Confusing Questions, Broken Promises, Unfaithful God

[R. S. Martin]

I'm not sure where to post this one. It started as a comment to posts in How Much Shit That You Rant About Today, Did You Do As A Fundie? but it got too long for that. I conclude I was one seriously confused lady trapped in a maelstrom of religion I couldn't get out of for a very long time. (My story is in my profile for those who don't know it.) This post is more about working through some of the confusing questions than about deconversion itself. The description for Testimonies of Former Christians says:

Help encourage someone else who is trying to deprogram themselves from religion - tell them how you did it or are doing it.

I'm not sure if I can help anyone else but I hope I can help myself by writing it out, or maybe someone can help me. The word "deprogram" jumps out at me. As I was writing this post (I'm writing the beginning last), I was hit by how serious I held these very contradictory questions. I guess we're talking about programing all right.

 

Fortunately I was never a "fundy", just a mild, don't-think-about-it-much xtian. So, not anything that I can recall...

 

Me, too. Pretty much.

 

 

I can't say that I never thought about it. I thought about it a LOT. Here I was--living this pious Christian life because I was born into it and the only way out was to make a radical cultural change that required renouncing the only social universe I knew, in exchange for total strangers and a way of life that was totally foreign to me. Fortunately, my church was against evangelization and proselytization. All the same, the NT was pretty clear about the Great Commission and the excuses my church gave for not doing it were pretty lame. One day when my neighbour was giving me a ride to somewhere, she asked me how we celebrated Christmas. At the time, I had no idea what church, if any, she and her husband attended. I told her we celebrated the spiritual aspect more. She quickly said, "Yes, yes, we all focus more on the spiritual aspect." That was the end of that. That was my evangelizing effort. I could not imagine what she understood about anything spiritual. They used to have drinking parties in ther backyard every summer. I found out somewhere along the line that they were Roman Catholic. I don't know if they went to church but they were good neighbours.

 

I used to harbor thoughts of pity toward those who weren't "saved" and thought that John Lennon's song "Imagine" was borderline blasphemy, but never thought to do anything about it. But I always did have a problem with evangelism and proselytizing.

 

About feeling for those who weren't saved. First, we didn't "get saved." We "came to accountability," and "repented of our sins/first Adam," and "grew in the Lord." We saw OSAS as heresy. All prayer in my community was silent except for one prayer at church led by the preacher. And in it, the preachers prayed for all kinds of people but lots of people seemed to be left out. I had a serious problem with that, so I used to pray for those who had no one to pray for them. I felt sorry for those poor left-out souls who had no one to pray for them. That would have been people like us--good citizens who were relatively prosperous and healthy and good and therefore never made any headlines but doubtlessly had the regular daily grind to face just like any Christian. Okay, most of us on here might have families praying desperately for us, but there's lots of secular folk who are so far removed from religion that they have no one to pray for them.

 

My church never had anything to say about homosexuality back when I was still attending (going on 14 years now, so what they do now, I don't pretend to know.)

 

The only reason my church never had much to say about homosexuality was because it was seen as so far off-the-map wrong. This could have changed in the ten years since I left them, what with gay marriage now legalized here in Canada.

 

I'm just trying to reconcile everything I'm saying on here with the questions I've had all my life about religion. My concerns about obeying the commands in the NT about tithing (my church didn't tithe) and evangelizing were real. Yet so were my questions about whether God existed, how Jesus' death worked, how come prayer was necessary, etc. I had been promised that my questions would eventually be answered so I lived on that promise and focused on the smaller items such as prayer and evangelization. But no answers were given on those items, either. My church was no good on answers at all. Nor was God. And I wasn't good on faith.

 

After all, the Bible does say if a person isn't faithful in little things, how can we trust him in bigger things. So it's no wonder that when God didn't come through for me in the easy questions that I stopped trusting him about the salvation question and even about his own existence. (I did hang around till I was well over forty.) Can't trust a god for the big things when he doesn't come through for the little things. Like my sister said to me, maybe we don't have to understand.

 

Right, we don't. But we don't have to believe them either.

 

Life is a laboratory. I let God prove himself. He failed. He (the church in his name) made promises he didn't keep. If there's anything that pains me more than confusing questions, it's broken promises.

[Eccles]

RubySera,

I read with great interest and fascination the post " The Bible was not the product of some deity" in this Forum by Franciscan Monkey. HereticZero's reply shows the big problem with the belief in Christianity based on belief in the bible:

"People have come to believe the bible is true because the idea of it being true has been pounded into their memory night and day by someone telling them it is true night and day. Peer pressure is what keeps the church running. This is why the church threatens to pull its fellowship from anyone who does not toe the line. Fear of being turned out keeps the membership in line. Fear runs the church. If someone does not believe the bible is true and without error then they are obviously against the holy ghost which is an unforgiveable sin. My life has been much more peaceful since I left the cult behind."

 

Franciscan Monkey whose brain had not been totally poisoned by Christianity, while partaking in all those bible studies, noticed many contradictions, expecially in the Gospels. He decided to read the bible from an objective point of view. He soon realised what crap is in the bible. it does not make sense.

 

As far as charity and helping one's fellow human, the notion that no non-Christian could be that way is ridiculous. There are many Atheists who are better than many Christians. As far as humility is concerned, the least humble is the "Holy" Roman Catholic Church. Look at it's opulence. Look at how it's clergy consider themselves above their faithfull. If Jesus was the person depicted in the bible, how would he react if he returned and saw the Vatican and the Pope. The word "humility" is not in the vocabulary of the Roman Catholic Church. I can personally testify to that from the priests and bishops I have known.

 

It took Franciscan Monkey all that time with bible story to become an Atheist.. He saw the problem from within. In my case I was aslo brought up in a strict Christian tradition: Roman Catholic parents, who were very good people. I saw the problem from without. I mean by that my study of Astophysics. That led me to the logical conclusion that there was no "God" and no creation. I suppose I was never a devout Roman Catholic. I appeased my mother by going along with the religious deception until I could not stand it any longer. One Easter sunday about 30+ years ago I announced I had had it and would no longer go to Mass because I no longer believed there was a "God'. Mother did accept my decision.

[GraphicsGuy]

Hey Ruby, that was really good. I think it's okay to have it in the "Testamonies" area...kind of a follow-up testamony so to speak.

 

I can really, really relate to the broken promises. Ultimately, that was the final blow to my own faith. I feel I don't even have to go into science, biblical controversies or anything to get to the nitty-gritty of why I deconverted.

 

Those are all sound, logical backups to my real reason for deconversion...which is broken promises. I can label out verse after verse after verse that promises healing in the Bible. Hell, it took me over an hour to do it on video. Jesus promised healing over and over and over yet I was not healed. I trusted those verses for years and years and years yet continued to suffer.

 

When I finally took the matter into my own hands and was "healed" within days I couldn't wrap my emotions around the "why???" of it all. The only conclusions I could come to were:

 

a) Jesus hates me

Xianity is bullshit

c) God has a "noninterference policy"

d) God doesn't exist

 

All I got from the Xians was, "this is a test," "it was God's will," "you didn't believe the right things," "those promises don't apply anymore," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

 

Pat answers and bullshit!

 

After all, the Bible does say if a person isn't faithful in little things, how can we trust him in bigger things.

 

Anyway, enough of that rant 'o mine! I wanted to comment on this line, but this was a big paranoia for me. I was terrified and often thought that God might view me as the "wicked servant" because I could not get my act together and grow the "investments" he had entrusted to me. I guess I viewed myself that way since I thought I was so worthless.

 

Fucking religion...

[R. S. Martin]

Eccles, I'm glad your mother accepted your decision to deconvert. I saw the thread you referred to earlier but could not find it just now.

