I am a Soft, Weak-minded Delusional Christian

Recently I was reading some articles on the problems with Christianity and reasons to abandon the Christian faith and I realized something. I am viewed by many atheists, agnostics and secularists to be soft, weak-minded and delusional. I have faith in a religion that I believe in for many reasons that I did not know. I act and think in ways that I did not realize until several authors were kind enough to inform me of them. Below are several of the reasons that they listed:

Christians believe in God out of Fear

 I had no idea that is why I had become a Christian. In fact, I can honestly say that Hell and fear had nothing to do with it. I became a Christian because I was hopeless and found hope. I had lived a life that was filled with anger and violence. I associated with psychopaths and was actually diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder as well as a masochist and sadomasochist.

Trust me, fear and cowardice are the very last reasons that I would have become a Christian. I would argue that I was agnostic out of fear and cowardice. The thought that I might have to pay for my transgressions or be held accountable for the lives I destroyed and the carnage I left behind kept me mired in addiction. As a Christian I live my life knowing one day I will stand before God and be held accountable for everything. Accountability is a huge part of a Christian's life.

Christianity Prays on Innocent People

I had no idea that I was innocent and prayed upon. Instead, I was a violent criminal addicted to drugs and alcohol that manipulated and used everybody that I came into contact with. I have done things in my life that make me the dregs of society and I did it all knowingly. I used to jokingly say, "If only the good die young, I will probably live forever."

Christianity, instead of praying on the innocent, gives hope to the hopeless and feeds and clothes the needy. They do attempt to give hope and faith to those who have been abused and taken advantage of, by funding homeless shelters and homes for abused women. How dare them!!

Christians Witness Too Much

This one cracks me up. Everybody witnesses too much. Pro-Choice people wax on about it being a women's body, and Pro-Life people say it's a life.. Those for guns constantly preach about their need while those for gun control witness about the damage they do in society. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Anarchists, etc all witness on and on about their form of government/non-government being the best and why. 

Secularists, humanists, agnostics and atheists recently had a Reason Rally where the leaders in their fields witnessed about their beliefs and were encouraged those in attendance to destroy Christianity by mocking and ridiculing Christians. That sounds a lot like witnessing to me. It actually sounds more like hate mongering. The difference is that when I witness about my faith, I do so to give people hope not to destroy what hope they have. 

Christians are Arrogant

Christians believe that they and only they have the right answer. I really cannot argue there. Life is kind of that way as well, but we have become very politically correct and moved away from it. There is some gray in our world, but it is mostly a black and white world. We are fooling ourselves and due to that we have grown soft as a society.

Some schools are no longer giving failing grades, and the students can answer as many times as they need to in order to finally obtain the correct answer. Wait until they hit real life, and they see that in most situations there is a right and a wrong thing to do. If I play a round of golf and I say I shot a 82 and my partner says I shot an 86, one of us is right and the other is wrong. We cannot both be right. The same is true of our beliefs. 

Christians Believe Out of Ignorance/Blind Faith in a Delusional God

Actually, most Christians I know who were saved later in life believe in God due to a personal experience they have had. That is why I have faith there is a God, because of the changes in my life since my transformation from dealing dope to dealing hope.

I am also an analytical person. I need proof of things before I can say I believe in them. Apologetics has done that for me. I now can argue Christianty using history, science and philosophy among other things. Look up fine tuning and cosmological theory to find out more.

Christianity is Cruel and Violent

There have been many killed under the guise of Christianity. There have been many times over that number killed by atheists under the guise of communism. From Pol Pot to Mao to Stalin atheists have slaughtered millions. Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, "the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our (Russian) people, Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

I would ignore all of that and recommend that you go to any natural disaster the world over and see the outpouring from the Christian community. Go to many food pantries and see where the bulk of their contributions come from. In fact, most of them were started by Christians as individuals, their organizations or their churches. What a bunch of bullies! 

Christianity is anti-scientific and anti-intellectual

I will only defend this one with a small list of names: Allesandro Volta, Georg Ohm, James Prescott Joule, Lord Kelvin (Volt, Ohm, Joule and Kelvin units named after them), Louis Pasteur (Invented Pasteurization ), Gregor Mendel (father of modern genetics), Francis Collins (director of the National Human Genome Research Institute), Gerhard Ertl (Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry) and William Daniel Phillips (Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics).

Most of the books that I read once I got saved (and trust me going from where I was a decade ago to where I am now I was SAVED!) looked at science, history and philosophy to prove Christianity and they made valid points. I have listed several of them at the bottom. 

Christianity Causes Sexual Frustration

As an agnostic I slept with hundreds of women, literally. I am not bragging, simply being honest. I was in one short term relationship after another, frequently having multiple girlfriends at the same time. I tried to define myself by conquests, as I had no identity otherwise that I was fulfilled through.

I met a women a few months after I got saved, and we dated for over a year before we were married. We did not have sex until our wedding night, and it was amazing. I have been faithful to her and we have an amazing relationship based on more than our carnal desires because we instead focused on our friendship and developed respect for each other. I see her as my mate and not as an object. I am so much more fulfilled sexually now than when I was when I was agnostic. 

Christianity has a Narrow, Legalistic View of Morality

I agree, such a narrow view of morality. We are commanded to do two things above all other, love God and love our neighbors and treat them as we would wish to be treated. That is pretty narrow. Can you believe the concept of people treating everyone with the love and respect they themselves would like to be treated with. If people were to actually live their lives based on what is commonly known as "The Golden Rule" the world would be a much better place. 

In Closing

I am a reasonably intelligent person. I got clean after 20 years of substance abuse and more concussions than I can count on one hand. Before I started college I went to see a neuropsychologist and was told that I had an IQ of 129. I have since gotten an Associates, a double Bachelors in Psychology and Sociology and a Masters in Social Work all while maintaining a 3.79 GPA.

I had a thirst for knowledge most of my life, even in my addictions. I read voraciously because I wanted the religion that my parents believed in to be wrong due to the judgmental and hypocritical attitudes that I had seen from Christians. I was searching for something, though. I reached a point where I was completely drained of hope and knew that I would never stop abusing drugs and living my life the way I did. There was no point in living life by rules if I didn't have to, and as an agnostic I didn't have to. What was the worst thing that would happen? 

So I continue to live my life as an agnostic who was clinically depressed, overcome with the urge to fight while stealing and sleeping from and with anyone and everyone. I was hopeless and hurting and the best that I could hope for was to be numb and not feel and I found that I could do that through my various addictions. 

I tried everything at one point or another to overcome my addictions and my past: residential/outpatient treatment, psychotropic medication, counseling (LPC, psychiatrist, psychologist), jail, prison, house arrest, 12 Step meetings and eventually suicide all to no avail. The day I turned to prayer was the last day I: drank, took drugs other than those prescribed as prescribed, smoked a cigarette, had premarital sex and got into a fight outside of a ring. It was life changing. 

Yet I still had questions. I still had questions and doubts so I have continued to read and study. Here are some of the books I would recommend to you if you have doubts about what to believe:

1. The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
2. The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel
3. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
4. What's So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey
5. Where is God When it Hurts by Philip Yancey 
6. Holman QuickSource Guide to Christian Apologetics by Doug Powell

All I know is that I used to destroy families and lives through the distribution and manufacturing of methamphetamine while reveling in breaking the law and using as many people as I came into contact with. Today I have found happiness in the form of hope. If that makes me a soft, delusional person than I am fine with that. This soft, delusional person has helped countless people get off of drugs, encouraged those who were living criminal lifestyles to get their GEDs and go to college by sharing what I have now with them.

