Peek-A-Boo!!! I’m Gonna Get You!!!
I decided to fool around and play peek-a-boo with my camera today…he, he. And no, I’m not blowing my readers a kiss. I snapped on the “boo” in peek-a-boo.
Well, I had an interesting day today. Went to church and almost got C.O.G.I.C. JUST KIDDING! In all honesty, I wanted to see if there was still “something there”…some kind of lingering spark. To my surprise, there was. At this point and time, I don’t plan to rid myself of any “spark” like my fellow ex-pentecostal “de-converts.” As long as I keep my head and guard my heart, I’ll be fine.
In addition to church, I attended a lecture by Rook Hawkins of the Rational Response Squad. His presentation focused on how OT texts created the “character called Jesus.” I of course do not agree with his assertion but I have to admit one thing. He’s well read, serious, and dedicated to his cause. I was impressed.
However, that wasn’t the thing that stands out the most..not even the delicious traditional Irish breakfast I ate stands out. It was a comment made to me by an elderly atheist I broke bread with. He told me about his daughter who had become a born-again Christian. She was a drug addict near death until she “got involved with some Pentecostals.” He is forever thankful to “them” for saving his daughters life. I wondered, why the atheistic worldview played no part in saving his daughters life? Why did she have to run to a God her father didn’t believe in? Hhhmmm
Lormarie,
I recall I might have shook your hand as you left, but my clarity after the event is skewed as I was approached by so many people. I am gracious for your complements about my dedication and knowledge on the subject. I am surprised you did not ask any questions during the Q&A or after? I would be more than willing you offer you any explanation to the best of my abilities if you would be interested in such a dialog. It can be public or private, and you can read me at my blog on RRS or WordPress. Or shoot me an email!
Highest regards,
Rook Hawkins
Rook,
Thanks for stopping by! I actually had a question but it was sort of answered so I decided not to ask.
To answer your question, drug addiction is a very strong addiction. Addiction to religious certainty is a similar addiction. One can replace the other. Kind of like taking a slightly less addictive drug to get past the addiction to the worse drug. (There are examples of people getting off drugs via Scientology if you read testimonies on Scientology websites.)
However, unless a person has reached a point where they see no hope in remaining an addict, and unless that person wants to change, no program can help them. I know of a famous faith healer who died an alcoholic when his liver and/or heart finally gave out.
The Late the Rev. A.A. Allen, yearly Bible Conference speaker at Bob Jones University and president of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship got his spirits from the bottle and not from God and died an alcoholic in his hotel room when he should have been at an Evangelistic conference that night. Dr. John Vaughn, the new president of the FBFI, sadly announced that Dr. Rod Bell, the outgoing president, had fallen into sin involving the consumption of alcohol. See info at end.
I know of others who got over drugs via a rival addiction, namely an addiction to religious certainty, then they got over religious certainty. Their testimonies are over at exchristian.net, and I’ve included some excerpts from them below.
So I see no contradiction about being grateful to some born again Christians for getting one’s child off of drugs. But even born again Christian converts have gone back to drugs and died from them, but you don’t hear about those stories. Like I said, people have to see the futility of simply continuing as drug addicts, and then join a program that demands personal responsibility in getting off the addiction. There are secular programs also out there. I mention such programs in my online article, “The Uniqueness of the Christian Experience” over at the Secular Web, which questions the uniqueness of the Christian Experience from a variety of angles.
I left the fold myself after no longer being satisfied with the explanations of Christian apologists for “believing the Bible.” And no matter how many drug addicts went from drugs to Jesus, that doesn’t eliminate questions.
