Do The Right Thing, Part II

Hi Tiffany, this is Uncle Ben from Cape Cod, he is an amateur theologian.

Usually, we do not air this type of information about each other in the churches. But your courage to share and your courage to seek help outside of your circumstances, is indeed an honourable trait. I respect you to share this information, and perhaps out of this difficult circumstances, it makes you a better person indeed. As an amateur theologian, I seek to discover and understand human nature with the sacred words of the holy Scriptures.

One of my major discoveries within the Christian communities, is that their have a claim that is false about their 'moral superiority.' This moral uprightness duping them into thinking that they are better than the rest of their community, since they have a 'new life' in Christ, and are 'covered in the precious blood of the LAMB' and therefore should act honourably and righteously in all circumstances. This, unfortunately is false. It is not true in a lot of cases, where the people inside the organization of faith, is just as bad, if not worse than outside the faith.

Accepting that people are no better in the Churches as it is in atheists or infidel organizations, is the first thing I would urge you. This humility to accept who we are, as simply human, who could do a great number of honorable things, as well as do a great deal of harm to each other, is the key.

Thus a minister, is just as morally corrupt as a taxi driver, or a greedy dentist, or a bank robber. I do not expect him to act righteously unless proven. In your predicament, your minister is both a thief and a liar, so call that as what you see. A thief and a liar comes from his own human moral failure, and the inability of those around him to call him that.

The second I would do, is that you do not lose faith in God. By that I mean the highest and most treasured notions we have in goodness. I do not mean the blind faith in the God they have painted for you, in a sermon, or by your own Sunday School teacher. I no longer affirm the personal deity that sits in the sky and judges and brings in judgement on those evil doers. Did not Jesus once taught, he causes the sun to shine on the good and the evil one? And that he allows all tares and wheat to grown until the harvest? No, I do not expect divine intervention in cases that he has already allowed, but do not lose hope in goodness of the human community, and I would urge you to be humble enough to look to the kindness where you usually do not look to. There is kindness in human community both inside and outside of the church. There is goodness that in all of us, that we need to discover. Even in this thief and liar, there is a trace of goodness and perhaps covered by much of his mud and sling of filth, do not lose hope that he too is a human being, perhaps he should take up honest work like picking a trade in construction, in farming, and perhaps he should return all the monies that he had cheated from the Church and liver honourably from now on. That is the sacred teaching of St Paul, for he says, "Let him that stole, steals no more, but rather work with his hands, the thing that which is good."

This goodness in all of us, in the birds of the air, fish of the sea, in this humble earth, collectively known as this world, or 'secula' is what I put my faith in. I turn myself to the earth, after all the world is greater than I, and most humble and patient than all of us, is where I turn. Maybe you should start a small garden, grow a few things, get closer to the earth, in order to feel the goodness that come from it. For me, this goodness is what makes the belief in God possible.

The last, since this is a sermon, and a small theological treatise, is to accept people for what they are, and who they are. In the final harvest, everything that is shaken and tested, will show their true state of being. As it is in a harvesting of seeds from my own garden. After all the pods are dried, we carefully crush them to allow seeds to come forth, and then separate seeds from chaff. It is simple, the chaff is lighter and it is blown away by the wind. So, everything that has been tested, will show their true state. For those who exhibited their fear, hate and anger, and their darkness that comes from this situation, stay away from such. Find those friends whose goodness has not been touched by such, and stay true to them. To have patience and lose not your faith in God, and goodness that comes from the earth and this human community. After all, as I was taught by Sir Lloyd Geering, that this world is greater than I, and if I were to ever lose my way, I would put my faith in the world, for me that is the ultimate.

There is life, there is joy, out of the mess you are in, when you are older, you will learn to appreciate this. If this church environment is too much, stop going for awhile, stay home on sundays and plant a garden, for this is therapeutic. Explain to your parents, that this emotional abuse has got to stop. It is human to merely just be. But we must stay away from harms way. Until it is a safe environment, protect what is most precious in you, the innocent ideal of love, goodness, and justice, and let no man trample on that. Ponder often the lessons we have, about the failed moral superiority complex we built and falsely maintained in the Christian community. Learn that is just being human, and exhort each of us to goodness (St Pauls' teaching), and learn from the founder, Jesus of Nazareth. For he has taught, to 'work while there is day light, for in the night, no one can work.' I take that literally, if you were to plant something in your garden, you must do so, during the day, for when night times approaches and the evil thereof comes, we cannot see well enough to work. In a church where the night falls upon it, we wait until there is day light. Then you may presume your service to a God, your own God. For me, I take that literally, and I grow a garden, farm in organic ways, teach my kids to appreciate the frailty of being human, while we 'pitch a tent' on the earth, to remember to be thankful, and to be. And to be, that is the question.

