, just, holy, righteous slow to anger, all-powerful. I thought that the Bible gave a false impression of God, the Bible was the problem, it was not all true and was full of religious propaganda. So I started to search for a God outside the Bible.


It was a book called “When God was a Woman” that started me into searching out the violent bloody stories in the Bible. The book was about the goddesses of the ancient Middle East, and how powerful these goddesses were, they were the first deities to be worshiped. Our prehistoric ancestors started to worship the female power to give birth before they worshiped male deities, that’s what this book says. It talks about fertility goddesses like Ishtar, Inana, Ashtoreth, Ashera, Astarte, etc. It revealed the verses in the Bible ordering slaughter for pagan idol worshipers, and says such a God can’t be good. It said the goddesses were not as sleezy as the Bible paints them, they were wives and mothers, and independent single women, like queens who ruled with their own authority.


I explored other religions, and got back into witchcraft through Wicca. I learned about Wicca and modern day Pagansim. I read the mythology stories about the pagan gods of the many cultures around the world. I read fun fantasy stories about dragons and wizards and elves, fairies, fantasy worlds, etc. I learned about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastriansim, Celtic Christianity, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, New Age mysticism and Eastern mysticism and philosophy.

 

[AgapeBible]

At the same time I was going to Sunday school, youth group and to my parents Baptist church. I always believed in Jesus, but I was starting to wonder if it was right for people to go to hell because they did not believe in him, I was wondering if it was OK to be a Christian and play fantasy, sci-fi games and watch movies, read books with fantasy sci-fi magic in it. Where do you draw the line?
I would feel guilty for liking dragons, unicorns and fairies.


I had major psychiatrist/psychological problems as a preteen and teenager, I was shy and depressed, and my peers were mean and made fun of me, I was an outcast, a nerd. But the Lord gave me wonderful gifts and talents. I am creative and artistic. I am good at drawing and painting. I draw fantasy subjects sometimes, I draw people, my favorite is costume design, I would like to be a Christian artist and work on Bible illustration. I draw angels sometimes.

I am also a writer, I write poems and short stories. I write fantasy stories, I try to make them Christian.


I struggled to find the true God. I fear going to hell, but sometimes I get angry with God and feel like my problems and pain are His fault, when I am depressed, filled with sorrow and crying I am angry with God and rail against him for making me different, in depression fits I feel like God messed up when he made me, I am retarded and messed up, I can’t do anything right and am a failure, I am stupid and filled with sadness because this world is a horrible place, society is corrupt, wicked and cruel, and I want out of the prison I’m in. Sometimes I feel like my body, my life and house are a prison for me. But God is always faithful, he provides these times of doubt and sadness to make even sweeter the moments of happiness, joy and serenity, I learn to survive through moments of pain and despair. I always feel better after about 5 or 10 minutes. I am sensitive and cry easily.


I love up lifting Christian music like Christian alternative music and Christian rock that’s not too loud and aggressive, and traditional church music like old hymns, southern gospel, opera-style classical hymns from medieval times, the Renaissance, 18th and 19th century. My favorite praise song is Amazing Grace.


I asked my Sunday school teacher and youth leaders about the difficult hard to understand places in the Bible, he said a lot of Christians have trouble understanding them, to pray and ask God for wisdom and insight, to have faith in the Lord and lean not upon my own understanding. I have sought answers in and outside the Bible, from Christian, secular, pagan and wiccan sources. I’ve compared evolution to Genesis, there’s no reason why both can’t be true, there are three different accounts of creation in Genesis. The Canaanites and other pagan natives of the promise land deserved to die for their wicked ways, they sacrificed their own children to idols and practiced ritualized prostitution.


I learned about Christian hypocrisy as a teen, which pushed me away from the Baptist church and from God more. I heard about greedy televangelists begging for money to support their millionaire lifestyle, like Jim Baker and crazy cultist like Jim Jones. I heard of fundamentalist bully preachers like Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchannen, and others televangelists and evangelists who are more like the Pharisees than like Jesus Christ, they push right wing Republican propaganda and tear down any democratic ideas. These preachers constantly ask for money, and several of them live high on the hog. Some of them have been found out to be guilty of adultery or embezzlement, and some preach hatred and violence to homosexuals, witches, Muslims, abortion doctors and women seeking abortions, liberal Democratic politicians, nature-worshipping environmentalists and feminists, and atheist scientists, philosophers and historians who try to disprove Christianity. These false prophets usually appear on television and want fame and fortune.


