It's The Journey That Matters...

[trek4fr]

Hi, all. Seeing as I’m in my middle fifties, my life’s journey has been a long one. I have a fairly long testimony of my exit from Christianity on my blog, but it wouldn’t be polite to post the whole thing here. So I will just share a few highlights.

 

I fell in love with Jesus when I was 12 years old. My sister and I were sent off to Vacation Bible School in the summer of ’72. I was enraptured by the story of how Jesus came to earth as a baby born of a virgin, did miracles to prove he was God, died for my sins so I could be forgiven, and rose again to make a way so I could go to live with him in heaven forevermore. The VBS teacher said all I needed to do in order to go to heaven someday was to tell Jesus I was a sinner, was sorry for my sins, and ask him to come into my heart to live. Of course, being in a Baptist church I was also warned about the consequences if I refused to believe in Jesus - namely, going to hell. But it was the love of Jesus that drew me and I responded to that love by becoming a Christian and beginning my life of faith.

 

During my teens, I started attending a Pentecostal church and became “on fire” for Jesus. I took my Bible to school with me throughout my high school years and witnessed to anyone I felt God was leading me to. I hung out with a group of Christians at school, but noticed they tended to argue a lot with each other over doctrinal issues. Sometimes they even thought other members of our Christian group were either not really saved and were going to hell. This began to bother me because I felt deep down Christians should be known by their love for each other, not by their arguments over doctrinal differences.

 

After high school, I decided to go to Bible College as I felt God was calling me into the ministry.  Bible College was a joy for me because I felt really close to God there, like I was doing what he wanted me to do, and I found I had an aptitude for theology. But because I had never spoken in tongues, the college asked me to reconsider whether or not I should continue my Christian education there. They wanted only “Spirit-filled” Christians. I didn’t return the next year.

After that year of Bible college, I married a Christian girl I had met in high school. Though we both came from rocky home backgrounds, we felt like we could make it because we were, after all, Christians in love with each other with God on our side. But our marriage proved to be a struggle. Neither of us was really equipped to work out our problems and all the going to church and praying we did just didn’t seem to help. After five years of marriage, things between us fell apart. Because we had no tools available to us to help us work anything out, we divorced. She got custody of our two children. I was decimated. In a short period of time, I had lost my wife and my children. And I wondered: despite many things in my past and in my life that may have been stacked against me, didn’t God have “a wonderful plan” for me? Didn’t Jesus come to give me an abundant life?

 

A few years later, I met a very special woman who was very accepting of me and my two children. We began dating and married almost a year later. My wife and I became very involved in our local church. We made quite a few friends there and felt loved. But I continued to grow agitated with the kind of Christianity that I was involved with. Maybe because of my past, coming from a poor, broken family, going through brokenness myself, I felt like Christians ought to be doing more to help the poor and broken instead of just sitting in pews singing, “I’ll Fly Away.” I began to wonder, “Why is Christianity so focused on leaving this world instead of on changing it for the better?” I wondered why Christians weren’t doing more to follow Jesus’ teachings about helping the poor, setting captives free, healing the sick and broken, and living out the Sermon on the Mount. I found that most of the songs and sermons I heard were not about what God could do through us here for the sake of others, but only about what Jesus has done for us personally in order to take us to heaven later. I began to see that despite claims to the contrary, Christianity can be a very self-centered religion, all about what God or Jesus does for us with very little about what we could do for others.

 

The “straw the broke the camel’s back” came for me one day during a church service. My wife and I were called out of the service to come tend our 4-year-old son who was in Children’s Church. When we got there, he was in the hall, crying hysterically. Between sobs, he repeated, “Daddy, why would Jesus burn me? Why?” I assured him Jesus loved him and would never burn him but he was simply too scared to really listen to what I was saying. My wife took him out to the car and I went into the Children’s Church room to see what had happened. The teacher had shown the kids an artist’s rendition of a man engulfed in flames, his arms raised to heaven, his face contorted with agony, crying out to heaven with a plea for mercy that would never be heard. She told the kids that this is what would happen to them if they did not accept Jesus as their personal savior. I reminded her that Jesus never once threatened children with hell, but she insisted that she did not want God holding the blood of these children on her hands. I was struggling myself at this time with the doctrine of hell, but I knew for sure it was inappropriate to foist this doctrine upon young children. We left that church shortly after that.

 

The truth of the matter is that I've lost my faith in Christianity. I can no longer live with the ugly side of Christianity - the empty promises of prayer, the judgmental attitudes of Christians, the constant guilt of sin, the desire to escape the world instead of trying to compassionately help it, the constant threats of hell, and the adherence to ancient superstitious worldviews as reality. All of this cognitive dissonance is too much for me to ignore.

 

Additionally, I found many things attributed to God in the Bible to be immoral or unethical. Things like God killing women and children in the flood. Things like God commanding the Israelites to kill their enemies, including women and children, and keeping virgins as war booty. Things like God testing people (remember Job and Jesus?) when he is supposedly omniscient. Things like God wanting his people to show their devotion to him by mutilating their sexual organs. Things like the notion that blood can somehow remove sin. Things like God sending evil spirits. Things like God hardening Pharaoh’s heart and then destroying him for having a hard heart. Things like God commanding genocide. Is this a “God who so loves the world”? I don’t think so. The more I read my Bible, the more I saw how contradictory and nonsensical a lot of it was, not only about God and humanity, but about the nature of reality. To me, Christianity is a religion rooted in the past, in ancient worldviews that are superstitious, nonsensical, and, sometimes, immoral.

