How I Became Free Of Christianity

[Guest rrrrray]

I've never posted here before, but I've told this story many times. There's no shortage of similar posts in this forum, but maybe something in my story will help someone else who is on the road to freedom from religion.

 

I was raised in a Christian household, was taken to church every Sunday, and attended a Christian private school until Grade 8. It was a given that God existed, that the Bible was God's word, Jesus died for us, etc. I never questioned it.

 

Despite believing the basic tenets of Christianity, I was bored out of my mind in church as an early teenager, and I went through a few years arguments with my father every Sunday morning. At age seventeen I won the war, as my father relented. Despite no longer attending church, I became more 'spiritual' and concerned myself in particular with biblical prophecy. I was convinced that the Bible was the inspired word of God, and that the so-called "end time" prophecies would be fulfilled in my lifetime. I watched events in the Middle East closely and tried to make those events fit the biblical prophecies. It didn't matter to me that these prophecies may have already been fulfilled thousands of years ago; I thought that prophecies could have more than one meaning/fulfillment.

 

One thing that set me apart from typical Christians was that I didn't believe eternal damnation and hellfire. My parents broke it to me when I was 16 or 17 that they didn't believe in hellfire doctrine. They believed that one day all of humanity, past, present and future would be saved, even if some souls were to be subject to a finite hell. I bought into this idea, partly because it made sense to me in terms of the (mis?)translation of the Greek text, and it did a hell of a job reconciling the "loving God" concept with any sort of hell.

 

Ironically, my penchant for looking at prophecy fulfillment turned out to be the catalyst for my deconversion.

 

Somehow I survived my first year of university with my faith intact. However, shortly into my second year I was searching the Internet for articles about biblical prophecy. I happened upon "Prophecies: Imaginary and Unfulfilled" by Farell Till. What a shock that was! I had never sought out nor been exposed to any literature that was contrary to my faith. I read about half the piece and was thoroughly offended by Till's hard-hitting, irreverent style. But at the same time, a seed of curiosity had been planted that brought me back to the same article a few months later. This time I read the entire article and by the end of it I realized I could no longer take those 'prophecies' for granted. In particular, Till did a great job of dismantling the virgin-birth prophecy in Isaiah and the corresponding claim of fulfillment in Matthew.

 

I was left in a position where I could not be intellectually honest with myself and still believe that the Bible was the inspired word of God. I didn't feel I could pick and choose what parts of the Bible to believe and what parts to discard. The Bible was the foundation of my faith and I realized the foundation was made of sand.

 

It's now 12 years later and I've been a happy atheist for most of those 12 years. The first few months were mentally and emotionally rough, but after a while I felt that a huge burden had been lifted from me.

 

If you're in a similar position to what I was back then, all I can say is be honest with yourself and have no fear.

[Astreja]

Welcome, rrrrray!

[pitchu]

If you're in a similar position to what I was back then, all I can say is be honest with yourself and have no fear.

 

That's a helpful suggestion, rrrrray, and easy to remember during times of self-doubt and self-abnegation.

 

Welcome to the forums!