I’m at work. I’m being competely horrible and working on my blog while I’m at work, getting paid some stupid rate. I’m a bad bad person.

‘The pre-processing handler for ECX job # ATD20182 has failed.’

Orrr, I could say I’m baby-sitting a semi-automatic process that fails half the time. This is not a way to achieve job satisfaction.

Anyway, I took some down time on Sunday. I didn’t go to the markets at some stupid hour of the morning, or go to the gym, or the library. I did manage to reply to some emails that I recieved nearly two weeks ago though.

I needed downtime because I’ve been overdoing the exercise. This was last weeks set of exercise related activity;

Monday: Gym (30 minutes cardio + weights)
Wednesday: Ceroc (two hours)
Thursday: Gym (PT assisted work out, one hour)
Saturday: Ceroc Dance party (four hours)
Sunday: Ultimate Frisbee (50 minutes)

Despite all this, part of me is insisting that I should have gone to the gym on Saturday and/or Sunday morning. That I must do four full workouts at the gym every week, and a couple of nights of ceroc and frisbee, and maybe rock climbing with my flatmate. For a month or two, I actually managed to keep up with this insane ideal.

But! This didn’t actually make me fit, it just made me tired and cranky and sore. I started getting sick without actually being infected with anything. I started having days where I couldn’t get out of bed due to the pain in my stomach, the pounding in my head and the way the room swirled whenever I tried to sit up. I don’t reccomend this at all.

On top of this, I was trying very hard to recreate a social life and my opinions and everything else after my hard disconnect with religion/Christianity. It really didn’t work that well. For the most part, we’re a big ball of pre-programmed responses. I’d talk to someone about something, and I’d have nod and smile like a retard because I hadn’t thought about things properly enough to have an opinion, and then the same topic would come up a week later and I’d be nodding and smiling like a retard because I still hadn’t had time to think it through.

I was still in a big sulk about anything to do with religion for the same reason. I was angry at the church for various things, and I was still dragging around those responses and thoughts instead of getting over it and getting on with my own life.

Anyhoo. After getting sick again last week (Tuesday, if you wondered where I managed to fit it in), and having some enforced downtime, I took it on me to sit back and have a beer and relax, and let my brain work through a few issues at it’s own speed.

The whole exercise thing is clearly an over-response to my ‘fat days’. To briefly throw numbers, I’m 183cm tall. I used to be 110 kg. That’s 17.3 stone, or 242.5 pounds at 6 feet tall. Several years ago I jumped on the scales, got the three scary digits, and said ‘Right, this has to change.’ S, right now, I weigh in about 82 kg. (180 pounds).

By the start of this year, I was down to 85 kg, and I had decided it wasn’t enough. According to the horribly inaccurate BMI, I was on the border of overweight. According to the gym’s equipment, my body fat percentage (15%) was smack bang in the middle of the healthy weight range, and on the border of the lean and normal ranges (10-15% and 15-18%).

But I still had (and have) love handles! Clearly those had to go. And damnit, where the hell is my six pack? Well, I have abs, but it’s covered by this stupid layer of fat! More cardio!

This started to impact on my work. I knew I was getting more and more unpresentable as time went on. I could ussually manage to show up spick and span on Monday, and casual Fridays I could pretty much get away with whatever I wanted, but the other three days of the working week were a hodgepodge generated by the nightmare of trying to get up, and shower and shave and iron my shirt and make lunch and still make it to work on time. Naturally I was late. So I worked late, then went to the gym late, and got up late… and the cycle got a bit deeper and hard and later.

I still wasn’t loosing any weight.

Worse yet, I noticed a change in the way woman were responding to me at ceroc. For a time there I couldn’t get away from woman at ceroc, I was either on the floor dancing, or in conversation. While I didn’t have any interest in any of them, this was quite pleasent. However, now I was practically being shunned. Was it the drawn expression, the shadows under my eyes, and my inability to remember more than half a dozen moves? I think it was.

Clearly, it was time to slow down.

I didn’t wake up this Sunday till two in the afternoon. I didn’t get out of bed till three. It was awesome. I felt so much better. I sat around and read books and did my washing. If I had a cat, I probably have amused it with a laser pointer for a couple of hours. Instead, I lay on my bed and thought about what the hell I’m doing with my life.

Right now, it feels like I’m just freewheeling. My job pays well, and is stable, and my own inability to concentrate notwithstanding, is not particularly onerous. But it’s boring. I’ve been here just over eight months and I’m bored. It was fascinatingly easy to fall into a trap of work and ceroc and exercise and not much else. I haven’t cooked anything interesting or new this year at all.