Ed (Edward T. Babinski, ed. of LEAVING THE FOLD: TESTIMONIES OF FORMER FUNDAMENTALISTS)
Some quotations below:
from “Scratching Walls”:
“I detailed how I went from one of the top students at my high school to a needle junkie to a real holy roller within the space of about a year… I think it clear that a drug addict, and most especially a very young one, is not exactly what I would call a “clear-thinking individual”. When we consider the sorts of decisions this person has been making up to the present time-stealing, lying, cheating, slowly killing their bodies…it seems obvious that they are not in a correct frame of mind to make thoughtful decisions… So now this line of thought becomes personal: I was a drug addict, I needed to change my lifestyle, worldview, etc., but I needed help doing it. For me, help came in the form of a sort of religious quasi-boot camp. The name of this loveshack is Appalachian Teen Challenge (ATC). My brief testimony on their webpage (written a while back) was posted by the director, Jim Nickels. At the time I last emailed him (according to my records, summer of 04, since the testimony has this timeframe), I was already at a stage of escape from this darkness that Jim would consider heresy-to him, I was “backslidden”. However, I felt a deep discord at the idea of revealing the depth of my progress to him, (as I see it) and opted instead for a generic report about how god was really helping me and mostly focused on my goals and plans and marriage, see the letter I recently wrote him for more… One of the most interesting things about the Christian culture is their tendency to bury the wounded. What they see as “lost souls” are ripe for evangelism and discipleship, but those who “fall away”, especially those like myself, who spent quite a few years teaching/preaching the faith, are often, as the Bible instructs (Heb. 6:4-6, 1 Jn 2:19), abandoned. Besides giving up hope for a backslider’s salvation, there are also a number of scriptural precedents for booting people who lose faith from the fold (1 Cor. 5:1-13; 1 Tim. 1:19-20; 2 Thes. 3:6; 2 Cor. 6:14-15; Job 24:13). So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the response I receive(d) from Christian friends and family… I will write more about my deconversion, and edit this accordingly, but suffice it to say that although I am open to new evidence and arguments in favor of god’s existence and in the religion of Christianity, I think I’ve already heard the “best” there is to offer, and I find it, on the whole, unconvincing.”
David J. from, “Tell me about that hell part again”:
“When I believed the Bible was infallible, it felt hopeless, and I drank to drown that out. Now that I see it has mistakes and has been severely altered by men, the constant fear and depression is gone. It is ironic to think back a few years to me quoting scripture to try and stay sober. Now that my beliefs have changed, I have absolutely no desire to drink. I still believe in God and don’t know what to believe about Christianity. I will continue to read about both as I did about the Bible and see where the evidence takes me.”
Dan from “Fear leads to the dark side”:
“I became a Christian as a result of a burnout on drugs (hash,opium) that I had at the ripe old age of 16 while living in Europe. After experiencing a great deal of paranoia and instability, I encountered a pastor of a newly developing church called International Christian Fellowship. Basically this was a spin-off of the Assemblies of God, made for the European market. Being so young and impressionable I believed all this, burned my albums (ouch!) cut my hair (Oh no Delilah!) and basically became a completely brainwashed Evangelical. We would preach to people of all nations, creeds and backgrounds through our church and I became what others considered to be the best at Christian Apologetics. It seemed as if I had an answer for every argument against Christianity at the time. When the church began to indoctrinate us further and require classes for all assistant pastors I complied and became fully immersed in it. I stopped sleeping with my girlfriend who also became a Christian (what was I thinking?), I stopped smoking (not bad I admit), and became the perfect “soldier for Christ” The church used “before and after” photos of me to show the transforming power of Jesus. Heavy rocker to Christian. Whoopee! But all was not well in paradise. As I became more and more involved in learning about the religion and being a defender of it I became aware of…” [see the rest online]
Daniel M, from “Returning to Sanity” :
