31. July 2006 by Frank.

I just didn’t care about anything at all anymore. Nothing was important to me. I didn’t care if I ever did anything again. I didn’t care if I ever read another book, watched another movie or TV show, went to church, read the bible, prayed; none of it. None of the things I loved to do the most in the world held any interest for me.

The only people who understood what I was talking about were other stroke survivors. I tried in vain to get my wife and my doctor to understand what was going on but my wife refused to accept the new me and my doctor decided I was depressed. He put me on antidepressants which actually DID depress me. I was bad enough beforehand but that damn stuff sent me straight to the bottomless pit. All I wanted to do was sit in a chair and drool on myself.

So what did I do? I defied the doctor once again only this time it had nothing to do with faith. It was self preservation pure and simple.

Faith and prayer never entered into that decision, I had to do it or die. God wasn’t exactly around to give me any guidance or a helping hand. God pretty much threw me to the dogs. The abandonment was so thorough it actually penetrated the mental fog and I realized something profound had happened. My understanding of just how profound was slow in coming but it gradually became clear; God was not the least bit involved in my plight.

Somewhere during that time I lost interest in going to church. The more I stayed away, the more I realized that I had stopped feeling guilty. I wasn’t repenting for everything anymore. The freedom is tremendous if you can distance yourself from the guilt. I was so doped up, however, it took a long time for this to really register in my mind. I knew something was different but I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

My job was gone and my house was in jeopardy while this was happening. I was driving around in a car that was literally falling to pieces before my eyes; still thanking god that it
wasn’t completely gone already. I eventually realized how stupid I was thinking it was safe to drive that thing.

And then I did the unthinkable. I actually started reading things that debunked my faith.

I committed the unpardonable sin.

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23. July 2006 by Frank.

While I will admit that many people have “a crisis of faith” due to some major illness or tragedy in their lives, I think that the manner in which the stroke shut down my faith gives me an unusual if not unique viewpoint on religion. There is indeed an “off” switch.

I had absolutely no intention of giving up my faith, I was fully into the man of god life. I prayed all the time. I studied my bible constantly. I was actively teaching and preaching the word as I understood it, researching hidden meanings in the original Greek text. I was trying to live the best life I could by faith, you might rightly say I was a Christian fanatic.

I was such a fanatic that I convinced myself that I could conquer extremely high blood pressure by diet, exercise, and, of course, faith, but not by taking drugs. Diet and exercise did nothing; I’m genetically programmed for high BP. I hated the side effects that I suffered from BP drugs, I hated them so much that I decided to disregard my doctor and use my powerful faith in god to beat it. I was a true believer; divine healing made perfect sense to me. And after all, god would be immensely pleased by my faith lifestyle.

Wrong.

280/160 BP can shut off oxygen to your brain (hell, it could kill you just as easy) even though you feel completely normal; the worst “symptom” I ever felt was simply that I sweated way too easily. That was one of the reasons I hated the drugs so much, there wasn’t any perceptible benefit to justify the side effects, and believe me, BP meds come loaded with some unpleasant side effects. So there I was having a stroke at work with no idea I was about to have my mind completely rewired.

The damage was instantaneous but the realization took quite a bit of time. I was rather euphoric despite all the pain. I couldn’t remember how to walk but my strongest reaction was, “well, that’s a nuisance if you have to go to the bathroom way over there.” One of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t seem to care about any of it. I was a physical and mental train wreck, my life was ruined, and I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass about any of it. I had no emotional reactions at all, I mean that literally. Eight years later, I still don’t care about anything and the only emotion I ever experience is an intense but incredibly fleeting anger.

At first, I was on autopilot where religion was concerned. I kept going through the motions but my heart wasn’t in it. Remember, I was a total faith fanatic before. God was my life. But as the days wore on I gradually realized god wasn’t around anymore. His word didn’t interest me (to be fair, nothing written interested me - I was a reading machine, devouring 2 or 3 novels a week as well as all my bible studying - then no interest whatsoever.) I was confused, heavily medicated, euphoric, miserable, in intense pain, baffled, emotionless, lost, dazed, and confused some more. But no one rushed in to help me; my wife even informed me that she was not going to support the family - that was still my job and I had better get back to it ASAP. It seemed rather obvious that god had turned his back on me.

