Rodney

I spent the first 15 years of my life attending church everyday the doors were open.  Over the next several years, attendance was sporadic and then I was drafted by the United States Army in the fall of 1972.  I remember well the exciting aura of the Holy Roller, Pentecostal, evangelical, speaking in tongues worship services.  There were several revival crusades each year that helped to boost attendance and keep the congregation from wandering too far from the flock.  I gave my life to Jesus Christ more times than I can remember but I do remember one thing quite well – there was NEVER a moment of any spiritual revelation.  I got nothing from any of the praying, forgiving, promising, kneeling, confessing, testifying - nada, nil, zero, zip!

July 2, 1979 is the day I decided to read the bible from cover to cover, Old Testament and New Testament.  My sister, still trying to save my soul, had bought for me a really nice leather bound, zip-up case, The New International Version of The Holy Bible.  Over the next several weeks, I pored over the pages reading many of the stories I had heard in Sunday school.  But the surprising thing is that there were a lot of other stories in the bible that had never been mentioned or were told quite differently from the many sermons of my childhood.  

Reading the bible was the one defining moment that turned me forever away from the religious indoctrination of my younger gullible years.  The one thing that absolutely bothered me the most was the fact that God was so cruel in the Old Testament and supposedly so loving and compassionate in the New Testament.  I thought that there is no way that a God can have multiple personalities, no way, can’t happen, if it does then they are not a GOD.  PERIOD. 

How can a god make so many mistakes; how can a god be so cruel; how can a god create such fallible creatures; how can a god be fallible themselves?  If the God of the Holy Bible exists, he is one cruel #$%g#&1* and I want nothing to do with that entity.  I have since found hundreds of other reasons to support my position of disbelief and can never see myself returning to the religious flock.  It has taken thirty years from that defining moment in 1979 for me to really feel free and unburdened.  In the year 2009, I can finally speak freely about my beliefs and am leading a happy, healthy and spiritually fulfilling life without the religious crutch. 

Rodney Hinds

Amarillo, Texas