God

How To Resolve Anger About Childhood Christian Indoctrination

It’s Sunday morning. When I was a child, Sunday morning meant getting up unreasonably early (for a Sunday), getting dressed and heading to our local church with my parents to learn about God, Jesus and The Bible.

The church services felt long and boring with dull music, but fortunately I didn’t have to stay in them very long as us kids could leave part-way through to head downstairs to Sunday School in the basement of the church. Compared to the church service, Sunday School was much more fun. I ran riot a lot of the time, running around the building whenever possible and playing with the other kids. Mind you, compared to Sunday School, I imagined that staying home or playing with my non-church friends was probably even more fun.

In Sunday School I heard stories like Jonah being swallowed by a whale for disobeying God. God’s plan involved Jonah going to Nineveh to tell the people there how evil they were. Didn’t sound like such a great plan to me; who would want to do that?

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Christian Teaching That Can Undermine Your Self-Confidence

I’ve been thinking lately about how much my self-confidence was undermined by what I was taught as a child in the church where I grew up. Even long after I had abandoned the belief system on a conscious level as an adult, I still felt the emotional effects of having my sense of self eroded and my self-belief undermined. There are some positive aspects of Christian teaching, but these didn’t sink in for me as deeply as the negatives. Even if you still believe in the basis of Christianity, I suggest you start questioning some of these Christian teachings which can undermine your self-confidence:

Blessed Are The Meek

Image courtesy sxc.hu

Yeah right. Try telling that to Genghis Khan. Now I’m not suggesting that you should go and invade half of China, but if ever there was a teaching designed to simply appease the masses, this is it. It would be more accurate to say “Blessed is the man who believes in himself and valiantly goes after what he wants in life without attachment to getting it”.

You Were Born Into Sin

The basic notion that we are born into original sin is flawed. The truth is that you were born exactly as nature intended.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago