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Goodbye Jesus

And I Still Haven’T Found What I’M Looking For…


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I’ve just found this site, so for my first post, let me tell my story (please forgive the length).

 

I’m an MK, but I had a miserable childhood. Not because I grew up in Africa but because my parents were so unloving. That really messed me up. At 16, I was drawn to the warmth and community of the church youth group (back in the UK by then), and I became a Christian. That finally gave me a family, a place to belong, and some of those people are still my best friends. I really went for it, in terms of the whole Christian thing, short term mission trips, Christian Union, and eventually went to Bible college and became a missionary myself. I worked in Asia for nearly 20 years, and was a practising Christian for over 30. Last autumn I went through burn out, which was the crisis that brought me out of the faith.

 

The cracks started to appear last year, serious questions that got no answers. For me, the violence of religion has always been a huge problem. In my reading of Jesus, he is a pacifist, but the church not only used to support the atrocities of the crusades for example, but Christians today still support war and happily send their kids off to join the military. That makes me extremely angry. But it also led me to the realisation that there are Christians on both sides of every major theological divide: free will versus predestination, creation verses evolution, just war versus pacifism and so on. And so there is no way to know what I am actually supposed to believe. In a sense I can take my pick. And if it doesn’t matter if I love people by turning the other cheek or by blasting them away, then how can anything matter?

 

The second huge problem for me is the failure of Christians to walk the walk. I worked with supposedly ‘mature’ believers, hand-picked, screened and sent out to the field, totally committed types (like myself), yet they were badly messed up. The amount of interpersonal conflict I had to deal with was horrifying. And they did not seem to experience the peace beyond understanding or life in all its fullness promises any more than I did. Something was wrong.

 

Perhaps the third biggie was hell. I simply cannot understand how a loving God would torture millions of people for eternity, and so I toyed with universalism for a while. I really have tried hard to stay within the fold, but in the end there are just too many questions. The system is held together with duct tape and blinkers, and I cannot stand all the mental gymnastics it takes to ‘believe’.

 

When I shared these doubts, the standard responses were to ‘try again’. Well, after 30 years, I think I have tried just about everything. Read all the best books, been filled with the Spirit and spoken in tongues, read the Bible a million times, you name it, I’ve tried it. And trying it again made no sense to me. You know, at that time, I still really wanted it to be real, and especially wanted it to be real for ME, but it wasn’t working. And of course, if it wasn’t working, the fault had to lie with me – obviously it could not lie with a perfect God.

 

And I know I have problems, caused primarily by my upbringing. I had hoped that after ‘faithfully serving the Lord’ all these years, that I would be better adjusted by now. But the fact is, counselling helps people more than faith. So a strong feeling for me is disappointment. I have been angry with God and the church these last few months but the bigger feeling is regret that I did not take this step years ago.

 

I am only now starting the process of disentanglement. Leaving the mission, finding a new job (not easy after a whole life as an evangelical missionary), beginning to tell people that I have made this choice.

 

But you know what? It is intensely liberating! And I finally feel like I can be real! And so I am setting out on a journey of discovery, to learn for the first time how to be human.

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Welcome! May your journey be filled with truth, warm people, and really good food and wine. Or beer. Or whatever you like. :-D

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Very astute observations that you came up with on your own. Very impressive.

 

Welcome to Ex-C. I look forward to reading more of your insights.

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One of the first things that bothered me was how Christianity had not make mankind any less violent, or seemingly after 2000 years solved any problems at all. My first instinct was to 'fix' them, but when you look at it hard you see that the violence is integral to the religion.

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Welcome. There are quite a few Ex-Missionaries here (see my testimony).

 

It may take you a long time to sift through all the years of deception, but there is nothing more liberating than the honest truth.

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there are Christians on both sides of every major theological divide: free will versus predestination, creation verses evolution, just war versus pacifism and so on. And so there is no way to know what I am actually supposed to believe. In a sense I can take my pick. And if it doesn’t matter if I love people by turning the other cheek or by blasting them away, then how can anything matter?

 

Welcome! I'm fairly new here too, and just "came out" about 3 months ago partially, then completely yesterday. I too, really got fed up with all the different ways of believing and interpreting the bible, and all the different denominations and "flavors" of christianity, and wondered how I was supposed to know which one really is right, or if they all can be. I've been told repeatedly that "our" way (that is, my church's doctrine) is the right one and anyone who believes differently is only fooling themselves into believing what they do because they don't want to obey the truth. That, I can never accept. People who spend their lives studying the bible come to very different conclusions and I decided if god really had something to say to man, he would have said it so we can all understand what he wants of us.

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I have been angry with God and the church these last few months but the bigger feeling is regret that I did not take this step years ago.

 

 

I know exactly what you mean here. When I was in the process of deconverting from Christianity, and even for months afterwords, I was depressed, confused, and angry. However, I am no longer "angry at God", since I feel it is not possible to be angry at a being that does not exist (in my opinion). Nor is it constructive. I think it was really helpful to put down my thoughts, concerns, and grievances on paper (ie. on the internet). Which is what you have done, and what all of us here on this forum are doing.

 

I often wonder how and why I stayed in Christianity as long as I did, considering there were so many signs and indications that it was not all it was hyped up to be. The power and hold that religion can have on the mind is not to be underestimated. However, I also feel the same kind of liberation that you have described after leaving the religion. Not being bound by any kind of dogma, and being able to think independently, and come to my own decisions and conclusions, is one of the best things about being non-religious (not to mention, being a human being).

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Hello and welcome...hopefully you can find some answers, inspiration, and like-mindedness here on the forum!

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