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encouraging ex-Christians
Personal de-conversion testimonials submitted to ExChristian.Net
by Astreja
My name is Astreja Kaéren Odinsdóttir, and I am a Heaven refusenik. I have made a conscious decision to deliberately choose Hell over Heaven, in the unlikely event that these places actually exist.
Somewhere between age five and seven I read the Bible for the first time. My parents' library included an illustrated volume with some rather striking lithographs, and one of those illustrations still haunts me forty-five years later. I remember a mass of humanity standing in a pit, hands aloft, pleading for mercy.
Fortunately for my sanity, neither of my parents are overtly religious. Although I was baptized without my consent at the age of three months, I somehow managed to avoid the standard indoctrination into Christian mythology. Imagine a seven-year-old girl commenting to the boy next door that threats of eternal punishment are useful for controlling the masses, and you'll get a good picture of my skeptical fascination with religion.
I've tried to approach philosophy, mysticism and theology with an open mind, but everything ultimately gets filtered through that religion-as-societal-tool epiphany that I had on the neighbours' front steps. At age 11, I could "see" time as a finite line, and grasped the inherent meaninglessness of all time-dependent events. A year later I had recovered from my brush with nihilism and had adopted Athena as my patron. I wrote a novella about a saviour-ish mystic with stigmata on his hands; researched Hinduism for a history project on India; and hung out with science geeks who made "velocity vectors" away from annoying evangelists. By the end of high school I self-described as an atheist, but only because I had yet to hear the word "agnostic".
Somewhere between high school and the working world I did have a rather close call. A born-again Christian in the laundromat across the street did try to convert me. However, when he asked me to recite the Sinner's Prayer, I balked. I do not believe in sin, let alone the involuntary and indelible Original Sin. I find the very idea disgusting. I believe in Original Neutrality, with value found only in conscious action.
On top of that, I did not care much for the god of the Bible. The concept of one and only one god is illogical to me, and I kept seeing that pit full of scared, suffering people. Jesus was a bit more interesting, and I did like what he had to say about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, but to me he was just another victim in the same sad story.
Then (after several decks of Tarot cards, some do-it-yourself magick, and visits to a synagogue and a Christian Science church), I discovered Buddhism. More specifically, I discovered the concept of the bodhisattva: Someone who wins the struggle for personal enlightenment, but stays behind to help everyone else climb out of the pit. That, to me, sounded honourable and worth pursuing.
Finally, I rediscovered my Scandinavian roots and became an Ásatrúar. The mythology, where even the gods can die, agreed with my love of polytheism and with my Life, the Universe and Everything vision from age eleven. The Norse heiðinn ethics (the Nine Noble Virtues of courage, truth, honour, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, industry, self-reliance, and perseverance) are reasonably compatible with Buddhist ethics. With the possible exception of the admonition against intoxicating substances, that is.
Accordingly...
...If there is an afterlife (Which I rather doubt)...
...With a place of reward (Anything is possible, I suppose)...
...And a place of eternal punishment (Oh, please; stop insulting the gods with such a barbaric idea)...
...I vow to go there and stay there until every other sentient being is released from torment.
In the meantime, I'm going to hang out with the Æsir and Vanir, brew me some mead, and perhaps translate the Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sūtra into Old Norse. Just call me the Zen Valkyrie.
My name is Astreja Kaéren Odinsdóttir, and I am a Heaven refusenik. I have made a conscious decision to deliberately choose Hell over Heaven, in the unlikely event that these places actually exist.
Somewhere between age five and seven I read the Bible for the first time. My parents' library included an illustrated volume with some rather striking lithographs, and one of those illustrations still haunts me forty-five years later. I remember a mass of humanity standing in a pit, hands aloft, pleading for mercy.
Fortunately for my sanity, neither of my parents are overtly religious. Although I was baptized without my consent at the age of three months, I somehow managed to avoid the standard indoctrination into Christian mythology. Imagine a seven-year-old girl commenting to the boy next door that threats of eternal punishment are useful for controlling the masses, and you'll get a good picture of my skeptical fascination with religion.
I've tried to approach philosophy, mysticism and theology with an open mind, but everything ultimately gets filtered through that religion-as-societal-tool epiphany that I had on the neighbours' front steps. At age 11, I could "see" time as a finite line, and grasped the inherent meaninglessness of all time-dependent events. A year later I had recovered from my brush with nihilism and had adopted Athena as my patron. I wrote a novella about a saviour-ish mystic with stigmata on his hands; researched Hinduism for a history project on India; and hung out with science geeks who made "velocity vectors" away from annoying evangelists. By the end of high school I self-described as an atheist, but only because I had yet to hear the word "agnostic".
Somewhere between high school and the working world I did have a rather close call. A born-again Christian in the laundromat across the street did try to convert me. However, when he asked me to recite the Sinner's Prayer, I balked. I do not believe in sin, let alone the involuntary and indelible Original Sin. I find the very idea disgusting. I believe in Original Neutrality, with value found only in conscious action.
On top of that, I did not care much for the god of the Bible. The concept of one and only one god is illogical to me, and I kept seeing that pit full of scared, suffering people. Jesus was a bit more interesting, and I did like what he had to say about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, but to me he was just another victim in the same sad story.
Then (after several decks of Tarot cards, some do-it-yourself magick, and visits to a synagogue and a Christian Science church), I discovered Buddhism. More specifically, I discovered the concept of the bodhisattva: Someone who wins the struggle for personal enlightenment, but stays behind to help everyone else climb out of the pit. That, to me, sounded honourable and worth pursuing.
Finally, I rediscovered my Scandinavian roots and became an Ásatrúar. The mythology, where even the gods can die, agreed with my love of polytheism and with my Life, the Universe and Everything vision from age eleven. The Norse heiðinn ethics (the Nine Noble Virtues of courage, truth, honour, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, industry, self-reliance, and perseverance) are reasonably compatible with Buddhist ethics. With the possible exception of the admonition against intoxicating substances, that is.
Accordingly...
...If there is an afterlife (Which I rather doubt)...
...With a place of reward (Anything is possible, I suppose)...
...And a place of eternal punishment (Oh, please; stop insulting the gods with such a barbaric idea)...
...I vow to go there and stay there until every other sentient being is released from torment.
In the meantime, I'm going to hang out with the Æsir and Vanir, brew me some mead, and perhaps translate the Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sūtra into Old Norse. Just call me the Zen Valkyrie.
Chucky Jesus
I enjoyed your post though. If you have read my recent post on Hell (the one above yours), you will see that we are both of the same mind regarding making the dignified choice of choosing Hell should there be such a feinish place to begin with.
Gulags, 're-education' centers, brainwashing camps, etc, are all just a sample.
Please don't feed the troll.
Accordingly, I don't want its mercy as it is meaningless to me. I have no intention of loving or worshipping a torturer.
And, Wandering Jew and Anonymous: if you don't like what you read here, go to a different website!
Assuming heaven and hell exist, that is.
Which I profoundly doubt.
But I'm still prepared to chance it, because I simply can't live with the alternative of turning my back on someone else's suffering.
What makes you so sure that image you saw had any validity at all?
What makes you so sure that those in Hell actually want to go to Heaven?
The only reason you can love, is because of God. If you're separated from God, I don't think you'll be "loving" much.
My guess is that whatever hatred you're anchoring yourself to today, runs the risk of being the hatred you experience in eternity.....minus anything that resembles love in your life today. God showers goodness on the just and the unjust on earth, but He doesn't promise to do so in Hell.
Do you honestly believe that our God of love didn't exasperate all options for converting those souls?
Of your list of virtues, isn't it interesting that you don't include Love, Mercy & Justice, our Lord's virtues?