Do the Right Thing

A quote from my recent post:

As a theologian, I see God in every thing. I see God in a simple beautiful tomato, and a small chicken. It is in the kindness of people, and sometimes in the unlikely places as well. God lives in the world, is the world. So, if I may using the ancient words of Daoist master, that Dao is in the lowliest places, is in urine and excrement, for example. That too, for me is God.

That being said, much of the anxiety comes from trying to be obedient to the holy writing that teaches we have to love our enemies, and do good to those that harm us, etc. This type of teaching is harmful to us. We cannot be in harmony and peace, if we run into harms all the time, sometimes, this type of harms kills us, inwardly and outwardly. We for example, shield our kids from child molesters, not because we have to live at peace with them, or to forgive them for what they do, but simply to run from harm. If a brethern in Christ or out of Christ is causing harm to others, how can you live at peace with such critter, though for this beast that Christ has died. I propose here a new solution, that blindly following ancient words of the bible is harmful, remember that these things are written for people, not the other way around. Therefore in the teaching of Jesus I translate this for you, "Sabbath is made for man, and man is not made for sabbath, and Man (son of man/bar/ben nasha = man in Syriac, which is Jesus' own mother tongue) is the Lord of sabbath." We read the sacred words of Christ, and throw out those words that are outdated, or dangerous to us in this generation. Remember, only the blind follows the blind and the dead buries their dead. You do what is right in your own eyes, that is the commandment from God.

Having Faith

I used to believe in the holy words of St Paul, "Once one is in Christ, he is a new creation, and that everything passes away, behold everything is new." In my childhood, I used to hold that devout Christians have a moral high ground, and the more devout, the holier these folks are. In others' words, I used to believe that Christians have this 'moral superiority.'

I no longer believe that. Christians are just as guilty, commit just as much in crimes and evil, sometimes more evil than the non-Christians. Having faith in Christ does not make one a better person. Matter of fact, Jesus cannot save a person and then change him. There is little to show forth before and after the personal salvation event. Faith gives one a feeling that he is better, and that is all a feeling. I do however, after giving up this notion of 'new creation' and 'sainthood' of believers, can now live at peace with myself. I was just given a notion of believing in a Christ that has little or no power to change a person. What changes our behaviour, is the sheer will of human spirit. When one is finally realize the depth of despair, or the wrongs one has done to others, or to the environment, perhaps there is a human will to change. That is called human courage. When a rapist turns himself in, when the thief returns the stolen goods, at that moment, one experiences the power of divine human spirit.

I no longer look to faith or to a Jesus that is unable and powerless to help us. I look to human beings who play the courage of God, who in fact are divine when they act in justice or goodness, who are compassionate. Those values are god- attributes, and for me, they are God. But a Jesus that died in Palestine many years ago, of their followers trying to claim that his teachings are more special than others, or that they are the now saints, I don't think so. They are just as acrimonious, and sometimes more rapists that others. I will stay away from such, or the schools that claim such holiness, in their midst, filled with dead, rotting flesh. I will look to the world for faith, love and justice. After all, this world is greater than I, and this human community is more just than a self-deceiving group of Evangelicals whose god died many years ago, rotted in the grave, and did not physically rise nor is it able to help those in need. As one theologian taught, "If I were ever to lose my ways, I would turn to the world. After all, the world is greater than I. I would put my faith in the world, foe me, that is the ultimate."