“At 16, I had already developed pretty deep doubts about god’s existence and attributes. When my father got cancer (a devout Xian) I lost all faith in the idea of a personal god. Unfortunately, I was also quite immature and emotionally unstable, and I started using pretty hard drugs during this time of intense confusion and pain. To get “clean”, a court and my parents decided a Xian rehab named “Teen Challenge” was the best answer for me. After 14 months there, this young, confused, hurting person came out a devout Xian again. I had stability in what I believed, and the evidence for god’s existence was the “change” that god wrought in me. After all, I was drug free!! Nevermind that I was seriously programmed, and that during that 14 months there was absolutely no way I could’ve gotten drugs had I wanted to. Nevermind that my problem was a mental and philosophical crisis rooted in confusion and disillusionment, and not the drugs themselves. Nevermind that deep down, I never bought into the creationism because I already knew enough about science and reason to reject a literal reading of Genesis. I was 19, and fresh out of Christian boot-camp/rehab. After slowly regressing over the period of years to a moderate Xian, I found I finally had the courage to acquire books…” [read the rest online]
x-ray man from “I Tried, I Really Tried…”:
“Many of my best friends also fell into serious alcohol addiction. Gary one of my oldest and dearest friends from childhood finally stopped drinking and found God. Almost over night he became a preachy born again Christian. I really wasn’t too fond of his ways, yet he did succeed in putting the cork in the jug. I continued to drink heavily. He always said that Jesus was the way to overcome my addiction. At age 27 I was married with a small child when I finally hit a complete rock bottom. My drinking took me as low as a man could go. On a March night in 1991, I was alone in my house shaking uncontrollably in a pool of cold sweat, with the DT’s. I had been drunk with a friend for a week straight. When the money ran out and the booze ran dry, I had the worst withdrawals any human ever had. My mind and body were in peril. I decided it was time for me to surrender to Jesus. It was my only hope. This was your typical addict finding God story in the making, and I was the main character. I called the 700 club prayer line, and got on the phone with a prayer counselor and asked Jesus to come into my life. I got down on my knees and prayed with all my heart. I wanted to be saved from the misery so bad. Well, as I was praying and pleading with God, I felt…………nothing. Absolutely nothing. No spirit, no uplifting experience. No sense that everything would be OK. Not even a little twinge of evidence that God was with me. I even remember the prayer counselor getting a little short with me, like as in “Hey buddy I’ve got other calls.” Well for the next few days I continued going through the serious withdrawals. I didn’t sleep for two nights. It was the worst experience my body had ever endured. The religious experience I had hoped for didn’t come close to happening. I have never drank again since that experience, but it wasn’t because I was saved by God, it was because I never wanted to feel that way again. Many will say that it was God, but I know better. It was me finally wanting to turn my miserable life around. Years later I tried to find God again. My wife and I decided to join a local church and get the kids baptized…” [read more online]
Harry McCall [himself a former fundamentalist who left the fold after studying for the ministry] points this out about Rev. A. A. Allen’s killing bout with the bottle:
The life of the late evangelist A.A. Allen is proof that one can preach Christ and drink himself to death at the same time. I believe his last months were living in a drunken state in a run down hotel room making audio evangelistic tapes for his radio broadcasts while in a drunken state:
A.A. Allen
Asa Alonzo Allen (1911-1970). Prominent, flamboyant and controversial Pentecostal “healing evangelist” of the 1940s-1960s. Allen made many outrageous, unsubstantiated claims of miracles.
From The Faith Healers by James Randi
On June 14, 1970, listeners in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines were hearing a recorded message from A. A. Allen on his radio program saying: “This is Brother Allen in person. Numbers of friends of mine
have been inquiring about reports they have heard concerning me that are not true. People as well as some preachers from pulpits are announcing that I am dead. Do I sound like a dead man? My friends, I am not even sick! Only a moment ago I made a reservation to fly into our current campaign. I’ll see you there and make the devil a liar.” At that moment, at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, police were removing A. A. Allen’s body from a room strewn with pills and empty liquor bottles. The man who had once said that “the beer bottle and gin bucket” should have been on his family coat of arms was dead at 59 from what was said to be a heart attack but was in reality liver failure brought about by acute alcoholism. (p.88)
If a person can get to a place where alcohol hurts more than it helps, they can quit. Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists and any other none “Jesus” religions can and do put depressed people on a spiritual journey and often apart from any god in the sky.
The fact is, when one is burned out by a section of their life of drugs and alcohol and their body is shutting down, what else can one do but to either change or die.
Call it “god” of self determination…both seem to work and boil down to that if help has a social support context, it’s religion; if not, it’s self determination.