Deprogramming Jessica

I have listened to a ton of arguments from Christians when they find themselves in a debate or discussion about whether or not the god of the Bible, Yahweh, exists or not and I have made some observations and I have some thoughts/questions. They misinterpret similarities between religions of the period.  I don't actually blame the Christians for this. The church doesn't focus on the historical aspect of the time periods aside from painting a contextual picture for the story being preached. They don't encourage learning about the history of the time period as a whole, nor do they teach it. That stuff is kind of on a need-to-know basis. So, the fact that Christians don't know about the timelines and how these ancient civilizations interacted with one another and how that impacted their religious beliefs, is not a shock. What I find interesting and even frustrating though, is that when they are confronted with these similarities of stories and legends from earlier writings...

It was a constructive conversation. It was a bit cathartic to get to say some of this stuff out loud, but I was worried about freaking her out a little. But, as usual, she took it just fine. She does firmly believe that this is a mid life crisis of sorts, having gone through something similar at the same age. She said that she knows I will figure everything out and move on, eventually. But that she understands my feelings of anger and betrayal right now. She doesn't throw the entire Bible in the trash like I do. But she does have some real unorthodox beliefs and she was open to listening to me vent about all the things I have learned and where it has led me.  We did hit one main point of disagreement though and it was on the topic of morality. This does seem to be the one area where people get hung up. They cannot fathom how people could determine right from wrong without God and religion. So we talked about that. She did seem to be trying to understand what I was saying, but I am ...

I spent the weekend doing more research. I can't help it. I want to learn.  I have found a couple of things that are interesting. One of those being that the album I have been drawn to for the last six months, as I hear it enough for the lyrics to sink in I realize that the message of this album is the exact experience I am going through. The exact realizations I am coming to. I should have known, with the album title Existential Reckoning. I didn't even know what that meant, until recently. But is exactly what I am experiencing.  I caught a quote from actor Jim Carrey this weekend. He went through this experience a few years ago and he said of it, "I used to feel like a guy experiencing the universe. Now I feel like the universe experiencing a guy.  That was pretty profound.  I have been spending time dissecting the Bible, lately. I have come to realize that in church, parishners are spoon fed parts of the Bible that a pastor or priest chooses and it is taught accor...

I have felt stuck in a phase of this deconstruction for a while now and I find myself trying to force my way out of it. I have been bouncing around in a phase of anger and acceptance wherein I go back and forth between feeling angry and lashing out about the lies I feel I was fed by religion and accepting these truths without malice. In this phase there is a lot of discomfort. I spend a lot of time researching, listening and learning about other religions, I have been reading the Bible more and learning about world history and the historical contexts of all of these different types of religions. In the past I would have taken all of these different accounts of these stories as some sort of evidence that many cultures had similar experiences which would point to the validity of them. Where as now, I look at them and I can see how religions borrowed from other religions and stories follow common archetypes. The fact that members of a particular religion can look at texts and belief struc...

Today I'm thinking on the concepts of heaven and hell. I have been doing some research on these alleged places and I have also been combining that with what I had been taught about these places, growing up. I have to be honest, the more I learn about heaven and hell and the more I think about these places as if they do exist, the more ridiculous they seem. First off, let me bring up the fact that not all religions believe in heaven or hell and even those that do, CANNOT agree on how this all works. However, we are supposed to have faith and believe that some version of this is correct. Of course there is always that chance we assumed the wrong version was correct which would, by all accounts, keep us out of heaven just for that.  I grew up a Christian so I am going to speak to THAT version of heaven and hell because it is the only one I know much about. There are a lot of different ideas within Christianity when it comes to the idea of heaven and how/when you get there. Some denomi...

I feel so fucking woke tonight. So fucking woke. The definition of woke changes depending on who you ask. For me, feeling woke means that I have snapped out of it! Meaning I am now standing on the outside of indoctrination and looking in at it. Like I have literally left the Matrix.  I see all kinds of things I never did before. I see some people doing everything they can to try and advance humans as a species. Trying to guide us forward towards our next version in the evolutionary process. Trying to work us towards being a little more civilized. I also see some people digging in their heels, feeling threatened and doing everything in their power to prevent any further advancement as a society. They place a tremendous amount of value in things like traditions and nostalgia.  The more I pay attention the more it is clear that we're not there yet. Humans are largely not ready for that next step. It's too scary. There's still too much of a tendency to cling to tribal behaviors...