Hi my name is David and I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ who has struggled in the past from the effects of being sexually, emotionally and physically abused as a youth, depression, anxiety, isolation, low self-esteem as well as addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, criminality, power and food. I have found a Better Life in Recovery and a better life through Christ and so can you.

Reaching the Lost: Apologetics and More

Hi, my name is David and I am a Christian. It was a hard process for me to become a Christian, because of various factors. I would like to talk about the things that kept me away from God for so many years, discuss what we can do to help people come to Christ. Some things are beyond our control because of the world we live in. Those should not be your focus. Instead, look at the things under your control. I know you can impact lives positively, because there were people who impacted mine.

I lost my faith at a very young age. My parents were hypocrites and although they were respected in the church, it was because nobody saw who they really were. Then I went through sexual, physical and emotional abuse from the age of 4 through the 6th grade and I became Agnostic. I did not know whether or not there was a God. I only knew that if there was one, He obviously did not care about me. If He cared none of the abuse would have happened.

I met kids at school that went to church, or at least I thought they did. I would hear them talk about seeing each other in church, or hear them talk about God. Then I would hear them cussing, picking on a less popular kid or see them fighting. As I grew up these are the kids I would go out drinking and chasing women with. In dealing with the Christians around me I only knew one thing; they were just like me. 

As I continued drinking and then moved into drugs, the people that I would hear talk about God became fewer and fewer. They were still in my life, though. I remember one of my friends would get high on meth and then spend hours telling me how worried he was for me, because I was going to go to hell because I was not saved like him. I continued to see the hypocrisy that I associated with Christians.

Over the course of my life, I would try to belittle Christians by asking those questions they never had answers to. I used my Agnosticism to feel intellectually and emotionally superior to them. I would ask them why they believed in God and the answer was usually because that was how they grew up, because they were afraid of going to hell or it was what the Bible said.

I would argue scientifically or historically and they never had any answers, instead leaning on faith and dogma. In my depression I would ask them even harder questions, like why would a God who loved me allow me to be brutalized as a youth and they never could answer with anything other than, “God has a plan.”

His plan sucked, in my opinion. I knew several things about Christians in my youth:

1.       Christians were hypocrites

2.       Christians were judgmental

3.       Christians believed in God out of blind faith

4.       Christians believed in God out of fear of going to hell

5.       The only difference between me and a Christian was they had been dunked in some water and believed in a God. They lived their lives no differently than I did: drinking, drugs, lying, fighting and sleeping around.   

I think if you were to talk to most non-Christians about their feelings on Christians, you would get most if not all of what I just listed above. Christians are called by God to do many things. Because we are not doing them, this is the opinion that many secularists/Atheists/Agnostics/Seekers have of us. There is no difference between Christians and the people outside of the church, so why believe in God? He obviously makes no difference in people’s lives.

My life was changed because of several things. I encountered people who represented Christianity well. They lived their lives morally and were incessantly hopeful and optimistic. They were the polar opposite of the people we both worked with. They loved me even though I was a wreck. They cared even though I was an Agnostic, criminal and addict. They lived their lives well and wanted to see the people around them living better lives, too.

When I had questions they could not answer, they admitted they didn’t know. Then they introduced me to someone that did. He could answer the hard questions I asked. He was able to tell me scientific, historical and philosophical reasons for his faith. For example, I was introduced to Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ and Doug Powell,s book Holman QuickSource Guide to Christian Apologetics.

Finally, I was introduced to Paul and heard about his struggles and how he overcame them. I heard Christian songs in church talking about the same struggles I had and how Christ was the answer. I heard testimonies through Celebrate Recovery that started with the hopeless and ended with hopeful thanks to the Holy Spirit.

What does this mean for you personally? What can we do to change how the world sees us?

1.       Let people see Christ by representing Him. Live your life as an agent of change by being different than the people around you. Don’t cuss, lie, gossip, have premarital sex, overeat, be lazy at work and quit doing drugs and smoking cigarettes. Your body is the temple of God and you are turning it into an amusement park.

2.       Instead of seeing the worst in people, talk to them and show concern and compassion for them. Care about people, even those who don’t care about themselves. You may be the first person to show interest in them or to have faith that their lives can get better. That is a powerful thing, it gives hope!!

3.       Be able to explain why you believe in God from several different angles. Make sure that one of them is personal experience and then have a couple of others after you study a couple of books on apologetics. Discuss those books with an accountability partner and be prepared to defend your reasons.  Better yet, start an apologetics small group at your church.

4.       Realize that fear of hell is not a reason to believe in God. I know the difference that my heavenly father made in my life. Because of that, I want Him to be proud of me. I don’t live my life the way I do out of fear of hell. I have lived through hell. I do it out of respect and because I want God to one day tell me, “Well done!”

5.       If we are saved, we are different. We should be proud of that difference. We have a message of hope that can save lives. Shout it from the roof tops. I know that you don’t want to offend people, but it will happen. You have no problem offending people that feel differently about politics or the economy. Why are you scared now?

In closing, remember that you may be the only Christian someone comes in contact with. What impression are they left with after they spend time with you? Your attitude, actions and language may be all that stand between someone being a victim or a victory!

The Beverly Hillbillies and My Faith

I am sure that this is a confusing title for a blog. After all, what could the Beverly Hillbillies possibly have to do with my faith? Did the show lead me to God, or did it help me get saved? No, it did not, nor did I learn anything about my faith from watching the show. That said, there are similarities between me and other Christians in the church and the Clampett family and the socialites in Beverly Hills.

The Beverly Hillbillies was a “fish out of water” show. It was about a dirt poor family from the sticks that became rich instantly. They moved to Beverly Hills where they were around other rich people. Because of where they were from and how they acted various things happened. They were sometimes looked down upon They  frequently did not understand the conversations that occurred around them. They were frequently misunderstood by those they lived around. They did not understand a lot of the things they observed, and when people would try to become their friends there was often issues that occurred.

At least in the show, this was always met with laughter and applause. In real life, this is not the case. Instead of laughter and applause there are often bridges burned and greater divides created that separate and hurt one side or the other. Are you still wondering what this has to do with my faith?

I was Agnostic for most of my life.  It started in the 5^th grade, when I decided that God could not be true because of all of the abuse that I was subjected to and the hypocrisy I saw from those who professed to be Christians (mostly my parents). How could a God that cared about me allow this to happen? It continued through my life as I struggled with various addictions and mental health issues while going in and out of jail and prison. It ended when I turned my life over to God at 37.

When it comes to living my life Christ-like, I was definitely the polar opposite. I was a soldier for Satan for probably 2 decades of my life, as I dealt drugs and played a part in the manufacturing of methamphetamine. I had a different lifestyle, used different language and sought after goals that were completely different from Christians. But, after struggling for over 20 years with addictions/anger/depression/PTSD, I gave my life to God and everything instantly changed.

Like the Clampetts, I went from being poor to rich overnight. In my case it was not financially, it was spiritually. I then started going to church, and a lot of the things that came out of my mouth were not understood or alienated some people from me. I would talk about my addiction and prison, because that is what my life previously had consisted of. I think of the dirt that the Clampetts sometimes had on their boots that caused others to turn their noses up in disdain, except my dirt was on my soul.

The Clampetts had Mr Drysdale, who had lived a much different life and had different interests always there to tell them what they need. He was all about the money, which was important to him and he felt should be important to Jed. Today we have the “seeker-friendly” church reaching out to the lost, trying to give me what l already knew. I came to the church for something different, not something comfortable. Change happens not from the ordinary and known but the extraordinary and unknown!

