by Frank Baugh

Created on: September 15, 2009

I am, I confess, an unhappy camper. I am a life-long Christian tottering on the edge of being a full-blown agnostic. It is sort of sad really and really scary.

Most men go through a mid-life crisis of chasing women, driving fast cars and wearing gold chains with their signs of the zodiac. I, on the other hand, have decided that instead of running around on my wife, I'm going to run around on God and suddenly decide that God is improvable and that The Bible is a compilation of conflicted myths dictated by a dysfunctional God marred by deep character flaws.

Yes, I have asked the question: "Am I mad at God?"

You betcha!

Why am I so mad at God? Why do I suddenly doubt God's existence; because God, or man's religion of God, broke his or its trust with me. I believed in the promises of the Sermon on the Mount, I considered the lilies of the field and I believed the Psalms. I trusted what the Priests and the Preachers said and none of it has come to fruition. I have spent a life of prayer not having them answered but trusting that they would be answered in God's time, but it hasn't happened. God has let me down. God has abandoned me when I needed God the most, so I question if there really is a God or not.

And what is worse is that I am scared of this big boogie man, that God is suddenly going to manifest like that fiery God of death that persecuted the Canaanites into genocidal near extinction. I am scared to death of this God because being an agnostic means that God might exist and if God does exist, he'll come and get me now because I question him and his holy word!

I think that the way it started for me was that I actually, like all the Preachers say a good Christian should, read The Bible. All the violence and cruelty of God actually depressed me! I guess I lingered in the Old Testament too long, but it was Mark Twain that pointed out to me in his Letters from Earth that the concept of eternal hell and damnation was a creation of the New Testament. Jesus is the one that brought that concept about of lakes of fire and eternal torture. I emphasize eternal torture! What kind of sick being could take delight in something being eternally tortured? Could you do such at thing? Ask yourself; would you like to watch somebody's soul writhe in eternal pain forever?

So, I'm scared that is going to happen to me now. That's the problem with toying with the idea of agnosticism. There may not be a God, but there might be, and boy oh boy, is he going to get me if he is real!

I know what all the good Christians will tell me to do (I have been one): to pray and God will forgive me. I ask for what? Being grossed-out by the violence of The Bible? Being afraid that my all loving Father in Heaven is going to squash me like a bug in an eternal lake of fire? Fear is no basis for belief.

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