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Goodbye Jesus

Not Completely Ex-christian, But Getting There


Guest The Mercury Symbol

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So now you may be wondering what the hell I'm doing here, right? Well, after two years of Bible college, I believe there is something terribly wrong with me. Many of you may know about the Holy SPirit and His ability to give you the power to accomplish what God has for you... Anyway, I began to read about all these great evangelists and the stories of how the Holy Spirit came upon them and they had a trasformation in their life. I was convinced that God wanted to give me the same expeirence..... But no matter what I did, it never came. I would fast, pray, read, blah, blah, blah. It was after this that I began to lose faith that God wanted to use me. So then I was convinced that I had commited the unpardanble sin somewhere down the line, and naturally I became a wreck.

 

My life was suppose to be one lived in fellowship with God. That is why Jesus was propitiation for my sins right? So why is God silent? While I still sin, I always asked for forgiveness and the ability to turn away from them. Yet the temptations came back ever more powerfully than before. What else could be preventing fellowship with God? There just must be something inherently wrong with me.

 

This is where I am at now. Sometimes I get suicidal, but I would never follow through with it. Sometimes I just want to dissapear. I'm at the point that I almost wish I was still a addict than a born-again Christian. At least when I was an addict I knew what my problem was and how to fix it. But know I'm in some strange spiritual place where God has left me, yet still the desire to be with Him is there. I only posted this on this board because if anyone could understand what I'm going through, perhaps it is somebody here.

Umm, yes we can understand. It sounds a pretty typical thing. I too went to Bible College and found that everything that inspired me to go there in the first place became 'inaccessible' to me as I progressed.

 

Have you ever considered that the problem might lie in the nature of the system itself, and you're stuck there because of some of the assumptions that it's "supposed" to be x,y, and z? In other words, it's "Biblical truth"? I don't believe in a literal God, however that said in most people (outside of hard-core fundamentalists) when they talk about "God", and what "God" means to them, it's something that most people who don't believe in God, believe in and value as well. So what could be happening for you is that you're feeling detached from "God" because God has become defined inside of a box for you of what "should" be true because of doctrinal teachings?

 

I'm saying this because that was it for me (in hindsight, many years of searching after the fact). I've come to see the expression "God" as simply a word that expresses something most people share in common, and that taking that word and putting walls around it - as in the literalist interpreting God, stifles what's otherwise a dynamic expression of the human spirit. Does this make any sense?

 

God in the religious sense is about control of people, and that is not about freedom of spirit. Let what's in you heart teach you truth. Hell, isn't that what the early Jesus character was supposed to have taught? Law written on the heart, and all that? "God" is not found through religion. "God" is found through living. I simply see God as a symbol of language that some (not fundamentalists) find useful in it's symbology to help them find what's inside them.

 

Any pursuit in understanding why the Bible isn't infallible, and the realistic understanding of history, etc can serve to break the hold of that mindset that limits you (literalism), but the key to understanding this for you is this: You are still you. You're not going to loose you. In fact you will become you in ways that you're probably being held back from. I think any one of us can attest to that. Whether you believe in a god or not, it's about being sincere and realizing the potentials of what's brought you this far in your life already.

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I've never had any desire to be a great theologian or apologist, I really just want to help people out. I'm actually hoping to go and spend time at a orphange in Mexico because I found that I really enjoy being with kids after my experience at Boys and Girls Club. But if there is no God than why even bother? Eventually the universe will die and all we are and do is meaningless. I would be a fool to spend what little time I have on other people rather than myself.

 

Thanks for all your responses guys. I'm sure people like me annoy you, but it's good for me to get a different perspective on things and you guys have given me something to consider.

 

It is good you are questioning, and here are a few thoughts I have had reading your posts. Sorry if anything written here is redundant.

 

1.) We should do kind, compassionate, charitable work regardless of our theological perspective. Helping others is beneficial to the giver as well as the receiver.

 

2.) If you are suicidal, perhaps you should seek out psychiatric treatment, and then re-evaluate your relationship with the divine.

 

3.) What is your attachment to the Christian God? Or the God concept in general?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I went home that night incredibly angry with God. Why couldn't that guy be healed through prayer? Why can't I be used as Peter was? I then began to go through in my mind all the prayers that havn't been answered and almost gave up right then and there. But I can't escape God... Even when I don't read the Bible or pray for periods of time I feel this great desire that God has for me. I'm sure I sound insane to some of you, but maybe some of you understand.

 

What do you mean "this great desire that God has for me"? Is it your assumption that God "needs" you, or something? I ask you because the idea that God could possibly "need" or "desire" something sorta contradicts the idea of God being infinite and all that.

 

I also remember reading your earlier post about your opinion that because the Bible is older than the Qur'an, that that makes the Bible more true. What about the Vedas, then? They were written long before the Bible was compiled. Doesn't that make the Vedas more likely to be true? And long before the Vedas, the Egyptian papyri and wall paintings told of Ra and Nuit and Isis. By your reasoning, doesn't that make the Egyptian religion more true than the Vedas? But there's evidence of Mother Goddess worship in Europe as far back as 40,000 years EARLIER. So shouldn't you be worshipping the Earth Goddess?

 

I just question your logic regarding how to tell if a sacred text is more true than another.

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