![]() ![]() All I know to do now is take my past and use it to help others. That said, I can’t help but regret the time wasted chasing after a myth. It is important for me to make clear that my life as a Christian was not one long slog of drudgery. I had many delightful experiences, including marrying Polly, my beautiful wife of almost forty-five years. I met a lot of wonderful people during my Christian days - and a lot of mean, nasty, judgmental, Jesus-loving sons-of-bitches too. Let me be clear, what I lament about the past is the wasted time, not necessarily the experiences. In many ways, I am still a pastor a man who wants to help others. Through writing, I am able to embrace my past for what it is and turn it into words that I hope are helpful to others. At the same time, he encouraged me to look to the present and future and use my past to benefit others. My past, he told me, is very much a part of who I am. He wisely encouraged me to be honest with and embrace the past. I sought out a professional secular counselor who helped me (mostly) come to terms with my past. Finally, I realized that lamenting the past was going to psychologically destroy me. There were times when I would dwell on these questions, bringing myself to tears. How could you have been so stupid, Bruce? How could you have been so blind? How could you inflict such harmful nonsense on your wife and children? How could you lead thousands of other people down a path that goes nowhere that left them with lives they too wasted serving a mythical God? Just thinking about this would bring waves of self-judgment and depression. ![]() From their days in the nursery forward, Evangelicals are taught that they are worthless, vile, broken sinners in need of saving that the only place salvation can be found is in the Christian church that only through the merit and work of a God-man named Jesus - who is the second part of a triune deity - can humans be “saved” that all other religions but Christianity are false and lead to an eternity of torture in a God-created Lake of Fire that until you believe this message and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, your life is, to put it simply, a waste.įor those who have exited stage left from Christianity, it is not uncommon for them to look back on their past and ruefully say, what a waste. When I deconverted fourteen years ago, I struggled with the fact that I had wasted five decades of my life chasing after a lie. It’s the only religion they have ever known. Most Evangelicals are born into Christianity. Perhaps what is really going on here is a long con. It seems, then, at least to me, that a life of “wasted” years is the norm for believers and unbelievers alike that life is only “wasted” when measured by the words of an ancient Bronze-age religious text. Do better, they tell believers yet try as they might, those pastors - even with much grace and faith - fail. Oh, they preach a good line, abusing congregants for not measuring up to the Biblical standard for a life of meaning, purpose, and direction. And their pastors, by the way, do the same. They spend a few hours on Sundays (and maybe on Wednesdays) having preachers tell them what life is all about, only to spend the rest of that week’s 168 hours living as if they didn’t hear a word their pastors said. Evangelicals yearn for Christ-centered lives, but “life” tends to get in the way. With their lips, Evangelicals say these things are true, but how they live their day-to-day lives suggests that their lives are every bit as “wasted” as those of the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. He is their e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.Įverything I mentioned in the previous paragraph can be found in the Bible. To Evangelicals, Jesus is their BFF their lover their confidante their therapist their physician and their spouse. Everything pales - including families, careers, houses, and lands - when compared to Jesus. This is a life focused on what matters: meeting Jesus face to face in the sweet by and by. This, according to Evangelicals, is a life of meaning, purpose, and direction. Everything in this life and the life to come is about Jesus. ![]() Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Sacrifice your life, ambition, wants, desires, and dreams, giving them all to Jesus. In the eyes of Evangelicals, non-Christians live lives of wasted years years that could be spent worshiping Jesus, praising Jesus, singing songs to Jesus, bowing in fealty and devotion to Jesus, giving money to Jesus, winning souls for Jesus, and doing good works - drum roll please - for the man, the myth, the legend, the one and only King of Kings, Lord of Lords, giver of life and death, the one true God, Jesus H. ![]()
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