I call it as I see it. I found that there are many who don’t, and much like Jethro I get confused when I see sin called something else. I see sin as black and white. I seldom see shades of gray. Do not get me wrong, I still sin. That said, I try to work on my shortcomings and I still see what I did as sin. Here are a couple of examples that I see often:

1.       How can you look down on someone who is watching pornography or using drugs/alcohol when you have a gluttony issue? Addiction is addiction, no matter how you slice it. Just because yours may be more socially acceptable does not mean that God sees them any differently.

2.       Here all I really have is the name of a book, “50 Shades of Grey.” Have you read it? I had a friend tell me that she had read the book. When I asked her if she was okay with her husband watching pornography she told me that was sick. She was offended when I told her there was no difference between watching it and reading it.

3.       Greed, the “name it claim it” creed and the “prosperity gospel” seem very close to the same thing, although people keep telling me they are different. Some people have a lot of money. There is nothing wrong with that. Other people shaft friends, spend little time with family or ignore the Holy Spirit’s voice because they are busy chasing wants not needs. That is greed, and that is wrong.

Because of these examples as well as many more, I am the fish out of water much like the Clampetts. I try to understand what I am seeing, but I interpret people’s actions instead of just listening to their words and get confused. I am used to taking things at face value, which is what I did in the world I used to live in. Back then it was life and death, so you had to learn how to read people and the best way to do that was by their actions.

Now that I am in a battle for my eternal soul, it seems to even more important that I prepare myself to be successful and here are the 5 Pillars I have found to do that:

1.       God/Jesus/Holy Spirit - This is where I found my hope, faith and strength. Without hope and faith, change is impossible. If I don’t have hope that it can change and the faith to pursue change, I am stuck right where I was. Recovery programs refer to a Higher Power, but “there is no High like the Most High!” (This was stolen from Mike Rogers new church in Springfield, MO)

2.       Bible – I say the book of James in particular, which is a great guide to help you live a better life. In recovery they talk about the 12 steps, in life I say there is no better game plan for living your life than the Bible!

3.       Mentor - Find someone who is living the life you would like to live, and ask them to help guide you there. In recovery programs, t hey call this a sponsor. Someone who is living t heir lives sober that has worked through the 12 steps to guide you through the 12 steps. In my walk, I would find someone that is walking the Christian walk I want to walk that can, with the help of the Bible, guide me to an improved walk.

4.       Accountability Partners – These are people with similar goals to yours that can encourage and support you while you encourage and support them. The best way to see if they have similar goals is by fruit inspecting, or gauging them by their words and their works.

5.       Church/Small Groups – This is the place where you gather with a group of people who have similar goals and gain hope/faith/strength. In recovery they talk about 12 step meetings, in life I talk about small groups which are set up with a specific topic!

What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?

I was in a group the other day and that question was asked, “What did you want to be when you were a kid and what is stopping you from doing it now?” What we were talking about was the way our various traumas and addictions had impacted us in the past, but at the same time acknowledging that we could still do anything we set our minds to.

I was not the first person to go, and I listened to various answers. One had wanted to be a fire fighter. There was the kid who wanted to be a bull rider, until he had gotten thrown a couple of times and he decided it was not for him. The opiate addict that had wanted to be a doctor, but both his drug of choice and the felony he had for fraudulent attempt to obtain a narcotic held him back.

Then it came to me. I said that I wanted to be happy and normal. When I was asked what that meant, I explained a little of my past. I was molested starting at 4 for a couple of years by a baby sitter. My parents were constantly screaming at each other from the earliest I can remember until they split up my first week of 5^th grade. From there I went to live with my grandparents, and my grandfather was an abusive man who would beat me and keep me home for the week “to help out on the farm” so the bruising and cuts could heal up. I thought it was because he had found out how “disgusting” I was.

So, all I wanted was to be happy, safe and normal. I had obviously not been safe due to the physical, sexual and psychological abuse I underwent. I was not happy. Who could be happy with all the aforementioned going on? I had lost my faith, as I could not imagine a God of love allowing me to suffer as I did and I became an Agnostic. Finally, and the part that probably hurt the worse, was knowing I was not like everyone else. I was abnormal at best and felt like a freak on my worst days.

I would hear other kids talk about their moms and dads and what they had done together. My parents were not together. In fact, I was being raised by grandparents. Because I had been molested I felt disgusting, as I had once heard my mother talk about grown ups touching children and she had said they were disgusting and sick. I thought that she meant me. Finally, I knew that the other kids were not getting beat like I was because they were always at school.

The kids I went to school with almost always had smiles on their faces. Somehow I knew that there smiles were real. Mine was not. I was dead on the inside but I build walls to keep the pain inside and not let it show to everyone else. I was crying on the inside, and it came out in the form of anger and violence as early as the 5^th grade.

In the 5^th grade I was already seeing both a school counselor and a counselor outside of school for my behavioral issues. I never once spoke to them about the abuses, because I did not want them to judge me for them the way I felt everyone else did and I feared my grandpa and what he would do to my sister if I told.

Instead, I kept it all inside. That is where the outbursts came from. It is kind of like a pressure cooker, if that steam is not released somehow you create a bomb that will explode when you least expect it. Not only that, but I felt I could never let people know who I really was. I looked normal but did not feel normal. I felt like an unloved outcast, because that is how I was treated.

It is difficult to function well when the people that are supposed to love and protect you are the ones that do you the most harm. Instead, you learn not to trust, not to love and how to mask your feelings. You learn to adapt and become a chameleon so that you appear to fit in. The truth is, doing that causes you to lose your identity over time and you forget who you are.

Then we ended the group talking about where we were today. Today, I am very grateful. I have accomplished my goals. I am happy and safe, though far from normal and that is okay. I have found that I was built from the ground up by God to do what I do today. Today, I get to share my strength, experience and wisdom with people by sharing the hope found in both grace and recovery.

What Brought Me to Church and Kept Me Coming Back

The church is losing people according to recent polls. There are probably some good reasons for this, but I don’t want to focus on what the church is doing wrong. Instead, I want to focus on what some churches are doing right. I was an Agnostic when I first came to church. I felt totally and completely uncomfortable there and I had preconceived notions about the church and the people inside. There was a reason that I came there, and a reason that I kept coming back.

I came to church because I had people in my life that loved me and cared about me, even though I had a lot of issues. I had always run into judgmental, hypocritical Christians in the past. I was raised by them, in fact. In my addiction I have had people telling me that I was going to go to hell because I was not saved while they were doing methamphetamine with me. I finally met a couple that were truly living their lives as a Christian should, and their empathy and kindness is what finally got me to step foot into a church.

The church that I walked into with them had a Celebrate Recovery meeting. It was a meeting weekly to help people with their hurts, habits and hang-ups. There was a chemical dependency group that I went to at the church that was faith-based. The church was not only willing to admit that many people who came there had issues, they were not afraid to talk about it. I had tried other programs, I needed something different and I found it in Celebrate Recovery.

The very first song that they played the day I went was called “Cry Out to Jesus.” It was by a band called Third Day, and in the song they actually talked about addiction. They were talking about struggles that I could relate to in their songs. I realized that the outside world often sang about addiction, but never would have thought that Christian music would come right out and talk about such a taboo subject.

The associate pastor heard that I was an Agnostic and asked me if we could meet and talk. When we met and talked, he was very warm and genuine. He answered my questions, and then gave me a book to read that he said had helped him. It was Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Christ.” He then offered to meet with me regularly to answer any questions that came up. He did not push me, scoff at my ideas/beliefs nor did he talk down to me.

The church was very friendly, and soon I knew the names of several people and a lot more of them knew my name. I would always have people talking to me, asking me how I was doing and showing real interest in me as a person.  If I did not come one week I would have people ask me if everything was okay the following week “because we missed you last week.” I felt accepted and wanted.

