Welcome, to all you relatives, in-laws, friends and just all you who may have always been curious about really who I am, what my life has been about and what I think about myself. Obviously, I want to focus on the parts of my life that relate to the objectives of my writings. I’m writing about things that affected me, basically in a religious sense, that have possibly affected others in the same way and others might be able to relate to.
Bottomless Pit
Growing up in a Christian family I received the influences of fundamental concepts of Christianity — the same as most other kids. At the age of around seven or so, at church with my parents I began hearing sermons from the pulpit, at that very tender age and being a very sensitive… 
That’s me at the age it happened.
“Going to Hell” at the age of 7!
As a child, sermons about “fire and brimstone” and the “bottomless pit”, spoken of in the bible from a very fiery preacher, were intensely frightening. Here I was, a little kid, in my imagination, lumped together with the fate of those who are destined to fall into that horrendous “bottomless pit”!
Being a little kid and understanding almost nothing of the realities of this world (much less the next one), caused much anxiety and depression and coupled with the outrageous sermons of the fire and 
brimstone preacher lead me into a deep and withdrawn state, not to mention sleepless nights and horrible nightmares of endlessly falling down a bottomless pit in unimaginable agony — for all eternity, with no chance of getting out — ever! And all this, mind you, in the mind of a sensitive, scared 2nd grader, with no one who could understand me or give me any comfort, much less help!
A Kind Man — Jesus
Then one day, finding myself at a “Good News Club”, a neighbor lady told us kids the story of a very kind man who went everywhere doing good and preaching love. In my mind, he was the only one who understood me. Soon he became my friend which seemed to help me a lot. Eventually, getting up the courage to go up to the front of the church by getting in line with a lot of other people who were in line at the benediction, I finally got up there to the front of the church. When my turn arrived at the preacher, he whispered something in my ear and I supposed, at the time, that was what got me “saved” from the terrors of the bottomless pit I constantly dreamed about. Later came baptism, and the nightmares seemed to have gradually gone away sometime after that.
Church
One time at some point in my early teen years at a church my dad made me attend, there was this guy who it seems had been a member of the church for some time, got up to give his “testimony”. But his testimony was more like a bragging session, talking about how he was so faithful in paying his tithe, etc… and that was just too much for me — it made me sick to my stomach. That was all I could take and I left the church building with my Dad right behind demanding that I get back inside. I told him, “no way am I ever going to church anymore”. He threatened me with a severe whipping, but I hardly ever went back to church after that for years — until I was about 19. 
This was the (bad) beginning of my religious experience. Throughout my teen years, I hated church — I would always try to get out of going at every chance I could. Too old to get spankings anymore, church-going pretty much stopped. One exception was for interest in a girl who after meeting at summer camp that went to a certain church. That’s where my first kiss happened under a full moon. It wasn’t much of a religious experience, but one of the most beautiful ones in memory.
The Unpardonable Sin
Long story made short, at age 15 my parents got a divorce and later on I went to live with my father at the around age of 19. Having not gone to church for years up until that time, my Dad insisted church was a must. He must have perceived my bad experience with the Baptist churches, so he suggested trying this non-denominational church, which turned out to be kind of a Pentecostal church. After being in Baptist churches that nobody makes a peep to a Pentecostal-type church where everybody is speaking in tongues and making all kinds of noises — well, it was quite shocking.
Blasphemy?
Upon hearing a woman prophesying, which really sounded strange to me, I commented to someone that it sounded, to me, like the Devil speaking through her. According to them, prophesying was the “Holy Ghost” speaking. Saying the Holy Ghost sounds like the Devil — wasn’t that “speaking a word” against the Holy Ghost? Well, at the time, and for years to come, it seemed so. That was something that really just ate at my soul — for years!