 

Hey Ruby, that was really good. I think it's okay to have it in the "Testamonies" area...kind of a follow-up testamony so to speak.

 

That was my thinking. They can always move it if it should be elsewhere. At first I thought to put it in Rants and Replies but I didn't feel like high-gear angry ranting. More just retrospective making sense of what was really going on, maybe like a memorial for a way of life that can never be again. In Christianity, "testimony" does not necessarily mean how one got converted. It can also just mean a "witness to the truth" (of Christ or whatever). In churches where that kind of "testimony" is given, a testimony tends to focus more on thoughts relevant to the situation than the speaker's conversion story. This would fit more into that kind of testimony.

 

I can really, really relate to the broken promises. Ultimately, that was the final blow to my own faith. I feel I don't even have to go into science, biblical controversies or anything to get to the nitty-gritty of why I deconverted.

 

Those are all sound, logical backups to my real reason for deconversion...which is broken promises. I can label out verse after verse after verse that promises healing in the Bible. Hell, it took me over an hour to do it on video. Jesus promised healing over and over and over yet I was not healed. I trusted those verses for years and years and years yet continued to suffer.

 

The Big Broken Promise for me was that we get the peace of God if we are faithful to God. Being faithful meant being obedient to God, church, and parents. And I was. For forty years. Even the Israelites were in the wilderness only forty years, and Jesus fasted only forty days. Moses was forty when he got his calling from God, then he worked forty more years for his father-in-law Jethro until he led the Israelites out of Egypt. It was forty days from Jesus' resurrection to his Ascension. Forty seems to be the "sacred" number in the Bible.

 

When I was young, I was told I would understand things about the faith when I was "older." I took that as a promise. Nobody told me what age constituted "older," but sometime after my fortieth birthday it hit me that "I am older now. God has had enough time to answer my questions." It was as clear as that, though not as an audible voice. It seemed as though I should actually do something, take action on the insight. But I didn't know what. Any action in keeping with the insight was too major to take lightly. In looking back I realize that I did take action within the year. That action was confronting the posibility of openly disobeying the church, God's representatitve on earth. In other words, was I prepared to defy Ultimate Authority and assume the risks involved?

 

[it must be understood that the church's authority was understood to be far superior to any human authority such as civil government or the police. The church obeyed civil government only as far as it did not interfere with the church's understanding of God's authority. (I strike through that part because they refuse to admit that it's just their understanding but that is what it is--their understanding. Other Christians read the same Bible and come to a very different understanding. They will say the others come to a wrong understanding...Everyone here knows how the arguments go.]

 

That was really complicated.

 

1. God's Existence. Part of me very seriously doubted God's existence because no evidence was to be found. Yet I had found not a single person who was willing to even think about the possibility of there being no god. So much as asking the question was not safe.

 

2. Morality. I had carefully observed real people in personal interaction, done a lot of thinking on the matter, and also read real life stories in Guide Posts magazine. I noticed that sports, dance, and divorce did not automatically corrupt people as I had been taught. I noticed a sincere and genuine desire to do what was right no matter what walk of life the people came from. I concluded that most people in mainstream society were good. I realized that if this were not the case, we could not depend on the law enforcement and medical communities for help in time of emergency. I realized that these did not exist for our purposes only, though most of the time we lived as though they did.

 

3. One True Church. I did not believe in the one true church concept. I had seen too much of that and found it sickening. People would leave one Mennonite group and join another one and then denigrate the one they left. They would then claim that the new one was the one true church. I had this diagram in my head. The Old Order Mennonites were the baseline from which all other Mennonites derived. (Other groups think they are the baseline but I didn't know that at the time.) Most groups that had split from us were more liberal, some were more liberal than others--it all went by a common system of degrees everyone agreed on (surprise!). However, a few groups were more conservative, also to varying degrees, also according to the same system.