Consider 'Job' and suffering

Here is the classical argument: "How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind. 3 Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?" And my own answer is,yes. There is no justice in the courts of the Divine, and certainly for those who suffer. If there is justice, it has something to do with humans. It is humans that hold those perpetrators accountable. These are the efforts of humans who fought the NAZI's and who with their lives, rescued the Jews. I do not see heavenly fires strike the guards at the concentration camps where Jews were burnt up. Nor is Hitler dead by lightning. These are possible attributes of the divine. Yet, there is none. In my humble experience, when I was on the Board of Prairie Bible Institute, the entire Bible Department was forced to resigned and the evil man who did this, the former president Ohlhauser thrived for a time. He was invincible. But in the end,he angered the entire town, for he suggested the school should be closed and move to another town. At the account of that, the entire town forced him out, he was not removed by god or gods. He was removed by men and his own action was his downfall. Throughout the entire scandal, I see no hands of god and this is one of the main reasons that I became deconverted. Gods are missing in human affairs. We are and we made what it is. So my own inquiry into Job strengthens my own disbelief that Gods and god are missing in human affairs. In Job, his questions are not answered. His plights are pitiful ad I would lay the blame on the author of this fictitious account, that he too has no answers to daily human sufferings. He has created this book to answer the questions of ageless human suffering but this human author fails at the answer at every turn.

Quoting this man who is an intellectual honest:

Why I Am No Longer a Christian (2003)

Ruminations on a spiritual journey out of and into the material world

Kendall Hobbs

I have found it a rare occurrence to come across a Christian evangelist (living in the United States, evangelists are almost always Christian) who does not have serious misunderstandings of my beliefs and the reasons for them. Typically, they approach me thinking that if only I would read the Bible with an open mind, or be open to God, or experience God the way they have, I would certainly understand. Or, when they hear that I'm a former Christian, they typically conclude that I must not have been a real Christian, that I was not taught the true understanding of God, or that there must have been some sort of tragedy to make me angry at God. Or perhaps I am just an evil person and I have chosen to serve evil. Or they believe that no one can really be an atheist, that deep down I must know God exists, and rather than actually not believing that God exists I must be actively rejecting God and all He stands for. But in doing so, they fail to address me. They are not talking to me, but to their misunderstanding of me. So my hope is that this essay will give Christians, and theists in general, a better understanding of how at least one former theist came to be a former theist.

This is also for anyone who has had, or especially for anyone who is currently going through, a deconversion process, to have a story of someone else who has gone through it. Having gone through it myself, I know it can be an emotionally and psychologically painful process, but I can say that, for me at least, the rewards of my journey have been more than worth it.

My Life as a Christian

I suppose you can call this my "extimony," a term which I should explain for those who may be unfamiliar with the brand of evangelical Christianity in which I was involved. Among the evangelical crowd, having a "born-again" experience of admitting to God that you are a sinner, asking for his forgiveness which he offers through the sacrificial death of Jesus, and inviting God into your life to "create you anew" is crucial: if you have not had such an experience, if you have not so invited Jesus into your heart, you have not truly been "saved," i.e., you are not a real Christian. As the label "evangelical" implies, evangelical Christians also take evangelism very seriously (as in the "Great Commission" at the end of Matthew instructing Jesus's followers to go to all the world and preach the gospel). To evangelize involves "witnessing" to others, i.e., telling them the gospel message, the story (as they understand and interpret it, anyway) of God, Jesus, Heaven and Hell, salvation, etc. One's "testimony," i.e., one's own personal story of one's born-again experience and subsequent relationship with Jesus and of what God has done in one's life, features prominently in witnessing. Thus, as one who used to give my testimony when witnessing to others about how I became a Christian, I call the story of how I became an ex-Christian "my extimony."

So, by "no longer a Christian," I mean specifically no longer a born-again, Bible-believing, evangelical, Protestant Christian. But if you are a Catholic, Anglican, Mormon, or some other form of Christian--or even a Muslim, Hindu, or whatever else--before you conclude too quickly that I was just involved in the wrong religion and that your own "One True Religion" (tm) is safe from my critique, think carefully about how some of my general critiques of evangelical Christianity may likely apply to your religion, e.g., the question of the existence of a theistic god in the first place. Also think about how some of my specific critiques of evangelical Christianity can be easily modified to apply to your religious views, e.g., problems with interpreting and defending your "Holy Book(s)" and your interpretations of them.


http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/hobbs.html

My Deconversion Story

Benjamin Chung, DMD

August 18, 2012 Common Era

East Orleans, MA

I had been a Christian all my life. I was born into a Taiwanese Presbyterian family, with a few generations of service to this Scottish church. My great grandfather served this church under very meager and harsh condition since his graduation from Tainan Theological Seminary in 1888. He died early in his career, and it was attributed to his work. He was overworked as a minister and the pay was meager and difficult to raise his eight children. As a result, he suffered poor health and died early, when my grandfather was eight. His wife converted to Catholicism, and for that, the removed his name from the roaster. This is how the Scottish Church paid him for his honest work. He left some writing, some recorded the extreme inequality of the pay scale: the masters, the white missionaries got pay ten times than the slaves (local natives). This type of pay scale continued for sometime after his untimely death. We call this practice “exploitation.” This is going to be a continual pattern in Evangelical Christianity.

