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Curious About Your Christian Experience


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I'm curious about your Christian experience while you were a Christian:

- What denominations did you try?

- What excuse can you give for being fooled?

- Did you become more Christlike at all?

- Did you experience anything spiritual?

- And anything else...

 

Also if you still are a Christian or have switched to some other religion I would be curious about that too.

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- Charismatic/Non-denominational/Holy-Roller

- Indoctrinated from early childhood

- In some ways, but only through fear

- A girl claimed to be demon-possessed.  Outside of that, no.

- I have good memories from church.  It was social outlet that I needed.  I just wish I was met with more opposition.  There's a Christian bubble here.

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-variations of Baptists including an almost all black church(gave me the best "spiritual experience") and some non-denoms

-indoctrinated by my mother from a very young age. I can remember as early as 5 when I started thinking about death etc.  I remember distinctly imagining that if I died I would cease to be however consciousness doesn't end with me and that another entity would exist it wouldn't be me but life goes on. Then church started and here I am.

-Yes I believed I was an integral piece to the coming rapture

-Yes I felt the presence of the spirit on a near daily basis "that buzy electrical feeling"

-Christianity is a total brainwashing cluster fuck machine
 

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To provide some contrast to the majority of stories... :)

 

- German mainstream protestantism

 Dunno, was I fooled? I always considered the church to be at least 95 % a social construct, not a supernatural thing ;)

- If "Christlike" means caring for others and being willing to sacrifice some of my own comfort, well yes at times I did that. I still do, but when I was still a member of the cult there was some additional motivation at times due to the oh-so-wonderful role model of Jebus

- As a christian? No. :P

- To be fair, I left in peace once I noted it's just no longer "for me", and I still respect the German mainstream churches as mostly okay - the most important reason for that being that there's precious little supernatural babblings in the standard churches of that type

 

And well, as my profile says, I'm still religious - a very laid-back Germanic/Scandinavian heathen. Started to read the Poetic Edda years ago out of curiosity, and had... well... if I ever experienced a "religious revelation" in my life, this was the day. Can't really describe it, but it made me contemplate all that stuff for a few days and then I parted ways with christianity and considered myself an Asatruar. Hail Thor! :fdevil:

 

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- SBC, small messianic congregations, GARB

- I was a kid. We lived in a bubble and so even though I had questions, everyone else I'd ever met believed, so I assumed there was just something I didn't get.

- Eh, not really. The messages I got weren't very useful for the personal development of a highly introverted person, so I thought that "being nice" meant being a doormat and codpendent, or just "weeping with those who weep" to the point that I needed comforting and had nothing left to give to anyone else.

- I did have two-way conversations with god until I realized he was just one of my own voices. I guess a lot of the meditation states I reached would counts as spiritual, but I never did those in the context of religion and only later found out that my "sitting still and thinking about things" was part of the "evil eastern occult practices" that christians aren't supposed to do.

- I read a lot of Buddhist stuff, and some yoga stuff, and have gotten a lot out of it. Some in reaching meditative states, but also a lot in thinking through ethical questions and understanding how being good to others starts with taking care of myself.

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- What denominations did you try? SDA, JW, Baptist, Maranatha, several other 'bible-based' churches, Gnostic, new age (outside of Christianity: Dianic witchcraft, trad witchcraft, neo-paganism of various varieties, 


- What excuse can you give for being fooled? Societal indoctrination... desire to find spiritual truth


- Did you become more Christlike at all? I don't know what 'Christlike' means... I was always a compassionate person and have a desire to help others, the world, etc... natural humanist I guess.


- Did you experience anything spiritual? In church? no. I have had experiences I can't explain, not yet sure how to interpret... so "I don't know" is the most honest answer.


- And anything else...  I guess I am not entirely a materialistic type atheist... more of a pantheist/buddhist/mystic with a very scientific bent.

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I started out as Southern Baptist and that lasted for about 12 years. Agreeing to participate in a Bible study with a Church of Christ preacher resulted in a 27 year relationship with that group. The Church of Christ is non-denominational.

 

 

I offer no excuses for being fooled. My wife was a cradle Christian. She was born into the Southern Baptist version of Christianity. I wasn’t anything religiously when I met her. I was baptized into the Southern Baptist Church mostly to please her after we were married. The idea that believing in God had to be validated in some intellectual way never occurred to me mostly because I’d never heard of such a thing. God was something people either believed in or they didn’t and in the deep south just about everybody was a believer. You would quickly become a social outcast if you didn’t believe in God.