The sermons were about the Bible and how to live life Biblically. They were often about the words and teachings of either Jesus or one of his disciples. It was not wishy washy stuff about staying the way I was and how much God loved me. It was about how much God loved me and how I would make positive changes and better choices as I continued on my walk with him. We talked about how my life would change. 

That is a few of the things that really helped me begin my walk with Christ. I have already discussed how I feel about the choices many churches are making in reaching out to the unchurched. As one who was unchurched, all I can say is that by the time many of us step foot inside a church it is because we are hopeless and searching for something to fill that void. It is because we are tired of the way the world is and are looking for something different. Give us something different. That is all I have to say about that.

My Life as a Bad Guy Part 3: Meth in Missouri

I decided that I was headed towards jail or expulsion so I moved to Missouri from Illinois. Once there, I tried methamphetamine. I liked it, a lot. Soon school was no longer important to me. It got in the way of my partying and I dropped out  the last semester of my senior year. I headed towards rock bottom. I went to jail multiple times. My probation officer sent me to Scared Straight at the prison in Jefferson City. I spent 120 days on house arrest and several years on probation, stacking up violations.

I had some things happen that should have changed me. I had a couple friends die in drinking and driving accidents. I was the first one on the scene and found one of my friends dead. I saw a friend get beat to death and another beat into a coma. I had alcohol poisoning and stopped breathing. They pumped my stomach and I was drinking again the next night. I saw someone I knew get shot during a drug deal.

I went on the run for a while. I was gone for almost a year. It is exhausting, being on the run. You always look over your shoulder in the party world, and it is three times as bad when you have warrants out for your arrest and all of the city and county police know what you look like. Finally, I needed some rest. I showed up at the probation office, and when my probation officer walked out I told him I was ready to go to prison. He said okay. I turned 21 in Booneville Correctional Center. I was drunk an hour after I was released and used intravenously later that night for the very first time.

I had found methamphetamine and learned that it could help with my pain. I was able to numb myself for periods of time with meth. When I started using intravenously, that was the end of me as a person. It gave me a feeling I had never experienced before. I became dead inside and only felt alive when I was high. After years of being an Agnostic, I had found my Higher Power. Meth became my God. Then it turned into Satan.

I hoped for death. I had alcohol poisoning and lived. Drunk, I flew a car 97 feet down a hill, clipping trees 32 feet in the air and lived. I attempted suicide and my sister found me unconscious in a pool of blood. The ambulance got there in time to save me. I lived. Are you noticing a pattern? That was the 5th time I had flatlined, and I kept coming back. I promised my sister I would never try to kill myself again after the attempted suicide. The truth is, I wanted to die. I no longer wanted to live and I was tired of feeling.

Meth gave me all I thought I needed. I had money, power, friends, women, excitement and so much more. I was the life of the party. But I was still dead inside. I could be at a party with 100 people and feel completely alone. I did not feel alive unless I was high. Meth was all I cared about. I would sit at home in a funk if I wasn't high, so I discovered a new lifestyle. I would stay up from Sunday when I woke up until Sunday morning when I would go to bed. I joked that if God got a Sabbath day, so should I.

I would wake up to a shot of dope on Sunday evening, then stay high through the week until early Sunday morning when I would take a handful of benzodiazepines to help me sleep. I found that I never hurt if I stayed high. No one ever got close enough to me to really hurt me as long as I was high. It got to the point that if I was awake, I was high.

I became heartless and used everyone I came in contact with. I knew if I didn't use them they would use me. Why not be first. Everyone in my life was there to serve me. I let people be my friend because they would allow me to be around a better class of people, they had money, they had dope, they cooked dope, they had friends who bought my dope, they were pretty and would sleep with me or I was trying to sleep with them, they would get high with me, they had things to loan me that I needed, they had a car I could use when I thought mine was hot or they had a house for me to party at so I didn't have to use mine.

Everyone and everything had a purpose. Some times I did nice things, but I even had ulterior motives for that. I remember one of my friends having a baby and being broke. I helped his family pay the bills for several months so that they could not work and  bond. I helped pay rent, utilities and even bought them food. I then would frequently bring up doing that any time people would talk trash about  me being a dope dealer. "Well, look at the good things I do with my money."

I would give people $100's just to remind them about it when I  needed to borrow their car or have a party at their house. I would justify my selling meth with this logic, "I use Super B to cut it. Other people use stuff that is really bad to cut theirs. My people get vitamins so I am doing them a favor by dealing." Life was a hustle, and I was good at being a hustler.

Somewhere along the way I became more suicidal. Some might call it an addiction to the rush of adrenaline. I would show up to a meth cooks house not knowing them to buy methamphetamine. I would hang out with the most sketched out people I knew. I would buy  meth at the  hottest houses I knew just to see if when I got pulled over they would find the dope. I was insane and no longer cared. I always had my sister to fall back on, and for the most part I could always argue that I was only hurting myself.

That is another thing I always did in my addiction. I downplayed the impact of everything that I did. I would justify my dealing with the law of supply and demand and my dope was better for them. I would never look at the money that I took from people. Maybe when they came down they beat their wife or kids. Not my problem. Maybe they gave me their families grocery money.  Not my fault. I would have tons of food stamps, at 30 cents on the dollar if I didn't like you and 50 cents if I did. Maybe they were robbing people for money to buy it. If it wasn't me getting robbed, I was fine with it. Maybe they would get high and rape people. As long as it wasn't my sister getting hurt, who cares? I know that I didn't!

The truth is that I saw and did things that give me nightmares 15 years later. I was insane, doing insane things and I associated with insane people. I have held people at gun point and made them strip because I thought they were wearing a wire. I have beat someone unconscious, waited for him to regain consciousness so that I could beat them some more. That was over $25, to set an example. I have done and seen much worse, sometimes for money, sometimes because they crossed lines and sometimes just because I was bored and angry.

I have ravaged people emotionally and psychologically, leaving them a shell of their former selves. I have built a shot for someone that they overdosed on. Quite a few people have overdosed on my drugs, I am quite sure. I have given many people their first shot of dope, because I knew that if I did that I would have control over them for life. I was evil, and I was okay with that. It was what I was good at, so I did it.

On the flip side of that, I have been robbed several times. I have been held at gun point. I have often been in situations I didn't know if I would live through. I have been beaten unconscious. I have been jumped by multiple people on several occasions. I have overdosed and been left for dead where I was. I have holes in me I was not born with put there by other people. I have been face down on the floor during a raid with a gun to the back of my head. I am certain that I deserved all of that and a whole lot more.

I was a bad guy. I look back on my life and I don't know how I am still alive. Scratch that, after dying more times than I can count on one hand and overamping multiple times, I am alive because there was some good EMTs and paramedics. I would tell you because of luck, as there were probably a dozen times I played Russian Roulette with a 38 revolver and a lone bullet. At the time I thought that nothing could kill me, and nothing or no one would ever get me to stop using drugs. I would have told you that only the good die young, and I was anything but good so I would probably live forever.

My Life as a Bad Guy Part 1: Why I Became a Bully

I can tell you that there is a reason for all that happens. I know that at times it seems there could not possibly be any reason for your past. Maybe you have had some horrible things happen to you. Maybe you have made some horrible choices. As one who has had a lot of bad things happen to me, I searched in vain for a good reason. As a person who has made a lot of bad decisions, I could never find any positive reasons for them. Then it all just clicked.