I no longer hold the god of the Evangelicals true nor do I pray to it or worship it. If I believe in God at all, it is in the human community, the good earth, and values that I share with my fellow humans.

Early in my life, I was baptized as a child. In my upbringing, I started to read the bible, and as part of the Sunday School education, I memorized quite a few verses. This continued when I moved to Canada in the summer of 1980. I was accepted by a local independent Charismatic church called “Glad Tidings Temple.” I spent the next four years in this fundamentalist church, became quite acquainted with Premillennialism, and had a dramatic conversion experience at the age of 16. At that time in my life, I was separated from my own family (my parents were not allowed to stay in Canada), my community (I was cut off from Taiwan), and I received regular indoctrination of man/sin/salvation at this church and my day school. My school, Temple Academy used an irregular and non-accredited fundamentalist curriculum called Accelerated Christian Education. It holds one of the most extreme views on Protestant American Christianity, and it was designed to supplant modern education, and to roll back advances made by modernity. It keeps kids from studying natural sciences, and provides them with a constant bombardment of an out-dated cosmology (Genesis), values, and codes of conduct. I suspect most of kids that completed such curriculum do very poorly in life, and perhaps were kept at the bottom of this modern society because they have no useful skills other than to regurgitate bible verses, and to wait constantly in fear of the second coming. These folks are decidedly 'left behind' by their own inadequate education. My teachers, narrow minded fundamentalists, told us not to study in a regular college/university, less we would be affected/contaminated by humanism. With education like this, you can imagine how many bottom feeders of this society they could produce. My luck was in the switching of this school to another regular Christian school, Prairie High School, in Alberta. It was accredited by the Alberta Education Ministry. Even though it was still a fundamentalist education, I received a much superior education which eventually allowed me to make application to any Canadian university. It was with this regular post-secondary education, I gradually moved on from this type of mind control.

My education by these religious Christian fundamentalists taught me to pay little or no attention to modernity. It permanently damaged my thinking in evolution. After a bachelor degree in Biology, graduate education in dentistry, I still find it difficult to comprehend this scientific theory. I attributed this to my tireless teachers and the damnable curriculum that drilled into my head to disregard science and modernity. It also gave me the anger about the changes that occurred in the development of modern theology. I was told of the great chasm between us as fundamentalists and secular humanist society. We were so certain in the inerrant, inspired word of god. Furthermore, when science and the word conflicted with each other, to disregard the obvious and trust completely in the bible. I was also taught as a Dominionist, that is, our faith is supreme to all other human conventions. My faith in the ancient and stone age teachings of Jewish writing, would uphold the unfair treatment of women (subservient to men, due to their fault at the Garden of Eden and the introduction of sin into the world), of gays (for the longest time, I fear and hated gay folks, thought them as sinful, unnatural and god will destroy them in the future), and slavery ( I find it justifiable that whatever scriptures advocated, it would be fine with me). I also see no trouble with massive genocide described in the bible, and the modern on-going genocide in Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. I was taught that every thing must be placed under the feet of god and his messiah (Ps. 2).

I no longer do.

I did not arrive at this point in my life accidentally, or by careless wondering, I lost my faith. Instead, I came to this point in my life by some life changing events and intellectually integrity that gradually moved me and propelled me to this current position.

1. Life Changing Event #1
   
   I met my wife in my final dental school year. I had not previously understand my folks, but in this incident, I realize what their religion is. Their religion is their stomach, their desires. As the sacred teaching taught, “their god is their own stomach.” My wife and I came from very similar back ground. We were all raised as Taiwanese Presbyterian, and later on I found out that her great grandfather was in the same seminary class as my great grandfather. My folks main concern was that she did not come from a wealthy family. On that point, I was mercilessly persecuted, yelled at, and humiliated. I was forced to take a job and worked in order to acquire my independence. I had to demonstrate the courage and the will to be, otherwise, I could not married her.