Today's quandary is on the topic of that infamous tree in the Garden of Eden. What about that tree? Actually, what about that whole creation of mankind story? What is that even about?  The Sunday School Version: When you are coming up in the church they teach you this Bible story about Adam and Eve. Nevermind the whole "everything was created in seven days," thing. You are taught that God made Adam and then he made a garden for Adam to live in. He had Adam name all of the animals. Then God looked around for a helper for Adam since he was alone and no helper was found among the animals so he decided to make one. He made a woman, Eve to be Adam's helper. God told them that they could eat from any tree in the garden except for that ONE tree and if they did, they would die. Then, the sneaky serpent tricked Eve into eating from that ONE tree that God said no to and Eve gave some of the fruit to Adam too and then they were suddenly aware of the fact that they were naked and...

Now that I am coming to terms with the next version of Jessica I am ready to start looking at what's next. What do I want to do from here? What things have changed that will impact certain areas of my life going forward? I need to sort that out. So I'll do it here! What am I leaving behind: Belonging to religious groups. This means no involvement in groups where the religious piece is the main focus or determines the goals. This does not mean I can't be in groups with religious people. I just can't be in groups were the group is FOR religious people. Unfortunately this is going to cause me to change areas I volunteer.  Being a leader in a public sense. This means I am not going to head up any committees for a while. I am not going to be the organizer of any causes or groups or teams, for a while. I need to take a step back from all of that while I continue to settle into this change. I may re-enter that realm at some point, but right now I feel the need to step back. I ...

I have been thinking a radical thought. It's not something I am spending much time lamenting, but I am thinking about something.  It occurred to me that existing comes at a monetary expense. It literally costs money to exist. Society has setup this construct. But, it's rather ridiculous, if you think about it. Rather unfair. Take me, for example. I didn't choose to exist, I just do. I'm not saying anything about my feelings on the fact that I exist without any say in the matter. I'm just saying that I didn't choose it. It just is. I'm just here! What's odd to me is how society and specifically capitalism has made simply existing mean that I owe someone money.  It cost money for me to be born into this world, with medical bills. I can't eat for free, not really. Even if I wanted to grow my own food, I would have to buy seeds. Plants being hybrids you can't use seeds from the plants you grow for the next season. You must buy new! I can't hunt o...

I have come to see the Bible as a book of myths, but I still think about some of the principles and teachings and I try to makes sense of them. It's probably because there are some questions I have had and some things that have bothered me, that when I asked were always explained away with apologetics. Now I am asking.  One concept I have always struggled with is that of Satan.  To me, Satan doesn't make sense. I understand the whole idea of balance and of light and dark and good and evil. I get that. And it stands to reason that in a big fantastic story the hero must have an enemy to conquer. I'm a writer of fiction (sometimes). I know how this works.  But, here is my problem with the premise of Satan. My problem is that it's problematic and contradictory for a lot of reasons.  Let's take for example this narrative that God is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing and all wise. We are taught about God that nothing happens that isn't according to his plan. We ar...

For me to be able to move on and be content with something I have to know that I have reconciled everything on the topic and made peace with it. That's why this blog is so cathartic. It gives me an outlet to vent frustrations, sort out thoughts and feelings and get them out of my head so I can stop obsessing about them. The other aspect of this reconciliation process that I have noticed is how much I do enjoy learning about new things. I get a lot of satisfaction and entertainment from diving in and consuming a bunch of information on a topic to better understand. That truth is one of the BIG contributing factors of my eventual rejection of the Bible. I had too many questions that needed answers and when I finally got up the courage to seek those answers they revealed things that let me finally release myself.   What has happened over the last year as a result of all of this objective research is what I can only describe as a great unraveling. Little by little I am pulling at ...