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Goodbye Jesus

A New Day


Dagny

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Here I am,

 

I am Dagny, meaning "new day", and I just got validated for this forum. I found this place many months ago but it took a while before I felt ready to join in. I'm glad to be here now!

 

I was a Christian since my childhood to when I was 26. I was quite serious about my faith - my understanding of the "gospel" was that people were sinful and heading to hell and could only be saved by believing in Christ. This idea scared me a lot and led me to obsess over questions such as "am I really a believer?", "how can I follow God sincerely?" and "if this is true, how can I convince the people around me?". Because of my desire to know the truth I spent a lot of time investigating my faith (while sharing it with others). This investigation took more than a decade and the final result of which was finally letting my faith go.

 

Well, this outcome was unexpected. But good. I am so glad to be free of religion!

 

Now I see how much christianity was damaging me. There's tons of examples I could give, but a big one was the idea of hell. It's awful, I don't want my worst enemies to go there. And not my friends and family for sure, or me myself! This troubled me so much! I had to find ways to convince others. I had to take this seriously. It had to give my faith priority while I was struggling in most areas of my life. Of course I tried to solve these problems, but at the same time I asked God to help me. Needless to say, God didn't help me. I only got more and more out of touch with reality, with myself and with people.

 

With all this fear, shame and guilt, leaving religion was scary. But I did and I think I told about a hundred people now, mostly Christians. Got a lot of the same boring responses, but at least most people were nice. It was shocking to discover that no one could give me good reasons for why they believe - I asked many of my friends very respectfully to explain their faith to me and they gave me silence or arguments like "everything is so beautiful, there has to be something", which to me just prove their ignorance. At best they gave me testimonies of what they thought God did in their life. I respect them for sharing those, but haven't heard any stories that made sense to me, just a lot of wishful thinking. I am glad to not be part of that cult anymore.

 

A new day has begun! My life is rapidly improving as I am becoming more and more free! I hope to share this journey with you, hear your stories and become friends along the way!

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Welcome, Dagny! Congratulations on deconverting.  We are glad you are here.

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Guest afireinside

Welcome Dagny!

 

I think we all lurked for a few weeks before we joined in, it's a safe haven for all of us refugees.

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Welcome!  It's good to hear from you Dagny.

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...Because of my desire to know the truth I spent a lot of time investigating my faith (while sharing it with others). This investigation took more than a decade and the final result of which was finally letting my faith go.

...

 

Welcome Dagny,

 

Like so many ex-christians, you searched for the truth, assuming it would draw you closer to jesus.  It's a painful process for which christians have no respect.  They somehow seem to think that ex-converts haven't asked, seeked, or knocked enough. They can't accept that the words of their saviour are false.  Jesus is NOT the truth.  Escaping the indoctrination is liberating.  

I wish you better times and increasing mental clarity from here on.

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Welcome, Dagny, from one former lurker to another!  It's much more fun getting involved in the conversations here.

 

I've had decades of never getting a reasonable answer to "Why do you believe?"  It truly is only, "because god," or "I grew up in the religion."  Oh.  I see.

 

I get a kick out of listening to religious radio stations, especially our local fundy one, and even the apologists only have answers that are like, "blahblahblahbiddyblah because god blahblah...."  Since being on this site, I can see through their arguments even easier than before.  They sound so sincere and pathetic.

 

And now you can ignore all the "blahblah because hell" arguments they use!

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Thanks xtify, mymistake, FreeThinkerNZ and afireinside for your warm welcome!

 

xtify, you are right. I have spoken with a hundred people about my deconversion, mostly Christians, and I never got any respect for this process. Sure most were friendly, but very few tried to empathize with me, instead they were critical. So I got into a lot of silly discussions and arguments. They told me that I was looking for answers in the wrong sources, implying I should avoid secular sources - these are university students and graduates I am talking about, they should be ashamed of themselves! It would be so cool if one said "man that must have been difficult. Here's a hug. Please tell me what it's like". It takes a great person to respond like this!

 

Christians talk about love, but don't practice it nearly enough.

 

But I don't want to judge them, having been one of them. They still have the idea that I need to get saved or else I would go to hell in their mind. And they fear that by my choice I am judging them personally - which is not true by the way -, or they start to doubt themselves because of what they hear. Like prplfox says in one of his YouTube videos, "under every Christian there's a human". That makes their response understandable to me.

 

My silent protest against Christianity is by refusing to see people as Christians. I don't want to be interested in labels, but in the people themselves.

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DagnY: Welcome to the site. I've been here about a year and a half and It has been very helpful.

 

As to the hypocritical conduct of Xtians, it sees that those that are outgoing personalities are the obnoxious ones, for the most 

part. But most Xtians I view as victims and perfectly harmless. The aggressive ones, however, drive me bananas. They've never been wrong on a single thing concerning their faith. Never. I have a brother who is like that. Has an answer for every single question about Xtianity no matter how stupid the answer is. And there are a lot of stupid answers to criticisms of the faith. 

 

I have never tried to argue Islam with a radical muslim, but I don't imagine them to be any more brainwashed than fundamental

Xtians. Anyway, I'm glad you're here.   bill

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Hi Dagny,

 

You are brilliant. Deconversion is hard. Christianity is infuriating.

 

Welcome!

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Welcome to this site.

 

It's a good place to find support.

 

And welcome to your own new dawn...!

