Basically, before I was 9 or 10 I believed everyone who went to church was basically crazy. But, then I got a concussion from rock climbing at 9 or 10 and started having night time seizures in my life so I needed to reach out to God because otherwise I would have died. There's a reason people believe in God around the world and kids with technology and wealth often wouldn't understand this now. But, when I grew up medical science wasn't much yet like it is now and so people had very little faith in medicine then, especially in my church so they wouldn't go to doctors and the died one by one somewhere between their 20s and their 50s a lot. It had always been this way back down through history by the way. Very few people were educated enough in useful ways to live a long time down through history.
How do you talk to people like this?
Very carefully. Because often almost anything is going to set them off. So, if people say crazy batshit ridiculous stuff to you (at least this is what it was like growing up for me) you just be kind to them and listen as a child so you can stay alive through all this crazy shit.
And then as an adult at age 21 I left my childhood church and it likely was the best thing I ever did up until then. It's not that it didn't have serious consequences in my life because I was sort of suicidal for a few years after leaving my childhood church.
But then, even though it was more lonely without hundreds of friends I had had in church all over the world I could actually be a free thinker and have a much better relationship with God not colored by a lot of crazy people in church with serious PTSD.
This is what I find in all fundamentalist churches Christian and otherwise is a whole lot of people with various kinds of PTSD. However, since everyone has these psychological problems in many of these churches it just seems normal to them to be this way.
But, through a lot of counseling and therapy I was able to move forward in my life in a much more constructive way because PTSD leads eventually to some really dark places and I watched many of my friends die horribly because they didn't leave when I did.
So, I'm very grateful to God to have survived my 20s and moving on from all the PTSD craziness of churches who feed on people's fears like that.
Starting to read Psychology today magazine in the early 1970s at Palomar college I was able to dump most of the insanity in my life and let go various kinds of pride that wasn't useful and move on in a much more compassionate way towards myself and all other beings in the universe.
By God's Grace
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