So, now what? Well, I want to travel some. Or maybe I don’t, I don’t really know, but right now, it’s still possible to fly around the world, and in ten years, either due to economic meltdown or peak oil, or plain just being over thirty and possibly being married and/or having kids, this is going to be a whole bunch more difficult. So, I should do it now, while I still can. But being honest with myself, I hate being in social situations where I don’t know the culture. There are some people that love jumping into a new situation and being all lost at sea on their own.

Good for them. I fucking hate it. I have some private theories about why that kind of thing doesn’t work for me, but the reality is that jumping into a foreign culture without a guide where I don’t even speak the language is likely to make me go insane.

So…

Friends of mine are going to the UK in a month or two. UK is close the Europe (so I’m told), so my plan is to go there at the end when everything finishes up here in Jan 2009.

There. I now have a plan. A goal, and in the mean time, possibly a saner lifestyle.

And having concluded all that, I folded my socks, feeling a lot better.

Why was this so important?

Because… I was stagnating. If I don’t have something to work to, I get bored, and have trouble justifying anything. So now I have a goal, and even if I don’t get there, I’ll have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I have this weird dichotomy of thought. I’m pissed off, because I spent three point five years of my life skipping opportunities because I was being obedient. On the other hand, I have no one to be pissed of at. I can’t be angry at God, because he doesn’t exist. I can’t be mad at Christians, because although some of them provided the catalyst for both my conversion and de-conversion, they didn’t make my choices for me, and I can hardly blame them for preaching what they genuinely believed was best.

And I can’t blame me, because I acted with integrity and honestly given the information I had available at the time.

So, I’m angry at nothing. Usually late at night when I need sleep and/or food.

Really, I should happy that I spent three point five, not thirty five years doing this. But I’m still pissed off.

It’s kind of weird looking back at this. To be completely honest, with the benefit of separation from the events at hand, it seems that if God existed, then it wouldn’t be quite so one sided. I always had an issue with tithing. No, that’s not strong enough. I Fucking Hate Tithing.

I hate tithing because Christians could solve world hunger in a day if they stopped buying coloured lights to ‘build atmosphere’ in empty church buildings, instead of caring for the poor, the orphans, and the widows. You know, like Jesus commanded. I hate tithing because I know that most tithes don’t go to those who need it, but go to the pastor so he (or she) can worry about his market share – sorry, growing his flock.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was to be obedient. And I eventually was. It hurt, and I hated it, but I was obedient to what I believed was the word of God. Which leads me to the next question – if I was obedient, and I still got nothing, why do those who are not obedient hear from God all the time? If He’s trying to build faith, it obviously didn’t work.

I’m going to start back-posting a bunch of writing I did in that time. At some point I may scrap the SRWOFB code in favour of something off the shelf. As I fill up the back-posting, I’ll post them at the time I dated them, and then a new entry at the time I back post pointing to the backpost to keep people up to date. Clear as mud?

I’m also painfully aware that there is no comment facility at the moment. I had tried to make it as easy as possible to make comments, so of course, some bastard had to come along and abuse the system. I’ll look at some sort of catchpa or something at some point in the future.

I am no longer a Christian.

Just so I’m clear on this; I do not believe in the Christian God. I do not believe in Jesus Christ as the resurrected son of God who died for our sins – I no longer believe in the concept of sin, original or otherwise. I certainly don’t believe the bible to be the literal word of God.

This has been building for a while. It wasn’t something I woke up one morning and decided to do, it’s been building in me for a while. I’m just now honest enough to admit it.

There are a bunch of reasons, but the central pillar of my apostasy is that I just couldn’t go on trying to reconcile Christianity with my own experience.

I never felt God. I never witnessed a miracle. I never had a personal revelation in my life that I couldn’t put down to natural causes or my own mind.

As a Christian, I always had trouble dealing with the obvious surface contradictions in the bible, like why God seemed to change so much between the old and new testament.

I kept reading the bible though, trying to make sense of how things fitted together. I kept expecting that one day I would read enough, and understand enough that I would see the hand of God at work. Instead, I just kept finding that less and less of it made sense.

I listened to other people talk about how they talked to God, and occasionally, I would add my own two cents in about what I heard. But at the back of my mind, I always wondered if I’d actually heard from God, or if I was just using his ‘voice’ as an alter ego. And why was the voice of God, that sounded suspiciously like my own, so hard to hear, unless I practically forced it into existence?

People in Church would talk of God being love. I confessed to a friend that I didn’t feel loved at all. When people reminded me of the footprints poem, I said that rather than feeling carried, I felt like I was being kicked in the ribs. I constantly felt that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t measure up.

But I kept on believing. I prayed, asking for something from God that I could hang on to. Some sign, some evidence. Something I could hang my hat on and say ‘there was God’. But I didn’t. Instead, I kept not finding God. In my prayers, I would say that I kept sliding further and further down the rope. Then, I hit the end of the rope, and stared into the abyss, knowing I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I had started looking at why I believed. I opened the door to look at my foundations, and found to my dismay, that I had built my house of belief on sand, rather than rock. Close scrutiny showed cracks that could not be mended. I finally turned to the bible, buying the latest book by Karen Armstong titled ‘On the Bible’. Instead of finding a historical basis to a true faith, I found a manufactured religion, twisted and turned at every point. Where was the magic consistency I had been promised? Why when I read the words of Paul did I find a delusional bigot instead of a near-prophet?

