Non-Believer Former Members of the Worldwide Church of God

As most of you well know (and as I am constantly reminding many of you), I was raised in an Anglo-Israelist endtime cult called “The Worldwide Church of God.” I was born into and raised in “The Church” until I was about fifteen years old, when most of the national and international congregations splintered and disintegrated amidst great scandal, as cults are wont to do. I’ve spent a lot of time obsessing over the chasm between what the records show about this church’s doctrines and practices, what I have read from the collective memories of church survivors, and the things that I remember being taught throughout the first fifteen years of my life. If I think about it too long, I begin to feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t intend that melodramatically, in the sense that I’m so stirred with emotional turmoil over these memories; I actually experience very little sadness or anger when I think about my religious upbringing: rather, usually, I’m still in shock. A confused sort of expression crosses my face when I witness most mainstream religious practices, and I’m rendered speechless by…well, by the blind idiocy of it all.

I have recently been inspired to put into words my own thoughts on the circus of the South and my life thus far–how it felt to be estranged from most other people I encountered throughout my life–and how it now feels to still find myself afraid of a God that was constructed to control me through suspicion, paranoia, and despair. I don’t know what the truth is about these discrepancies between what I remember, what I’ve unearthed through research, and what motivated each of my parents to join this cult to begin with. The longer I live, the more mysterious my own life becomes to me. I don’t understand most of it, and yet it keeps happening. I’m not certain, but I suspect that most of the really ugly “down” time I have spent over the course of the last year or so had something to do with an attempt to keep new things from happening so that I could see more clearly everything that was already swirling, ambiguous, and frightening about my past. I know that it won’t stop spinning. But I got an idea: maybe, if I try to write it down, remember it as best I can, I’ll become centered enough to see things more clearly. Remember sitting in the middle of the merry-go-round? You could close your eyes and pull your feet close, and you’d spin and spin and never get dizzy. Clinging to the edge with your head thrown back, trying to see everything all at once…instant vomit cocktail.

I’m digressing. I haven’t been writing much of anything lately, so I’m relying far too much on adverbs and weak metaphors.

I’d like to make a long story short, but I can’t. I don’t even know what the story is yet.

What I wanted to say, this time, is fairly important to me, though.

I don’t believe in God. Not that God. Not the guy I learned to loathe through what was done to me in his name.

I don’t want anything to do with church anymore, and I think that most religion is a practical joke played on the masses.

I want to be a good person, and I don’t need God or religion to do the dirty work for me. I refuse to be like so many of the religious people I have known, with their rotten attitudes and their self-serving pedantry. I strongly feel that “With or without religion and God, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. But for good people to do bad things–that takes religion.” I don’t even know who said that. I hope my Christian friends won’t take offense to these declarations. If we are friends, really friends, then your life inspires me and our connection is God to me. But in the meantime, some of the most miserable times of my life were forced on me by religion and religious people. And I DO blame religion, because so much of it was done in God’s name. I don’t want anything to do with that God, if He’s there. The world of Christianity was not one of love, anymore than any other caring world community would be. I’m through with it. I’m through.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 9:32 am and is filed under Personal Story. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments must be approved by the moderator before they will appear.