ClaraOlive Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 Growing up, in order to know that ex-C's existed, I would have had to have known people outside the church. Of the 40 people in my Christian school class, I know of one guy who is an open deconvert. 2-3 other men appear to have left the trappings of Christianity, but I don't know if they consider themselves Christians or not. NONE of the other women are not professing Christians, and maybe 2 of them aren't not just professing but active in the church. So among those I grew up with and who were my friends in childhood, I know almost no one who understands leaving Christianity, and it really made me feel isolated when I deconverted. When I was a teen, when the one girl in the youth group who wasn't from a Christian family left and there wasn't a hook to guilt her back, we were told she was "never a Christian" and had only been pretending. A big thing was that in such a controlled and controlling environment, it was very hard to just "drift away" like the child of nominal or liberal Christian parents might. There was especial pressure on girls to do "family" church things even as adults, so that you couldn't not go to church for a few weeks and make it less and less as it stopped being what you wanted to do - you had to explicitly say no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voice Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 The Internet didn't exist when I became an ex-c. It would have sped my recovery by decades. I didn't know anyone else who had left christianity and lived, and there were no groups or sub-cultures or anything. People just were on their own. I had to recover with help from non-christians and from what books I could come across which were rare. I lived like an animal for a while, outside. Our popularity is growing and will continue to. It's at least possible to find ex-christian community now since thanks to the Internet, there is one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babylonian Dream Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 It's kind of odd how, in a world where you can find groups of the most random sexual fetishes online, many of us never thought "I'll bet someone else might be going through the same crisis of faith that I am." I would guess that a lot of that repression on my part, at least, comes from the decades of hearing from the pulpit about how "atheist" = "devil worshiper" or something. Going to think this over for a while. It's funny how that'd be an afterthought, but we'd be sure to find groups with similar sexual fancies though huh? Shows the way we are as a species -Food - Mate - Fight off predators Then comes everything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noggy Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 I'm finding that a lot of Christians are shocked to hear of people like us and it seems with atheism as the fastest growing "belief" structure in the country where many are said to be Christians, this would be rather common and lot more people would be aware of it... So what's the deal? Why don't they know? I think many have the same questions and complaints we had during our deconversions but probably think they're alone. It would help if they knew there was actually a rather large segment of the population who were once just like them. Don't you think? So what's up? How come they seem surprised people who actually believed, no longer believe? I mean, the sheer number of us should serve as evidence for something, right? In case you haven't noticed, christians are really really stupid, and have intentional blinders over reality. /thread 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 It's funny how that'd be an afterthought, but we'd be sure to find groups with similar sexual fancies though huh? Shows the way we are as a species -Food - Mate - Fight off predators Then comes everything else. Though some might change the order of the hierarchy a bit. If can't always eat....you can usually still pleasure yourself at least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kolaida Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 The Internet didn't exist when I became an ex-c. It would have sped my recovery by decades. I didn't know anyone else who had left christianity and lived, and there were no groups or sub-cultures or anything. People just were on their own. I had to recover with help from non-christians and from what books I could come across which were rare. I lived like an animal for a while, outside. Our popularity is growing and will continue to. It's at least possible to find ex-christian community now since thanks to the Internet, there is one. Yeah, I'm super grateful for the internet and this site, in particular, for that matter. I'd probably still be going back and forth and having an emotional breakdown if not for this site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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