All that time, I wondered often, of what went wrong. I studied at a very prestigious school, Harvard, and I did everything was supposed to do to please my folks. At the age of 28, I seldom date other women, for the fear to upset my folks. My previous adventures were utterly failures, all my former girlfriends were repugnant to my own folks, as they made many excuses whether it be race, culture, or timing. At the age of 28, I grew tired of this talk. I realize that the fifth commandment is not about blind obedience, it was about honouring the parents. But in my folks mind, their own honour was link to their face, and had I married to their will, I would just marry any body they put up, and live with that person for life (Christianity forbids divorce except very strenuous circumstances). My goal at that time was to study theology after my dental training. I even made application to Princeton Theological Seminary, and my wife did not seem to object this as some others had done. Meeting my wife changed all that, and I recanted my application to Princeton, and went to work.

As I stepped out of 'the will of god' began my self-reliance, I was extremely fearful of an angry god, in addition to my own angry folks. That god might strike me down for this blatant disobedience to his teaching. I should have broken up with this MIT educated girlfriend, and married anybody they say. I worked in the slums of Lowell, spent three hours commuting daily for about 5-6 months, until my folks reluctantly granted me permission. As I took the hour long commuter rail from Boston to Lowell, I read Kierkegaard. I admired his courage to do what is right. He taught me that the courage to be. That was a life line to me as a fundamentalist, since beneath the angry, there was fear. The god we worshiped told us to blindly obey our parents, less it would strike us down. I actively disobeyed this god and my folks. I rather be dead than to live like a coward. So far, god did not kill me, and I am still alive, with a lovely family of 7. My lovely children in many ways, repudiated this ridiculous teaching. This first life changing event taught me that this god does not exist, and we need not to fear it. So I became 'depersonalized' of my relationship with it or to its jesus.

2. Life Changing Event #2

I served as a Board of Director at Prairie Bible Institute during 2003-2004. I had spent a lot of time and money at this school. I paid my own way to the board meeting, I donated a good sum of money to this school. I stayed up at night agonizing over my decision to close my own high school. I called the chairman, spoke to other board of directors. They assured me that this is a christian organization, and it would be different from 'secular organizations.' Instead, this is the same if not worse than regular organizations. There was no transparency to all the decisions made on the Board. Every decision has been made prior to my joining the board, they were looking for a rubber stamp. This would have a last impact on my understanding of “the moral superiority” of Christians. They all claim that since they are the new creation, that they have moved from darkness into light. Their actions are blessed by god and they are indeed truer human beings and higher moral beings, and they act much more justly than their unenlightened unsaved neighbours. This is actually a self delusion. They are like their neighbours, and if not, much worse than their neighbours. I would come to this point later in this testimony. My board experience allows me to see past this egregious christian claim, and as I sat there in the midst of an autocratic president, deceitful agendas and uncaring and intellectually inferior board members, I had another life crisis. I had trusted god and these men. None of them are trustworthy, I felt betrayed as my school was closed. I tried unsuccessfully to arouse any alumni by calling them and emailing many. It turned out that they are just as bad as the Board. It seems to me that they have been taught to blindly trust god and this president whom they thought has the will of god to guide school into bigger and better thing. Events would unfold that his unpopular tricks would resulted in the anger of the bible college community and the whole town. They literally ran him out of town. Through this whole thing, I see no hand of god, just merely our own foolishness and the blind trust in a being that is not there, that is not at all powerful, or knowing. And worse yet, I had given a large sum of money to something that would have definitely helped my own desperate financial situation.

This crisis affirms my suspicion that god is not there. We have blindly trust in a being in the sky that was thought to be all powerful, all knowing, and all present. No, this bible college was struggling against the tides of time. It is no longer attractive to young men or women, as the interests in missionary enterprises died, and the money evaporated. This man, Jon Ohlhauser had a very limited education in the fundamentalist college (Liberty University), his dictatorial habits came from his reading of the bible, of his own assimilation of biblical Moses. Neither was the Exodus event historical or if there were other archeological findings to back this (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/bibles-buried-secrets.html). Many of our faith community attributed to the appointment of this man as the will of god, and toward the end, the installed the Chairman of the Board as the next president as the will of god. This new president knew all along that Jon was destroying the school, failed to stop him, and is awarded the presidency of the bible college. I am not sure this is the will of god or is it our own foolishness.