I'm with the "sweet irony" post though, if you're so charitable that you're willing to sacrifice your soul for others, I doubt very much that you'd be anywhere but in Heaven. But, to be clear, I don't believe any of us have any business judging, or even guessing, at where anyone will end up. It's best to just hope and pray. His mercy is so great, He gave us a glimpse of it's magnitude even while He was on the cross...by forgiving a repentant and pleading for mercy on His assailants.
The problem with "sweet irony", is that I don't think any of us (at least I don't) really believe that you're being selfless with these words. What I hear is that you're judging God's judgment and disagreeing with His will to such a degree, that you're ready to hold on to that arrogance till the bitter end.
Here's another virtue that was missing from your list, humility. If we all work on that one, it doesn't take long for God's spirit to teach us that His decisions are good and that we are much too little to be judging Him.
You may not understand the doctrine of Hell, but not understanding something shouldn't mean you don't believe in it.
Humility will lead us to His spirit and His spirit will teach us to trust Him.
Peace,
Marc
Marc, I was trying not to post on the same threads as you, as it is quite obvious to me that you and I are diametrically opposed in viewpoints and just wind up at each other's throats. But, now that you've left muddy footprints all over my Ex-timony, I have no qualms about telling you what I think.
You are a hypocrite, Marc. You want us to believe that *your* religion's visions are "miracles", then you turn around and question mine.
I know what I saw that day. It terrified me until I came to understand its deeper implication: That the only meaning to life is what we give it in the present moment. And the corollary: Mortals are perfectly capable of creating meaning, right here and right now, without divine help of any sort.
Understand this one thing: What I saw on that winter afternoon in early 1969 permanently affected the way I view the universe. I can not un-see it, nor do I care to. From where I sit, an eternal life is no more meaningful than a finite one. And, if your god were actually to exist, its actions would be no more meaningful than yours or mine or those of my cats.
Oh, and don't make me laugh. "Love, mercy and justice"? Not unless you're talking about Freyja, Guan Shi Yin and Themis. The god of the bible fails on all counts.
And when did I *ever* say that I made that vow out of selflessness? I'm doing it for me, first and foremost, because anything less is dishonourable in my own eyes.
Reason will lead us away from superstition and toward rational thought. Rational thinking will teach us that magical thinking is for children and the infirm.
I think you're both beautifully strong people, and I love that you're both passionate about what you say.
I've recently been contemplating faith, & these things have entered my head from my looking at Christianity:
What is hell?
If according to scripture hell is eternity without God then fair enough if people who don't want God get hell. Who knows what being without God is like, if God really is the Creator.
Is it fair?
If according to scripture God is the source of love, and we can love because we are in his image, then if we reject the source, then perhaps eternity without love is just.
Hmm. I'd like to hear people's thoughts.
Secondly, do genuine questions contemplating the possibility of the Bible's realness warrant no answer? If ex-christians are to be comfortable in their non-belief they should be comfortable & able to respond to those who are open.
astreja,I encourage you to read the divine revelations of hell,make a long story short God took a woman through hell in her dreams,and told her to record everything she saw and she ended up publishing it.The point I wanted to make is that in there it stated that he cried and wanted to let them out but judgement had already been made.And we don't know for sure if non believers are going to hell or not.we can only go by the bible,after that its in Gods hands.its no forsure non believers are going to hell.
To all of the Christians trying to minister you rock,but remember they're not going to listen if you just state facts because to them it's just an opinion.You have to remember these rules
1.You have to reason with them,ask them questions
2.DON'T JUDGE THEM
3.Pray and ask Gog to soften their hearts,and talk to them.Ask God if you're doing the right thing,does he want you in this position.
4.Be a Role-MOdel.If they see you getting all crazy calling them sick,theyre going to think our religion is fake.or faker
5.Keep it Christian!listen to what they have to say,respect them,reply in a calm smooth way.
The point I want to make is this sounds pretty f%cking stupid, if we are talking about an "ALL-powerful" being.
Something like....