As least Baptist don’t practice legalism anymore. I heard about legalism in the past, the it went out in the 1960’s and 1970’s, still lingered in the 1980’s, but now it’s mostly all gone. Legalism is a strict no-fun policy of religion, where the religious leaders add rules to the law books. For example, in the 1950’s, it was considered a sin to go to the movies or to dance, and rockn’roll was a very bad sin. Girls were not allowed to wear make up or short skirts or pants, boys were not allowed to wear jeans, chewing gum was bad and offensive, so was putting your hands in your pockets. You weren’t allowed to play games or listen to the radio or TV on Sunday and you could only read the Bible, no other books. There were other strict rules for moral conduct, no sex until the wedding night, and kissing between unmarried couples was

 

[AgapeBible]

was frowned upon. This is with Christian families. If someone disobeyed the rules, like if a teenage girl got pregnant out of wedlock, she would be a social outcast, and called a tramp. If someone had an alcohol or drug problem, or if they committed adultery, likewise there was little room for forgiveness in those days there was plenty of gossip and they might be expelled from the church, in the past Baptists churches preached hellfire and brimstone.

That’s legalism, putting itty bitty details that you have to obey and be perfect to be a good Christian. It is wrong. We are all sinners filled with the sinful nature of Adam and Eve and we need to repent of our sins and receive forgiveness. I have done stupid and selfish sins in my life, and my dear savior Jesus Christ has forgiven me. I am guilty of the sin of sloth and laziness. I can also be selfish and spoiled. No one is perfect, who could live with such strict stuck-up rules and be on their best behavior all the time. Even those who just sin a little, I guess that would be me, so far I have never had sex or done illegal drugs or gotten drunk, never been in a physical fight. Those who sin lot, they are forgiven the same. My Jesus has saved my life, I love the stories of His miracles and parables in the Bible, he is the great Healer, He heals the body and soul, even restores the dead to life.


In my early 20’s I went to a variety of churches with my parents and with my only sister whose older than me. I went to Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran and non-denominational churches. I also read the Bible at home and pray, I haven’t made a daily habit of it until recently. My mental problems got worse and I needed more medication for them. I began to have strange, vivid, scary dreams. I was so relieved to graduate from high school and be out of that mess. I never did go to college because of my learning problems, I live with my parents. I take art lessons at the cultural center, I’m trying to improve my art, hopefully one day it will be good enough to sell. I’d also like to publish one of my stories, but I have trouble finishing them. I get money for my disability. I really have a problem with math and science. Bad thing is I don’t have a chance to improve it.


I was embarrassed at the church I went to a few weeks ago, I suppose I may not be able to go to church anymore because of this problem. The preacher was talking about our pain in this life. He said that we should embrace our pain because it teaches us to be stronger and to appreciate happiness and what we have, well he was talking about embracing our pain, I thought about my problems and troubles in my life and I started to feel the pain, he did say embrace it, so I felt the pain and was sad and broken hearted because it hurt and I started crying. My mom was embarrassed, so was my dad. I felt depressed and sad, and when I first went into the church I was calm and happy, but because of the preacher’s words he made me feel sad and hurt. I suppose I am not normal, I am a mentally ill freak, I realized that too as I looked around and saw I was the only one crying, this fact hurt like a knife in the heart and made me cry even more and ask God why did you do this to me, why did you make me this way? Needless to say, when I left the church I was angry with the pastor because I felt it was his fault.


When I saw my counselor, she agreed with me that the pastor should not have said “embrace your pain.”


I do not know if I will be able to go to church again and handle my emotions and not cry. My mom and dad are really embarrassed by it, it makes them angry.

Jesus Christ has been my best friend and savior who has helped me through life’s troubles and trials and joys. He has brought me close to my Heavenly Father and when I was rebellious and turned away from him because I did not understand and was foolish and immature, he brought me back with his love and courted me like a prince courts a princess. He broke through the pain, doubt, turmoil, anger, confusion, stuborness, pride and sorrow I had in my heart and set me free from Satan’s traps and lies, and now I realize how much I need him and repent of my sins and fall into His arms of grace. He shows me answers to my questions and opens my heart when I seek the Lord and pray and search His word the Bible. Without my Lord and Savior Jesus I could have commit suicide, I might be dead and in hell right now had not Jesus saved me and given me hope to go on.

