RobWood wrote:
Now, before you declare how impervious you would be to all of this obvious chicanery, consider that in the midst of this "in-rushing of the Holy Spirit," you have people apparently getting instantly and miraculously healed of physical ailments, depressed and despondent people suddenly laughing and crying with emotional release, the "voice of God" speaking through believers in the form of lamentations or exhortations or prophecies, and a general feeling of ecstasy flowing through the crowd and - whether you want it to or not - through you, as well. The experience can be so overwhelming that it - temporarily at least - overrides the cognitive center of the brain, and unleashes pent-up emotions that all human beings have.
The scary thing is, I knew it was bullsh*t, I knew it. I knew it like a drunk knows how to drink...and while I didn't get sucked into the church or the religion I SURE got sucked into the insanity! For a LONG time, I had few non-Pentecostal voices speaking to me regarding matters of faith. I heard little if anything else, I got sick of God, I got sick of hearing about and talking about God and I almost became convinced that the Pentes were right, but because they had already hurt me I didn't get sucked in I just became angry...angry with them, angry with God, I learned to hate hearing about Him and really did become very angry and judgemental towards Christians.

Why? Well, like L4T and others have told me it is easy when it surrounds you, to conflate Christianity and Pentecostalism. It doesn't help that the Pentes (who are very convincing when you don't know their tricks) will try to convince you that theirs is the only true form of Christianity! As I'm sure I have said before, it literally took a bunch of non-Christians...mostly Muslims in fact...to turn me from a deep and misdirected anger toward God, to realizing that my issues were with the people who had hurt me...my ex and those she surrounded herself with...and not with God.

The scary thing is that as much of a religious background as I had, and as much as I could see the insane beliefs, the lies, etc. I still got drawn into the web and I almost lost my soul to anger because of it. I did a lot of things I probably shouldn't have because of that. I know, I know that my ex was trying to break me down so that I'd end up "on my face worshipping the Lord" or some such junk, it just didn't work out the way she planned it would. There were several times I pretty much cracked, I occasionally suffer from depersonalization disorder due to brain damage anyway (I'm disabled due to a car accident) and this was one of those times where I'd either just...disconnect...for hours or days on end. There are a lot of things I remember but there are also a lot of things I don't. I look at it as fortunate in a certain sense that my response, as badly thought out as it was, that I tended to lash out in anger and fight back. The scary thing is, it worked in a certain sense...but I always have felt like I left part of my soul back there.