In the two weeks leading up to Christmas of `07, I hit the tipping point. I talked to a Muslim convert at work, and he described the exact same feelings when entering a mosque that I had heard many Christians speak of. How could that be? Surely he was fooling himself. Right? More to the point, where were my feelings? Why had I not experienced this feeling of joy, happiness and hope that everyone else did? All I found in church was emptiness, drudgery, and expectation.

I heard how three Christians I respected, who said the right words and did the right things, had completely failed to walk the talk. When temptation came calling, they went willingly. Rather than trusting in the Lord they claimed to know so well, they didn’t even try. Instead, they made plans to fail and executed them with frightening speed.

This was when I started getting angry. These people weren’t even trying! I had tried. For three and half years I had tried. I had been baptized. I had lead a cell group, and been involved in youth work. I had geared up to go on a missions trip for six months, giving up excellent job opportunities, believing it to be a call from God. I had prayed, read my bible, bought books, been to conferences. I had repented my sins over and over again. I had confessed a bunch of embarrassing lies in front of my friends and family. I had got on my knees and begged God to let me understand. I had pulled myself up again and again, willing myself to go on.

And still, I heard nothing.

I gave up.

I let go the rope.

And… I didn’t fall. My feet were on solid ground all this time. The rope didn’t exist. I had simply been willing myself to believe that it was there.

I kept waking up each morning, expecting to feel the ‘God-shaped hole in my life’. But there wasn’t one. Instead, I felt… free.

Free. Free from expectation. Free from guilt. Free from fear.

Where was the great unraveling in my life? Where was the emptiness I’d been lead to expect? I looked at my beliefs again, this time without the fear of divine wrath. Why was everything good was God’s doing, and that everything bad was either the devil tempting us, or a trial to grow us? Why couldn’t it just be good luck, mere statistics? Why should I suffer for Adam & Eve screwing up? Why couldn’t God just start over? And if I didn’t believe in Creationism, what sense did the entire concept of original sin make anyway? And why did God never heal amputees? Why did every single prayer always feel like I was talking to the ceiling?

I hit the Internet, and discovered many people exactly like me. And the answers to their deconversion always came back to the bible. I had tried the bible. I found it lacking.

The church failed me, my own experiences failed to bring me to God, and the bible didn’t ring true.

So, I stopped being a Christian.

Please don’t quote scripture at me. Unless you can give some good referenced reasons about why I should trust the bible, don’t bother.

Please don’t ask me if I’ve thought about this, because I’ve thought about little else for near on a month now.

In late April, I lost my job. The company is/was going to run out of money because we had too many support staff (eg; Money Sinks versus Money Generators). Unfortunately for me, the technical sales guys could do my job, but I didn’t/can’t do his. Plus, I didn’t have a mortgage, or any dependants, so I got the chop.

I sent out a gigantic email say “Help, I’m out of a job.”

I got email back 45 minutes later from a chap that we sub-contracted for a while (Rob) saying that he had some work that he needed help on that he was doing for a company overseas, for at least one month, probably more.

We had a chat. Things seemed to be good. The pay was exceedingly good, dependant on if the parent company agreed. I also noted that my working on this was dependant on me getting a Holiday at some point. (Since I’d basically worked non stop since Christmas 2003/04, this was something I needed.)

Before I agreed, and heard back from him. I sat down, thought about this, and had a chat with God. It’s a lot of money. I really really don’t have a practical use for this kind of money. So, after tax, about 45% goes to my mission fund (which will pay for me going to Nepal and supporting my local Churchs missionary efforts), I get about the same, and the remainder is to go to people of Gods choosing (which neatly turned out to be about a tenth, not that I worked it out that way originally).

Got offered the job, accepted, took the job. Worked for a month. During this time, my pastor hauls me up in the middle of Church, and says basically; “God says don’t worry about the money, and be ready to accept or adapt when things change suddenly.

What? Ok.

Finished phase one of the contract. Went on Holiday for three weeks. Went to the South Island for a couple of weeks. Drove around the South Island, had an complete ball
of a time. Came back, got home, got really really really sick, and turned up to the office on the 19th of June.

There’s no phase two of the contract.

Queue swearing on my part. OK, so it’s not Robs fault. I knew this was a real possibility. The parent company is under Zero obligation to continue the contract.

