Reflections on my time as a Christian: A discordant rant in the K…

Me and Lucifer, Lucifer and Me:

Like many, I knew I was a Satanist, or at least LHP inclined when I was a teenager, but my approach to life has mostly pretty much been to say yes to almost any experience I was offered. Or maybe another way of looking at it is that I sort of take the basic concept of method acting, and apply it to my actual life when it comes to learning. Growing up with an Anglican Father and Lutheran Mother, I was  raised Roman Catholic, and went to a Catholic school early on in my childhood, because the public school system in my aria at the time was a breeding ground for future convicts ahaha. So early on I was indoctrinated into the Church, but like most lower class Australian families in the 1980’s, my weekly household was not hardcore Christian, heck my parents were divorced which is a big no-no. I was probably the most religiously fervent from my recollection, but I was not to bring God home from school, though the holidays were always the time to get your religion on. But then I did live with my mother, so in some sense I always had a “divine presence” with me, after all, mother is the name of God on the lips of every child.

I started having doubts about my faith around the age of 7, not realizing at that time that there was the option of not believing in God, my doubts manifested themselves in the form of a sympathy for the devil, so to speak. I felt very sorry for a lot of Biblical figures who I at the time believed really existed. Even though I would try to reinforce the notion that Gods judgement is just and righteous, I would have compassion for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah for instance, or the Pharisees and Sadducee’ who had for so long been raised as what we might call today “orthodox Jews”, only to have some fucking Nazarene declare himself to be the Messiah, and yet who contradicted the Laws of the God he is supposedly the son of, and who threw out the old Covenant of Moses,for his new hippy dippy love all even the gentile socialistic philosophy, and performed magic tricks and suspiciously pagan version of Jewish customs. Only to be the precursor and justification for a long history of antisemitism because they did what they Torah supposedly said they were meant to do, which is to have him crucified for blasphemy. And I always thought the devil was a guy whose side of the story we never got to hear.

So then as I got older and became more rebellious, still not realizing I had the option to not believe in God, my first venture into anything remotely resembling Satanism was to worship a very narrow, very Catholic concept of the devil. Enthroned Darkness Triumphant by Dimmu Borgir was the soundtrack to my damnation at the peak of my devil worship. I can look back on that period of my life and laugh at myself, even though back then (and even to some extent now) I felt like it was the most epic, glorious awakening of my life hahahaha! It wasn’t until Marilyn Manson’s liturgy seeped into my ears and consumed my soul around the same time, and I read his autobiography which (among other things) spoke about Satanism and the Satanic Bible, that I became aware about this thing we call Satanism. And it wasn’t until I read books like the Satanic Bible, and Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, did the notion that God doesn’t exist, I mean really doesn’t exist ever cross my mind. Sure by then I knew some people didn’t believe in God, but that is different from contemplating the non existence of God…life changing event is is life changing lol

What would you know anyways?

So all of that brings me to this. I don’t claim to be an expert on Christianity by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a subject that I have spent a substantial portion of my life researching from first hand experience. As someone who has been both a student and teacher of Christian theology to some extent, I believe I can speak/write with some credibility and confidence on the subject.

I’m not going to get into the theology here, but I have posted many things on the Sect Facebook page on the subject, and I thought I might write a little bit about my background and “credentials”.  So err my uncle Bill (on my fathers side), was a trained sniper in WW2 and on his first mission could not bring himself to shoot the Japanese solider and apparently “gave himself to Jesus”, and when he came home he became Jehovah’s Witness, I have been to a several of their kingdom hall meetings over my lifetime and I continue to have regular discussions and debates with their proselytizing door knockers.We are presently discussing the Millerites at the moment.

I used to live with a Mormon who was excruciatingly nice and pleasant to be around, who taught me a bit about about the various Mormon beliefs, (I like the idea of 3 heavens, 1 for Mormons, 1 for other Christians, and 1 for those folks that were good people but didn’t find Jesus lol).

I used to work at a Patisserie, and one of the workers invited me to his church one Friday, so for a while there I was going to regular Pentecostal services. I eventually got bored with that and another work mate from the same place invited me to a Youth Camp with his local Catholic parish. I went alone and had a pretty good time to be honest. Because of a technicality in which I was not actually confirmed in the Catholic Church as a kid, I ended up being sponsored and did the whole conversion/confirmation thing. That was cool, I did an extensive course of Catholic Theology leading up to the confirmation. The Good Friday before my confirmation I was asked to partake in the “stations of the cross” at mass, which is where I carried a big heavy cross to the alter and performed this ritual during the liturgy in which I  hammered nails into the holes that represented the hand and feet wounds of Christ. And then placed a wire halo on the cross that represented the crown of thorns. Very kooky stuff. I attended youth group every weekend, and several youth camps in which I was a group member and presented talks on a number of various theological and philosophical topics. I eventually was asked to go on a Cursillo retreat, which is a three day apostolic training pilgrimage. That is where you enter into a “Catholic Brotherhood” in which you delve deeper into Catholic Theology, Dogma and metaphysics with your fellow brethren. This then extends out to monthly meetings at various locations where you further discuss and debate a number of philosophical, spiritual and epistemological topics.

I was involved in two Alpha courses, 1 with the Anglican Church, and one with the Uniting Church (in which I was a group leader). Alpha is a multi-denominational program which serves as sort of Christianity 101 course with the sole purpose of bringing in new converts. It is a 10 week program which consists of a group dinner and then video lecture presented by Reverend Nicky Gumbel, and then concludes with people breaking off into smaller groups to discuss the lectures themes. You all then go on a weekend retreat, usually to a Convent, or Nunnery, or other non specific location depending on the denomination running the coarse. I thoroughly enjoyed that coarse as it really gives you a cross the board understanding of the theology of Christendom as apposed to denominational specific dogma. And finally in 2008 I went with my parish to Sydney for the WYD Pilgrimage which ended with having mass with the Pope with tens of thousands of other Catholics from around the world. After having long winded debates with a number of clergy and a rather earnest and candid conversation with several Franciscan Monks over the course of the pilgrimage, I knew I had learnt as much as I was going to learn about Catholic theology short of becoming a monk or priest, and the thought had crossed my mind. Could you imagine a Catholic priest who is really a Satanist?Talk about method, “the Actor’s Studio would like to acknowledge your role as Father Paul, in the role of your LIFE”. “Why thank you Mr Lipton you are too kind”. lol

No doubt some of you may be thinking that I am the furthest thing from a Satanist. Or at the very least that I seem to be a person who perhaps is not sure exactly what he believes and maybe should reconsider whether or not he is a Satanist. But as I previously stated, I kind of have a yes to life experience mindset, as well as this OCD way of thinking that I can’t truly “know” about something unless I have experienced it first hand. This obsession has taken me to some pretty wild places (including but not limited to a Trotsky Socialist Political Party and a brief foray in Islam HAMDILLAH!). So to repeat what I said earlier, I don’t claim to be an expert on Christianity by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a subject that I have spent a substantial portion of my life researching from first hand experience. As someone who has been both a student and teacher of Christian theology to some extent, I believe I can speak/write with some credibility and confidence on the subject.