To start off, let's talk about the bad that has happened. In the 5th grade, my mother left my father and we lived with her mom and dad. My grandpa was an abusive man. Over the course of the next year and a half there were multiple times he would beat me then not let me go to school for a week because they would see the bruises. To compound the abuse, I was the only 5th grader I knew who was living with their grandparents and at the time I was not seeing my dad. All of this I blamed on myself.

When I was really young I had been molested by a babysitter. I did not tell my parents for fear of what they would think of me. I had heard them talk before about a child being touched by an adult and how disgusting that was and how horrible they were. I did not want them to think that I was disgusting so I didn't tell them. When my grandpa started beating me I figured it was because he somehow knew. After all, that is what you do to disgusting people. In 5th grade I became an Agnostic. I knew if there was a God He would not let me suffer like I was.

To cope with everything I became violent, depressed and detached. I felt like I was all alone and I discovered that if I picked on one of the other unpopular kids in my class, the other kids would laugh and I felt more accepted. I soon became a bully. It was nice to pick on kids and beat up someone, not just for the feeling of acceptance but to release some of the anger. I told myself I didn't care what people thought of me, but my actions told the truth. I so wanted people to like me I would hurt others to feel accepted.

I was so mad at the world and everyone in it. I was a hurt and confused kid who felt that he had no one to turn to. I felt unliked, unloved and alienated. To cope with that I did what was natural. It was natural to want to feel accepted and strong. When I hit someone or picked on them and hurt them, I was no longer the victim. It made people laugh and others look up to me. I became a bully. From there it just got worse.

Are You In Recovery?

In my past I was many things. I was son and brother, friend and co-worker. I was drug addict and drug dealer, lover and fighter. I would say I cussed like a sailor, but I have never known a sailor to hear what they cuss like. Instead, let me just say that vulgarity was my verbiage of choice and I spoke loudly in public while waxing prose. My music contained a lot of vulgarity and was mostly about violence and drinking/drugging.  I liked to play it loud so everyone would hear it, also.

I did not have any respect for myself based on my choices, so why would I have respect for anyone else? My music and language in public proved that. My lifestyle also painted a picture of who I was. Was I really that person? I would say, deep down inside me, I was never the person that I presented to people. I had been severely hurt and was terrified of being hurt again. I found that numbing myself with chemicals, seeking thrills and conquests as well as putting up walls of testosterone kept me safe.

It created a persona. I adapted to the people that my persona attracted. For the most part, we were the dregs. We were truly anti-social in our behaviors, even though the behaviors were not who we really were. I adapted to my surroundings and friends so that I could survive. Any weakness would get you at the very least used and taken advantage of. In the worst case scenario it could get you killed.

I became someone that I was not. I like to see people happy and laughing, yet I hurt people physically and emotionally on a regular basis. I am an honest person, yet I told lies so frequently that it became second nature. I would lie just to lie, and sometimes I would tell the same lie so often I would begin to believe it myself.

I enjoy my freedom, yet I got to the point I would go to jail with the money in my wallet to bond out and would stay in there for a week just to rest and catch up on sleep because JAIL WAS LESS STRESSFUL THAN MY LIFE OUTSIDE. I was smart, yet I refused to use it. I love my sister and respect her more than anything, yet I used her repeatedly.

I was a walking anomaly. Even after I stopped using drugs, I still was vulgar, violent and whorish. I was incomplete and miserable. I would feel all alone at an after party with 50 people there. I was hopeless, because I was not who I really was. In order for me to improve my life, things had to change. Some people work long and hard for that change. I was blessed. After being an Agnostic for 20 plus years, I gave God a chance.

I was transformed. I have not used drugs/alcohol, smoked a cigarette, gotten into a fight outside of a ring or had premarital sex since that prayer over 4 years ago. Even though I was transformed, I still had things to prove to others if I expected them to believe that the new me was really changed and not just an act. So what to change? Everything!

I stopped listening to music that had vulgarity or extolled the virtues of sex, drugs, alcohol or violence. I switched to contemporary worship music. I actually found good rap and metal acts to listen to that only had positive messages (they are all Christian artists). I stopped watching and reading pornography. That was a struggle, because it was so accessible. I also became more aware of the impact my actions and words had on those around me.

I had been cussing most of my life. It was who I was, as was drinking, doing drugs and fighting. If I was going to quit one, I might as well quit them all. They all were part of my past criminal and addictive lifestyle. Why would I want to hold on to any piece of that? If you want to stay clean, you cannot dance in the mud.  It was a going out of business sale. My past life was bankrupt and everything had to go!

I gained humility. Even though I could argue that I did not care what other people thought or if I offended them so what, it was not true IF I were in recovery. Sobriety or abstinence yes, but never in recovery. A lot of the people that I have encountered failed to remember that although it starts out a selfish program, it does not stay that way.Addiction is egotistical, abstinence can be selfish but recovery is altruistic.

So, for those who feel that they are in recovery let me ask you a question: Do your actions and words show it? Or are you still holding onto your old, addictive, criminal lifestyle in one form or another? People can not judge our hearts or intentions, only our words and actions. We are to be beacons of recovery, shining a light into the world that accomplishes a couple of things.

1.       We should make people who are still in their active addiction want to be in recovery. Stop being such a “Negative Nancy” and buck up!

2.       Why so angry? It would appear that getting sober has sucked based on your attitude and language. Stop showing that you carry the addiction with you and let it ALL go, not just the using. New comers aren’t going to want what you have.

3.       Share sobriety and recovery with those coming to the meetings. When you are telling a 10 minute war story, it defeats the positive message. How did you get sober? What helped you stay sober?

4.       Stop using the rooms as a dating service. You are doing nothing more than taking advantage of emotionally vulnerable people and that could cause them to never come back to a meeting or trust a sober person again. Stop victimizing people!

5.       We should be vocal about where we once were outside of the meetings so that people can see that not only do we get sober, but we change and become morally upstanding members of society who give back TO SOCIETY! Is making coffee at a meeting a good thing? Yes, service work is important. But, do we represent recovery in our community and do COMMUNITY SERVICE?

Is Christianity Under Attack

I was shocked to see the latest from the Pentagon. Someone in the military who shares their Christian faith can now be court martialed and possibly imprisoned. I guess this is the new form of the military code, except now it is "Don't talk, don't tell." That said, I am just now finding out some new things about Christianity.

I didn't know that Evangelical Christianity is a form of religious extremism comparable to Hamas, the KKK and Al Quaeda according to training given to Army Reserves in Pennsylvania.  http://www.adfmedia.org/files/ExtremismPresentation.pdf For Christians in the military, it gets worse.

“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

That is a quote from Mikey Weinstein,who is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He has also said that Christians who share the gospel in the military are guilty of committing an act of “spiritual rape” as serious a crime as “sexual assault.” I wonder how women and men that have been raped would feel about that comparison. I know it shows me his lack of education on the issue. I was Agnostic for over 20 years and when a Christian talked to me about their beliefs it was nothing like getting molested when I was a youth.

The scary thing is that Mr. Weinstein is sitting down with the Pentagon as a consultant to help them develop new policies on religious tolerance.  There does not seem to be too much tolerance coming from Mikey. It is becoming more and more obvious that there may be issues for Christians.

For starters, Christians are held to different standards. While Mr. Weinstein can say whatever he wants about Christians, imagine if Christians spoke the same way about his organization. They would be vilified. If Christians voice opinions about the veracity of the Koran or who Muhammad was they are branded bigots. If Muslims burn Bibles it is considered no big deal.

Take Jason Collins coming out and telling the world he is gay this week. When Tim Tebow prays on the side of the field he is told by the mainstream media, "Keep that to yourself. No one cares." When Jason Collins comes out the media proclaims, "He is a hero." I would argue that both feel that the things they share are a huge part of who they are, so what is the difference?

