Living In Fear

[Yviee81]

I googled "Why does God hate me" and this website was the first link that came up. I was so intrigued that I had to check it out. I am 29 years old and grew up in a Baptist home. I cant say that it was horrible, actually it wasnt all that bad. Fact is...even though I considered myself a nice little christian girl, I was a sinner. No matter how you look at it I was...and AM,,,,and always will be...I guess. See I always believed in a non-judgemental God. One that didnt care that I had Gay friends, had pre-marital sex, was forgiving when I said horrible things about people when they pissed me off, ect. So if Im a constant sinner, and always will be, why the HELL am I always saying that Im a Christian and always just asking God for forgiveness? FEAR! Fear has become the main motivation behind my FAITH. The fear that if I dont pray for forgiveness every night that i could end up in Hell. And thats really the only reason why I would continue on with my faith. Now, I have recently had some really tough times, as we all do, and I too have prayed and begged God to help me, or at least restore my faith in him, and nadda. But I look at my,I like to call them.."my perfect friends." They are a family that I know that are TRUE real DIE HARD Christians. And they are SOOOOOOO Blessed. And for years I sit here and scratch my head wondering...damn why the hell does God love them so much and could give a flying you know what about me? WTF? Really? It really dosnt seem fair. But neither does the 5 year old child that gets kidnapped and raped and left to die in the woods. Neither does 9/11. Neither does any of the bs that happens in this world that Christians validate as "not Gods fault>" or "Really..he really does love you" even though your life sucks and others seem perfect. My main purpose for posting this was to simply get some feedback from people who might have had the same curiosity as I did.

[Guest Valk0010]

Does god want you to believe out of fear or love, because if its fear, the way your going to practice religion is different then it would be if its out of purely love.

 

If you believe out of fear and you can't believe out of love of god, then whats the point, your not really being religious. Its a get out of jail card then.

 

That is my two cents on that subject anyway.

[Objet_trouve24]

But I look at my,I like to call them.."my perfect friends." They are a family that I know that are TRUE real DIE HARD Christians. And they are SOOOOOOO Blessed. And for years I sit here and scratch my head wondering...damn why the hell does God love them so much and could give a flying you know what about me? WTF? Really? It really dosnt seem fair. But neither does the 5 year old child that gets kidnapped and raped and left to die in the woods. Neither does 9/11. Neither does any of the bs that happens in this world that Christians validate as "not Gods fault>" or "Really..he really does love you" even though your life sucks and others seem perfect.

 

That all really resonates with me. In high school, I did a lot of the ex-gay therapy type stuff (I'm bisexual), and the big thing all of us had to wrestle with was this feeling that we were randomly selected to suffer a harder struggle than straight people, and we all were told to accept that every day life would be this constant dark struggle, where other christians would have it so much easier. As I got older, I realized that it wasn't just the ex-gays who had to deal with that, but also the very sexual, a lot of lonely single people, "porn addicts" etc. Then I noticed that it's actually hard like this for people who just ask a lot of questions. The people who seem so blessed seem to be, to me anyway, the ones who are solidly heterosexual, marry young, have children easily, and don't like to do a lot of thinking on philosophical, political or theological issues. And don't research science stuff much.

 

Something we talked about when I took my first philosophy class in college was would you rather be a human being, or a cow. Cows don't have to think about the future, don't have to worry about life after death, or the existence of gods, they just eat, sleep and moo till they die. As humans, we question, reason, and feel deep emotions that can be wonderful, or horrific. We are aware of senseless slaughter of our own kind, even if we only hear about it, where cows are generally not aware beyond instinctual if they actually see it happening. You really have to think, if I could shut my brain off, be incapable of love, but also never have to really feel fear, would I?

 

I think those of us who have "non-perfect" lives will get more out of them. We'll make friends with a wider variety of people, we'll have fascinating conversations, we'll know the true value of finding a really good lover, we'll have a much more in depth sense of self. But we'll also have to wrestle with very scary things, have our hearts broken and feel emotions harder than others. In my life, I've found it to be worth it in the end. I have a good home, a good family, a religion based on love and a search for wisdom and a much higher opinion of myself than I used to (I thought I was scum for years). I think I'm more blessed than most christians I know, if for no other reason than I don't have to fear hell, or fear others going there, and I don't have to feel bad for things like having sex before my husband and I married. It's harder doing it this way, but I really believe the outcome is better.

 

Welcome to the site, sorry for rambling at you at first meeting. I'm getting over being sick, and inhaled too much paint stripper earlier trying to fix an old coffee table, so I'm a little loopy. Hope you enjoy the site, good luck.

[Suzy]

Welcome to Ex-C, Yviee!