 

 

The bible was simply accepted as being true because everyone I knew believed it was written by people who actually witnessed the events they wrote about. It did, however, occur to me at some point that I was actually placing my faith in the honesty of those who wrote the text more so, or at least as much as I was professing a belief in God.

 

 

I was sincere in my beliefs and attempted to live my life in a way that would please God, but because I was affiliated with an extremely legalistic group that proved to be something that was humanly impossible to do, at least based on their interpretation of scripture.

 

 

Did I ever experience anything Spiritual? I have experienced a couple of things, one in particular that would seem to stretch coincidence to the limit of mathematical probability; something along the mathematical lines of winning the power ball. A series of “coincidences” over a period of weeks lined up perfectly and the result was that my life was changed forever...for the better.

 

 

Those events made such an impression on me that I am still unable to let go of the possibility that there is more to our reality than what we have thus far identified. I have no problem saying that “religions” and their “sacred text” are manmade because there is an abundant amount of evidence that supports that conclusion, but things sometimes happen that defy logic, reason, and a scientific explanation that makes sense. That reality forces me to keep an open mind when it comes to the possibility of there being other as yet undiscovered realms, realities, or dimensions.  

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Started out Southern Baptist and then various non-denominational churches

Lack of knowledge

I think so but I was already a good, compassionate, giving person

Definitely. Makes me miss church sometimes, but I know what they believe isn't true.

I practice (sometimes) meditation and Eastern spirituality. It works for me. smile.png

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Raised Christian.  Age 3 to about 8 - Methodist - age 9-17 - Fundamentalist independent Baptist. Left Church when I went to college, and stayed gone during the whole decade of the 80s.  Divorced and back to Christianity in 1990 in futile attempt to atone for my "sins"- of which I was guilty only due to indocrination.  So - Fundy Baptist church 1990-1991 - then tried different churches (the indoctrination was too severe and I crumbled under life's circumstances) Unitarian, Episcopal - from 1995 to 1999 - then roughly 2000 was the last time I walked through any church door.

 

Converted to Buddhism in 2008.  My mother can't accept I am not a Christian.

 

Excuse for being fooled? Indoctrinated and brain washed practically from infancy.

 

Spiritual experiences? Oh yes, several. Some related to Christianity and some not.

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- I was raised in a non-denominational church although it would be something like Pentecostal. My dad was a pastor pretty much my whole childhood until the age of 16.


- I was brainwashed into it from infancy. All my parents' friends were Christians from church so all my friends were their kids from church. Everything Christian. It took joining the Marines at the age of 17 and leaving home to adapt a neutral viewpoint from which I could rationally dissect my ingrained beliefs.


- I don't know if I was "Christlike" or not. I was raised with the Bible as the ultimate moral foundation.


- I had a few emotional moments but that most certainly was due to the music and the feeling of unity when the church prayed and worshiped together.


- Religion is one of the worst things ever. It fucks up people's lives, egos, and brains. It caused me to be very depressed and suicidal for a while because of the pains of deconverting. I would not wish it upon even my worst enemy.


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Thanks for those responses.  It's interesting that most ex-Christians believe they have experienced something spiritual while Christian.  I like to think there is something out there.

 

For me:

- raised Episcopalian, atheist as an adult, tried Orthodox briefly a few years ago

- brainwashed as a child, no good excuse for the second time other than psychological problems

- didn't make me a better person at all

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Denominations? Born into it. All my lullabies were Christian songs and all mt stories were Bible stories. My first real experience was at 4 years old singing Fishers of Men in VBS. I really wanted to go out there and get souls. Methodist til 12 maybe when my mom had a falling out with the minister because he was complaining about the noise my disabled brother made during service. Went back to church at 17 - Non denominational, then 4 Square which were both Fundy, Pentacostal, Born-Again, Spirit-Filled til I was 41-42, so 24-25 years + 12 years = 36-37 years, dropped out of church 6-7 years. Then wanted to go back recently, but hubby broke it to me gently that he was an Atheist, then I started deconversion now that I am 48.