Queue much discussion/thinking/praying on my part. I am going to Nepal in December. I’m sure of this. I’m sure God has said it Will Be So. Now, there’s a bunch of IT work out there, but I know that if I try and get a job for six months, they’re going to laugh at me. If I don’t tell them, then just quit – then that’s a completely horrible witness. So – I’m left with the option of trying to continue with one off contracts.

So, I hit the Internet, talk to a couple of people, and follow up some leads. Word gets back to me that the overseas company is keen on doing phase two of the project again, which is cool. A few days go by, and I’ve got a satisfying four solid leads in my inbox, and I’m confident that at least one of them will get back to me, if nothing else, keeping my rent going and food in my stomach.

And… then my Inbox goes silent. I don’t hear _anything_.

Queue me talking to God.

Queue me yelling at God.

I pull out my Bible, and the note from church I shoved in there randomly opens it at Haggai. As you may or may not know, Haggai is an incredibly short book where God tells the Israelites in 1:4;
“Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses while this house [the Lords house] remains a ruin.”
and in 1:9;
“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”

I look at the bag of clothes from Meccano I just brought for retail therapy (and to be honest, don’t really need), and feel about this >< big.

The money I promised to God has not been delivered yet. In a kind of I’ll-do-the-dishes-eventually kind of way. So I transferred the amount ‘owing’ to my churchs tithing account. At some point, I will transfer the amount appropriate to the Red Cross.

And then – I will essentially be out of cash (cars warrant and service is due and my rent is due) except I won’t, because there’s this giant pile of money sitting there for going to Nepal.

Now, the thing is – there’s tonnes of work out there for IT folks in New Zealand – if you’re willing to commit to a regular job, which I can’t do for reasons explained above. It’s very very tempting to move to Wellington right now, and pick up a regular paying job, and forget about the whole Nepal thing.

So now – I’m in real danger of running out of money, despite sitting on a huge wad of it, being very capable at my job, and there being lots of work available – all because I’m trying to do what God said. You can imagine how I feel about this right now.

Everyone is telling me to have faith. I’m having faith right now by not taking that permanent $80K job that I’d be a shoe-in for. Everyone is telling me God will come through. I’m sitting here, praying and hoping that he does… because if he doesn’t… well… it’s not good. This is the make or break time. I’m this position because of God. And if I have to start digging into that missions money to pay the rent and eat?

Well…

I’m trying not to think about that right now.

Right, so stuff explained. This is going to take a while. It involves God.

I’ve been a Christian for about three years now. How I got here is a story for another time. For the first two years of my often wobbling walk, I was always exceedingly resistant to the idea of me going on missions. I wasn’t even particularly interested in going overseas. I had a friend (James) who was the missionary person. He was going to be the person out there in the world, and I was going to stay home in my nice little world of hot showers, good coffee, and fast(ish) Internet connections.

Last year, for some reason that escapes me at the moment, I decided to be Obedient, and prayed the following;

“Hi God. I guess if you really really want me to go on a missions trip at some point, I guess I can do that.”

Then I went to bed.

The very next day, James has popped over to yarn it over, and in the process of things mentions that out at the bible college he’s attending this guy from Interserve gave a brief presentation, wherein he mentioned that they were really short of qualified IT people*.

Shit**.

Well OK. I get the picture. I talk to Interserve. They have a conference on in two weeks – the last one for the year. I sign up, stay with my Grandparents, and after some interesting navigation in Auckland, attend the conference. I think about it, I pray about it. I get fired up, and start announcing to all and sundry and my church that I’m going to Nepal, or somewhere similar that in December(ish) 07.

I said Nepal because it was the first one on the list at the time. I may not go to Nepal, but it helps to have a goal. I start saving.

In January 07, through a variety of circumstances, I start putting aside approximately a third of my income into a missions fund. I manage to not spend it on anything else. For the first time since I brought my car, it passes a Warrant of Fitness test without needing anything fixed. Things look good.

By the end of March, I’m about 35% of the way towards my savings goal for a missions fund. The good people at Interserve send me an email to see how things are going, and I email them back with a big affirmative that I’m still keen. Things seem to be going well.

More to come.

* Brief note: I’m an IT professional. I’ve worked with Linux, Windows, Macs, half a dozen languages, and I have the appropriate degree – BSc in Software Engineering from Waikato University)

** Yes, I’m going to swear. More on my bad habits later.

Somewhere in the last year and a bit of full time work, play, and living, I lost my love of technology and loved people more.

All operating systems suck. They just suck in different ways. Who cares? It’s software. It’s not real. It is a means to end.

I don’t post now, because I don’t have time. I spend eight hours a day in front of a computer, and when I get home, I go out and do stuff with other people. I cook, I dance, I do Karate, I listen to music, I hang out, I drink, I eat, I laugh, and I live. I do not need a significant other to be happy, because I happy being me.

I probably won’t post much anymore, unless I get a really good album or recipe.

I will respond to comments though. I like to talk to people.