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was “saved” sometime around the tender age of five. I say this now with a smirk as it is odd that my salvation must not have stuck. And yet, salvation is always referred to in the past tense as if it were already done. Being saved is the modern Christian way of saying that we have accepted Jesus as Lord and savior of our life and that we accept his death on a cross as the means by which we ourselves may be forgiven and cleansed of our sin. We are also to accept that Jesus represented the “perfect lamb of God” for the sacrifice of our sins to which all previous animal sacrifices culminated or “shadowed” as it is often put in Christian circles. Oddly enough, many non-Christian societies and religions also instituted sacrifice both of animal and human alike in attempts to pacify the anger of the gods.

No one knows why the gods were always so angry, but given the suffering in the world, they clearly must have been. And so, to make such gods less angry, mankind murdered one another to dedicate religious buildings and protect them, to make it rain, to prevent volcanic eruptions, or even to ensure the sun would rise in the morning. I find it odd that many people can brush off as preposterous the idea of dumping someone into a volcano in order to prevent eruption, and yet continue to hold that a loving God would decree animal sacrifice—and the sacrifice of Jesus in particular—to cover over our sins and save us from the hell he created. I appear to be getting ahead of myself, however.

             I must admit that I originally accepted this salvation due solely to the persuasive words of my grandmother. She offered that I should choose between everlasting peace and eternal damnation in a fiery lake of hell—a tough choice to be sure. A child tends to be so hasty with such important eternal decisions without fully weighing the pros and cons of each. So like any other five-year-old, I chose this heaven idea over hell. Had I understood that the labels of heaven and hell had actually been switched some hundreds of years ago I may have chosen the alternative option. The concept of sacrifice is one such evidence of tampering with the labels, but I will explain this more in a later chapter. In short, I asked Jesus into my heart and I went galumphing back home with a newfound assurance of personal safety and favor in the eyes of The Supreme.

             I cannot say I led a very religious life as a child. While I had many experiences including singing in a choir, they were fairly irregular. We rarely went to church as far as I can remember. I participated in a few events, but church never really played a huge role in my family life. Church stayed at church. I had not discussed it much with my parents at all until high school. Even then, the discourse was generally limited to the ever-required question of “how was it” with the obligatory response that “it was good.” I had a small amount of religious influence from my grandparents who lived only half an hour away and who were more vocal about their faith. I also attended Vacation Bible School (VBS) a few times and I went through AWANA’s Sparks program. When my dad got a new job sometime after I had completed the fourth grade, we moved a few hours away to the eastern side of Washington. That effectively ended the religious influence on my childhood since visits to the grandparents became more scarce and we did not get involved with any new churches as a family.

             Prior to the move, I remember Sunday church services boring me to tears and I hated the droning, lengthy prayers.  But I did love VBS, AWANA, and church daycare—mostly because I enjoyed the bribes of friends, crafts, snacks, and games along with the personal recognition incentives of badges, ribbons, and candy bars. I do not remember much religious indoctrination in any of it except maybe a few minor stories like David and Goliath or Zacchaeus in the tree and memorizing some verses which quickly flitted from memory. All but John 3:16 resided in my brain just long enough to get credit for memorization prior to retreating to the book from whence it came.

John 3:16 is a verse on an entirely different level in the Christian bubble. Many atheists know this verse just as well as any Christian. The leaders drilled it into our moldable brains as the verse of utmost importance within the Bible and we heard it and recited it every day in VBS. This verse, of course, is the one that most people interpret as being the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross which we must accept: “for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” One must read into it, however, what “gave” and “believeth in” truly mean.

             Such things as VBS and AWANA seem harmless in and of themselves, but they do have consequences. Constant repetition and familiarity of something such as John 3:16 and the emphasis on the Bible as important and true, causes a child—or any human for that matter—to begin trusting and relying on it over time. Enticing children with fun and games while repetitively submerging them in small factoids (or falseoids) will undoubtedly cause them to believe such ideas and take them for granted.

Studies have shown that adults function in much the same way. In “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman explains various examples of how we tend to trust things based on familiarity. Simply seeing the image of a person’s face a few times will actually make someone more likely to trust that face over other faces despite knowing nothing about them. We do this without any evidence of that person’s trustworthiness for the sole subconscious reason that the face is familiar or recognizable.