 

Fooled? Never was exposed to anything else. Indoctrination

 

Christ-like? Spiritual? When I was 7-8 I read all 4 gospels and started praying for a while at bedtime. Asked God to bless each person I could think of individually and when I ran out of names I started on professions, doctors, firefighters etc, then prayed for people who had a harder life than I did, people in jail, people who had no house etc. This was a really formative time of my life. I had had nothing but nightmares my whole life since I was a baby. I asked my mom one night at bedtime how to get rid of the nightmares. I already knew God could protect me and I insisted on sleeping with my Bible and had my mom hang a crucifix down over me from my canopy bed. My nightmares were particularly bad. I would wake up and the dream would continue in my room. I was probably hallucinating or I just had a very good imagination. I was later diagnosed bipolar, so that may have been it. My mom told me I could pray and ask God to stop the nightmares and God could answer my prayer. So I did and God told me in my little imagination, to say, "This is only a dream." in my dream and it would stop and it worked! No more nightmares until I was 17 and recommitted my life to God when they returned with a vengence.

 

When I became born-again at 17 I had a powerful conversion experience. It was a large group of teens like 200 of us there to listen to the evils of rock music. I had to go with my homeschool. I was in the front row heckling the pastor and cheering on my favorite groups and was just really not into being there. At the alter call, the girl sitting next to me asked me if she should go up. I said only if you want to, thinking not me! But the alter call seemed to go on forever there were all these people 5 feet in front of me that I was ignoring and the preacher kept going on and on. Finally he said something that struck me hard. He said, "Jesus said, If you deny me before man, I'll deny you before the Father in heaven." And he kept on saying that... Well I didn't know about that Jesus guy but I loved God. I knew him from when I was little and I was just getting to know my grandfather, whom I loved and thought God was like him. I didn't want Jesus to deny me before God so I walked 5 feet forward and when I did I felt this liquid warmth flow over me from head to foot and instantly started crying for the lost souls of my friends. That was far from mocking the pastor! That conversion or rededication experience carried me through all the dark times I had as a Christian, and now I have chalked that and hearing from God some of my delusions. Maybe there was somethind spiritual there, but for it to be encouraging Christianity which turned out to be so cruel to me was a bad joke. I had many "spiritual" times like from spending hours in prayer and the ecstasy I got from worship. I miss that the most.

 

Every one around me spoke to God and he spoke right back. It had happened to me before so I didn't have any reason to doubt it, but I wasn't hearing anything, so I asked my grandmother how to hear God's voice. She said to learn to recognise the difference between the feeling I get before I get a good idea, as opposed to the feeling I got when I had had a bad idea. It was like good and bad intuition. The voice of God never contradicted God's word, so you need to keep reading and checking the Bible. Soon I was a pro at hearing from God and the voice grew less and less fuzzy.

 

I never understood why no one wanted to go to the hospital and empty out the beds by praying for the sick, or go to help at the homeless shelter and stuff like that, but I was too scared to go alone, so I was very frustrated. I felt very Christ-like because I had a lot of faith and was willing to die for God if necessary.

 

Anything else? Currently I am Atheist, but I am thinking of becoming a Secular Buddhist which I feel are compatible. I won't get caught up in reincarnation or any do anything which requires twisting my mind up like Christianity did. I plan to avoid fear and guilt like the plague, and not get into any delusions my Bipolar brain is especially good at dreaming up. I am going to hang back so my brain doesn't tell me to dive in all the way and become a monk or something. I am good at extremes, so my extreme will have to be extremely non-committal. No Delusions!

 

I think since Christianity like runs in families, I like to think the ones where the crazy runs in families seem to go toward fundy, I don't know, just a guess.

 

 

Rez

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- What denominations did you try?

 

I was raised Baptist and used to walk to church every Sunday. We lived in a good churchy community and a kid could actually do that then, lol. After we moved from that little town I stopped attending church for a few years, then started attending a church of christ with my best friend and his family. That's where my Bible education really took off and I became immersed in the faith. After discovering the many obvious pitfalls of the CoC, I started searching into something a little older than Reformationist churches. It came down to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy won. Became Orthodox (a catechumen, never baptized) for 4 or 5 years. I went in with the mentality that Orthodoxy is true or nothing is true. And well... now I'm here. lol.

 

 

 

- What excuse can you give for being fooled?

 

I mistook the emotionalism and "Warm Fuzzies" as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When something made me feel good, it was evidence of God. Being Bipolar, manic episodes also greatly intensified these emotions, and inspired zealous religiosity.

 

 

 

- Did you become more Christlike at all?

 

I did. I was a virgin. I didn't drink or smoke weed. I didn't cuss. I visited monasteries and considered a life of monasticism. I was very prayerful. I spent most days of the week in church (Orthodoxy had a lot of days where you could visit and attend services out of the week). I fasted, felt a deep mournful repentance for my sinful nature, tried to win friends over to the faith... I wasn't always on fire, but when I was, it was true.

