Hi!

I made this blog after learning some things about “scripture” and the Christian faith that were, to put it plainly, shocking to me. I’ll tell you a little about my personal history a little later, but suffice it to say right now that what we’ve always been told at church, especially in regards to sex, have been flat-out lies. I have another blog elsewhere but I wanted to make a WordPress blog to reach more people, especially the religious. First, I should tell you a little bit of my history. I grew up kinda religious. Went to Catholic mass every once in a while as a child. Didn’t have too much church growing up but I always believed there was a God. I remember going to this Baptist church once when I was about 15 or 16 with my mom. There I uttered (under the guidance of some dude because I had no idea what I was doing), the “sinner’s prayer.” At that point (so I thought), I was saved; I was goin’ to heaven! Fast forward a few years to when I was 21 and in the Navy as a Corpsman. Just got to my new duty station, 1st Medical Battalion at Camp Pendleton, CA after a two-year stint in Okinawa, Japan. Was shopping at Wal-Mart when this guy approached me and invited me to church. I told him that I would check it out. After all, in Okinawa, I couldn’t get the chance to go to church regularly because of the way everything was restricted there. So, I attended church, studied the Bible, the people there were INTENSE for God. It was all they ever talked about. Everything was about God. The brothers even lived together when it was possible, claiming that it helped with “accountability” and urged others to do the same so that Satan wouldn’t be able to tempt them as easily. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The church was called the San Diego North County Church of Christ, part of the International Churches of Christ. I went through their “discipleship” series. It took literally weeks for me to get through it. Then they asked if I wanted to be a “Disciple”, which was their code-name for a “Christian.” I suppose they did that to stand out. I said yes. I vowed to no longer lust in my mind, look at pornography, masturbate, or anything sexually-related until I was married. I was a virgin at the time, hadn’t even touched a girl at all. I was baptized in December of 2001, excited to do great things for God. My first two years at that church went by, and I learned so much about the Bible and God and what He was doing in the world today. I was ecstatic to be a Christian – no, a Disciple! I was a Disciple of Jesus Christ. News of our impending deployment to Iraq came as a shock to no one. Still, one cannot be totally prepared for something such as going to fight a war. We originally were to be deployed to Afghanistan, however, that got cancelled for some reason and we were placed on stand-by to be deployed to Iraq. I made all of the arrangements because I could be deployed at any moment. The church members seemed to be concerned, too. There were other members that were also disciples, and I was friends with them. The time came and we were given the green light. We travelled by HUMVEE from Camp Pendleton to March ARB near Moreno Valley, CA, then boarded a C-151 bound for Kuwait. With boots on the ground, I began a 4-month life-appreciation course. I’m not kidding – the basic things that I took for granted, I began to miss. Private showers, private peeing and pooing, sleeping in your own room, etc. Fortunately, I brought along stuff to read in my downtime. Besides the Bible, I read some books from Christian authors (the church strongly recommended you read books from an “approved list”, which most of the books that I read up to that point were by Discipleship Publications, International, ICOC’s publishing company, so they were all safe). I remember there came a time when I began to have these thoughts. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them doubts. One of them was, “When was I going to marry someone?” I was 23 and a virgin. I needed a nice Christian girl to settle down with. I remember this one time specifically when this guy in the unit was “bragging” to another about how he had the chance to lose his virginity at 13 or 14 but decided to lose it at 16, because he was a good Christian boy and was concerned about “purity.” I wondered how God could bless someone so…immoral. Who was he kidding? Deep down inside, I asked God why His hand of blessing was not on me. I was tired of not having sex, and I was horny as hell. After 4-5 months of living in dirt, I boarded a plane back to the States. Never wanted to leave a place so badly in all my life. You would think that things would have been better once I got home. I mean externally it did, but inside I still had a deep longing to be with a girl. Did I mention that the church considered everyone else, even Christians that were not going to their church “lost?” So, they would not let people date outside of the ICOC. This was a problem, as it limited the choices of women. I grew very horny at times, not having an outlet. I eventually moved to a different area to pursue a nursing degree, while still attending the ICOC in that area (remember, they taught that anyone that wasn’t a part of their church was going to hell). The people at that place were, frankly, a bunch of assholes. My enthusiasm hit an all-time low. I fell into depression. After 7 years, I finally left that church, hating God and vowing never to go near another church again. How did I go from being a hardcore “Disciple” to being almost an atheist? I did some research on the ICOC some time after I left, just out of curiosity. My Google search led me to the Reveal website (www.reveal.org) and it stated things that some people were saying about that church all along. They were saying that it was a nasty little four-letter word that starts with ‘C’. That’s right, apparently to a lot of people out there, the ICOC qualified as a ‘cult’. Here’s a list of 25 characteristics of a cult, taken from the Free Believer’s website (www.freebelievers.com /article/25-attributes-of-a-cult):

25 ATTRIBUTES OF A CULT:
This list is taken from a college course called “The Psychology of Fundamentalism” offered by the University of Texas

1. the leader is charismatic and often militaristically demanding
2. the leader is always right
3. elitism, the leaders treated as royalty or a sense of awe, hierarchical, authoritarian power structure
4. lower members get no respect, or get abused
5. leader is not held accountable for his actions or the actions of his authority structure
6. leader will not tolerate or receive criticism, but leader criticizes all others
7. there is no exit
8. if members exit they are considered rebellious, out of the will of a higher power or the leader
9. members do not have any association with members that have left the group
10. there are no graduates from the “program” or group, just deserters or evil people
11. there is cult speak (a language many others can not understand)
12. personal attacks on critics or those who are not in the group
13. solidarity within themselves, no outside allegiance or association
14. use of guilt to manipulate members
15. the leaders of group are self absorbed
16. instant community
17. members unable to tell the truth
18. money grubbing
19. newcomers don’t “think right” and need to be trained
20. system of punishment and reward
21. intrusiveness
22. sense of powerless, dependency, covert fear, guilt
23. members and leaders are imbalanced or mentally ill
24. thought stopping language, clichés, or slogans
25. demands of ultra loyalty or ultra trust in the groups process and others

A lot of the things on the list I experienced or witnessed. I am SO glad I’m out of there.

Note: I’m not saying the ICOC is a cult. I’m merely expressing my views and backing it up with relevant data from outside sources. This is not to attack any group, but to express how I was hurt by religiosity and legalism, which unfortunately permeates most of Christianity, as I see it. Keep reading, you may find some of the things I found to be quite shocking, as I did.