Then Chris Broussard is asked his opinion about Jason coming out and he is called every name under the sun for giving it. I have a rule, do not ask questions you do not want answers to. That said, it was not like Chris spoke with the kind of malice those posting on his site are displaying.

Christians are facing a day when freedom of speech for them is fading. Christians are told to keep their opinions to themselves and to be tolerant of others. From what I have seen, they are. In fact, they show love and give support in the way of shelter and food to people who live lives that they do not agree with. I believe they say, "Love the sinner hate the sin." Then you have people like Richard Dawkins saying, "Mock them. Ridicule them in public," when speaking about Christians and he is applauded. That does not sound very tolerant.

A quote that I saw attributed to Voltaire said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." Point being, it would seem that as much as the media shouts about the Christian majority, Christians do not seem to be the ones in power. They are the ones told to be tolerant while everyone else picks on them and calls them names.

Thankfully, Christians continue to give millions upon millions of dollars as well as hours of their time to help those who are struggling. I remember working the Joplin tornado doing psychological first aid and seeing tent upon tent staffed and funded by churches as well as Convoy of Hope and Compassion International semis loaded with supplies. Would have been nice to see some secularists putting forth the same unified effort.

I guess none of this should shock me. It was predicted 2,000 years ago by Jesus in John 15:18-19, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Eternally Optimistic

My name is David and I am eternally optimistic. That is how I used to introduce myself in process groups, and often how I would reply when people asked how I was doing. Why? I have found that repeating something over and over again has an ability to make it seem a little more tangible. Optimism seemed like something that I wanted in my life, so I try my best to act and speak as if it were true. Over time it has become true. Why am I optimistic?

Hi, my name is David and I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ who has been blessed with lots of difficulties in my life that I have learned from and that have made me stronger! That is how I introduce myself at the Celebrate Recovery groups that I go to. In that sentence are the reasons that I am optimistic. I will share each one of them with you.

I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ. Why am I grateful? I was raised a Christian, but from 5th grade to the age of 35 I was Agnostic. I became Agnostic because of the hypocrisy and judgemental attitudes that I saw displayed by the Christians that I knew. I struggled with depression and substance abuse. I tried everything I could to get through my depression and be drug/alcohol free and nothing worked. I tried rehab, medication, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, jail, prison and even suicide. Nothing set me free until I got saved. I have not used once since that day. I  know what it is to be hopeless, to feel that waking up without a hangover is the best my life would ever get. Now I know what it is to have hope, and I am grateful for that!

My life has been blessed with lots of difficulties that I have learned from and that have made me stronger. Wow, that is a mouthful. It took me years to be able to see my life that way. I was sexually abused for the first time when I was pre-Kindergarten by a baby sitter. My parents divorced when I was in 5th grade. I went to live with my grandparents. I was physically abused by my grandfather starting in 5th grade. I was suspended from school for the first time in 5th grade. I started doing drugs in 7th grade. I dropped out of high school. I went to jail for the first time at 17 and prison at 20. I attempted suicide at 25. My dad committed suicide when I was 35.

I got my GED in prison and started college at 29. I have gotten an Associates, a double Bachelors and my Master's in Social Work. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I have been working in the recovery field for 5 years and have been a counselor for various drug courts the past 4 years. I have a 5 year old son who is amazing. I have an awesome wife that I am in love with. We have a 6 1/2 month old daughter who is the happiest baby I have ever seen. I am active in the recovery community, both at work and in my free time. I write a blog about my faith and recovery and am in the middle of starting my own non-profit, Better Life in Recovery, Inc.

As you can see,  I have had some issues. I have also had some positive things. I realize that if not for the negative things that have happened to me, I would not have a lot of the positive things. In my life I have had both positive and negative things happen to me. Part of optimism, which imparts happiness, is focusing on the positives instead of the negatives. Another huge part is finding the bless in the mess. That is the part that comes with time. Here are a couple of examples.

There have been issues with both of my children at birth. My son spent time in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), as did my daughter. I did not get to hold my son until he was a week old. My daughter had to go to St Louis to have surgeries twice before she was 2 months old and will have to have at least one more. Now I could focus on the negatives, or I can be happy that they were born. I have gotten to spend time with them. I might not have gotten to hold my son at first, but at least he was alive. My daughter still has at least one surgery, but she is always happy. If she can be, so should I. Be grateful for what you have.

I was abused, addicted to drugs, went to prison, can't count on one hand the number of times I have died and been brought back and all kinds of other stuff people feel are horrific to go through. Some of these I did to myself, and some of them were done to me. I cannot change them, no matter how much I want to. They are not the problem, thank God. If they were the problem, I would be in trouble. Why? Because they all happened in the past. You cannot change the past. You can change how you view the past. That is what I have done.

I have realized that I am good at what I do. I help people who are struggling. I help people who are empty inside, who hate themselves and who feel hopeless. I am good at it, too. I am good at it because I have been there too. I went from hopeless dope fiend to dopeless hope fiend. Going from where I have been and where I am now plus the college education I have received has given me wisdom, book knowledge and insight that many do not have. I use that to help people.

There are those who would argue against that. There statement is usually either "You don't have to have cancer to cure cancer" or "Would you want your psychiatrist to be Bi-Polar and Schizophrenic like you?" Those are good questions that are usually asked by people in the field who have not had the struggles. If what they say is true, then no one should ever do grief and loss counseling as everyone has lost someone. But I will take it a step further. Here is my scenario.

Imagine you are getting your butt kicked. You want to learn how to defend yourself, and there are two different people in your town that teach self-defense. The first guy has on his resume watching fights, reading books on fights and several friends who are fighters. The second on his resume has watching fights, reading about fights, growing up in gangs in south Chicago, being an Army Ranger with 2 tours in Vietnam and having multiple fights in the ring that he was won. Who would you want to teach you how to defend yourself, the first or second one?

I am not saying that someone who has never struggled with addiction cannot be an effective counselor. After all, there is an NFL coach that never played football himself. What I am saying is that it cannot  hurt. I had several counselors in my past, and the person that helped me the most was a counselor who was in recovery himself. I knew that he knew what I was experiencing and that developed a bond that the others had not been able to develop. When you combine overcoming struggles yourself in the past with an education in the field, I think that is a pretty potent combination.

So, that is why I am grateful for my past. It not only made me who I am, which is a father of two amazing children with an incredible wife, but it also gave me the desire to go into the field I am in and be pretty good at it (if I do say so myself). I realize that I have learned from everything I have gone through and in the end it either made me wiser, stronger, or gave me another tool. Generally it did all three of those things.

So in closing, I am eternally optimistic because I realize bad things may happen to me and I might make foolish choices on occasion. Those things may make me sad and they may impact me for quite sometime, maybe forever, but they will never lead me back to where I used to be. I will work through them clean and sober, and will come out of them both wiser and stronger for the journey.

The State of America: 4 More Years

The truth is, I am worried for America. Not because O'Bama is president, or that a democrat is president once again. I have seen some people insinuate that America is heading to hell because we elected O'Bama. How dare you! I will address this statement later. What concerns me is that I have never seen our country this polarized. If we are not united, we will fall. Our hate for each other is causing a divide that someone could easily capitalize on. United we stand, divided we fall is true for our country as it has been true for every super power before us.

Atheists and Agnostics, this is for you. I had a friend say that he is content today knowing everything does not count on this fiction called God. He said that science and common sense once again won out over those who believe in unicorns because O'Bama is president. He said that O'Bama won by secular votes because no Christians would vote for him. I have many friends who are Christians that voted for O'Bama (I don't believe they are going to hell). I know that horrifies both the Christians and non-Christians alike, but it is true.

