Church is just people getting together and playing make believe - Bill Guthrie

Today I spoke with Bill Guthrie, who grew up believing in Jesus, committed his life to sharing the gospel, and went to school to be a minister, but eventually deconverted as he dug into the details of the Bible and its claims.

As we talked through his story, we discussed many topics, including:

• Going to Bible camp and recommitting himself to the Yahweh character.
• Becoming deeply concerned that he did not have a real relationship with Jesus, and finally getting born again and on fire for "the Lord."
• Getting rid of worldly music to honor Yahweh.
• Being compelled to preach the gospel to those who had never heard it.
• Dealing with the KJV-only controversy.
• The tendency of some Christians to be judgmental of any Christians who weren't passionate about telling others how to "get saved."
• The idea that if you didn't share the gospel enough, the blood of those who went to hell without Jesus was "on your hands."
• Realizing that Paul wrote other epistles that were not include in the NT canon, and that many good scholars believe that many of the canonical letters attributed to Paul were not actually written by Paul, but by someone else claiming to be him.
• Realizing that the god who you thought was going to provide for your needs is not actually providing for your needs.
• Watching Christians fight over which preachers are not conservative enough due to various doctrinal stances that they feel the need to fight for.
• How the Church uses teachings on hell to keep people in fear and under their control.
• Watching small cracks in the Christian worldview become huge cracks.
• Facing the judgmentalism that is rampant among Christians, especially if you don't fully agree with the party line of your particular denomination, and even more so if you appear to be questioning the basic claims of the Bible.
• How every aspect of the Christian's supposed experience with god can be easily explained through understanding human psychology.
• Knowing, as a Christian, that if you walk away from the faith your fellow Christians will ostracize and mistreat you, and ultimately deal with you as a traitor.
• The moment of realizing that we don't believe anymore, and the bizarre experience of admitting to ourselves that the Jesus character is made up and is thus entirely irrelevant to our lives and worldview.
• Starting to re-think what's really going on in the world -- apart from the perspectives of the mythology of Christianity.
• The importance of empowering kids to have "thought autonomy."
• How the cult of Christianity uses brainwashing tactics.

Many thanks to Bill for sharing his journey with us today!


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--Tim

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Ending music by Eyal Raz, "Friends"

   • Friends  

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