I couldn't shake the image on the screen.
I would look up and start crying. Repeat. Again and again.
The sinewy hand and jagged fingers of Satan holding the marionette strings to my helpless body. The other shadowy hand was pumping me with a needle.
I was 16 and had worked the summer at a Christian camp in upstate New York. And I was scared to death. I had just watched a play about a recovering addict who had become a Christian. The "reality" of Satan and the guilt of my own sin was palpable. The next image was Jesus taking my place and being tortured by Satan. Then beating him, triumphantly!
I felt so awful about who I was... despondent that I was even allowed to live.
Guilt...
Loved, but so dirty.
And it was all in my mind. It was all due to internalizing a message until it felt true! Worse than that, I realized that it played on my clinical depression and my already tattered self-esteem. The only self-esteem I built in my faith was that yes, I was disgusting and incapable. But, less of me and more of him!
Filling a vacuum with praising an imaginary person. I realized I had no identity outside of the caricature I created in my faith in God.
Who was I?
Where was my voice? My personality? My passion?
Slowly, as my theistic delusion melted away with skeptic-minded research and inquiry, a true self emerged! Along with clinical mental health therapy and medication, I found my way out of captivity!
And I really liked the person I found inside.
I like the way I think rationally and use my sarcasm and wit. I like the compassion I have for others with no religious strings attached.
I like thinking out loud and having my mind as the bastion of my own thoughts! No guilt or though-police. My sanctuary and home!
I am excited to share this blog with people because skepticism and inquiry helped me crawl out of the captivity that my own mind created around the dogma of the bible. I'm excited to discuss how historical inquiry helped with that and I'm excited to hear what path other people found out of Religion!
I can totally relate to what you said here:
ReplyDelete"The only self-esteem I built in my faith was that yes, I was disgusting and incapable. But, less of me and more of him!"
In fact, the need to find a way to see myself as a better person was one of the reasons I left Christianity.
I look forward to reading more about your experiences.
Thanks for the comment Jarred! I think what I found was that I wasn't filling up the "hole" with any supernatural being or ideal, but a caricature of that ideal. That is probably a clumsy way of saying it. But there's so little definitive detail about who Jesus is, you fill up on the caricature of the church perception of Christ.
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