This is a typical—and usually beneficial—shortcut for our minds. We need to make many decisions without having every last bit of information so we make assumptions. Familiar faces are likely to be more trustworthy since it establishes that others must trust the person enough to let them hang around or be so promoted on billboards, signs, and movies. The faces of our close friends and family, of course, achieve trustworthy status most easily since they are the most common faces we see as we grow up.

My aunt Gen was one such face. She often encouraged me to read the Bible, but I had always found it so dreadfully boring as a child. She even bought me a New Century Version Bible and transcribed her hopes of me reading it and growing in Christ on the inside cover. We did a lot together when we visited and I really enjoyed her company. As far as aunts go, Gen was quite young which made her more like a big sister with whom I never had the requirement of fighting. When she went on a mission trip to the Philippines, I romanticized about the adventure of helping people as I learned more about their culture. I had always enjoyed a unique perspective on life and at eight years old, pooping in holes in the ground sounded right up my alley. Her influence stuck with me as I got older and I excitedly told her right away when I later dedicated my life to living for God. I had aspirations to one day be like her and help people in less fortunate countries.

             I had equal aspirations to one day be allowed to drink the thimble of juice and eat the oyster cracker at communion. For those unfamiliar, this is the practice of remembering the sacrifice of Jesus by eating his metaphorical flesh and drinking his metaphorical blood. If my sources are accurate, Catholicism takes this a step further and teaches that the contents literally transform into his flesh and blood upon consumption. Unfortunately, I was told I could not partake of this ritual until I understood it better. I tried reasoning with my grandmother by revealing my dire hunger, but it did not seem to be a very persuasive argument. In the end, when my understanding finally deemed me worthy, the experience left much to be desired. The juice amounted to being just enough for choking on, and eating the cracker was about as eventful as a funeral for a fly.

             While my childhood was not as saturated in Christianity as my lungs were with the blood of Christ after choking on various communions, Christianity influenced my thought processes greatly and provided a basis from which to make further judgements and logically assess situations. I had always been one for challenging everything with the understanding I had gathered from all the data that crossed my impressionable mind. My third-grade teacher even made a special certificate just for me which he called the “Well I think it should be…” award because I challenged so many things he had said. I did not particularly disbelieve anything he told me, but I compared his statements with what I had understood at that time (albeit very little) and I often needed far more data points to come to the same conclusions.

Being so curious and always pondering how to connect all the dots, religion gave me a lot to consider. It simply never occurred to me to question whether or not it was actually true to begin with. Instead, I pondered how it all fit as if it were a given that these things were facts. I certainly did not think my trusted and loving family would be lying to me and I had no relevant experiences to compare to, so I basically took it for granted. I heard no opposing views from which to realize that any even existed until much later in my life.

             I remember being told that I could pray to God and that he would hear and grant whatever I needed. I did not question its validity, but I questioned what I could do with this newfound gift of prayer. Like most people, I prayed to become rich, but only so that I could feed all the starving kids in third-world countries. After considering a while, I then prayed that God would simply feed all the starving children directly while I wondered incredulously why nobody had thought of such an easy solution before. Answering such prayers seemed far more practical than trying to raise donations in churches to fly people out on mission trips.

It only made sense that God would answer such prayers from what I had learned of him. God purportedly loved everyone. God supposedly had the power to do all things. The Bible proclaimed that God responded to prayers and especially those deriving from childlike faith such as mine. With these three facts combined, I was Captain Prayer-Warrior. My young mind awaited mana from heaven to fall in Africa and riches to come flowing into my pockets.

             I did keep a buffer of realism, however. I understood that I might have to wait until I am older to obtain my riches. To my dismay, the prayers were about as effective as the time I tried to run away to China by digging a hole deep enough in my sandbox to reach the other side of the earth. I had thought for sure that I reached the mantle below the crust after digging a while and hitting some rather tough dirt, but alas the mantle proved too tough a layer for my plastic shovel to penetrate. I am not sure what I had planned on doing about the magma, but I likely thought I would cross that bridge when I got there.