To address the unicorn part, I don't believe in unicorns but I do believe in God. I find it easier to believe in an all powerful God that has always existed than the uncaused cause causing the Big Bang (just saying that is confusing), chaos causing order, life springing from non-living matter and then micro-evolution. It's called Occam's Razor. I find God to be the answer containing the least assumptions.

To Christians, be careful. Your hate is showing. It is okay to say that you are unhappy about the results, but saying, "Everyone who voted for O'Bama is going to Hell," is taking it a bit far. How about realizing that in the end, all things happen for a reason. A long time ago I learned that not all things happen the way we want them to, but they happen the way they are supposed to. God always has been and always will be in control.

Further more, we are to show love to our fellow man, not hate. Empathy not apathy. This election outcome impacts a temporary world, not the eternal Kingdom we should be focused on. If you are feeling hopeless today because of the election's outcome, that is not a political problem. That is a spiritual problem. Remember who is in control. 

I would encourage all to pray for our country, as well as all of the other countries out there. I would encourage you to pray for the leaders on a local, state, national and global level. We are to be salt and light, and I am not seeing that the way I would like to today. We need to be that for people. We are to love our fellow man, not hate on him. So let's start doing that!

The Bible says we should pray for our leaders. Please, join me in praying this day and every day after for the United States and other countries, for Democrats and Republicans, for blacks and whites for the rich and the poor. All people deserve our prayer and love, not our derision and hate.

For those who say, to quote one of my friends, "If you didn't vote then keep your mouth closed you have no right to say anything" I guess I had a little to say. Since my friend was a Christian who said that I will say that my kingdom is not of this world. I have my eyes focused on the eternal. I look forward to that kingdom finally coming. Until then, I will pray for all politicians and all nations to have the wisdom and courage to do what is right. Maybe someday they will.............

Great News for "Religious" Parents (Religious People in General)

I am a substance abuse counselor (RASAC II) by vocation and a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) by degree. Due to both of those being a part of my employment, I have to go to training so that I can keep my credentials. This is about the training that I attended last Friday. It had information on a couple of studies that I had not seen. I then looked up several other studies. I want to share this information with you.

These are several different studies I have come across. The first study is done by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. It was a two year study that they conducted they found a significant difference between children and adults who attended church and those who did not (http://www.casacolumbia.org/templates/PressReleases.aspx?articleid=115&zoneid=48). Let us look at the adults first.

Adults who did not consider religious beliefs important were 3 times likelier to binge drinks, 4 times likelier to use illicit drugs other than marijuana and 6 times likelier to use marijuana. Adults who never attend religious services were found to be 7 times likelier to drink, 5 times likelier to use an illicit drug other than marijuana and 8 times likelier to use marijuana. So what about the children?

Teens who did not consider religious beliefs important were 3 times likelier to binge drink, 4 times likelier to use marijuana and 7 times likelier to use illicit drugs. Teens who never attend religious services were 3 times likelier to use marijuana and binge drink and 4 times likelier to use illicit drugs than teens who attended at least one religious service weekly.

In a study conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that 10.1% of individuals who attended fewer than 25 religious services in the past year had used illicit substances in the past month while only 2.9% of individuals who had attended 25 or more services in the past year had. A study of youth done by Indiana University showed that non-religious students were twice as likely to use drugs, alcohol and engage in binge drinking when compared to students that were religious (http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/religion2.htm.)

The researchers studied data gathered through Monitoring the Future, the University of North Carolina's four year nationally representative survey of high school seniors. Among specific findings were that especially religious youths were less likely to smoke, drink and use drugs and more likely to start later and use less if they started at all, he said. They went to bars less often, received fewer traffic tickets, wore seat belts more, took fewer risks and fought less frequently. Shoplifting, other thefts, trespassing and arson also were rarer. "Religious 12th-graders argued with parents less, skipped school less, exercised more, participated more in student government and faced fewer detentions, suspensions and expulsions," Smith said (http://monitoringthefuture.org/).

In another study conducted by Byron R. Johnson, Director and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, University of Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Fellow, Center for Civic Innovation, Manhattan Institute of 1,087 youth ages 11 to 17 (http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_12.htm), he arrives at a number of important findings:

• Religious low-income urban teenagers are much less likely to take illicit drugs than otherwise comparable teenagers living in the same high-poverty neighborhoods.
• Highly religious youth living in poor urban neighborhoods are less likely to use illicit drugs than non-religious youth living in middle-class suburban neighborhoods.
• The degree to which being religious reduces a youth’s probability of using illicit drugs increases the older a teenager becomes.
• Youth who have good family relations, do well in school, have non-drug-using friends, and possess anti-drug attitudes are even less likely to use illicit drugs when they are also religious.
• The effect of religious commitment in cutting illicit drug use among poor urban teenagers is statistically significant for all categories of illicit drugs including hard drugs.

In closing, I want to say that I too have found this to be true. I was an addict in and out of jail and prison when I was Agnostic. I have not so much as gotten a traffic ticket since I was saved. I was hopeless, and without hope I began using and eventually became mired in addiction. This blog looks at research that shows that the non-religious use drugs and alcohol at much higher rates than the religious (if you look up these same studies you will find that they also commit crimes and commit suicide at higher rates, also). I have been told by many atheists and agnostics that my son would be better off raised without religion, and that I was stupid for feeling otherwise. "God is just a worthless fairy tale that you are better off not buying into," several have told me. For some reason, that just did not sound right to me. Guess what? It wasn't.

I now have statistically significant research that supports me sharing my faith and raising my son to have a relationship with a Higher Power. Raising my son in the church will give him a better chance to live drug-free/sober, not commit suicide and stay out of prison than if  he does not attend. For me as a father, that is huge. Besides, my son is deserves that chance!!

What's Wrong With Faith?

How many of you stop at a green light?

I am asking that question for a reason. We will get to the reason later. That said, I am a firm believer in faith. Currently I am a Christian, and I have faith that what I believe is true. When I was an Agnostic I also had faith that what I believed was true. I had a confidence in both instances that I was right in my belief, therefore I had faith.

Unfortunately when I was agnostic I abused drugs and enjoyed hurting people. I tried multiple methods to get off of drugs: prison, jail, house arrest, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, prescription medication, residential treatment, outpatient treatment, scared straight, anger management even suicide. Nothing secular worked. I couldn't even be successful at killing myself!

Since  I have been a Christian, I have not used drugs nor have I been arrested. I turned my life over to Christ February 1st, 2009 at 2 A.M. and I have not smoked a cigarette, shot up, got into a fight, used drugs/alcohol nor had premarital sex since. To me that is nothing short of amazing. I used to deal dope and ruin lives, now I deal hope and share recovery to those who do not have it so that they may use my testimony to gain faith that they too can overcome their personal habits, hurts and hang-ups. My relationship with God allowed me to change. WIthout faith I was mired in addiction and crime.

Here are two examples of faith that I see in my daily life. First, I work in the substance abuse industry. Depending on the study you look at for methamphetamine, recovery occurs in only 5-10% of cases. Those odds make the idea of recovery disheartening at best, and unattainable at worst. Yet I have seen many people who in the face of these odds still have faith that they will succeed. I was in addiction and every one that I knew that tried to quit drugs always came back. Today, I have faith that those same people can and will change.

Second, I have seen on several occasions a car in front of me get t-boned going through a green light by a car running a red light. In one of those instances two people died in the accident. Many people have seen a car get hit by someone running a red light. I would further estimate that most people have at least witnessed a near miss. Therefore, we have logical proof that people run red lights.