But I didn’t care.

I found I wasn’t praising or thanking god for every little improvement I made. Those were some damn hard efforts completely of my own. What the hell should I praise him for when he could’ve stopped this from happening? He could have healed me even after it did, but he chose not to. He didn’t help me financially either. He didn’t help me when I went back to work and my boss started harassing me. He provided no insight as to what to do when my boss humiliated me beyond belief for being too slow; I could barely even stand up! God did not intervene and I lost my job. I was out of work for nine months, long enough to use up all my retirement money to keep from losing my house and car. God offered no relief. My doctors eventually gave up trying to convince me the pain was only temporary, god never said or did anything about it.

By the time I had convinced myself that god had thrown me to the dogs, I was finally free enough from church influence to start to question what went wrong. I was finally free enough to read things that would cause real live doubt to come in.

Best thing that ever happened.

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15. July 2006 by Frank.

I’ve been reading atheist blogs for a few years now, trying to get a feel for the mindset of people who have given up on religion. While I have found quite a few former ministers and other religious fanatics who found freedom from religion, I’ve also noticed some very common elements tied in with politics. In some cases, the politics seem to be of far greater concern than the religion.

Basically, there’s an amazing amount of consensus that you must be a liberal in order to be a good atheist. You must hate President Bush, all his policies, the war in Iraq, the Republicans, the conservatives, the Fundies, Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and anyone who agrees with anything any of them say.

Personally, I’m not very political. It doesn’t matter which side is in office, I am in the class of people who will get screwed by their policies and agendas.

With the exceptions of the extreme left and extreme right, there’s probably good from both sides in that great big middle grey area. Which incidently is where most real world people are actually located. Unfortunately, a vast number of those people are either lemmings or sheep and are controlled by whoever or whatever they listen to. So it seems you can’t escape politics being tied in with religion.

But religion itself is of much greater interest to me.

Another thing I’ve noticed in those that concentrate mainly on the religious matters is an antagonism with fundamentalists in particular. While there are several very intelligent, very reasonable atheist sites that present their arguments in a civil manner, there seem to be far more that use all kinds of vitriolic hostility against religious folks. I’m not sure why they bother since calling someone some foul-mouthed variations of “clueless idiots” is not going to influence any of them to give any consideration to anything they (the atheists) have to say.

Nevertheless, I enjoy both kinds of presentations when done well with interesting viewpoints and arguments. I will be setting up some links soon but just to get started and to demonstrate the difference let me direct you to these two very interesting but radically different sites:

Ebon Musings

God is for Suckers

I’ll let you guess which is which kind of attitude.

What I present here isn’t going to quite fit the mold of these other types. I’m functioning on a much more personal level because of the effects of a stroke. I was not looking to leave my faith, I did not think there was a better or even different way. I had no intentions of giving up my religion. I was doing everything in my power to live by faith at the time, I was preaching and teaching, I was completely into being a man of God.

A few moments of oxygen deprivation changed all of that.

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8. July 2006 by Frank.

Indeed, the problems with my new religion started almost immediately. Not only was I seeing things happening that were contrary to the New Testament I had just read, there were things contrary to the church’s own teachings. I did not understand how this could be but I rationalized that it was just my own lack of understanding. After all, these people were filled with the Spirit of God and were quite spiritually mature (by their own confession of course.) So I decided that I needed to learn from those higher up than myself.

Because I fell for God’s plan of salvation at the weakest moment of my life, I felt as though the entire weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. It was quite thrilling. It didn’t take long, however, before I realized all these mature brothers and sisters in the Lord were trying to put all that weight back on me. This was bizarre to say the least but it did not deter me. Instead it became obvious to me that I had been called to set these things right; I was supposed to preach and teach The Word in such a way as to correct all these wrongs.

That first church self-destructed within 6 months.

By then I had gotten married to a lifetime Baptist girl. I had no idea what to do in regard to religion so I started to go to her church. I came to the conclusion that I was called to bring enlightenment to the Baptists. I’m not sure I want to admit what this says about my personality but I was on a mission from God (kind of like the Blues Brothers.) This phase lasted for many years but I never considered myself a Baptist, I was Charismatic despite the spectacular failure of my first church. As I became bolder, however, the Baptists began to resist my message more and more. Finally, they asked me to leave.

