Read the Bible--It Will Scare the Hell Out of You: Why I Am No Longer a Christian

In a small town, it is a gossip inducing sight: In a pew sits a mother with her two children, alone.

"Is that lady divorced?"

"The father is that blond guy who worked at the grocery store."

"I can't believe it! He seemed like such a nice guy. Why isn't he in church with his family?"

"He said he is no longer a Christian."

"No longer a Christian? Got into drugs?"

"I don't know. Didn't seem like a drunk. He said something about problems with the Bible, but DUH! Maybe there's another woman."

"Well, he's sure not a good role-model for his kids."

The author hasn't heard that conversation, and actually probably never would in his lovely kindhearted small town. But he feels it. And he has had to deal with the question "Why aren't you in church with your family?" When verbal explanations failed, he began this written defense that even Joe Sixpack can understand. The implications of the evangelical fundamentalist worldview initiated his skepticism, but it was the Bible that finally drove him from his born-again roots. They don't put these scriptures in sermons, and being born-again may turn out to be something completely different.

One bright Sunday at the age of 18, the author's life took an unexpected turn. A book was reviewed in the Sunday school class of his small-town Presbyterian church: Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth. Suddenly everything was different. The world was coming to an end; Jesus was coming back. He dropped a scholarship in chemical engineering at the University of Tulsa and transferred to Oral Roberts University. After a theology degree, he went on for geology degrees at the state universities of Oklahoma and Colorado with the goal of getting involved in evolution/creation research and the search for Noah's Ark. But nine years after his entrance into the world of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, he had to walk out. His disgust with the evangelical worldview, combined with a realization of what the Bible actually contained drove him away. Eighteen years after his exit, his children and then his wife drifted into that same fundamentalist world, which he metaphorically describes as Godlyland. He could not accompany them. Just hearing about the rides in there brought back memories of mental nausea. Inquiries regarding why he wasn't in church with his family reopened old wounds and motivated this description of his own trip to Godlyland, his reasons for leaving, and his recently discovered evidence for eternal life, from an entirely different direction.