 

I can relate to this very well. Looking back religion gave me nothing but guilt and fear and the only thing why I didn't leave sooner was that I was trapped in this fear. A fear of Hell and a fear of making God angry with me and punish me in my Earthly life as well as in the afterlife.

 

The thing that liberated me from this fear was science. After I started reading books on Cosmology and Evolution I realized the Bible simply cannot be true on so many levels! And once you realize the Bible is not true you are free from the fear! At least that's what helped me.

 

 

 

The people who seem so blessed seem to be, to me anyway, the ones who are solidly heterosexual, marry young, have children easily, and don't like to do a lot of thinking on philosophical, political or theological issues. And don't research science stuff much.

 

 

That is so true! For almost two decades my Christian life was a constant struggle about why God doesn't love me as much as he seems to love other Christians. Other people in the Church seemed to be so happy and satisfied with their lives (though I didn't know them so I don't know if it was the actual truth), so why can't I enjoy my Christian life if others can? Of course, like any "good Christian" would, I blamed myself, since God is perfect, isn't he?

 

In the end I realized what you wrote above that those who can be happy with Christianity are typically those who don't think much. And the reason why I was so unhappy with it because I was thinking too much.

[traveler68]

I understand where you are coming from completely. I served or tried to serve god more out of fear than out of love for years. Its hard to love someone that you cant see, cant hear and feel no love in return from. Sometimes I just needed held or told I was loved. I would beg for an answer. Nothing.

[traveler68]

Are your friends truly more blessed? Maybe they try to "act" the role of a good and blessed believer?

[Overcame Faith]

Once we reject Christianity and the god of the bible, such questions as why does god bless them and not me disappear. Whether one has a happy life (whatever that is) or a miserable life (whatever that is) has nothing at all to do with the supernatural. It has to do with many other things including one's natural temperment, the circumstances of one's birth, the "lucky" breaks someone gets, their parents, their genetic predispositions, where and when they were born, etc., etc. These things can be understood and at least to some degree can ease our thinking. But to grapple with why god would show favoritism can never be understood. And the reason it can't be understood is because there is no such god involved.

[Yviee81]

Thank you so much to all that replied. You have really given me so much to think about and have helped me open my mind. Its also comforting to see that there are so many people out there that feel the exact same way as I do. Living with fear and guilt, never feeling good enough in Gods eyes, ect. I really enjoyed the feedback. Im really excited to embark on this new journey of a fearless/guiltless life and focusing on the reality of the here and now. No more trying to live up to the perfect Christian standard and thinking that God made some kind of mistake with me. Hey..sounds like a New Years resolution..

[piper]

Hey, welcome to the bright side! I started the questioning this spring and am happily over the whole religious BS.

Life is much better out here, the tearing of the fabric of the soul can be very hard when you leave, but is SO worth it!!

[SirPhoenix]

But I look at my,I like to call them.."my perfect friends." They are a family that I know that are TRUE real DIE HARD Christians. And they are SOOOOOOO Blessed. And for years I sit here and scratch my head wondering...damn why the hell does God love them so much and could give a flying you know what about me? WTF?

 

In statistics, this is what is known as a "spurious correlation". This means that there seems to be a realationship between Die Hards and Blessedness, but that doesn't mean the relationship is real. It is also a fact that intelligence is directly related to a persons height. You say, "what, that's crazy talk?" That is until I tell you that the study was done from newborns through adults. Surprisingly, the short newborns are dumb as hell, whereas the taller adults are quite smart (with a few outliers). The correlation is actually age versus intelligence, not height, but if you didn't know any better, you might think it was height.

 

The same can be said of Die Hards. Perhaps the correlation is that christians who acheive success are more likely to go fully Die Hard. It's easy to not question God and have strong faith if everything in your life is going well. The success is due to an entirely different factor or factors. It could also be that the chruch you attended tends to attract the successful due to location, pastor, size, etc.

 

I would also wager money that if you looked inside these families that seem so "blessed", that you would find the same sets of problems that everyone has. There are those on the verge of divorce, bankruptcy, etc.

 

I don't believe there is a god withholding anything from you. Fear is a huge factor in this, and I encourage you to research the doctrine of Hell and how it evolved over time. My de-conversion came about becasue I hated that doctrine and I decided to research it so I could get in line with the truth. What I found is that the OT Israelites had no such doctrine, and that the concept of hell evolved in early christianity due to pagan influences. That was a huge barrier broken for me, and when I saw Hell as false, I wondered what else was, and well, now you have an agnostic pantheistic atheist*** writing this to you.

 

***Note: Basically I mean that I'm toying with different belief systems, but when it comes to the bible god, I'm an atheist, when it comes to any type of higher being, I'm agnostic, but when it comes to my admiration for the universe how we are all connected to it, I'm pantheistic.