Once upon a non-time, an invisible, self-existing, omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving being created some sub-beings. He knew in advance that they'd disobey him, so he created "hell" for those of his creation who would disobey him. Come judgement day, God sends 3/4 of his creation to "hell", and there, God watches and weeps("cries") as his creation is being incinerated--and while he wishes it wasn't so, he is powerless to change is own mind, even though he is omnipotent.
Uh, huh?
That's predictable.
You still didn't prove your point.
No he did not know people....you know what I can't prove a point to you when you don't even know the first part of the bible.so explain what youre trying to say and while your at it respect me enough NOT to use profanity.
No,he just sticks to his word,he wrote something in the bible and he's going to stand by it.
No one knows for sure who's going to hell,or if he'll change his mind or not.
In genises(that would be the first chapter in the bible)It says God created the heavens and the Earth,I read no where it says in the beggining he also created hell until later on.
In genises(that would be the first chapter in the bible)
Whaaaa?....in "genises"????????? lol
I think this conversation's over. Bye little boy/girl.
Father God I ask that you will speak to these people,save your children,LOrd for they know not what they do.Forgive them for their sins,reveal Yourself to them.I speak blessings and prosperity over their lives Father.I demand the devil be released from their minds,bodies,spirits,and souls.I pray and demand their salvation Lord.I ask that you soften their hearts,speak to them late in the midnight hour,in their dreams Lord.Let them know you like I know you.Give them a heart like yours.I ask that you remove anything in their minds that is not of you Father.I bind and rebuke stubborness,unforgiveness,and any demonic spirits that are in these peoples lives.Impart your word in them Father,Impart your words in me to minister to them,give me and others the boldness to minister to them.I plead the blood of Jesus on everyone who doesn't know you father.Make them like you father,I ask this prayer in Your mighty name,in Jesus name AMEN
May reason find you....
God 'less.
they are flourished,longlivid,stable,durable,incorruptible,fruitful,virtuous,full of peace patience and love.
Since the inception of this site, do you have ANY clue how many "prayers" just like yours have been chanted on our behalf? THOUSANDS, if not tens-of....and yet, your invisible friend sits on her invisible a$$ in her invisible throne with her make-believe invisible "powers" doing NOTHING.
Out of all the energy you just wasted typing your prayers to your non-existant friend(and probably more to follow), you could've used that energy to actually read something that challenges your pre-programmed beliefs, thus, starting the deconversion process. Good luck with that.
Bye now.
(Cuts down magical hedges; unties all the demons and sends them home for supper; and passes mops and pails to all the angels so they can clean up the *yuck* blood.)
You can go to any hospital emergency room and ask for help, and at least, maybe head off a complete disintegration of your personality.
Just go up to the admitting desk, and tell them that you are crazy, and you are afraid that you may hurt someone.
Dan, Agnostic
And stop spamming this thread with proselytizing crap.
Royalty
I love you, Royalty
1.You will have ALL five of your senses( see,taste,smell,hear,touch/feel)
2.It's NEVER ENDING PAIN, if you took a lighter and set yourself on fire(Lord forbid), that's cold water compared to Hell.
3.It's for eternity, yes eternity.(never ending, no stopping point)
And I already know, " Royalty, you've never been to hell", "Royalty, you're psyco", "Royalty, get help", "Royalty, you don't what hell is like." "Royalty, royalty blah blah."
Go ahead and post those imbecilic comments. But know this, I'm a very busy individual, I relax(do absolutely nothing) about 19 or less hours a week, if I knew this was wrong, would I waste my time ministering to someone I don't know anything about?(NNOOO!)I wouldn't wish hell on someone who tortured me and my family and then killed us all.I would pray that he or she goes to heaven. I love you too much for you to go through that.
I love you, Royalty
Please read the Site Purpose and Disclaimer. Also, incessant proselytizing merely reinforces what we already know about many Christians. Furthermore, the apparent conviction you display in your posts demonstrates you are not interested in conversation, only conversion. That being the case, I see little reason to engage you seriously on any topic until and unless you choose to abandon your inflammatory rhetoric.