My prayers, being so dreadfully ineffective, left people starving and dying on a regular basis and my riches still have yet to come. I am fairly young yet though so perhaps I just need to wait a little longer. I also suppose that I did not provide an exact dollar amount for my riches and comparing to over 80% of the world’s population still suffering from poverty, I am comparatively quite rich already. So maybe God did answer that one, but I have not yet realized my desire to alleviate poverty in the world.

             In another stroke of childlike genius, I also prayed that God would change the devil’s heart and make him a good being. After all, God could do anything as I had been told. He created everything, including the devil, and I reasoned that perhaps no one had ever thought to be so kind to the devil as to pray for him. I suppose, for all I know, God actually did answer my prayer and all evil is now the product of man rather than the devil’s schemes. We are now giving him a bum rap for no reason. He could be in heaven right now crying that everyone accuses him so falsely all the time.

As a child, and as every Christian adult I know of, rather than recognizing prayer as ineffectual, I merely altered my understanding around it. God could have better things in mind and thus say no for our own benefit. God could be teaching us a lesson in delayed gratification and the “no” is simply a “later.” God works in mysterious ways and has grander schemes than we can comprehend, so perhaps there is a good reason that any one particular prayer goes unheeded even though God definitely answers other prayers.

We can pray for a job and not receive it and that is simply God having a better job for us somewhere else. We can pray for a raise and when we receive the raise we proclaim that God answered our prayer. It is entirely impossible to prove that prayer does not work with this mindset even though it is just as effective as praying for nothing at all. Sometimes you get the job, and sometimes you do not. Sometimes you get the raise, and other times you do not. Praying or not praying, the results are always the same: you might get what you want, and you might not. This did not sway my faith in the slightest since I felt God’s presence in other ways.

Around the age of eight or nine, I encountered people speaking in tongues for the first time. The memory of the event is still burned into my mind like a movie reel. I have learned that such flashbulb memories are entirely unreliable—or at best are equally unreliable to normal memories—but their existence usually indicates that a significant or meaningful event had occurred. My grandmother had taken me to a church activity where I stood in the corner of a small room awaiting the freedom to continue playing Short Order, Egg-Splode and Super Mario on the NES back at her house. As I waited, a girl with long blond hair, probably no older than twelve, hesitantly raised her hand to volunteer for something due to her friend pressuring her. Much praise and many hallelujahs followed. About twelve other kids her age and a few adults circled around her as they touched her wherever they could find room around her shoulders and head.

             The girl understandably seemed as comfortable as a child being touched by a multitude of strangers as she raised her head and hands at their bidding. Everyone began chanting indeterminably in strange and mostly repetitive sounds. Each person made their own sounds, but many of the people were fond of saying “rabbita shabbita” with a lot of trills on their ‘r’ sounds. If they were actually saying anything, they were each repeating their statements rather frequently and many were speaking different non-existent languages from one another. The girl struggled to make similar sounds stuttering and sputtering as one of the adults put his hand on her forehead and spoke more forcefully. She could hardly stand still with the number of hands pressing on her and she stumbled slightly and fell to her knees. She sputtered a little more and then shook her head trying to say something above the noise. They continued a little while longer until they relieved her. Some people assured her that this was okay and fairly normal and that they would just try again later. She did not seem all that enthused at the reassurance as far as I could tell.

             I later asked my grandma what had happened. She explained that the Holy Spirit of God spoke through the people and that they were praying over the girl trying to help her speak with God’s voice as well. I could not help but draw the connection at that time that God thus prayed to himself and utterly failed to be successful in obtaining that for which he himself was praying and to himself for that matter who then denied his own request. It is a lot like asking myself with deep sincerity for a sandwich of which I am clearly capable of making and yet telling myself no and going away hungry. Although, that at least makes sense when one is dieting. I scrunched my face inquisitively and asked for clarification, but unfortunately she provided nothing beyond assuring me of the complications in the intricacies of the matter.

I requested God to speak nonsense on my behalf as well but he never did. Not even up into my adult life despite numerous requests and sometimes fearing inferiority at not being so chosen. I asked about tongues quite often to many different people who claimed to speak it and I received a variety of answers. Some people said God took over their jaws and others said they spoke of their own power as God led them.