That’s right, I actually managed to get myself thrown out of church.

Unfortunately, tenacity is my middle name. I was soon neck deep in a nationwide televangelist ministry headquartered just 36 miles from here. The things I saw, heard, and did there are unbelieveable, but I must remind you I was a true believer. And by then I was a master rationalizer.

Then the wannabe Charismatic church was starting up and I finally thought I had found my place. During the same time there was a major change of regime at the Baptist church and they actually were ready to welcome me back (but not as a teacher/preacher.) There’s the dual membership story in a nutshell. I spent over a year teaching how to receive and use the gifts of the Spirit but I had no effect. The pastor wanted to be spirit-filled in a Charismatic way but all he could understand was emotion and spirit dancing. (After I left, he started a “spiritual dance team” despite the fact there is no such thing in the Bible. Soon after, he wound up in a mental hospital.)

Just before that the stroke took me down. It soon became apparent that God had abandoned me and so had that little church. I kept trying but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Then the pastor suddenly became a “King James Only” fanatic. He actually got up after I was finished and proceeded to tear everything I had just taught to pieces because I didn’t use the King James version. That was the effective end of my relationship with that church.

All I had left were the Baptists. They had no compassion for me. Nor did they have any use for me because I was too radical for them. I was in a drug induced stupor by then (because of treatment for exceptionally high blood pressure) so I really didn’t care. I stopped going to church.

I gradually realized that I didn’t feel guilty anymore. I didn’t feel guilty at all. I am firmly convinced the number one thing that all churches do is load their members down with guilt. Christianity is a religion of guilt and condemnation. First, it convinces you that you are guilty. Once they’ve managed that, they convince you that only Jesus can relieve that guilt. After you’ve accepted him and are feeling better for awhile, they begin laying it back on you. Then they load it on you constantly so that you can’t escape. No matter what you do, you are never good enough to please God. So you repent. Over and over and over again. There’s no escaping it. You have to go to church all the time to get recharged because you can’t make it through the week without sinning. You ask forgiveness for sins you didn’t even commit, this increases the guilt. You have no strength, you have no morals, you have nothing apart from God. Unless everything you do is for his glory it is absolutely worthless.

The truth is; if you stop subjecting yourself to this crap long enough and start using your brain, you’ll soon be able to see how bizarre and absurd all of it really is. It took a stroke to wake me up. I’m hoping my exploits will help you to recover without having to endure quite so much.

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8. July 2006 by Frank.

I don’t intend this to be just a deconversion story but I feel a little background is an appropriate starting place.

I’ve been blogging for years, long before they invented the word in fact. Mostly I wrote about the massive physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual changes a stroke brought about in my life back in 1998. Originally, I was quite depressed and confused; my rambling commentaries about life were all over the emotional landscape. I live in constant pain now even though I am not paralyzed. I spent many years in a drug induced stupor. I’ve been financially ruined by the ordeal since it cost me my job I had for 23 years and I was barely able to keep from losing my house. I wrote about all those things and more with the hope that I could find someone who would talk to me about all of it.

I did find a fledgling stroke survivors group that helped me for a time. But I didn’t find any help for the biggest change of all; I went from being a “true believer” Christian to an “I don’t believe anything” unbeliever.

The stroke I had was the most incredibly peaceful experience, I thought I had died and entered the presence of God. It was wonderful. One of the first things I realized was that I had lost all fear of death. That’s a very good thing to lose. For eighteen years before the stroke through the hour of oxygen deprivation I prayed all the time. After the oxygen started flowing and the pain had started, praying never occurred to me again. It took a long time to realize what had happened; there was far too much to assimilate, I didn’t even know how to walk anymore. Whatever it is in your mind that enables you to be a believer was damaged beyond repair by the stroke.

I was a member of two radically different churches, an old established Baptist congregation and a less than a year old wannabe charismatic startup. Both of the pastors came to see me in the hospital, at the same time no less. They actually competed with each other to see who could pray the best prayer over me! It was the only visit by either of them that I received. One family we were friends with and one guy who had suffered a stroke from the charismatic church came to visit me once. Other than that both congregations ignored me other than offering to say prayers for me. There was no other support of any kind from over 200 people who all supposedly believe we are a family in Christ.