So if I believe that people run red lights and cause injury to those who don't stop at green lights than I operate on faith every time I go through a green light without stopping. I have logical proof and material evidence that people run red lights. If I operate on logic and reason I would slow down if not stop at green lights. I assert that if we were not operating on faith, we would slam on our brakes before going through a green light.

So, how many of you stop at a green light?

The Reason Rally: Atheists, Agnostics and Secularists Oh My

I just felt that with the upcoming gathering called the Reason Rally I should put in my .02 worth. After all, they are having it on my birthday. It is amazing that we both have chosen the 24th as the day to have a celebratory gathering. There will be much talking, laughing and music on my birthday. In that the two events will be very similar. That is where the similarities will probably end. We will both be celebrating on the same day, but for a very different reason.

I am having a gathering to celebrate something that I have knowledge of. I know for a fact that the day I exited my mother's womb and took my first breath of fresh air was on March 24th. I have knowledge of what happened. There is no uncertainty or disbelief in my birth or the date that it happened, therefore the gathering of like-minded individuals to celebrate my creation.

The Reason Rally, on the other hand, is gathering to celebrate several things. If atheist, then by definition they are rallying around lack of belief that there is a God. If agnostic, they are gathering to celebrate lacking the knowledge to prove (or disprove) something exists. If secularist they believe that public education and politics should be without religious influence.

I can actually see the gathering of secularists based on the definition. They have an agenda. I cannot for the life of me understand the gathering of atheists and agnostics, and I was for 25 years of my life an agnostic. I would get together with fellow atheists and agnostics to make ourselves feel intellectually superior and to point out the evils of Christians, but not to celebrate all the good that we did. We never really rallied around our beliefs, but instead used our time together to belittle those of "faith."

Hopefully that's not the reason for Reason Rally. According to their site, it will not be. In fact, on the about page the question is raised, "Are we just going to use this opportunity to trash religion?" With the answer given being, "No. This will be a positive experience, focusing on all non-theists have achieved in the past several years."  I wish that were the truth, but I have trouble believing that for several reasons.

For starters, look at the list of speakers they are featuring. Among those speaking are Bill Maher, Paul Provenza  and Richard Dawkins. I dare say that they have hate for Christians. That would be based on the vulgarities they use as well as the names they call Christians. How can you have a positive experience focusing on all that non-theists achieve when you have people featured who use their bully pulpit to call Christians idiots and worse?

Secondly, how is one of your sponsors formally inviting Westboro Baptist Church to the Rally fit in to your expressed agenda? You are claiming that you want to have fun and talk about what non-theists have achieved. Those are mutually exclusive goals. That is sensationalism and media seeking at it's very worst.

Imagine my brother in the Army died in combat. I let everyone know the funeral is a celebration of his life and we want to recognize his service to country. Later that day I send an invitation to WBC asking them to join us in showing our respect to the deceased. It would appear that the expressed purpose in inviting everyone to the funeral was dishonest based on the invitation extended to WBC. Just like the expressed reason for the Reason Rally is sullied with the invite to WBC.

I feel this was done so that the Rally can film two segments. First, here are the non-theists. See how we are polite and speak nicely to each other. We are kind, loving people. Now look at the Christians, how they shout hate speech and wish us ill. We are so maligned by Christianity. Poor us, we are so mistreated and the Christians are so mean.

That is sad! Pointing to WBC and saying that is how Christians are is like me pointing at Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Benito Mussolini  or Jeffrey Dahmer and saying that is how non-theists are. It would be completely unfair of me to make that blanket accusation. Hope to see those who claim to have reason actually show it at the rally and in the subsequent discussions that they have after it is over.

I truly hope that the Rally helps non-theists figure out ways to improve living conditions around the world. I hope that they discuss all of the humanitarian efforts that they are involved in, and how they can come together for relief efforts and to provide services and basic needs after natural disasters and in areas of high poverty. I would have loved to see tents and semi-trailers from non-theist instituations manned by non-theist volunteers giving out supplies when I was giving psychological first aid in Joplin, but I did not.

Hopefully, that is what Reason Rally is about: helping those less fortunate, struggling with physical and mental illnesses, funding/staffing humanitarian efforts and showing love for their fellow man. Unfortunately, based on the speakers that are there and  the invitation to WBC that was made I am led to believe that they have a completely different agenda.

The Art of Intelligently Speaking or Why We Fight so Often

I feel that far too often the discussions people have with each other suffer because they are done poorly. The more strongly we feel or passionate we are about the subject, the more the discussion is affected by two problems. I know that I am at fault when it comes to this, too. I am not as bad as I used to be, because I have become aware of the problem and I am trying to stop doing them. Wonder what they are? We do not listen and respond well! What do I mean by this? Let us look at this in the realm of what we believe in.

Let's assume we are talking to someone that has a completely different belief than we do. We will be more than willing to share our view point, but when it comes to the other person sharing we will check out. We will ignore what they are saying. Our eyes glaze over, and it becomes apparent that we are unwilling to listen to them but demand that they hear us. That is simply rude and highly condescending behavior. "My view is important, yours.......not so much," we are seen as saying.

What I am learning is that in order to have an informed discussion and not sound like an idiot, I need to know both sides. How can I defend my position if I do not know theirs? How can I expect you to respect me when I do not show you the same accord. Like my Big Book says, we reap what we sow. I should hear you out if I expect you to hear me out. I should hear you out even if I expect you not to listen to me. Furthermore, I should never stoop to the level of someone who is treating me rudely.

Another way that we show we are not listening is by interrupting the other speaker. I will get angry if they attempted to interrupt me while I am speaking. Yet let them speak, and before 5 words are out of their mouth I am already talking over them. This is disrespectful and shows a lack regard for other people. Some times it appears that we are playing a form of verbal double-dutch, just waiting for the first open spot to jump in to. That is not conducive to a discussion.

In the book "Chicken Soup for the Soul" they talk about breathing. I have found that to be a good practice. When someone finishes speaking, I take a deep breath before I talk. This does a couple of things. One, it allows the person speaking to continue speaking if they were not done i.e. they were taking a breath or collecting their own thoughts. Two, it allows me to fully process all of what they just said and then speak a coherent thought instead of jumping right in and showing our disrespect. Third, it gives them the impression that I was listening to what they were saying, which makes them more likely to listen to me.

Next we have those who get angry, cuss or call the other person an idiot. This may not be the case, but it makes it appear that you are either fearful or uninformed about your own belief system. We will have someone call our belief into question and instantly we react poorly. I have seen people professing Christianity cussing at an Atheist. That proves the Atheist's point. We tend to get angry when we either are unsure of our own belief system, we cannot defend it well enough to the person we are discussing it with or we lack compassion. I often have conversations with people who do not understand what I am saying or how I am explaining things. That is not something to belittle someone over. Those who do are cruel and pretentious.

In order to not get angry I have had to do several things. First, I have had to learn more about my belief system. Then I had to learn more about others belief systems and their theories on creation, how we are here and why we are here. I also had to remember that I could not expect someone to listen to me or respect me if I was yelling at them or belittling them. I was disrespecting myself, them and Christ by the way I was talking to them. 


I had a philosophy professor who defined intelligence as the ability to know both sides equally. The more I know about other beliefs, the more firmly I believe in my own belief. That is where apologetics comes into play. It allows me to know not only my side but also the other side. How can I possibly hope to not only explain myself well, but possibly convert someone else if I have no clue about their beliefs. So in closing I remind you to do a couple of things. 

1. Become an Apologist and study Christianity as well as the belief systems of others
2. Hear others out (Listen when they speak)
3. Don't forget to breathe 
4. Don't take it personally
5. Maintain proper decorum (don't yell, cuss, name call or belittle the others beliefs)