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I was brought up in an Afrikaanse family during the 50's, who were members of the "Nederduidse Gereformeerde Kerk", one of three sister churches in South Africa. I spend my schooling in a boarding house Middelburg Transvaal where I learned that Black Persons were a sign from God after Cain and Abel (Adam and Eve's two children) had that terrible argument and God was upset and said one of them will always be the slave of mankind and that's where Black people came from. That never bothered me at the time because I was to young to understand the real world around me. What did bother me was that I could never understand where all those other people of Earth that Cain and Abel met up with, came from if God created only for Adam, Eve and their two sons. I was never allowed to ask those questions during the 60's.
Life was just great for me and my God at the time in the white only boarding school. Later I got my call-up papers to the Nasionale Weermag (they classified me as a "G3" because God or the Devil gave me Polio) to fight the "enemy". There I met some Jewish guys who told me they also worship one third of my gods but not the Jesus and Holy Ghost ones. They also believed God created everything in six days and got tired and needed to sleep for a day. I used to think it was totally ridiculous that the Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth took a break on Saturday, and not Sunday like the rest of the world knows it happened. But we all agreed on talking snakes, donkeys and talking burning bushes. We agreed to disagree on the Walking on Water thing, Turning Water Into Wine for your mate's wedding, and healing certain ailments (excluding amputees or polio sufferers) of persons Jesus Christ found wherever he walked. (Jesus Christ never healed anyone in China at the time). What really concerned me most about my Jewish friends is that they didn't have a hell to go to if they committed the appropriate sins. But....they told me that my God is their God, and that was enough for me. At least they weren't a sect who just stole ideas from the NG Kerk, I thought. They were chosen people, and so were us Afrikaners. Ek was so bly gewees.
My first trip to Europe as a youngster was shortly after I defended my Country from "die gevaar", and I was in total awe with all those cathedrals in France, Germany and of course...Italy. I couldn't tell Gothic from Roman to Baroque architecture, but that never mattered, I just knew that my God was the right God, and all the paintings and fresco's showed that Jesus was a White Man. All that money, all that wealth in the Vatican....I just knew that God cared for me. I just didn't like all those graven images, the Ten Commandments said it was a sin. But it's OK. Who can doubt the Holy Pope and the Greatest Religion on Earth?
In 1977, I went to Art College in Bok street in Johannesburg. There I met a Muslim person for the first time in my life. He told me that he also worshiped the same God as mine and my Jewish friends, which made him OK to me, I just never understood the white horse with wings part. That was not in my Holy Bible written by men who were led by the other third of my Holy Trinity Gods: The Holy Ghost/Spirit.
At this stage I still loved my God with my whole heart. I had some heathen friends who made me aware of all those funny things in the Holy Scriptures written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit/ Ghost (one third of the Trinity Gods) like woman grabbing men by their testicles if they quarrel, covering up women and not lust after them, homosexual men wanting sex from angels, bashing babies on rocks and keeping the virgins for yourself, people became hundreds of years old, men's family registers, cutting and collecting foreskins for the king, and oh, many more things. But that's just Old Testament things which the Holy Spirit wrote out of context and is no longer valid, I told them. Just the new Testament where God the Father sends His only son through the Virgin Mary and then man goes and crucify him but God the father takes Him back into heaven for our sins.
There was a group of Hare Krishna people who wore those bright saffron /curry colors and I could see them a mile off in Joubert Park from the Art Gallery. They always looked so happy. I must admit, I thought they smoked a lot of pot but I soon found out I was not going to score there. I could also not keep up with them in the streets of Hillbrow because I just could not walk and sing at the same time. The old leg, you know.
But then one of them made friends with me and explain all their God- systems to me and all I wanted from their Gods was pot and a book on Karma Sutra which was all banned in South Africa by the very powerful white national government at the time. They also believed that their Gods send floods (long before my Gods did that) and killed every little child, their pets, their sinful fathers and mothers, insects, fish and everything else. I liked that. I couldn't tell Buddha from Shiva and Ganesha, but what the heck, everyone at Art College thought is was cool not to eat animals and be thin. This phase came and went, it was just another temptation that Domenie Barnard warned me about..... in my life.
After College, during the mid 80's came Disco, with John Travolta, Saturday night Fever, Golden Girls, Dallas, Poppers and "Ecstacy". I thought I was in Heaven. I soon found out that life is very real and the party ended abruptly with all the bombings in our South African cities. I started reading Revelations in all earnest as I remembered how Domenee Barnard told us about the end of times.
Well, it turned out that Domenee Barnard was wrong, because the 90's came and found Heaven again: Rave parties and a new evil called "The Internet". The age of information brought me so meany websites telling and re-telling me all I wanted to hear about Jesus my personal Savior. But it also said things about Atheism, Agnostics, Humanists, Ken Ham, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, The Cult of Dusty, WhyWontGodHealAmputees, Non Stamp Collector, and within a month of reading and watching Religion vs Un-Religion.....I became an Atheist. A Non Theist. Not the Devil, not a sinner, nobody. Just a person who go through life without any further indoctrination, superstition or having to give money to the Gods.
2015. The Age of Information taught me more in fifteen years than what I have learned in my entire life. I can now see what a Religious Terrorist is and that skin colour has nothing to to with this. It's not a sin to be Gay. Flying into buildings with hijacked planes is not Gods way of reminding us of what he has done with the Tower of Babel. The Holy Bible written by men guided by the Holy Spirit is just another book. Science is the evolving and ever changing and improving quest of us. Heaven is a place on Earth.
