Preface: A Brief History

I was born into the Pentecostal Movement. I was 21 days old the first time I went to church. The pastor prophecied over me. People cried. My father was a godly man, though he was a man. My mother was uptight to the extreme. Disapproval was the rule of the day. She was still liberal compared to her "no dancing, no bowling, no movies" up bringing. She would note wryly that oddly there was no prohibition on parking.

I was the favored child of Sunday School. In fact for years, the only child. I knew my bible stories. Would sit for hours listening to Bible stories reinacted on vinyl records. I went to Bible College straight out of High School. Two years then to State college. Two years. Then unwilling or unable to knuckle down and study I split and joined a missionary group. I met my future wife there and we married within 2 years, and returned to the mission.

17 years and three kids later, we left the mission. That is when the 20 years of undisciplined spiritual playtime came crashing in. I was a wreck. In deep depression. Unable to find and keep a job. Lost. Drowning my pain in porn. within two years we were separated. We decided to try again, and put it back together. A pastor and some counselors helped. Five years later, I had improved some but not really enough. We were still dead broke. Stressed and unhappy.

Before I go on we need to go back and look at the spiritual journey.

The Pentecostal church I grew up in was a no drinking, no dancing establishment. Movies were frowned on, though not prohibited. My pastor once claimed that he didn't even chew gum because it served no purpose (a proposition Wriggly later pointed out was a fallacy as gum chewing reduces cavities). While my church was fairly laidback - no chandalier swinging) I attended youth camp as a child and a teen and was very influenced by the preaching of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, going forward to seek the gift of tongues. Yep. I also jabbered away like everyone else was modeling. Very exciting.

It was a natural progression for me to attend Bible College. I was regularly taught that being a minister was the highest calling, and secular education was viewed with suspicion. The Bible School I attended taught emphatically that you had to speak in tongues to be saved. oh. Yes. They. Did. So I went through a pretty radical phase, but the legalism of the place gave me pause and started some skeptism.

When I joined the mission I was a child of my up bringing and training, but at least went with an open mind. It was open enough to accept that some of my new Christian friends there DRANK. That was radical. I actually let them be my friends anyway. We were taught that God spoke to us regularly and daily. And very detailed. He wanted to tell us what clothes to wear on any given day, not because he cared about fashion, but so we would grow sensitive to his leading so he could talk to us about BIG things. Like reaching nations. Today underwear. Tomorrow Uttar Pradesh!

We were led into inner healing, and to forgive our parents for how they had wronged and failed us. I remember my best friend sitting there frozen. Seething. "I have nothing to forgive my father for!" He growled. That was a good lesson for me. One of the first times I had ever seen anyone resist a pulpit message.

When 1988 and the Rapture came.... or not...... during the build up to that great and glorious day I was very disturbed by what I saw happening. '88 was a watershed, where I was finally able to look critically at the escatology I was raised under - and amazingly my parents hold to to this day. We don't go there. My whacked out conclusion was a new timetable that put Christs eventual return about 2000 years in the future (simple math based on Young Earth Creationism and major Biblical dates). Anyway I began to doubt the evangelical End-Times theology. Some friends helped with this. Introducing me to amillinialism, which I became a closet believer in. Such a rebel.

Along the way I also abandoned Pentecostalism and tongues. That was load off. Oh, and I also dumped young earth creationism a long way back.

Later, after watching endless abuse of God telling people to do things - typically the things that either made them look really spiritual but somehow he never provided for, or the thiing that was the most adventurous and fun, and yes I was guilty as hell in this too - I was hit between the eyes, when the most mature and spiritual among us asked us to join them on a dangerous mission to plant churches in a distant god forsaken location. The next thing we knew we were living in the middle of a war. Literally. With three kids. The greatest arguement for God is the fact that we got out of there alive. Five other tourists to the same location at the same time were kidnapped and never seen again (except the guy who was beheaded).

Anyway, Mr. and Mrs. Led-by-God come in one day * less than six months after we arrived) and annouce they are pregnant and going home. Huh? You mean, God brought us out here not realizing you wanted more kids? His direction and leading suddenly changed because you had sex? We were devestated beyond words. They left us there. Left us.