This struck me as particularly odd. According to the Bible, if one parts suffers the whole body suffers. There was great concern for other people in times of great trial but none for me. I had been quite active at both churches teaching and preaching, I often spoke twice as long as the pastor of the charismatic church. But where was the love? Apparently I never sowed any because I sure didn’t reap any.

My mother-in-law a suffered a series of strokes the year before which left her essentially comatose for the next eight years. I had already seen the indifference of the Baptist church she had been a member of for over thirty years and was appalled by it. That and other things finally led to my staying away from either church for a long time.

Do you know what happens when you stop listening to most old fashioned preachers? You stop feeling guilty. You stop feeling guilty, you stop feeling the need to repent. You don’t need to repent, you don’t need a preacher. You don’t need a preacher, you don’t need the Bible. And then you don’t need God.

And apparently the feeling is mutual because God doesn’t seem to need you either.

I read the entire Bible all the way through several times but I concentrated mainly on the New Testament, reading it through 75 – 80 times. I knew something was wrong. But I was a true believer and I had been thoroughly trained in the fine art of rationalization. There couldn’t possibly be any errors so any problem understanding or reconciling had to be my fault.

The stroke set me free from the fear of death. Death is nothing to be afraid of, there is no eternal flame of damnation awaiting you if you made the slightest little mistake or didn’t believe the exact right thing. It’s perfectly peaceful. All the sensory inputs stop; that means no pain whatsoever. The great vast nothingness held no fear with my mindset telling me it was the presence of God. But the more I thought it over afterwards the more I realized God was not in the presence of God. He was nowhere in evidence. No angels, no demons, no devil, nothing.

I was heavily medicated so it took a long time to reason these things out. The total lack of compassion from two different congregations was glaringly obvious despite the mental fog. The wannabe charismatic preacher went so far as to claim that he had prayed the prayer of faith over so well that there was no question of my recovery. The Baptist preacher never prayed for God to heal me, he merely asked for wisdom for the doctors because the stroke, after all, was the will of God for me. Talk about a crock. From two opposing schools of religious thought no less.

One thing I was always painfully aware of with modern day Christianity was that there was absolutely no unity of the faith even in individual congregations. Unity of the faith and the believer’s love for one another is supposed to show the world the reality of God. On one street I drive down frequently, there are seven churches in less than 3 miles. I’ve studied their doctrines. Each of them has at least one doctrine that pretty much makes the rest invalid. Churches in this community have even taken out ads on the secular radio stations denouncing the way they worship at the other church down the street. Why, those heathens aren’t even saved! Being a member of a Baptist church and a wannabe charismatic church at the same time, while a story in itself, made the conflict painfully obvious. (I suppose I should explain my use of “wannabe” in regard to the charismatic church. I spent over a year teaching them how to receive and use the gifts of the Spirit but they never got it. Instead of sound Bible doctrine they wanted to do things like dance in the spirit (which isn’t even in the Bible)! But I digress.)

During the years when I was gung ho for my religion, I would not dare look at anything that disagreed with it. You do that, you allow doubt to enter your heart. Then your prayers won’t get answered because God only responds to faith. There are a multitude of such teachings to insure that you don’t question what you’re taught or what you currently believe. Do you know that there are Christian books that debunk other Christians who hold different doctrines? Selective editing is Christianity’s only truly common ground.

The divisions that exist amongst this one true religion are absolutely appalling. In themselves, they are more than sufficient to prove the lie of the whole construct. But the people are trained to be so narrow minded and so myopic in scope that the enormous falsehood becomes something very easy to just shrug off. They are told what to believe and what to read to reinforce that belief. The vast majority of them have never and will never read the whole book.

And naturally there are some things we’re just not meant to know.

How in the world I swallowed all this and actually promoted it myself is beyond me now. I know I was hooked when I was at the lowest point in my life; I was offered everything I wanted and needed to get out of the black hole of despair that I had dug for myself. Yes sir, God had a plan for me! So just like a fish, I swallowed the bait and got the hook through my jaw. It was wonderful! Someone gave me a Bible and I read the New Testament all the way through the first week. I wasn’t supposed to do that. I got the distinct impression that certain things we were being taught weren’t the same as what I had just read.

To Be Continued …..

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