[HappyChef]

It breaks ones heart to realize that fear is the primary tool xian churches use to manipulate others. The more you educate yourself on the origins of the xian church,the easier it is to get away from the fear mongering.

 

Good luck on your self discovery and welcome to the site.

[ilovemybrain]

 

 

 

Something we talked about when I took my first philosophy class in college was would you rather be a human being, or a cow. Cows don't have to think about the future, don't have to worry about life after death, or the existence of gods, they just eat, sleep and moo till they die. As humans, we question, reason, and feel deep emotions that can be wonderful, or horrific. We are aware of senseless slaughter of our own kind, even if we only hear about it, where cows are generally not aware beyond instinctual if they actually see it happening. You really have to think, if I could shut my brain off, be incapable of love, but also never have to really feel fear, would I?

 

I think those of us who have "non-perfect" lives will get more out of them. We'll make friends with a wider variety of people, we'll have fascinating conversations, we'll know the true value of finding a really good lover, we'll have a much more in depth sense of self. But we'll also have to wrestle with very scary things, have our hearts broken and feel emotions harder than others. In my life, I've found it to be worth it in the end. I have a good home, a good family, a religion based on love and a search for wisdom and a much higher opinion of myself than I used to (I thought I was scum for years). I think I'm more blessed than most christians I know, if for no other reason than I don't have to fear hell, or fear others going there, and I don't have to feel bad for things like having sex before my husband and I married. It's harder doing it this way, but I really believe the outcome is better.

 

Damn good post, Objet!! I think about stuff like this all the time - if I could be numb all my life, would I want to be? I tried that for a couple years and it was killing me. So I'm just myself now, I let people see the real me, I feel fear of rejection and pain when that inevitably happens, but I also get to feel a lot of joy and love and exhilaration when I find acceptance and love and friendship. I'm in a hard time right now and wish I didn't have to feel pain, but the good stuff makes it all worth it.

[MrsRobinson]

Wow I can relate to most of what you said. I came to a point where I felt God wasnt gonna bless me no matter what I did or believed so why continue praying I asked myself. It wasnt my Christians friends around me that were blessed it was my sinner friends!! I was actually embaressed to be a Christian in the end because they were all thinking I had such a crappy life, God must be punishing her!! I always confessed sins immediately to God in fear of him attacking me or allowing satan to attack my life, But even when I wasnt sinning, he wasnt blessing me. I tithed and tested him to no avail. I was scared of being thrown in hell if I died at any given moment and I began questioning what being a Christian was. I knew we had to suffer sometimes but I am not willing to suffer ALL the time. Point being, because we were supposed to be the salt of the earth and bring other people to Christ, noone wanted to even go there seeing what God did with me so I was like If youre not gonna do youre end of the bargain God, Im done!! When my husband left I declared God supplies all my needs according to the riches in Christ but we were DIRT POOR. I declared Thy Maker is thine husband but he never helped a damn day with the kids. Nor did I ever feel comforted. Well like I said in another post, if I could count all the lies in the bible Id be here all day. Im around your age, do you have kids because I do and Ill be here if you need to talk. Good luck with everything!

[MrsRobinson]

By the way, I dont know how well you knew this perfect Christian family but you really never know what happens behind closed doors. Get a load of what happened here. When my husband was beating me up I turned to this Pastor and his wife, they councelled me and my husband and they had 4 kids and just all perfectly Christian and said it was possible to live a sin free life. They were pretty young too.The pastor always talked about how beautiful his wife was to me and how he loved her. So anyway, me and my hubby continued to fight and one morning I get a knock on the door from the pastor alone. He came in and said he had something to tell me and also handed me a bagel and coffee he bought me. At this point Im thinking hes gonna say Im a bad Christian and Im not welcome to communicate with his wife and him anymore BUT!!!! He goes -I have been fantasizing about you for weeks and I think Im in love with you, I will raise your kids if you have the same feelings for me and leave my wife and kids (he had 4 kids with his wife) and that he told his wife a few weeks ago he was hot for me and she kept quiet. My jaw hit the floor as he went from 0-90miles in 2 minutes with me having NO IDEA and we ladies always get this instinct but Im tellin ya there was none. I told him I still love my hubby and dont have feelings for him. They ended up splitting up over the incident and I learned there was another woman he liked other than me. The whole church thinks theyre crazy and my husband seen the wife at the bar drinking not too long ago. There goes her sin free life crazy byotch!!