At the age of 19 living with my Dad wasn’t free anymore and I had to get out and get a job. During a job working at an oil refinery working in the field there was this guy who had Pentecostal background and we got to talking since we were going to similar type of churches. He was able (gleefully) to convince me with verses from the bible that it was possible for a Christian to “blaspheme the Holy Ghost” and lose one’s salvation. Remembering the comment about the woman prophesying caused me to believe that I may have committed the so-called “unpardonable sin” and lost my salvation. Well to me at the time, with little understanding of spiritual concepts and with almost no facts about the Bible, fears rooted in ignorance led to severe anxiety. 
These thoughts about losing my salvation tormented me so badly that anxiety attacks and horrible panic attacks started. They got so bad that scratching my skin so hard caused bleeding. The pain to my skin was easier to bear than the pain experienced in my soul — in fact, it seemed to relieve the pain on the inside. The anxiety disorder and severe panic attacks went on for several years, having done pretty much everything possible to keep my mind off of it. Even going to the pastor of my church and asking him about it yielded the answer: he “wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so” — that wasn’t good enough.
It was hard enough for me to talk about it let alone getting any help, so the pain went on and on. The thought of dying was terrifying: “at least as long as am alive there will be no eternal torment in the fires of Hell”! What exactly is the unforgivable sin, or the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? There was very little certainty in my mind about about the possibility of committing it or not, or even if I was still “saved” or not, and if I wasn’t, could I ever get it back? (not likely it seems) By reading it literally it sounds like forever!
However, since the “blasphemy” is not clear, to explain away the obvious, they will say that rejecting God and God’s good news of salvation is what the sin is. But still, that doesn’t sound like blasphemy. Blasphemy sounds like something you say against the Holy Ghost, doesn’t it?.
“Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”
“And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come” (Mt 12:31,32) (KJV)
That sounded pretty clear to me. The sin is speaking against the Holy Ghost. That made it super difficult for me to explain it away to myself, to avoid continually thinking about the fear, torment and agony of the flames of Hell for an eternity and without anything that could be done to be forgiven of it, either in this life or the eternal hereafter! That was it. It plainly said that in the Bible and spoken by Jesus, the very God in flesh himself! What Hell!
And the Bible is the truth… Or is it?
The only way to ever get around this horrible destiny would be to discover if Jesus didn’t actually say it. But since there are no original manuscripts, and the fact that no one really knows who wrote the four Gospels, or what Jesus really did say, it is impossible to know.
Eventually, there it became more and more obvious, after much studying of things other than just the Bible and religious materials, that the men who wrote the Gospels, invented much of this in order to generate fear into the hearts of men to be able to control and manipulate the masses. Just think. How many people may be living and may have lived in the torment of their souls for years because of the lies of dishonest and evil men! One thing gradually I began to see is that there are some words that Jesus actually did say like:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
Thanks to Jesus and the words that I think he probably did speak in the Bible, this was one of the things that made it possible for me to finally be able to break loose from the chains of fear and lies that had kept me deceived all those years! The bubble that I was living in burst! In all likelihood those words that kept me in the bondage of fear were words that evil men put in the mouth of Jesus, that he never did say to put fear into the hearts of men.
Knowing and Believing
Knowing and believing are two completely different things. Believing is a holding a concept that you just accept because you heard it or read it from somewhere even though you don’t really know if it’s true or you can’t really prove it’s true, because you don’t have any evidence or facts to back it up. Why hang on to something that you have no way of knowing is the truth, when it just serves to hurt you? It’s not a wonder why so many people have fallen away from religion, when religion is the very thing that is supposed to be there to help.
Believe it or not, what really helped me was to stop believing everything. I had belief in things that I had no way of knowing was in reality truth or not! Why believe in something there is no facts or evidence to be real Truth? What I eventually discovered was that I was believing a lot of things that were just plain untrue! So I ended up throwing out everything — the baby, the bathwater and all! And started all from scratch.
So that’s where I was. Just believing everything that I read and heard others say. I didn’t have the freedom to do the research for myself, use my own brain instead of letting someone else use it for me — I had no critical thinking skills. I was a prisoner of my own mind because I believed in others — they did all the thinking for me.
Next: About My Life Part 2