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I came to Wayworld as an agnostic. I had spent some 20 years or so of my youth in either a Lutheran Church or the Methodist Reformed (now ask me if I could tell the difference) and was pretty much tired of empty platitudes and toothy grins on Sunday morning from people that hated my guts the rest of the week. I'd never seen much of anything in religion except the musty-smelling basements and some timid housewife trying to convince the kids in her group that "Religion is really fun!" So when I heard Wierwille talking about all the terrific signs and wonders and healings and all the other empty promises, somehow I paid attention (could it have anything to do with the fact that I was madly "in love" with the girl who witnessed to me?). Here was finally somebody saying that The Bible had REAL promises that would come to pass in your daily life - IF - you knew the secret code! So, all that was well and good. Life goes on. You speak in tongues, get together very regularly to reconvince yourselves that you're really onto something special, and you slowly get older. FINALLY, one day you unlease all those pent-up doubts and start looking at the whole concept a little more dispassionately. AND, the tenets of your faith don't tolerate real, in-depth scrutiny very well - at least mine didn't. And the light dawns on you that, lo and behold, the whole religion game is hardly anymore credible than a kid's book of fairy tales. There's lots of well-worn arguments to try to hold the game together, but those are hardly anymore believeable than the religion itself. So, you drop the facade and try to figure out life on your own. Mostly I realized that an inordinate amount of the true believer's time was spent doing spin-control for The Almighty. Making up excuses for why somebody didn't get healed, why the guy in your twig DIDN'T get the promotion, why evil unbeliever that's been taunting believer-person seems to continue prospering, why you don't have peace or joy in your life, why you don't seem to have any fellowship with "The Father", why everybody outside of your fellowship seems to be doing quite well, while you and yours are constantly struggling. Eventually the excuses just don't cut it anymore. "God HAD to let such-and-such happen or He wouldn't be a just God!", or "The Devil is still in control of the world!" (and just how the hell did THAT happen, anyway - nobody was watching?), or - the Wayworld favorite "It musta been YOUR believing!". Funny how you never read those excuses in The Bible, huh? Nope, there it's always set-in-stone verities. "Thus the LORD did such and such" "Ye SHALL receive all the good stuff you've been wanting", "Those that work iniquity will SURELY die" (gee, and nobody else does?). It all strikes me as a toxic game of mental gymnastics. I'm just tired of jumping through the hoops anymore...