I talked with my brother by phone this weekend, and he told me that he had “got a wild hair”, and decided to look up some of the people that we had gone to “church” with as children growing up in the Worldwide Church of God. He seemed pretty smug when he told me that the three people that he found on Facebook were now, like him, all professing atheists. I’m not sure why he wanted to make sure that that I became aware of their atheism. Was it because my Christianity is making a little nervous?

That the three people that he found were now atheists did not surprise me, but it did make me think a little more about something that has concerned me since I began my search to find out who God really was and henceforth becoming a Christian.

When I began to seriously research God and Christianity, I was all over the place on the Internet and with other reading materials. Anything and everything seemed relevant. I read much about the Early Church, the Protestant Reformation, Gnosticism, Catholicism, Atheism, Cults and anything else that I could find in reference to Christianity and religion. One thing that kept popping up on my computer screen were all of the atheist websites that seemed to be all over the Internet. Many of them seemed to be relatively benign, simply putting forth their views but many more were downright militant. Then, as my research progressed, I found that more and more of the atheists that I was encountering on the internet were previously associated with the “church” that I grew up in, The Worldwide Church of God, or some other abusive religion.

Even though I debunked many of the tenants of Armstrongism (the religious belief system of the Worldwide Church of God and its many splinter groups) years ago, I still read much of the information that I find from former members. I was only mildly surprised to find a great many of them to now be atheists or agnostics, especially second generation adult children who grew up in this cult. Although growing up in the WWCOG definitely left its scars on me and I feel that those scars were a primary reason for my struggles with encountering Christ in a personal, meaningful way, I have never considered myself atheist. I would say though that I was on the verge of becoming agnostic when Christ rescued me from myself and I came to know Him for who He really is.

One website that I stumbled upon several months ago stated that roughly 40,000 of the adult children “survivors” of the WWCOG were now atheist/agnostic. I find that number hard to believe and even harder to substantiate, but I do find that a very large percentage of the Armstrong “survivors” are now either atheist/agnostic or are embracing gnosticism or some other non- or neo-Christian theism. I’ve not researched how many adult children of other cults or cult-like religions professing some form of Christianity have also had such difficulties as adults with coming to know Christ, but I would imagine that the numbers are similarly high.

I can see how this has happened. When a person learns that basically everything that they were taught about God and Jesus was a lie, they tend to have a hard time believing anything at all about God or Jesus. I left home and “The Church” in 1983 at the age of 16 and spent the next eight or so years basically just decompressing from that experience, with very little interest in God or Christianity at all. In my twenties I began to know that I needed God, but basically had no idea who or what He was. I knew that the teachings that I grew up were wrong, but it took many years of reading my Bible as well as other Christian writings to find any degree of comfort level with dispelling the entire doctrine of Armstrongism.

It’s really difficult to accept the fact that essentially everything that you were taught as a child about God and Christianity was incorrect and still retain any faith at all in the God of the Bible. One must first unlearn and disprove all that they were taught as a child and young adult and then relearn what the truth is. It is also very difficult to trust any religious teachers, pastors or theologians to supply you with the truth when the “Apostle” that you grew up listening to turns out to be a false prophet. I can see how becoming an atheist or agnostic could seem to be a much “easier, softer way” than to actually read the Bible and all of the commentaries to come to a conclusive belief in who God actually is and that Jesus actually did come two-thousand years ago to show us how to live and then to die for our sins.

Additionally, I found it hard to believe in a Jesus who loved and cared about me when all that I learned about God growing up was the fiery Wrath-of-God Jehovah who seemingly couldn’t wait to throw all of the sinners into the Lake of Fire (i.e. Hell). Closed, controlling religions such as the Worldwide Church of God and other cults tend to try and control their flock with a doctrine of the fear of Gods wrath instead of embracing their flock with the truth of Gods love. It’s all a lot of “you better do this or else…” instead of “God loves you no matter how many times you screw up.”

My brother once told me that he would rather burn in Hell than to worship an egotistic God with the temper of a three-year-old. I have seen than same sentiment mirrored on many atheist websites. In fact, although he won’t admit to it, I imagine that’s where he picked up the terminology from. Reflecting back on my youth, I don’t remember hearing the term “Grace” one time from the pulpit while I was growing up. Grace simply wasn’t part of the curriculum. In some ways, the God that I was taught about did resemble that ill-tempered three-year-old that my brother was refering to.

Another reason that I believe that so many people who grew up in cults as well as other “closed high-demand religious groups” turn to atheism/agnosticism as well as gnosticism and other “new-age” religions is the proliferation of all of the religious as well as anti-religion websites on the internet. When I first began my search for “the truth” about God and Christianity, the internet was still in its infancy and I had to do the bulk of my research the old-fashioned way by reading the Bible and using some very large and hard to read commentaries like Matthew Henry and Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown. Now, and for perhaps the last fifteen years or so, all one has to do is log on to the internet and you can find any number of people willing to commentate on the Bible. Some of them have some very good things to say, others not so good, and some are simply completely crazy. It can be very difficult to separate the “wheat from the tares” when you are looking for theology on the internet.

Now, I’m not saying that the internet isn’t a very useful tool for someone looking for Biblical truth, but one must use a very high degree of discernment. I pray regularly that God will guide me in my search for truth about him and keep me from straying into potentially dangerous ground. I have found some very enticing websites from people professing to be atheists who gave some very good arguments for their beliefs and in all honesty the whole Gnostic theology has its attractions as well, but at the end of the day, I can thankfully say that Gods grace came through for me. I can see, however, how someone coming out of a cult could be easily drawn into atheism or Gnosticism from simply spending time on some of the websites available and reading some of the publications, both fiction and non-fiction from these camps.

By Gods loving grace I came through the darkness and into the light, but it was a very long and arduous journey. I ended up going down a few blind alleys that turned into dead ends and had to turn back. Coming out of a cult or other closed, legalistic, or spiritually abusive religious group and then coming to know a loving Savior is possible; I did it. It’s not necessarily easy, though. I went through this journey largely on my own, with only God’s loving hand to guide me and a few Christians that I largely didn’t trust giving me encouragement along the way.

Those Christians were as helpful as they could be, but they still didn’t understand how difficult my “deprogramming” was because they had simply learned about Christ and came to love Him. For the most part they didn’t have to unlearn and then relearn Christ the way that I did. I hope that one day I can guide someone through the same path that I came down, but perhaps it won’t be as difficult for them since I already know the road, at least to here anyway.