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Welcome to ExC, Dagney,

 

I agree completely that at first leaving the religion behind is scary. But even that fear demonstrates the weakness of the religion. If it is the fear of hell that holds people in then to me the religion has no depth. Fear is hardly the basis for a good relationship. I am so glad you saw through the scam that is Christianity!!

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Welcome!

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that fear demonstrates the weakness of the religion

 

Exactly. Nice way of putting it.

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Thanks everyone! Your positive words mean a lot to me, it's great to have found this place and I'd love to read about your experiences! :)

 

Welcome to ExC, Dagney,

I agree completely that at first leaving the religion behind is scary. But even that fear demonstrates the weakness of the religion. If it is the fear of hell that holds people in then to me the religion has no depth. Fear is hardly the basis for a good relationship. I am so glad you saw through the scam that is Christianity!!

I agree with you. Looking back this fear of hell thing is indeed a scam; it can hold you in it's grip for a long time, even when the religion does not make sense to you. It was only when I decided that it does not make sense for an infinitely God to make people to care about what they do so much that He sends them to hell when they disobey, and that the only way to be saved was to belief in his Son - based on a book that's full of errors. So this life is some kind of test but not a fair one - and God decides (most of) our fate by his (in)action(s), but he punishes us for not making the right choice. When I saw that this story did not make any logical sense, and before this I discovered through the years that all my "evidence" for God is not evidence at all it was an obvious step to leave.

 

By the way, not my whole faith was based on this fear of hell. But I surely cared more about not going to hell then about heaven (which seemed boring and frankly pretty scary as well). Atheism has conquered my fear of death!

 

The only difficulty was the social dimension of this choice. Telling family. Telling friends. Leaving church. You know what it's like. For the first months I had dreams about leaving Christianity almost every night, and it was not about the hell thing anymore (I had many dreams about this when I was a child) but about the fear of judgement and social exclusion (which fortunately did not happen a lot, at least not directly).

 

This social fear and fear of hell now combine: I feel bad for Christians when I see that (for many) their worldview holds them back. I feel bad that they have to fear that I go to hell when I speak with them about my deconversion and that they have this fear in this life at all.

 

How did fear of hell influence your life? And what do you feel about people you know and love still being held captive by this fear?

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By the way, I discovered that many Christians around me deal with hell by saying things like "it's up to God", "He will judge rightly", "that people aren't Christian does not necessarily mean they are lost. We do not know how God will judge". And "Hell may not be so bad as we think, it could end" and "hell is the place without God and that's where you want to be if you do not want God in your life".

 

This never made sense to me and it makes me quite angry. The bible speaks about people going to hell and hell being a torment - people just ignore these verses. I think it's because they are nice people who can't imagine friends and family deserving hell, and at the same time they are reluctant to tell people that they may go to heaven and hell because they know they'll be ridiculed - so they prefer to stay quiet and ignore this part of the "gospel". They create a "feel good" religion that does not require much of them - the fact that the bible speaks about people going to hell does not make them care so much about it.

 

It's pretty pathetic, but at the same time I am glad that these people can live normal life (though sadly it requires them to be hypocritical in their religion).

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How did fear of hell influence your life? And what do you feel about people you know and love still being held captive by this fear?

The fear of hell did not have too much of an impact on me while I was a Christian. I just didn't worry about it. However, when I first determined that Christianity was a false religion, I did think of hell. I thought that I had to be as certain as I was capable that I was correct because if I were wrong and Christianity were true, hell would be my destiny. That, in turn, led me to study the Bible, and particularly the four Gospels, carefully. At the end of months of in-depth study, I became convinced that Christianity is untrue and my concerns about hell were and are gone.

 

It saddens me greatly when I see people, whether in real life, on ExC, or elsewhere, who suffer from a fear of hell. Sometimes, I just want to burst into some church where a preacher is giving a fire and brimstone sermon and shout out, "Do not believe what this man is saying! It is a terrible lie!"

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By the way, I discovered that many Christians around me deal with hell by saying things like "it's up to God", "He will judge rightly", "that people aren't Christian does not necessarily mean they are lost. We do not know how God will judge". And "Hell may not be so bad as we think, it could end" and "hell is the place without God and that's where you want to be if you do not want God in your life".

 

This never made sense to me and it makes me quite angry. The bible speaks about people going to hell and hell being a torment - people just ignore these verses. I think it's because they are nice people who can't imagine friends and family deserving hell, and at the same time they are reluctant to tell people that they may go to heaven and hell because they know they'll be ridiculed - so they prefer to stay quiet and ignore this part of the "gospel". They create a "feel good" religion that does not require much of them - the fact that the bible speaks about people going to hell does not make them care so much about it.

 

It's pretty pathetic, but at the same time I am glad that these people can live normal life (though sadly it requires them to be hypocritical in their religion).

That sums up my experience with what I've heard people say regarding hell, and it sums up my reaction to what I've heard people say vs. what I've read in the bible.  I have to admit I was one of those people who never took hell seriously, and it did tip me into agnosticism years ago because, really, if you're going to be a xian shouldn't you take xianity seriously?  

 

Or just get out of xianity altogether, which is much more reasonable.

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Welcome to the forums.  I can relate to a lot of your story, especially seeking a god who won't be found and becoming increasingly out of touch with yourself and reality.  My deconversion took a total of four years, two years of a total crisis of faith followed by two more years of learning how not to be a christian.  All four years were brutal, but I'm none the worse for wear, I suppose.  Anyway, I'm glad you made it out of there and into here.  Give us a holler if you need anything.

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