"The Christian is a fool...He that worships the invisible and prays to the dead. For if God were that which the believer had intended, it would be of the most vile and indescribeable of monstrosities..." C.Spellman (Great philosopher)
As a guide, I have instituted a program that I believe is an effective protocal for helping Christians free themselves from the addiction of Christianity. Many persons familar with Alcoholics Anonymous will recognize the Twelve Step Program that I utilize in counseling Christians.
It is important to remember that like any addiction, Christianity is also a disease of the mind in many aspects. Persons afflicted with the fanatical beliefs that Christianity espouses are unaware to how deep in a religious abyss their faith has led them. The most important component of recovery is a recognition and admission that one is enslaved in the cult that is the Christian religion. With my step-by-step program, I have paved the way to helping Christians escape from the insanity they are governed by.
1.) "We have admitted we are powerless over Christianity - that our faith has become unmanageable."
The first step to recovery involves simple admission that Christianity controls you, that you no longer have the ability to think rationally. This is the key component to liberation from your religious chains. By falling victim to Christianity you must face up to the fact that you have allowed a cultic religion seize your powers of thought and of decision making. Once you can actually say to yourself - "Yes! I am a victim. I am powerless to this addiciton." - you can start looking to the second step. Firstly however, you absolutely must work this first step. Stand up and admit to yourself that you have allowed Christianity to overrun your life.
2.) "We came to the realization that Christianity could drive us to complete insanity."
In your illusory view of the world, seen through the deceptive and unrealistic veil of Christianity, you have embarked on a journey down the road to madness. As you have already admitted that you have become a victim of your own religion, you must now face the reality that it has the potential of driving you insane. A good way to visualize this is to look at many of the religious leaders you see on programs such as TBN and the 700 Club. The men and women portrayed on these programs are clear-cut examples of the tragic symptoms of this disease. You must recognize the insanity they exhibit while they rant and rave, while they espouse their non-sensical ideas and speak the lies their religion supports. This step is of critical importance and yet it is one of the most difficult as it mandates you to admit that you are ideed a part of an illogical and dangerous cultic religion. You must face these realities head on. A way to better come to grips with this task is to reevaluate what your relgion asked you to believe in. Remember, you have been ordered to worship a dead cult leader - Jesus Christ - of whom you were told 'died for your sins', which you will soon see makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Further on we will examine your belief structure to help this you absorb this step with greater ease. Once you have a more intelligent view on your religion you will be better able to extract yourself from it.
3.) "Made a decison to stop turning over our free will to the care of a God we never fully understood in the first place."
This step involves taking back your most precious faculty - Free Will! One of the first things you lost, and the most important, was your ability to think for yourself. As a Christian you have surrendered your ability to make rational choices and to think with skepticism, which you will see is a critical element of rational thought. By unshackling your mind from the mental imprisonment of your Christian faith, you now have the weapon that Christianity fears most - an unwashed brain! With your senses again in order you can face Christian dogma face to face, and see it for what it really is. Step Two taught you to come to the acceptance that your relilgion was an exercise in insane humility. With your mind armed with this knowledge you can now begin erasing each one of the childish myths that you once allowed to control you.
4.) "Made a searching and fearless moral evaluation of our faith."
This step asks you to sit down and take a hard look at your beliefs as dictated to you by your cultic religion. It is the folly of Christians that most never bother to apply a shred of critical thought to their religion's mythical nature. Hence, one becomes a Christian by failing to use rational thought mechanisms and inevitably falls prey to the emotional seductions of this superstitious cult. By allowing yourself to actually analyze your belief structure without the mental blinders imposed upon you by Christianity, you will soon see that you have been a victim of the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. Later on we will help you attain the necessary elemental thought patterns needed to see your faith for what it truly is.
5.) "Admitted to society, the world and ourselves the exact inept nature of our religion, which is totally wrong."
While one of our programs most difficult steps to take, it is also the most important. Now that you have admitted that your faith is out of control and that you have recognized the many follies your religion represents, it is time to tell the world, to whom your religion so loudly tried to corrupt, the truth about Christianity. Having evaluated your faith you can now begin the task of helping others recognize the treachery that you allowed to befall you. In this process not only will you be able to strengthen your resolve to become a better non-Christian, but will also aid others in leading them away from their so-called "saviour". As you see that, even as a recovering Christian, you can help others who are lost amidst the madness of Christianity you will have the added bonus of reinforcing your commitment to total seperation from your former self.
6.) "We are entirely prepared to remove these 'holier than thou' attitudes."
One of the strongest hallmarks you have exhibted as a born-again is your remarkable ability to believe you were somehow a "chosen one" or that God had some special place in his kingdom reserved for you. Christianity, in it's smug self-rightiousness, has filled you with a spiritual ego that would offend even the most arrogant of Gods. The extraction of this attitude is a neccessary step as it involves removing one of the most offensive qualities a Christian carries with him/herself. Additionally you are given a lesson in humility, something every Christian is in dire need of.
