Lori’s de-conversion story My father came from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. My dad had stopped practicing for a while but picked it back up when I was about five years old. I have pictures of my family celebrating Christmas early on and opening gifts around a Christmas tree or I am sitting in Santa’s lap. Then between the ages of five and eighteen, Christmas and every other holiday including my birthday was a thing of the past. It didn’t bother me since my parents said we were doing the right thing. I thought it was normal. I got baptized when I was 13 years old. I was a bit hard headed teen at times but I also tried hard to do what I thought was right. We met at the Kingdom Hall three days a week. At these congregation meetings, there was a bible study, service meeting, theocratic ministry school, Watchtower study and the public talk. At one point, I moved up from a publisher, someone who goes door to door and has to account for all time doing so, to a regular associate pioneer, 60 hours per month witnessing door to door. I knew this religion inside and out and believed it with every part of my being. At age 18, I moved away from Arkansas to Florida and met my now significant other who was not a Jehovah’s Witness. I moved in with him prior to marriage which was a big no-no for the Jehovah’s Witnesses as you can imagine. I was disfellowshipped. Everyone that I grew up with in that religion was no longer allowed to associate with me after that public announcement was made. Fortunately, I am a bit of a rebel and just went on living life not caring what they thought of me. I still believed it was the right religion, but I thought I was just a sinner. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in hell so all that could happen to me is I would lose my chance of living forever on a paradise earth. I wasn’t one of the anointed 144,000 that would have the heavenly reward either so that didn’t matter to me. I loved who I thought was our Creator, Jehovah but I just couldn’t act right, or so they said. At one point, while conversing with my brother in law who was involved in the Baptist religion, we were at odds on something scripturally (I can’t remember what) and he and his wife shared a book with me. I still have it. It’s from Ron Rhodes called Reasoning from the Scriptures. (ronrhodes.addr/store/reasoning-from-the-scriptur/reasoning-from-the-scriptur.html) That really started me thinking. I attended a Baptist church through the years. Around 2008 I got seriously involved in a Baptist church, volunteering to serve in the youth group. At this point, I was coming up with what to share each week so I would pray and ask for guidance. I was a fervent prayer warrior. I put together an Old Testament 101 syllabus for us to follow. We had to answer the when, who, why, and where for each OT book. Reading from the bible is what opened my eyes to start questioning if this really made any sense. I asked for God’s guidance while reading. I had 100% faith and just like every other fundamentalist today will tell you, I didn’t believe in religion, I was on my own personal journey with Jesus. Just a few questions as I was reading, why two separate creation accounts between Genesis 1 & 2? Why couldn’t Ezekial mourn for his dead wife as a symbol of the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem, yet Jeremiah could lament a whole book worth, hence Lamentations about the destruction of Jerusalem? Why would God kill thousands in Israel by plague for David’s choice of performing a census? I thought all scripture was inspired of God because the bible said so, so I tried to just have faith. Then after a while, I noticed my same brother in law (now an ex-Baptist deacon) who had shared scripture with me to lead me to think that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were wrong had posted an article about challenging your faith. In it, he shared a book by a current New Testament Professor; named Bart Ehrman called Jesus Interrupted. ( bartdehrman/books/jesus_interrupted.htm). I thought since my faith is so strong and I had truth, what would hurt from reading from someone that studies the bible for a living and has the historic framework to fully put all the pieces together. Chronology interests me. I read this book, and what I liked is he doesn’t want you to just read what he says. He wants for you to take just the bible, read the gospels and pick just one story such as the resurrection of Jesus and compare that same exact story between all the gospels and you will see the contradictions. I did what he said by getting an index card and writing down all the important points of a story in the gospel and found out that what he says is true when you compare it with that exact story from another gospel. If the bible is the book that I am going to base all of my decisions on, it does need to be inerrant. I went on to meatier readings since then from authors such as Christopher Hitchens (https://goodreads/author/quotes/3956.Christopher_Hitchens) and Richard Dawkins (https://richarddawkins.net/) (https://goodreads/work/quotes/3044365-the-god-delusion) which has opened up my eyes to put more emphasis into critical thinking and questioning vs just having blind faith. I enjoy reading on evolution which is a lot more complicated and can explain so much more with tangible evidence. One thought provoking thing for me will always be this. If earth is SO perfect that it came from intelligent design and just has to have a Creator, where did the Creator come from? Wouldn’t he be more perfect than his creation? You can’t quote that he has always just been here because the bible says so. Faith is a choice. If faith is derived from belief in the bible and the bible is contradictory, then that faith is unwarranted in my opinion. I am a non-believer. I am an atheist. I am not against Christians as much as I am not against Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Buddhist, or Mormons or any other religion. Simply of all the deities that have been presented thus far, I do not believe in. It’s that simple. I want for everyone to have ideas as they wish but not to the point where they harm or judge another for not having the same ideas. Religion should not be forced on anyone. Most atheists would fight for Freedom OF Religion as they would for Freedom FROM religion. I don’t have all the answers but I do enjoy reading scientific literature from intelligent people who apply a scientific method towards their theories. I would like for everyone to know I am not lost, I have shared your faith in past if you are a believer, but I have made an educated decision for myself not to share in your faith. It is insulting to us to be treated as lost or needing saved. We don’t want to push our ideas on you. We want to stop being misunderstood and disliked for no valid reason. This is what I would like for you to know about most atheists. faithstreet/onfaith/2014/03/18/10-things-i-wish-everyone-knew-about-atheism/31345
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 01:02:56 +0000
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