We found an exit and left ourselves, humiliated and hurt. And moved to a place we loved, but into a whole new battleground.

The toll of this lifestyle was beating us down. We were nearing 40 and had nothing. No savings no retirement. Living hand to mouth on contributions from people who thought we were doing God's work. Gradually we pulled out of the ministry. It was hard. It was scarey. it was all we had known. I had skills suitable for the joke of a ministry we worked with, but were basically unfit for the real world.

Every young couple we worked with back in those days now is struggling just as we are. We feel ripped off. But it was the foolish choice we made.

I don't know why I was coddled as a child when it came to the things that mattered like real character, work ethic, school, training, But I was spoiled. I was allowed to just get by. Except when it came to sin and God. In church everytime the doors opened. Punished for sin. I remember the day my mother discovered my masturbation habit. Of course there was massive guilt around that whole subject. I was harshly punished for "sexual sin" at the tender age of 5. I still remember that closet door opening while playing doctor with that little girl. Oblivious to the hell I had just unleashed. I have made sure that I never reacted negatively toward any sexual curiosity by my kids.

How did I get on that? I developed this idea that things were just provided. And that I could succeed with only cursory training. That is still a huge battle.

I became away a couple of years back of another battle. I had my own business. Amazingly. I sucked at the business side, but had a modicum of talent, so I was making a living... almost.

I was trying MY best (which frankly wasn't very good), and trusting God to step up and help with the rest. But it was the same old thing. No prospering. No abundance. Just barely getting by. Really never having enough. Our rent was $800 (in a $1300 market), we depossessed two cars so had no car payments (once again we were driving donated vehicles), I had health insurance for my family. We had cable and internet (our one luxury). Yet I was told (by the God I knew and my parents indirectly that our lifestyle was too extravegant.

Financially I felt in my trusting the God I knew that I was being tortured. I will repost a journal entry from those days expressing what I was going through, but in short I felt as though God was sweating us, holding back provision, bank accounts zero, on the edge of collapse, then boom a job would be provided a rush of money, pay the bills in the nick of time, pick up a couple of new things we had been needing like socks or a new shirt, and then the account would be zero again. If perchance there was a little extra, there would always be an unexpected repair. So the feeling was, as I dutifully trusted God to provide, that he was sweating us, holding us under the water till panic set in, then pulling us up by the hair to suck in a lung full of air, then plunging us back in. This went on and on and on. They say that doing the samething expecting a different result is insanity. But when God is there saying "Trust me" and offering help and promises.... you just keep hoping.....

I began to notice something else. If I tried to deviate from the course. To apply mself in new ways. To achieve more. He was there saying, "That is not my will for you. I will not bless this. Wanting and having more is ungodly. Suffering is godly. If I don't give it to you, if you try to get it against my will you will fail, you will be fighting me, and that is a fight you cannot win." Things like that. I finally realized there was problem with this. This voice inthe back of my head. Not a literal voice, but the voice of what I believed, the voice of The God I Know. There was something seriously wrong with him. He was destroying me and my family by what he told me and how it effected me. Beliefs. Acted out.

I decided that the God I knew was not actually God. So he had to die. Everytime from that point on that those thought patterns arose, I woudl shout them down in fits of such utter rage as I had never experienced, including calling him every vile name I could concoct, just to shut him up. I knew this was not something I could go to a pastor about. He would just reinforce the God I Knew. Sure he woudl say I had God all wrong, but in the end, there would still be His Will and my need to surrender to it. In fact I did talk to one friend and told him about what I was doing. He was appalled.

In the back of my mind I held to the idea that the God I knew, the one that was destroying me through his image in my mind, the one who spoke through my beliefs and to whom I spoke back with a resounding "Fuck You!" Was not the real God. I hoped that he was out there, waiting for this idol to be torn down so he could rush in and show what he was realy like. I invited that unknown god to do just that.

He never did.

Silence.

I shut up the God I knew. And no one else showed up. I suddenly found myself god-less.

Actually it was pretty cool. I could do things guilt free that I had always wanted to do. My depression that I struggled with for years lifted. I still had my personal character and skills issues, but now I could own them and begin working on them.

Another year passed and still the God Who Really Is God never showed up. And I realize now that he never will. He doesn't exist.