3. Life Changing Event #3

I studied biblical Hebrew as an elective course in college. I am very familiar with the first 12 chapters of Genesis. It began to dawn on me after 20 years, that my reading of Genesis is tainted with my own fundamentalist beliefs. These few chapters contradicts modern science, advocates polygamy and the subservience of women, blood shed and human sacrifice. There are many things we no longer accept as valid, and the deity in the Genesis is a vengeful god and his sons had lustful sexual intercourse with human daughters which resulted in the extermination of the supposed human race. This Noahic story is to be a pattern for the future destruction as it was foretold by Jesus in the Gospels. This time, instead of using water, it would be the unquenchable fire. The creation myth is closely approximating Gilgamesh tales, and it would make sense that this myth was perpetuated in Near East where the Jews came from. Stars, little or great light (obviously the author was careful not to use Shamash the sun god) was placed into the firm-dome called the sky. The author had no proper modern cosmology, and there was no way for his imagination to the creation of this world, other a stone age understanding. This is not how the world began. Stars are billion and trillion light years part, and in order for their light to reach the earth, that light had to be travelling a very long time. Geological records point to a very old earth, with many layers of fossils that contain intermediary forms. DNA points to the common ancestors that we share in this gift of life. Furthermore, my understanding of inerrancy was a product of American ingenuity against the development of textual and higher criticism of the christian scriptures. Bart Erhman through his careful studies, established the same conclusion that much of the christian sacred texts were not totally fool-proofed. Much of the textual formation is directly related to the faith communities they come from, and the details of much dispute can be traced to the changes of the ongoing faith communities of shifting and changing christians all over that Roman era. Details in the Gospels conflict with each other, confuse each other, and in a way nullify each others. Jesus has two different genealogical accounts. His teaching varied from gospel to gospel, and the details of his life, crucifixion and resurrection all varied significantly from gospel to gospel. Whether he was silent on the cross, or murmured a prayer, or held direct conversations to his contemporary at that time. Whether there was a large earthquake which resulted in the raising of many dead people, or there was none. Much of these lore cannot be historically verified, and even the person of Jesus is in doubt, much of his life seems to coincide with the deities of that land, during that time.

Lloyd Geering taught me that we create the concept of god. This god is not a person, and at the end of his interview, he believes in the human community and the earth. He has a profound influence in how I see the question of faith.

4. Life Changing Event #4

As I type these words, I no longer profess my belief in a personal god, nor do I have faith in a theological christ. If I have any faith at all, it is in the goodness of people, this community and the world, the earth. I have seen many went into the theological seminaries because they no longer can sustain themselves in a real work, or would hold onto a proper job. Their inability to find regular and meaningful work, propelled them to seek this easy life. They would study at a simple seminary for three years, and upon graduation, they could find a better employment that pays well, demands very little physical or actual work. Indeed, their work is virtual, they preach a god to the taste of their congregation: that is full of love (the congregation needs that), supplies all their needs, blesses them with wealth, jobs and children. That it answers prayers, and in the time of need, to provide virtual comfort. They also justify their being in this type of unproductive work by asking their parishioners for money. I have seen much of this lazy and deceitful practice that they pay no taxes, that they fooled the congregation of their time and money. Worse yet, this instant power allows some of them to sexually molest innocent children and adults. Their preaching of a submissive role of women, and the strict sexual purity practices kept the fear in their congregation. They then proceed to transgress that by sexually molest and rape the young women or children. It happened at my own bible college, and other religious institutions, be it the Catholic churches, Bob Jones University, or Jack Schaap of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in Hammond, Indiana. Indeed, much of the abuses is not just sexual or physical, but emotional or spiritual. These parasites sucked life and money and energy out of their parishioners. I no longer see this type of faith is justified in the insurmountable evidences that point to the simple fact, that their god is their stomach, that they could not take a regular job so their turn to the religious who are simpletons. They dare not question the will of god, and they dare not to ask the obvious question. Should we or should we not spend money and time in these delusions??

