Earlier this week, I got a lengthy letter whose author gave me permission to share it with you:
Dear Ebonmusings:
I gave a glimpse to your musing about the carrot and the stick – I didn’t expect it to talk about morality, mainly because I realized that the latest part of my life as a christian was about pursuing a carrot and a stick.*
Allow me to share my story. Sorry if it’s a bit depressing, but I can assure you that I’m much better now (and much better than before, since I embraced atheism and got rid of many prejudices and sick attitudes).
I had always been a devout Catholic. My devotion was fed in a positive feedback loop by my own spiritual experiences. I had thought God loved me and considered me so special that he had given me some visions and experiences that I read about in the works of Catholic saints. Today I just realized it was mere delusion.
Anyway. My problem was when, for health reasons, I had to leave a hellhole called seminary. I was going to be a missionary priest. I couldn’t even finish the first year because there was no doctor there and I got ill more than once – worse, I lost around 20 pounds of weight from malnutrition. To make things worse, they made us work and live in very unsanitary conditions – once, the pork we were going to eat was left to rot for around three days under the sun, without us even suspecting it. I fell ill and had to take whatever antibiotics we had at hand. Eventually I got better. During the mission, I slept less than five hours a day for more than a month thanks to my brothers, who always stayed late, and I had to be the one who would wake up first to be able to take a quick shower before Mass at 6 AM. Eventually I got the flu and had to leave everything.
When I returned home, I realized my father had already given up my home to my sister who recently had gotten married and was expecting a baby. So I had to live in a little storage room that was below the ground level. This was bad because it flooded occasionally and sometimes the sewer overflowed, and I couldn’t get my own apartment because I couldn’t find a job.
Still wondering why God had left me in this situation, I realized I was growing older and I needed to find myself a wife – as I couldn’t stand my loneliness… much less the depression that I was going through. I was tortured by my loneliness and my escapes in masturbation (which meant that I sinned)… at the same time, I was going through such horrible despair that I wanted to kill myself. But I couldn’t because God would send me to hell. I begged him to kill me or give me a hand, a new room, etc.
Eventually I realized I could no longer live isolated in that room (only to come to my parents’ one-bedroom apartment for breakfast and dinner), so I decided to live with my parents and sleep on the couch. There was a little problem… my dad always woke up at 4 AM and I couldn’t sleep well. At one point I began dreaming about having my own bedroom. In the dream, I was so happy but I remembered it was just a dream, and I woke up crying and wanting to die.
During that year, I kept asking myself: “Why, God? Why?” Why was the question that God never answered. And I realized today that I had always wanted an answer as why God was testing me in such a horrible manner. At one point I felt abandoned, crushed and hated by God – I felt there was no other explanation.
I sought help which didn’t come. Even after being able by mere chance (actually, the landlord increased the rent and some neighbors had to leave, so we moved to a two-bedroom apartment) to finally get my own bedroom, my bitterness hadn’t gone away. I kept asking for and expecting a compensation for all my undeserved sufferings. They didn’t come.
A believer’s life on Earth is always carrying a burden of suffering… seeking a carrot named “help” with a stick named “Faith”. In my case, if I ever dared to question God’s infinite love, or even his existence, I would doom myself to hell. I couldn’t even curse his name (in fact, I haven’t, even as an atheist – except that claiming that he doesn’t exist might be cursing him). So, I was doomed to suffer if I challenged (“tempted”) God, and I was doomed to suffer and wait hoping God would be compassionate towards me otherwise. Also, because I was such a sinner, I felt that God was punishing me and I couldn’t get any help.
This is what I wanted to share. Faith is evil, it forces many unnecessary sufferings on people who seek divine help that will never come, instead of seeking the help of our fellow humans and realizing that if you don’t help yourself, nobody else will.
Finally I would like to thank Reddit for sharing so much insight on life and helping me realize there is no God. It’s been a liberating experience.
Please feel free to post this on your site, as long as my testimony remains anonymous.
Thank you for listening.
* In a follow-up e-mail, he explained: “One note about my testimony… it wasn’t a carrot and a stick used to hit (as in reward / punishment), but a carrot hanging on a stick. This is why I called the stick ‘faith’, and the carrot ‘happiness’. You try to move, but the stick moves with you. You cannot get the carrot until you finally get rid of the stick (the faith).”