I do hope that one day you'll learn respect for ideas other than your own, and some courtesy would suit you as well. Take care.
I think J.C. Samuelson summed everything up nicely(per usual). But I'll add a few things while I'm at it:
Royalty: [in christian "Hell"]You will have ALL five of your senses( see,taste,smell,hear,touch/feel)
If you should happen to get a opening in your schedule, ***please provide us with a scientific peer-reviewed journal or literary publication that supports post-mortem life of ANY sort.
Please note the disqualifiers:
1) The Bible.
Comments: The bible does not qualify as "science", or else snakes, vegetation, and domestic donkeys would be speaking Hebrew; people would be healed of disease with bird-blood; blindness would be cured with spittle; hammers would float; Shamu's bellie would be for rent; there would be a giant dome holding up the sky; zombies would be walking amongst us, and the list of absurdities goes on.
As for "prophecy"--I will get thirsty and need water sometime in the next 24 hours. Please worship me.
2) NDEs(Near Death Experiences)
Comments: These cannot be qualified, unless you accept the NDEs of Muslims, Buddhists, and many other non-christian religionists who say they "see" their respective "Divine" figureheads when they are "near" death.
Royalty: It's NEVER ENDING PAIN, if you took a lighter and set yourself on fire(Lord forbid), that's cold water compared to Hell.
3.It's for eternity, yes eternity.(never ending, no stopping point)
Ouchy. 'Sounds pretty hot. I'm glad God loves me. Okay, see here***, above.
Royalty: Go ahead and post those imbecilic comments. But know this, I'm a very busy individual, I relax(do absolutely nothing) about 19 or less hours a week, if I knew this was wrong, would I waste my time ministering to someone I don't know anything about?(NNOOO!)
Marvelous deduction. "IF" you knew it was wrong, no, of course you wouldn't do it. Duh?
And as far as dedication of time---I don't know, I think the Jehovah's Witnesses got you beat. They minister door-to-door, and they wouldn't do that "IF" they "knew they were wrong", right?
Royalty: I love you too much for you to go through that.
No, dear, it's not us imbeciles you love---it's your religious "life insurance" that you love. And with every person you meet who rejects this "insurance"; with every person you meet who rejects your legendary superstitions, you tremble with fear of the unknown.
Peace, and may you one day find reason.
However, I am a woman of my word. What I say, I do. Period. If I'm wrong, I will go there of my own free will because the alternative is worshipping the unspeakably barbaric and egotistical god of the Bible. And the odds of me doing *that* are so low that you might as well call it zero and be done with it. In time, you may come to realize that your prayers have absolutely no effect on me, although announcing that you are praying for me does piss me off and lowers my opinion of you even more.
Although I would gladly hold the door for you as you leave this hypothetical Hell before me, I do not "love" you in return. I just shake my head in exasperation to think of you wasting your finite human life in thrall to an absurd and imaginary god-concept. There are real people out there who need real help from you. Not preaching or guilt trips. Just honest-to-goodness help with the myriad difficulties of this life.
Thank you & much love to you, Royalty (nice picture!I'm working on mine, but I'm having a little trouble)
Muck thanks & love, Royalty
XOXO(hugs and kisses) Royalty
I love you, Royalty
No. Absolutely not. I took the liberty of examining your blog and discovered an uncomfortably high number of administrator-removed posts. I understand that it's your blog and that you can remove posts that you don't like, but I prefer to debate on lightly-moderated fora.
"I apologize if I offended you when I said that I would pray for you..."
Apology accepted, this time and this time only. Be aware that this is a very sensitive point with many of us. Your prayers are not only not appreciated here, but often seen as an attack. Pray all you want; that's your right. (Just don't tell us about it.)
I love you big brother!, Royalty
Love you, Royalty