My story

[thomas]

Leaving Christianity is not easy. I am still struggling with it, but I have reach a point, where it is obvious, that I never will be able to go back to the old kind of “bible believing”, “born again” Christianity I was raised in. I do not know if there is a God – rational thinking says “no”, but my feelings still says “yes”. But even if there is a God, it is totally insane to believe, that such a God should reward Christians for their life forsaking life style by giving them eternal life, while punishing people who actually enjoy life, by taking their life from them. It makes no sense.

 

When I as a youngster became “born again”, it first felt as an enormous relief. My Christian upbringing had made me fearful of death and hell, so when converting, I felt that this fear left me, and that I had got a totally new life. As I gradually became dissatisfied with my Christian life, instead of leaving it, I looked for more spiritual power, and ended up in Charismatic/Pentecostal circles. I became addicted to Church and went there 3 – 4 times a week. In the beginning everything seemed fine, but when I had not been to Church for a couple of days, I felt empty inside and looked forward to next time.

 

At that time, my everyday life and my church became two very different worlds. In my every day life, I was student at a secular university, and I liked it very much. But the kind of behavior expected in Church (charisma, miracles and nice cloth), was so different from what I was taught at university (rational thinking). Basically I felt most at home in the university world, but at the same time, I was addicted to Church..

 

Over time, I became more and more dissatisfied with this situation, so I started to look for better versions of Christianity. Basically, I was trying to find a way to both be a happy Christian and a normal rational human being.

 

After a long time (and after some rethinking about what it meant to be a spiritual person) I thought I had found it. My new Church said, that it was okay to question the Faith, because, if the Faith was truth, it could stand it. So I started to in my free time to study theology in a church based program for distance education. In the beginning everything seemed fine, for after some years, I really began to see how self contradicting the Christian theology is. And as I wanted to question different tings, I realized that the other teachers and the other students generally only was able to questions things to a certain limit. They were not really open minded, but started do defend the Faith.

 

But thanks to theology, I learned that:

- the different proofs for the existence of God (like Aquinas’ 5 ways) do not really prove anything.

- Christian language is metaphorical in nature, and therefore the Faith can always be reinterpreted as you like (magnificent tool to manipulate other people)

 

So now, I have no good reason to believe in Christianity any more, but my feelings still tell me, that there is a God. But according to theology, I dangerous to build on religious feelings alone, because they are so subjective.

 

Last summer I decided to take a break from voluntary Church work, because I needed time to think things through. Also my family (wife and there Children) was not happy about the amount of time, I used on Church. So it was a very reasonable decision to take a break, but the reaction from people in Church was surprising. Of course I did not expect them to be delighted about it, but they started to treat me and my wife as people who needed to reconvert. So they quickly lost us. I do not miss Church, but I do feel sad (and also a little angry), when I think about the way the whole think happened.

 

It is more than a year ago, that I first discovered places like this one, at the internet. I have read a lot of deconversion stories, and they have really helped me to see, how I have been manipulated by Christianity. First time I really understood, that the existence of the universe does not prove the existence of a creator, I felt that a pressure disappered. I suddenly realized, that I through my whole life had the idea, that God was watching every single detail of my life in order to control my. So the idea of no God, seemed promising. But then I also started to feel worried about my financial situation. I realized, that some of my previous financial decisions, were too risky. When I made them, I did not really find them risky, but now without the Christians God, I saw the situation in a whole new (and more sober) light. It was a scaring discovery, but now I am able to use reason instead of prayer to guide me, and that’s a big improvement.

[pitchu]

Welcome, Thomas.

 

Have a good time (for its own sake) with all of us here at Dave's Place.

[Reach]

Hi Thomas!

 

You should fit in here quite well. Many of us struggled with grief over several of the things we had to part with when we were forced to walk away from the Christian "life." I wish I had a dime for every Christian who thinks we simply walked away because of "our love for the world and its pleasures." There were costs aplenty to leaving and they are not limited to emotional or mental anguish either. Some of us found that seemingly or literally overnight, without justifiable provocation, our relationships with family and friends were ripped apart at the seams. For me, those divisions remain.

 

For most of us here, leaving Christianity had little or nothing to do with a pursuit of "the lusts of our flesh." For some of us, like you, it became a matter of integrity and rational thinking. We were no longer able to believe and we were not willing to pretend otherwise. We recognized that we had been force-fed a pile of lies and we simply had to leave behind all the irreconcilable garbage we'd been feeding on.

 

Welcome home, Thomas. Here, you are free to doubt.

Reach

[♦ nivek ♦]

Welcome Thomas...

 

Part of cutting loose of the comfortable is the brain cramping that often hits us while we unravel the knots in our thought processes..

 

I'd like to say "Oh it is all OK now and you'll never have another single doubt or have a trigger that will hurt you.."