[SirPhoenix]

By the way, I dont know how well you knew this perfect Christian family but you really never know what happens behind closed doors. Get a load of what happened here. When my husband was beating me up I turned to this Pastor and his wife, they councelled me and my husband and they had 4 kids and just all perfectly Christian and said it was possible to live a sin free life. They were pretty young too.The pastor always talked about how beautiful his wife was to me and how he loved her. So anyway, me and my hubby continued to fight and one morning I get a knock on the door from the pastor alone. He came in and said he had something to tell me and also handed me a bagel and coffee he bought me. At this point Im thinking hes gonna say Im a bad Christian and Im not welcome to communicate with his wife and him anymore BUT!!!! He goes -I have been fantasizing about you for weeks and I think Im in love with you, I will raise your kids if you have the same feelings for me and leave my wife and kids (he had 4 kids with his wife) and that he told his wife a few weeks ago he was hot for me and she kept quiet. My jaw hit the floor as he went from 0-90miles in 2 minutes with me having NO IDEA and we ladies always get this instinct but Im tellin ya there was none. I told him I still love my hubby and dont have feelings for him. They ended up splitting up over the incident and I learned there was another woman he liked other than me. The whole church thinks theyre crazy and my husband seen the wife at the bar drinking not too long ago. There goes her sin free life crazy byotch!!

 

I think stories like this are very common. Christians who really don't want to be Christians are suffering silently. They are afrid of hell, afraid of what their fellow Christians will think. They believe that they are the only ones having these problems. I am far happier knowing that the bad things in life are sometimes just coincidence. I feel empowered by this, because if a god didn't punish me, then I don't have to get in his good graces to get out of a bad circumstance. I can actually work at it and do the best I can do to make things better. I may not be able to fix everything, but at least I don't need supernatureal approval to better my lot in life.

[Yviee81]

Yes that is a quite common story. The Pastor at my church was having an affair with a lady who was also married, and she and her husband all attended the same church. AND...hes now remarried to the lady he was having an affair with and they are all happy little Christian leaders at the church still to this day. Nice. Guess God is all forgiving. OH Mrs Robinson...glad to see that Im not the only newbie lol. Welcome to the site

[Tsumanai]

The way I see it, Christians want you to believe that god loves you, but they also want you to be afraid of going to hell. Some even want to call it a "relationship."

 

Do you know what it's usually called when you're in a relationship with someone who wants you to love them, but you're constantly afraid of their punishment?

 

An abusive relationship.

 

Get out of it while you still can.

[Suzy]

The way I see it, Christians want you to believe that god loves you, but they also want you to be afraid of going to hell. Some even want to call it a "relationship."

 

Do you know what it's usually called when you're in a relationship with someone who wants you to love them, but you're constantly afraid of their punishment?

 

An abusive relationship.

 

Get out of it while you still can.

 

Exactly.

 

What would we call it if somebody put a gun against your head saying: "you'll either love me or I will kill/torture you"? A psychopath. So how is God the great example of a loving father when he is doing exactly the same? Oh, I forgot, he is god, his ways are "mysterious".

[MrsRobinson]

The way I see it, Christians want you to believe that god loves you, but they also want you to be afraid of going to hell. Some even want to call it a "relationship."

 

Do you know what it's usually called when you're in a relationship with someone who wants you to love them, but you're constantly afraid of their punishment?

 

An abusive relationship.

 

Get out of it while you still can.

 

Exactly.

 

What would we call it if somebody put a gun against your head saying: "you'll either love me or I will kill/torture you"? A psychopath. So how is God the great example of a loving father when he is doing exactly the same? Oh, I forgot, he is god, his ways are "mysterious".

 

lol Suzy, (mysterious)...and well said Tsunamai

[Yviee81]

The way I see it, Christians want you to believe that god loves you, but they also want you to be afraid of going to hell. Some even want to call it a "relationship."

 

Do you know what it's usually called when you're in a relationship with someone who wants you to love them, but you're constantly afraid of their punishment?

 

An abusive relationship.

 

Get out of it while you still can.

 

Very well put!

[Eugene39]

Here's a link to an article posted back in December that may possibly be of value to you.

 

http://new.exchristi...r-and-love.html Welcome to ex-C!

[ShakenNotStirred]

Does god want you to believe out of fear or love, because if its fear, the way your going to practice religion is different then it would be if its out of purely love.

 

If you believe out of fear and you can't believe out of love of god, then whats the point, your not really being religious. Its a get out of jail card then.

 

That is my two cents on that subject anyway.

 

I agree, and the irony is that it's the only reason many can believe. I can't speak for the whole world, but I personally don't see how it's possible to truly love a god that demands worship and obedience, then often lets even his most faithful servants suffer quite cruelly. I now believe it's because it's not possible, or at least highly improbable, for this type of god to exist.