Without further ado, here is The Letter D's story in his own words:
I was born and raised a christian. In my childhood days I thought of god as "that bearded guy who lives in the clouds" and Satan as "the red guy with a pitch fork living in a fiery underworld". Nothing more complicated beyond that. Church consisted of a few verses read, several songs to sing, and in general hanging out. Nothing beyond that.
Dad became bored with the church and started reading the bible on his own and with several "companion" books. He became, to quote my mom, "jewish" since he started following closely what the bible said. He gave up Easter entirely and celebrated Christmas only in a secular way. He adopted Passover and gave up eating most pork products (he made exceptions for bacon and sometimes sausage).
I began to read the same books. It was difficult at first. After studying Shakespearean english I could at least finally understand most of what the bible said. The "companion" books used select verses from the bible to support their claims. I...at the time...believed the nonsense that they uttered. I still feel like a gullible twit for what I believed at the time... They taught what I found out later to be British-Israelism. They taught that the human races were decended from Noah's 3 sons (Ham-black/dark skinned, Japheth-east asian/native american/polynesian, Shem-white/tan skinned). That America and Britain were God's chosen nations due to their ancestry with Manaseh and Ephraim and that Germany was decended from Assyria and other nonsense like that. {shudders}
I discovered that besides me and my dad that several of our relatives also believed in similiar. We more or less believed the world was evil. We believed that all events that occured were predicted by the bible. One day dad's beliefs changed a little. He read a pamphlet that talked about cults and mind control. I gave it little heed at the time. He became a little more liberal. More open to Christmas (although he still ignores Easter). I still ignored those holidays though. I considered them pagan traditions unworthy to be celebrated. I looked upon other people outside of christianity (and even some other christians) as misguided and felt that homosexuals/bisexuals were to be pitied.
Some years later I read that pamphlet. Many of the "companion" books were written by people who were listed in the pamphlet. The pamphlet told about the sordid histories of those authors, the lies they tell, the corruption within their churches (while dad and I believed what they did, we were never members of their churches). I didn't believe it at first. But with research done on the net* it confirmed what was said in the pamphlet.
I was devastated to learn of this. That I was fooled into believing their version of the bible. My gloom didn't last long however and I was deeply reading the bible on my own. I didn't read all of it. But some of the parts I came upon were deeply disturbing. I told myself "God knows what he is doing. If he kills he has a reason for it", but deep down I knew it was wrong.