 

So where am I today? Well, I still think there might be a Creator behind the universe who was the first cause and whose laws continue to sustain things. And I still like many of the teachings of Jesus, especially the ones about loving and helping each other. I think it is still a good idea to care for the earth, to be compassionate toward others, to feed the hungry, heal the sick, shelter the homeless, care for the poor, even to forgive our enemies rather than destroying them. But I'm no longer a Christian as Christianity and most Christians would define the term. So what am I? I guess I’m more of a naturalist than anything else. I believe my approach to life should be rational, sensible, pragmatic, while still seeking to live by the Golden Rule. I want to spend my remaining years enjoying the life that I now have, and trying to make life and our world better for my family and friends in whatever ways I can.

 

[trek4fr]

One last encouraging note from my testimony, if I may. As many of us well know, it is difficult and painful to leave the religion(s) of our youth, especially if family and friend relationships are involved. But I've found that it is important to stay as close to the truth of things as we can, at least as far as our understanding of truth goes. This, to me, is about the only thing that has made the cost worth it, knowing that the only thing I really have is myself and that is a unique, immeasurable gift. And, as someone has wisely noted, "For those who really care, it won't matter. For those who believe it does matter, they don't really care." Thanks for listening.

[amateur]

That's beautiful!  You really appreciate what's important in life, don't you?

 

By the way, your child has gotten over that vicious teacher's picture of the burning man, right?  What a horrible thing to do to a 4-year-old.  You answered her so well, saying that jesus never threatened children with hell.  

 

I'm about the same age as you.  It has been quite a journey, hasn't it?

[trek4fr]

Yes, Amateur, my son has gotten over that picture, though he still remembers it. Most of my family is still Christian, so I still have to deal with the complications there. But I've exposed my son to more rational ways of viewing and considering reality, especially science. He's almost 15 now. He occasionally goes to a UMC with my wife (they don't preach hellfire and brimstone in this one), but I feel it is better for me to help him learn the positives of naturalism and a real-world approach to reality than to preach the evils of religion to him. That way, he will have the tools to decide for himself what makes sense for his own life.

Thanks for reading, Amateur. The Bible College I attended was in Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh.

 

[amateur]

The Seminary in Oakland?  Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, isn't it?

[florduh]

Very glad you got the hell out.

[trek4fr]

No, Amateur, it wasn't that prestigious. Ha ha! It was Export Bible College, a training school for Pentecostal preachers and a place where young Pentecostal women could get their "MRS" degree. Ha ha!

[amateur]

No, Amateur, it wasn't that prestigious. Ha ha! It was Export Bible College, a training school for Pentecostal preachers and a place where young Pentecostal women could get their "MRS" degree. Ha ha!

I never heard of that one!  I do like Export tho; I dated a guy out there for a few years.  It's pretty out there.  

[TrueFreedom]

Welcome from a fellow North Texan, trek4fr!

[Ellinas]

Welcome.

 

You have few years more than I have on which to look back, but we're basically the same vintage.

 

Perhaps the advancing years encourage a degree of distance from the emotionalism of religious ideas and practices, and allow us to be more disinterested in our outlook.  The enthusiasm that Christianity habitually demands of its' followers is rather difficult to maintain into a more weary middle age.

 

It also strikes me as indicative of the nature of the religion that you got out in part as a result of seeing the suffering it would cause a child.

 

By the way, you're not alone in entertaining the possibility of some sort of deity out there - nor in deciding that it is not a reason to ignore rationality.

[trek4fr]

Thanks for the welcome and the comments, florduh, TrueFreedom (I'm a "browncoat" too. Second-best scifi show to ever be cancelled.), and Ellinas.

 

Ellinas, I think you bring up a very good point about middle age and youth-oriented religion. After all, the evangelical selling point of Christianity to our young people is, "If you died today, do you know where you would go?" It appeals, naturally, to the instinctive fear that we have of the unknown and the desire of young people to somehow want to shape their future (which is no bad thing in and of itself).

But Christianity posited in this way, i.e. all about the destination instead of the journey, makes young people believe that religion is not about what they might or can do for others, but about what holding to often-irrational beliefs can do for them.

As I've aged, and I may not even have tomorrow, I'm less concerned about what happens to me when I die. I *am* concerned, however, with what we are doing to our planet and the kind of world we leave to our children and grandchildren. Our world is quickly becoming more and more volatile and complicated. "Blind faith" is, IMO, not only ill-equipped to deal with our modern problems, but may even exacerbate further harm to humanity and our planet. I am all for tolerance and peaceful religion. But some forms of religion are not tolerant and are far from peaceful. It's for this reason that I seek out joining with others who care about the future of humanity and the world.

[StJeffTheIncomprehensible]

Hi trek4fr,

 

Good to meet you--I enjoyed reading a little about your journey. On my way out of Christianity I was asking myself many of the same questions you mention here. It's not easy to step back and take a critical look at things when you're in the middle of it all, but once you give just a little space and gain some perspective, you end up thinking "Holy shit, how did I ever believe that!"

 

Anyway, I'm happy you're here, and hope you find something to help you along your journey.

[eXcelInferno]

I love your testimony! It has really struck me as well how judgmental and corrupt Christians can get... It's sad that they often don't see it for what it is.

Thanks for sharing!