Each person had their own story of doing it for the first time. One person said he locked himself in his room threatening never to come out until he could speak in tongues and God apparently approved of this tantrum. For me, God simply never took over my jaw, tongue, or vocal chords, and speaking gibberish as my brain felt led seemed more like making stuff up than being that of God’s direction. I recognized that my lack of imagination in speaking a language I did not know indeed caused me to repeat the same sounds regularly much like a child faking Chinese might say ching, chong, and chow a lot. My attempts at speaking in tongues only ever achieved laughter from myself as I realized how ridiculous I was babbling at myself like a baby learning to manipulate sound.

             I also learned through many Biblical stories that not only God possesses people to speak nonsense on their behalf, but demons also enjoy inhabiting people and speaking for them. Not only would demons speak through people, but they would also cause them to do all kinds of terrible acts like throwing themselves on fire. Demons at least speak an intelligible language, however, which is mighty kind of them. After hearing of such stories, I had a dream where Satan chased me all around my grandma’s front yard. I ran around in fear and leapt over their picnic table in my frantic attempts to escape. Eventually, as in most dreams where I am chased, I found I could no longer run. As is required by all nightmares, I also could not scream. The ground then opened up beneath me and began to swallow me as the devil pranced around in triumph for having gotten me.

When I awoke in the middle of the night, the dream led me to worry that a demon might have entered me body or captured my soul. I awoke my cousin who slept beside me and I discussed my concern with him—partly to scare him, of course, but partly to assuage my own fears and doubts since I, too, was a tad frightened. He went frantically to my grandmother and told her of our conversation. She came back in a hurry ready for spiritual battle.

My grandma prayed over me to cast the demons out which I found rather humorous since I had yet to be fully convinced that I had any demons in me at all—I had no signs of such possession and I behaved no differently than before. Of course, my response of laughter when the name of Jesus was invoked upon me probably looked a lot like demonic possession itself. If I could review that event in my life, it probably looked like a horror movie depicting a laughing demon-child while priests try to exorcise the demons within. I probably gave her nightmares worrying that my voice might lower and my head might slowly rotate as I levitated to her room as she slept.

             To reiterate, these events were very few and far between—especially the levitating. And I do recognize such beliefs and behaviors as belonging to a particular sect of Christianity which others disavow. I am sharing only to provide a background and not so much to indict all of Christianity based upon singular experiences. In the end, I had a fairly non-religious childhood overall. I simply expected Christianity to be true since my loved-ones told me so, but I did not find much application for it at the time since prayer seemed rather worthless. High school is when Christianity began to play a more significant role in my life.

Without these childhood influences, it is quite possible that I might have rejected Christianity from the start by having first developed the ability to reason prior to encountering it. I similarly reject burying people alive at the base of buildings in hopes that they will protect it from spirits in their afterlife. That would perhaps be a completely different story had I grown up with my elders burying people alive. Without indoctrination to such silliness, it remains just that: silly. Well, perhaps horrific is a better word. But when you are indoctrinated, it takes a significant amount of courage and thought processing to present a countering argument that the sun just might rise on its own without ripping someone’s heart out. And when you do propose such pompous and arrogant know-it-all ideas, one often finds that their heresy has put them next in line for heart surgery. Even in today’s world in some locals, standing up against traditional beliefs will find oneself hacked to death, stoned, whipped, or imprisoned.

We are generally indoctrinated into only one religion and we thus see each and every other religion as being ridiculous while presuming our own makes perfect sense. It is quite absurd to think that God had a human child whose head was replaced with an elephant’s after his own was lobbed off. Instead, God obviously had a human child who performed miracles and became a blood sacrifice for sins. We have a very hard time questioning our own culture but it is very easy to dismiss the culture of another. Ask a Christian when he or she last considered the probability of Islam being correct and I am sure most will answer that such a consideration is unnecessary and never took place. For most Christians, they already know the truth and thus it is not worth their time to consider another opinion, belief, or culture. I can never know for sure, but these few incidences of my childhood are likely to blame for all that followed in my religious walk. I cannot help but wonder what I might be today without them, but one thing is for certain: it all made for a very interesting life story once I made my life-altering decision to commit myself to God’s eternal services.