 

Okay, so we have about six different groups of Mennonites living in Waterloo County. All of them think they are the One True Church. People leaving our church and joining this or that group would broadcast all over the place how much better their new church was and how much happier they were and that they really had the Spirit or the Light (as the case might be) in their new church. My mother said at one point, "Why can't they find the Light here with us?" I confess that statement had a profound impact on me. Indeed, why not?

 

Thus, when I was crowded out, I was very careful to state that I was looking for an other church, not a better church. I felt a strong need for a community to support me when I left the horse and buggy church. It wasn't all that clear in my mind at the time; I just knew I had to have a church and I searched my options for one that met my needs. I went for one that was "all the way in the world" because I did not know of any other that did not have a dress code. I did NOT want to be forced to change my dress. Also, I did not know of any other Mennonite church that would allow all the education I wanted. I did not want to have to change churches every year. Some people worked their way up the ladder; I didn't want to do that. What I found was an other church and not a better church. I think it was the ideal way to move from the horse and buggy community into secular society and I would probably do it the same way if I had to do it over again.

 

4. Hell. Hell was a major concept I struggled with. Had I not exhausted every last home remedy the community could come up with to solve my unhappiness, I might have caved in. Because I did not accept the One True Church doctrine, I could not convince myself that I had left an apostate church behind for the True Body of Christ. I had a New Birth experience when I got off the phone from making plans to attend the modern Mennonite church the next Sunday. However, I refused to accept it as a genuine new birth. To accept it as such I would have had to accept that God existed and I needed more evidence for that. Somehow, it was not okay by me that god hide forty years and then bop me over the head when I decided to disobey. I wasn't going to fall for that kind of crap. A real god had to be bigger than one stupid little group of bickering Mennonites--I don't know, but I wasn't convinced.

 

The experience was enough to very seriously confuse me but not to convert me. I was convinced that leaving my church was the right thing for me to do because it brought me the peace I had sought all my life (the peace of god??? did god exist then???) and because they did not allow me to excercise my natural talents (as Jesus/Bible said we should). Even so, the fear of hell was overwhelming. Had I been able to think of one unturned stone, one untried possibility, for finding peace and happiness in the old church I don't think I could have stuck it out. There was none. I had tried EVERYTHING. Absolutely everything.

 

I kept a casual ear out for any new suggestions they might come up with as they criticized me and railed at me for what I did. But they didn't even come close to anything that could have worked. I did hear some defensive answers as to why they did not allow me to do any interesting work, such as teach elementary school. They all knew I had wanted to do that. I'd "waited on the Lord" for twenty years to call me to the classroom and it didn't happen. Their excuses for not doing so were as full of holes as a sieve. The funny thing is they did not even have to make those defenses. I don't remember telling them that I left because they didn't let me teach. I think I told them I was training to for work that I like. If they had tried as hard not to hear what I was saying as they had done for the previous twenty years, no one would have heard anything about me wanting to teach. Funny how the guilty hear sounds in the night.

 

When I finally took the matter into my own hands and was "healed" within days

 

RIGHT!!!! When I finally took things into my own hands and risked all I had, I found the peace I had longed for all my life. There was a major burst right after that phone call, but there have been additions as time went on. I don't think I would have been psychologically capable of handling more at the time.

 

I couldn't wrap my emotions around the "why???" of it all. The only conclusions I could come to were:

 

a) Jesus hates me

Xianity is bullshit

c) God has a "noninterference policy"

d) God doesn't exist

 

All I got from the Xians was, "this is a test," "it was God's will," "you didn't believe the right things," "those promises don't apply anymore," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

 

Pat answers and bullshit!

 

I like this--pat answers and bullshit. I described the steps and thoughts I went through. I didn't know fancy words like bullshit back then and "pat answers" still makes me think of pan cakes. It's not part of my Pennsylvania German horse and buggy vocabulary.

 

After all, the Bible does say if a person isn't faithful in little things, how can we trust him in bigger things.

