Why Knock Christians?

Peggeen here. Since Square Peg gave me a chance to post on his blog, I’ve been surprised at the words boiling out of me.

Some people reading this blog might think that both Peg and I (who, by the way, don’t even know each other) are obsessed and venomous.

So far from true.

I never wanted to grind axes or butt heads with anybody. I prefer not to hate or even disparage. I just want to know what’s right and true. I’ve spent a lifetime hoping to find the truth that other people find in religion. I’ve studied. Read everything I could get my hands on. Gone to churches. Talked by the hour with believers. Cried out in the middle of the night to an unresponsive god. Seeking, always seeking. Always listening respectfully.

Until very recently. When I finally had enough.

You want to know why I’ve now come out — although anonymously — to knock Christians and Christianity?

Because not only does the evidence say that Christianity is delusion. But all my life Christians have knocked me, sometimes in the cruelest possible ways. And I’m finished being polite about it.

From infancy, Christians informed me that I was a worthless, sinful piece of shit. Christians told me god was spying on me 24 hours a day and making black marks in his big book every time I made the smallest slip-up. Christians gave me “holy” commands backed by “holy” punishments whose sole purpose was to control me through terror.

Sunday School teachers terrorized their little charges by telling us that any day now, any minute, all the good people (defined solely as those who shared their opinions) would disappear, leaving only us bad ones behind, even leaving little children like us alone to fend for ourselves in a world filled with criminals and sinners.

More recently, Christians have called me a fool for questioning their holy book. When I got no response from their god, they’ve called me stubborn. Every time one of their dogmas failed, they blamed me, my evil, my sinfulness, my … humanness.

Always, there has been the falsely cheery “Jesus loves you!” followed, sometimes within seconds, by the much more sincere, “You’re going to burn in hell forever!”

Yes, yes, I know somebody’s going to say that’s not the real spirit of god. That the “real” spirit of god is sunshine, unicorns, teddy bears and LOOOOOOVE.

Well, buddy, have you really read your bible? Read the OT, then tell me all about all that kind, gentle teddy-bear looooooove.

I’m tired of lies: “Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” I’m tired of supposedly intelligent people whose quality of persuasion would get them flunked out of Logic 101. People who contradict themselves at every turn. People who don’t know their own scriptures. People who have never studied history and have no idea at all about the corruption, murder, and imperial politics that formed their own church’s history. People who think that, in the face of horrific facts, they can win me with a combination of bland platitudes and terroristic threats.

People who then call me names and wish eternal pain upon me simply because they can’t persuade me to agree with their opinions.

In short, I’m tired of being polite and respectful toward arrogant, hate-filled people.

Even now — now that I’m finally speaking out — I can speak only anonymously, because if I even mention in passing that I’m not a believer, it’s a sure thing that religionists will descend on me, damning me to hell in amazingly gleeful smugness.

So yeah. I’m angry. Angry at having been terrorized, threatened, lied to, and constantly put down by Christians. I was willing to leave you in peace with your beliefs, but you didn’t have the decency to respond in kind.

So may I politely say f&^%$ck you and the foul religion you rode in on.