 

Time, and education, friendship with things outside the Flock Box, and being able to *see* with un-tinted glasses makes a hellova difference.

 

Best advise I can give is that here at Dave's House is to ask, read, learn, and don't feel like you are alone.

 

The 'net has drawn together a decent group of some of the coolest un_churched (and a few still in that choose to hang here) people I've met.

 

Come on in, good place to spend on.ass, on.line time.

 

Be welcome,

 

n

[LloydDobler]

I was gonna make a doubting thomas joke but reach beat me to it, dammit.

 

Welcome man, you're on the right path. It's just very very hard to let go of something you believed all your life. I hung on to the 'christianity is untenable but I still believe in Jesus and god' worldview for about 3 years before I finally said it out loud, that the christian god just isn't there and the bible is baloney.

[pandora]

Interesting that your previous faith led you to make unwise financial decisions... I am happy that you have found true peace. It's wonderful, isn't it? Freedom to judge ideas based on their own merit with your own mind, and not what others tell you to believe... The endless circular mind game is over, my friend...

[Loren]

Welcome, Thomas.

I also had to leave due to integrety issues which led me to a place where I simply didn't have the freedom to choose to believe (or not) any longer. I did enough study and thinking to come all the way out of it, with no going back. I could no longer choose to believe that the Bible is true any more than I could choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese.

 

Fortunately for me, I missed out on the weird social reactions of the church crowd. I'm very glad to have missed that part, and sorry that you and your family had to go through it.

 

So please feel free to get to know the good folks here and have some fun!

 

Loren

[thomas]

I was gonna make a doubting thomas joke but reach beat me to it, dammit.

 

Hi, hi you have a good sense of humor

[thomas]

Thanks to all of you for the warm welcome (ups, this sounds like a phrase from Church).

 

 

Interesting that your previous faith led you to make unwise financial decisions...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

It is now 30 year ago I became “born again”, so I have material to a long and detailed story. But I have tried not to make it too long, and just concentrate on a few highlights. But if you like, you are all welcome to ask me questions.

 

It seems to me, that Christianity manipulates people by working with their basic assumptions about life. Some of that manipulation I discovered gradually over time, while other parts of it almost came as an instant revelation. The part about my financial decisions was such an instant revelation. It was scaring, it was like being drunk and drive your car in the wrong side of the highway, and then suddenly become sober.

 

I have been running a small IT consulting business for some years and have a few regular customers. When I started, one major reason was, that I wanted to have a flexible job, that also would allow to take time of for voluntary church work. I felt God called me to do Church work and for a period of time, I spent one day week working with church administration. Of course, it was totally insane to do so (your own business requires all your time and energy) but I was convinced that I just should seek the Kingdom of God, and then ……….. Now, the Church work was not a big success. I learned a lot about churched from the inside, and I felt I had to leave it for the sake of integrity. Then I changed to another Church where I quickly became involved in more church work and began to study theology in my free time (as mentioned in my original post). Later as my belief in Christanity and church began to break down, I started gradually to put more efforts in my business.

 

One night when I was lying in bed and trying to sleep, I was thinking about the existence of God. I had read some atheist material explaining, why God as a creator was an unnecessary hypothesis. And I had to agree with it, so I was trying to imagine what the world looked like from an atheist point of view. And as I finally really understood it, I had this remarkable experince that a pressure left from me. It was the feeling (as mentioned in my original post), that God had been watching me to control me. And this was a total surprise, I had never noticed this feeling before it left me (you know, just like if some background music in the supermarket suddenly stops).

 

And then it dawned to me what a risky path I had been on with my consulting business. It was just as big a surprise to find out, as the thing about God watching me. I had never realized how many risks I had been running, how easily things could have gone wrong etc., how little I have saved for retirement etc. It was really an like an alcohol that had blinded me to the risks. (Of course I am not against running calculated risks, because that is done with open eyes. I ran my risks with closed eyes).

 

I can tell more about it, but I think you get the picture. After this experience, that feeling that there is a God came back to me, and so to speak tried to comfort me and blind me again. But I am quite sure, that even if there is some kind of a God (or an intelligent principle, or force) somewhere, it is not a God, who gives me special treatment for serving him. I now know, I have to live by the same rules as all other people.

[pitchu]

Thomas, what a good point re: the realization that if a god was watching you, it was in order to control you.

 

I remember as a very little kid being consumed with the idea, which my grandmother imparted, that God watched my every move. Rather than producing shame and paranoia in me, as it probably should have, this translated, to me, as my being on a stage, giving God a performance. Consequently, I tried to be unrelentingly entertaining for a God so fixated on me!

[thomas]

... this translated, to me, as my being on a stage, giving God a performance.  Consequently, I tried to be unrelentingly entertaining for a God so fixated on me!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hi, hi, interesting reation.