Moving Further Away All The Time

[OnceConvinced]

It's been a long time since I last visited. Probably sometime last year. When I joined up here I was pretty much disillusioned with Christianity and although hadn't firmly decided I was an ex-christian, was heading that way.

 

Well now I haven't been to church in over a year. Many times I've prayed asking God if he is there, could he please just let me know, even if it was just a sense of his peace. But it never came. God seems very uninterested in me. Wish I'd figured that out years ago.

 

A friend at work encouraged me to go and see a guy speaking here where I live. An American - former Kung-Fu master/ bodyguard guy who turned his life around. Can't recall his name. Part Chinese. So I thought "God, this is it. I'll go and hope that maybe you'll touch my heart or something like you always used to. Here's your chance to convince me to return to Christianity." So I went and although the story was an inspiring one, I didn't felt touched. In fact I felt annoyed at a lot of the crap that was spouting from his mouth, stuff I used to believe without question. Made me realise even more that Christians are truly kidding themselves with the stuff they believe.

 

Yep. God's not interested in me.

 

I felt it was time to return here and get involved in some more discussions. Can't believe it's been so long now. I guess the thought of Hell doesn't bother me so much anymore, as I never truly believed it was a place of eternal suffering anyway. But I guess the one big thing that still bothers me is that I'm no longer going to go to heaven. (Mainly because I figure it's most likely a fictitious place anyway). It's sort of sad really. One good thing about being a Christian was the belief that one day I'd be living in paradise, so all the time I wasted in my life didn't matter too much. But now I'm almost 40 it seems I've wasted half my life.

[mwc]

I'm not quite sure what to make of your post.

 

It's kind of hard to come to terms with the fact that you might have "lost" your faith. There's definitely a period of adjustment and I suppose depression goes along with it (maybe those stages of grief?). This is probably the time when I went back but it didn't last for more than a few weeks since it was just the fear of "hell" that drove me more than any real conviction and once you're convinced that there's no heaven the fear of hell wears off pretty quick it seems.

 

I imagine that the idea that you've wasted your life will wear off with time too...unless you maybe lived in a cave for jesus or something...then, sorry, you really did waste your time. Otherwise you only wasted part of your time and everyone does that on something or other...so no worries there. Instead of wasting time on the old religion start wasting time on something else. I'm 38 and unless something kills me off early I've got another 38 to do things (unfortunately youth IS wasted on the young so there are a few things I can't anymore do without risk of injury).

 

Oh well, enough of my ramblings for now. I'd say "cheer up" but that usually just makes me feel worse so just post and see if that helps any. We got a bunch of helpful folks no matter what you decide to do.

 

mwc

[OnceConvinced]

I appreciate your comments and to be honest I don't really know what the purpose of my post was myself. I guess I was kind of just rambling. lol

 

I have a lot of good memories of life as a Christian, but I think I lead a way too sheltered life and missed out on a lot of things.

 

I think if God really wanted me back as a Christian, he'd have made some solid moves to get me to return to church. I think I'm too far gone now to return, even if I wanted to. Whenever a Christian rattles on about their beliefs now, I just can't help but wonder why on Earth I used to believe all that crap. I guess my eyes have been opened.