Much of the evangelical god and enterprises rest with capitalism. They have an unnatural urge to increase the amount of money and followers. They seek to convert as many as quickly and by all means necessary. They have unexamined their own faith in god and jesus. If they truly believe in this fictional gospel jesus, they would have given all their possessions to the poor, live a homeless celibate life. They would walk “the narrow path”, and live a very modest if not austere celibate life, eagerly waiting for the second coming and the next life. They would abstain from taking the money since in the Acts story, the collection of money was for the saints in Jerusalem (ie. poor people), and no more. There was no mention of building elaborate church buildings, paying the clergy a sizable sum of money and putting them up on the pedestal as the kings and governors of the simpletons. This marriage of capitalism destroys families and rifts them apart from their actual communities. They want more and more followers and conversions, and devote all their energies, and by all means necessary. I see this delusion harmful, and anti-religious. God is not honoured and human communities and families have been unfairly taxed to build bigger and better looking buildings. As they increase in size and numbers, they propelled these men whose intellectual life this world rejects. So they in turn fooled others. These parasites are a burden to society, like all other forms of biological parasites.

My conclusion:

If anything that can be said about seeking a religious life, is to live a religious life. There is no need for any unfounded moral superiority in these evangelical churches. They fooled around as much as others do, and the divorces are more so in the churches than the infidels. Their intellectually dishonesty and their consistent greed is what sets them apart. As I alluded to the early part of my testimony, their god is their stomach (desires). I no longer do believe in this god.

If I believe in God at all, I do so, believing in the goodness every human being who honestly trying to lead a good life, knowing the faults of being human, but able to reconcile that with their neighbours and love and esteem others better than ourselves. Refrain ourselves to take what is not ours, and share the land and its bounty with the animals we live with, and in the world, with courage. That is God, that is God to me, that we have the moral courage to act and do the right thing, and be honest to ourselves.

It is “to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly” with this God.

I wrote this deconversion testimony for a certain group of people. I wrote it first for myself, to summarize why I no longer believe in a personal Evangelical god. And it helps me to summarize why I no longer look to these churches for help and comfort. I also write this for another set of people, of those who are actively taking and sucking on resources of others to fulfill their own damnable desires. This parasitic activities have destroyed families and unfairly burden families in the fear that they had to in order to please god. No, they do not, but they have to have the courage to be. Finally, I write this as a warning to those ministers of the Evangelical faith, that they ought to cross examine their calling, perhaps they can take up meaningful jobs and live a life I can respect, and do not burden others for the work their should have done themselves. It is in the realization that their faith is unusually married to capitalism, that their insatiable greed in en massing great numbers of money, people and resources. Perhaps they will learn that there is no end in what a hell will acquire through this type of greed, and live a sustainable, humble life style, if any, they can also worship God in their meaningful work for others, in the greening of Christianity, and in building a more just society for their neighbours. It is then, the Kingdom will come to earth when we stop believing in fairy tales, and supporting delusions to enslave others. We are indeed able to believe in God and in this good earth. We will live the rest of our lives in this peace and to that end, we will be. Amen.

My random thoughts about God

 I agree with a few folks upstairs here about this mis-applied verses on temptation. I have been taught that God is alive that he is almighty and all knowing and that he acts in human history. 

I am 47 now, and after serving on Prairie's Board of Directors, and working with children ministry for at least 10 years, served three summers with the Child Evangelism Fellowship, and not counting the numerous hours with church youth groups, and prayer meetings, and praying and reading the holy bible. I have come to a place in my life that our concept of God is human. It is very human, and it is something we made up, perhaps if there is a God out there, it is not like that. God is not Jewish, nor is he merely about material blessing. Jesus was human, but I cannot affirm his miraculous birth, his miracles or his resurrection. All these stories conflict with each other in the gospels, and the more I read, the more conflicts of the details I see. I have come to see Bible as a very human book, and offers a human solution. God is perhaps in our best values, but he is not a being, not a thing, and no a body.Because of this metaphysical way, he cannot and will not intervene. I no longer believe in a Christian triune God. Not like that. What I do affirm, is the goodness of every human beings. There is hope in this green earth, and after we are passed, the world will still be here. It gives me tremendous freedom, and relief to know that my God is dead, that this world comes alive more than ever to me. 
So, in short, my answers differ significantly to yours, and I know so. I was once upon a time, a fundamentalist, after serving Prairie and Ohlhauser, I see that God is not what we think, that God fails to come to our aid, and that God is a figment that we are so afraid to let God. So I would use a usual Prairie phrase, let go and let god. Yea, let us be good. Amen.