I would really like to know how you came by your beliefs and whether you are part of an organised religious denomination?
If you were an atheist six months ago, what changed? I’m genuinely interested.
Well when I say 'atheist' I was using it as shorthand for a person belonging to no religious denomination, maybe a better term would have been agnostic but the difference between now and then feels as though it is the difference between a believer and a non believer.
I was raised Catholic, with Jewish influences but as my parents divorced the Catholic side of the family took precedence over my belief system and I attended Catholic school etc.
Catholicism never sat well with me. Even as a child the discrepancies between those who preached Catholicism and the ostensible teachings of Jesus seemed uncomfortably disparate.
Nuns, as I experienced them were rather bitter and nasty specimens and priests as we know are given to rather heinous predilections
I believe that the Catholic Church became a place for paedophiles and sadists to hide in plain sight.
Furthermore I believe it was this way from its very inception.
How can a man have the right to absolve us from our sins? Even to me, as a child that seemed somewhat off. Surely that was the preserve of God?
Only he can judge me, surely?
Only he can right my wrongs, right?
So I was broadly agnostic I suppose as I couldn't reconcile the only belief system/religion that I had been predominantly exposed to with its actual teachings.
However I always intended to live my life according to the bible. And why not? Its as good a belief system as any, if you can do away with the misogynistic and bigoted aspects of it. These were religious doctrines and interpretations in any case and have very little basis in the scriptures . In short, they were man made.
When the pandemic began I started to pray. Dont ask me why, I don't know, it was as if it were a call to prayer. I would find a quiet place and I would beseech God to keep me safe, to keep my family safe, my children safe, my patients safe. To keep all of us safe.
For us to come through this unscathed.
As more time passed and I continued to pray it was as if I began to 'see through' the rhetoric of men. I began to understand the fear which was being weaponised, I think we all saw the absolute shambles the government made of the situation and I began to pray for them to make better choices.
I began to read the bible and I began to see evil where it was, I began to see the divisive rhetoric that was being employed to fragment society during a time when we needed the most cohesion.
I began to see the weaponisation of fear to turn us against one another.
I began to see the evil.
The trans issue was another big red flag for me.
What the hell are we doing to convince our children that we can change sex? To use puberty blockers, to convince women that we must accept men as women and that we could cut our breasts off and become men?
In short, what kind of a world were we heading towards?
What fresh hell was this?
I started talking to Jesus about all of this.
And I felt peace. I understood that all I had to do was see things for what they are and accept the love of Jesus and ask him to guide me. To live my life as he did. To be a light where there once was none.
As I studied the Bible and as I talked to Jesus I realised that yes, we are almost certainly in the times of tribulation.
Satan has such a grip of this world that my misgivings regarding the faith in which I was raised suddenly made sense. He has them too.
He quite literally has the Vatican.
But there is so much hope, there is always hope where there is humanity and the overwhelming majority of us are just trying to do our best given our circumstances, given our propensity to understand our situation.
And that in itself is hopeful.
Evil is in the minority and it was ever thus, it is simply that now that minority has been enabled to wield the majority of power due to the transfer of wealth.
There is a reason that it says within scripture that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
And who are the main players on the world stage?
Rich men.
Megalomaniac men.
Power hungry men.
Evil men.
To those who seek to denigrate me I'm going for gold because at this point in proceedings I'm sure I can't seem any more crazy to those people than I already do.
And trust me, I'm ok with that.
But much like lots of people who become acquainted with God...evil itself made a believer of me.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it beelzebub 