7.) "Humbly agreed to keep our relation to God completely to ourselves."
One of your greatest weaknesses as a Christian has been the seemingly uncontrollable impulse of "ministering" or "spreading the good news of the gospel". By doing so you have made yourself a great nuisance to persons of other faiths (or of no faith at all) and have essentally become a menace. Once you have mastered the early steps of this program you will have seen how much of a pain in the neck you were and want very much to resolve it. Having done away with your childish outlook on religion (your Christian perspective)you can now concentrate on keeping any further relationships with God to yourself and no longer striving to tell the world about it. This will help you make friends in the long run.
8.) "Made a list of all persons we had deceived and turned over to Christianity and became willing to tell them the real truth."
This is a pertinent component in your recovery process. This step involves reaching out to those you "ministered" to and brought to Christ. When you did so, you never realized what potential harm you were doing to the minds of your victims. In fact, you wholeheartedly believed you were doing God's work. The real truth of the matter is that you had a personal agenda in mind. You believed that by bringing in new cult members you were sucking up to God, thinking he would somehow have a higher opinion of you and would possibly reward you in some form or another. This is the selfishness inherant in most Christians. Many seek avenues that offer shameless self-promotion and place them on what they assume is God's list of favorites. What you never understood was that you were in fact contributing to the "dumbing down" process already rampant in today's society. As you are coming to realize, Christianity does NOT offer salvation - only consternation, guilt, ego and self-righteousness. By making a commitment to seeking out the persons you sucked into your cult and admitting you were wrong, you are not only helping to undo the damage you may have caused to these individuals, but aiding greatly in your own process of recovery.
9.) "Made direct ammends to all persons we told would 'burn in hell' if they did not believe as we did."
Like Step #8, this is yet another act of goodness you must execute on your road to becoming an ex-Christian. You will no doubt remember the terrible ideas you promoted as a Christian to non-believers. These include the pushing on others of the concept of damnation to eternal fire for not accepting Christ. As you, at this point in the program, have come to admit, this is a ludicrous concept. It is one of Christianity's most filthy and deviant weapons. Many ignorant persons you told this to were almost certainly scared into joining the ranks of the Christian cult. You yourself may have been sucked into becoming a Christian via this method. This threat of death and hellfire is the Christian Church's most effective weapon. What you now must embark upon is a reconciliation with both yourself and those whom you used this weapon against. As in Step #8, it inolves telling them the truth about Christianity. This will be greatly enhanced as you become more free-thinking and develop more effective critical thought skills.
10.) "Continued to take a spiritual inventory of our former beliefs and when we were wrong (which was almost always), promptly admitted how naive we were."
Again, like a few steps you have already taken, this simply involves reexamining your former beliefs and identifying those you now know to be utterly false. It is a lesson in humility, something every Christian needs. Naivety is the most telling trait of every Christian cult member. As you progress from a theologically brainwashed prisoner of Christ to a more enlighted, free-thinking, self-governing entity, you will actually come to find this step the easiest and perhaps most enjoyable of them all. You will, for the first time, have the opportunity to laugh at yourself and be able to see the great humor in your religion. You'll wonder how you could have be so utterly blind. Regaining a sense of power over your life will be this steps greatest reward.
11.) "Sought through education and common sense to improve upon our disconnection from Christianity as we saw necessary, educating and empowering ourselves to carry the renunciation of our faith out."
As your walk down the path away from the demons of Christianity progresses, you will find solice in the fact that your mind will be openeing to all sorts of horizons you probably never knew existed. The greatest enemy of your religion is knowledge. Christianity is fueled and kept alive by pure ignorance and intellectual immaturity. The educative steps you embark upon will lessen the withdrawal symptons you may experience and at the same time open the gates to a new and wonderful life. For the first time you will be able to respect and admire the fruits of knowledge and education. Previously you often denied basic facts of science which you will now find make more sense than ever. As science was always your greatest enemy, you will now find it an antidote and ally. You will finally come to accept such basic facts as evolution, both biological and non-biological. You will come to laugh at your former beliefs in such ridiculous stories as Noah's Flood and the infamous story of Creation found in Genesis. As your beliefs in fairy tales fade you will finally come to recognize these stories for what they really are - myths. Also, for perhaps the first time, you will be able to effectively utilize basic common sense and critical evaluative thought. Christianity has kept these away from you for long enough, now its time to enlighten yourself!
12.) "Having had an intellectual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other misled Christians, and agreed to cease all further practices involving shameless religious persuasion and, furthermore, to never again use God as a terror weapon."
As you take your last step towards spritual freedom you commit yourself to spreading the good news of salvation to other cult members. With having broken the chains of Christianity you now have the knowledge in hand that can benefit persons lost in the madness of Christian illusion. Furthermore, you make a promise to never use your former relgion to frighten others into falling prey to the Jesus-Cult. This means no further ministering of any sort, only that of recovery. You can now think clearly about life; forever free from the enslaving and hateful doctrine of Christian dogma.
Questions/Comments regarding counseling are welcome!
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