 

Anyway, enough of that rant 'o mine! I wanted to comment on this line, but this was a big paranoia for me. I was terrified and often thought that God might view me as the "wicked servant" because I could not get my act together and grow the "investments" he had entrusted to me. I guess I viewed myself that way since I thought I was so worthless.

 

Fucking religion...

 

I'm mighty glad you shared your "rant." It allowed me to share more of my own story. I find it easier to respond to another person than to just pull stuff out of thin air. Besides, your rants tend to be interesting.

 

I hope you got the message that I was turning the tables on god here. But is that verse about being faithful in little in the same passage as the one about "you wicked and slothful servant"? Wow! I didn't realize that. I'm not sure I'm deconverted enough to say THAT to god.

 

That's probably inconsistent with the other stuff I'm saying here but the title is about being confused...I'm beginning to think that deconverting from a religion one had given one's life energies to is confusing. Like a swirling flood of feelings or a creek after a down-pour that is wild with sticks and leaves and what not. Nothing makes sense. It's all in there topsy-turvey right-side-up and up-side-down.

[GraphicsGuy]

Like a swirling flood of feelings or a creek after a down-pour that is wild with sticks and leaves and what not. Nothing makes sense. It's all in there topsy-turvey right-side-up and up-side-down.

 

Oh...gees...you could not have said that any better. That's exactly how it is. It's a mess. Even how you said that "peace" was the promise you were holding onto. Well, "peace" is also the big one for me, but I lump it in with "healing" since the two were not mutually exclusive in my point of view. It's like having to unravel the entire sweater to find the beginning of the ball of yarn...

[R. S. Martin]

Like a swirling flood of feelings or a creek after a down-pour that is wild with sticks and leaves and what not. Nothing makes sense. It's all in there topsy-turvey right-side-up and up-side-down.

 

Oh...gees...you could not have said that any better. That's exactly how it is. It's a mess. Even how you said that "peace" was the promise you were holding onto. Well, "peace" is also the big one for me, but I lump it in with "healing" since the two were not mutually exclusive in my point of view. It's like having to unravel the entire sweater to find the beginning of the ball of yarn...

 

I don't think I needed any specific healing, except emotional and that will go on for the rest of my life. I'm trying to remember. Did you say somewhere that you needed hormone treatment and that this turned your world right-side-up?

 

Yeah, I can see that this would be "mysterious" enough for religionists to say "it's all in your head" or whatever, and for medical scientists to say your body lacks vital chemicals to function properly.

 

My mother used to insist that "nerve problems" were "of the devil." But I never heard her say that after my own breakdown. Since mine was brought on by a very obvious case of chronic emotional stress (obvious to me on the instinctual level, though I had no vocabulary at the time to explain it), I never thought that Satan was involved. Maybe it was his fault that people treated me badly but I simply wasn't the type of person to think that way. My mother was strong in looking at what motivated personalities to what behaviour. I'm very much that way, too, and will today take it to the level of science. Back then I was already leaning that way.

 

One of my younger sisters found an article on mental illness that made it out to be as natural as appendicitus (sp?) or toncilitus. I was very fortunate in that way. Wasn't taken to a doctor and I was oh! so glad. I didn't want to have to tell a doctor what was wrong with me because I didn't know how to tell him. I was in my mid-20s and legally an adult but a person who has been kept as a child and never been allowed to make any personal choices or decisions has no opportunity to grow up. I think I was more of an adult at 14 than at 24. At 14 I was still hopeful and optimistic about life. The next ten years taught me that I was worth far less than dirt. Dirt could at least be used for something productive. I couldn't, not in the eyes of my people. Best to keep me inside the metaphorical iron box where I couldn't damage anyone.

 

Well, I got out. They're still convinced that I'm some kind of retard. Never mind that retards don't go to grad school.

 

Hey, I like what you say about unraveling the entire sweater to find the ball of yarn. I never heard that one. Neat.