 

[paul becke]

That is a very interesting personal testimony, Agapedragon, and also very touching.

As regards the preacher, I think he was only trying to express in a passionate way - instead of in a cold clinical way - the truth that our crosses really will be recompensed beyond our most optimistic imaginings. Some saints have begged God to give them more and heavier crosses. I tried it, too, but gave the notion away in very short order!

Still, we should perhaps bear in mind, simply from the point of view of increasing our understanding of the faith in its most exalted and sublime aspect, those most strange words of St Paul concerning Christ's most agonising and shameful crucifixion, when he describes Jesus as leading a victory procession! "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

Being all too human, I expect most of us would prefer a quiet life, keeping our heads down and "our noses clean", as best we can! But the preacher was trying to remind us that, for the Christian, crosses are never entirely negative, if at all, from a spiritual perspective.

As for the tears, don't take it too seriously. Try to see the funny side of it. A man had me in stitches of laughter, when he told me he once walked into a church, where he had the opposite experience to you. Everyone else was crying their eyes out. Being, I suppose a pretty uncomplicated type, he told me he just turned round and walked out again, evidently totally baffled by it.

But tears are a very strange thing. They can come upon you completely unexpectedly - in my experience, on a couple of occasions, only realising much later what it was about. On a completely unconscious level, I was responding to an insight into the fact that I was in for major disappointments. And I'm not in the habit of crying at disappointments! I'm not even all that miffed! As Peter Sellers put it so eloquently: "All part fo life's rich pageant.

On other occasions, it is the generosity of spirit of another person, one one occasion, a fellow-mourner commiserating with me on the death of a relative (when I'd been "fine" before!), and at funeral services. I'm always taken by surprise, too, as I'm very upbeat about our passing on, on a conscious level.

As for the Old Testament, the thing to bear in mind, I believe, is that, after the Fall, our spiritual growth started from a very low point. So low, in fact, that more than a millennium after Christ's death, Charlemagne conquered most of Europe by the edge of the sword, ostensibly for Christendom. Yet he wasn't a psychopath like most national rulers seem to have been througout our history. In fact, he arranged that his troops should carry 6 months of food supplies with them on their campaigns, forbidding them from taking it from the civilian population as they passed through.

One of the first questions a bishop in one of the conquered territories asked the then pope was, how should the sale of a slave be regarded by the Church, knowing that the buyer wanted the slave as a victim in a human sacrifice. The answer was, "as murder". So, the perplexing question arises - would it have been better to allow those conquered peoples to continue with their human sacrifices (young women and children being the favoured victims, I believe) or to introduce them to the knowledge of Christ, even at the price of conquering them?

We know that, as the writer, G K Chesterton, said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but found hard, and left untried. Still, to the extent that it has been tried, I think it's been found preferable. And Rome was, itself, attacked by pagan hordes, so for a nation to be the only Mr Nice Guy in that world may not have been much of an option. But you yourself touched upon that - the human sacrifices - in your testimony, didn't you?

Anyway, we don't even have to look back to the early part of the last millennium to see wickedness abound (all the more so, in these post-Christian times), and how slowly grace builds upon nature. That's the way to view the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament.

And bear in mind that it did bear fruit: Judaism at the time of Christ - even though the Synagogue itself was being appallingly run, with its hideous legalism, its detrimental "traditions of men", the avarice of its all too worldly religious/political authorities, and its general hypocrisy - was, in its pristine teachings, immeasurably superior to the pagan religions of the surrounding nations. Neverthless, we are told in the gospels that the gentiles were known by the Jews for their cruelty. Remember, the religious authorities had to persuade Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus, as they were forbidden to. I would definitely prefer to be stoned than crucified.

Anyway, Agapedragon, the thing is, you have the most precious gifts, containing everything else of any value: personal intimacy with Jesus and love in your heart, so you should try not to let anything get to you (other than the sufferings of others, by which, as Christians, we are all rightly afflicted). And try to see the funny side of the ups and downs we are all subject to, in one way or another and in varying degrees, and it will make your burden lighter. Water off a duck's back!