Was Blind, But Now I See!
Story Submitted by Graeme Lamprecht
I was raised as a “born again” Christian. My parents took me to all those happy clappy pentecostal meetings replete with babbling in tongues and apparent faith healings. Then I started questioning. My first, tentative questions. Full of the fear of “god” was I, thinking he could monitor my very thoughts, and being tortured by the possibility that this might constitute “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”. But the questions remained. Nonetheless I decided that the weight of evidence supporting the Christian narrative must be of non-reproach, so I soldiered on, eschewing many wonderful opportunities to enjoy my life while simultaneously causing myself to be ostracized by many because of my subsequent militant approach.
My flawed reasoning is that “god” somehow has a purpose in all of this, that his plan for the world would finally be realized and that, I reasoned, it would be better to follow him than risk the possibility of being sent to that eternal, infernal place of torture he’d supposedly prepared for those who rejected him. And so, I lived my life in this tortured existence, but when adolescence kicked in, I became a rebel and started drinking and smoking, and generally giving my parents grey hairs. Though I STILL clung to the core beliefs that had been inculcated in me, which simply served to compound the guilt I felt at being such a wicked reprobate in the eyes of “god”.
At the age of 32 I moved to Taiwan to teach English, met the girl of my dreams, a local lass, and got married. Ironically she was (still is) a Christian and had insisted that she have a Christian husband. To her, this was the answer to her prayers (shocked she was when I jettisoned it eight years later). My deconversion process was actually a long one although there were pivotal events that finally, rapidly, tipped the balance. When I think about it, there were many moments in my youth that contributed to my eventual enlightenment decades later, music even. I remember loving REM and particularly loved their song “Losing my Religion”. It seemed so sane, and yet so blasphemous all at the same time. And deep down, that’s what made it relevant, logical, and cool! Though I would never announce it openly.
A series of events tipped me after I had left South Africa, notably the death of my sister-in-law in England who was a missionary doing “God’s” work all over the globe. Thousands upon thousands of people all over the world prayed for her miraculous recovery. If ANYONE deserved to be spared, surely it was her. She dedicated her LIFE to spreading the “gospel” as well as helping abused and vulnerable women and children all over the planet. I prayed for her with all my might, especially on the day she died. My brother, who’d clung to hope of her surviving only told me the cancer was terminal the day before her passing. I got his call one winter’s morning here in Taiwan. I sobbed and sobbed. How could this be?
I still clung to this bullshit religion for another three years after this, though.
Then my wife’s best friend’s ten year-old daughter died of cancer. Same story, she was fervently prayed for; her mom even converted from Buddhism to Christianity in the vain hope that her daughter could be saved. I was shattered. Again. For months and months after the little girl’s passing I pondered her death, my sister-in-law’s death, as well as those of many other innocents who die despite sincere and fervent pleas from the Invisible Sky Daddy by their blindly devout flock (of sheep).
Ironically, my final epiphany came as a result of a video shared with me my one of my adult students who is (unbelievably) still a Christian. That video is by the late, great George Carlin, “Religion is Bullshit”. At first I was incensed at the blasphemy and irreverence of it all. Then I started laughing, tears of laughter and joy streaming down my cheeks. With that, I felt the most ENORMOUS relief! I was finally free! It was so liberating watching this amazing man, with such confidence and joy, tear apart this awful man-made thing called religion. And now I was free to say, with exuberant glee, and without a gram of fear that yes, I AM AN ATHEIST!
[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE&width=400&height=250[/embedyt]