 

 

 

- Did you experience anything spiritual?

 

To me, yes, it was mostly very spiritual. But I think spirituality is a human condition now, not the result of what you do in church, or divine intervention. I can achieve the same spiritual highs with 0 belief in a deity. One can enter into a "trance" or "ecstasy" through the mind.

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I'm curious about your Christian experience while you were a Christian:

- What denominations did you try?

- What excuse can you give for being fooled?

- Did you become more Christlike at all?

- Did you experience anything spiritual?

- And anything else...

 

Also if you still are a Christian or have switched to some other religion I would be curious about that too.

 

 

I started in a Reformed Baptist church, and then later moved to a non-denominational evangelical church.  I didn't leave the Reformed Baptist church out of any disagreement though; I simply moved to a new city.

 

What excuse can I give for being fooled?  As I've stated on another thread, the closest thing to an excuse I can give is to say "I was being a douchebag" by ditching my family's religion and converting to Christianity.  It was never a matter of the supernatural truth claims, though.  Despite being a professonal scientist, I've never had most of the objections others have reconciling supernatural belief and scientific fact.  I can believe in a supreme God, and in people who perform supernatural acts without any trouble.  Ultimately my problems ended up being personal, and later theological.  I guess I could also attempt to excuse myself by saying that I don't practice religion based on whether it's true or not, but based on what effect it has on my life.

 

Did I become Christlike?  For sure!  I bought into teachings on mercy, forgiveness, etc.  Really these were things I already believed, so it was pretty easy.  I did try my best to emulate Jesus, and it was out of love rather than fear of hell.  Of course I also became more Christlike by embracing his teachings that people burn in eternal hell for failure to submit to him.  So I suppose I became more like Christ at every level.

 

I didn't really experience anything especially spiritual.  But again, I was never looking for magic tricks (e.g. faith healing, miracles, etc.).

 

Since leaving Christianity I've returned to Hinduism, which I grew up with.

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-I wasn't raised in any religion, though there were religious influences from outside sources from time to time. My first experience was at a Church of God in Christ, an all-day church. Had some regular visits from a couple JWs briefly when i was 15. Fast forward years later, i visited a Disciples of Christ church for awhile, and a couple Catholic churches, one more liberal, the other more conservative. Went to my great-uncle's funeral at a United Methodist church last summer.

-My excuse for being fooled was that i was pretty much between a rock and a hard place at the time, and i thought religion could fix it. Instead it created more problems and made matters worse. I wanted acceptance and a sense of belonging, and there were these people, offering it to me on a silver platter! Looking back i know it was too good to be true.

-Probably no more than i was beforehand. I accepted others for who they were, i lent a helping hand to those who needed it without expecting anything in return (and definitely not for the bragging rights and the brownie points), and i kept myself on the straight and narrow in terms of behavior. I tried so desperately to forgive others in the way the church taught, but there were some i couldn't forgive no matter how hard i tried, and i felt like garbage because of it.

-None i can personally remember. I wondered what was wrong with me, why couldn't i feel the holy spirit working within me the way i saw others at church with the way they'd have their arms outstretched and stuff like that.

-Xtianity, like every other religion that's come and gone through the ages, is nothing but superstition, manipulation and mythology.

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I'm curious about your Christian experience while you were a Christian:

- What denominations did you try?

- What excuse can you give for being fooled?

- Did you become more Christlike at all?

- Did you experience anything spiritual?

- And anything else...

 

Also if you still are a Christian or have switched to some other religion I would be curious about that too.

I was raised a liberal cultural Catholic complete with Communion, Confession, and CCD.  I was then convinced I was going to hell by my very conservative Baptist best friend, so I went there for a while.  In high school, I started going to an independent Christian Church (the be-immersed-or-go-to-hell people) who were Creationists with pretty orthodox doctrine, but pretty chill otherwise.  I went to a holiness Nazarene church for a short while (skirts, no makeup, no cutting hair, no jewelry) when I dated a guy who was sponsored by them (he was South African and had a green card, and his accent was hawt).  I then got a degree in comparative religion.  I went from moderate Christian, to trying the mainline denoms like Methodist and Episcopalian churches.  I then went to UU church for a while, and then completely broke free from all church.

 

I lost my dad at age 13 and clung to my religion as a surrogate daddy.  It helped me get through my adolescence without much drama or depression.  This caused problems later, though.  When I left Christianity, my worldview and coping mechanisms for grief were shot to hell (ha) and I had to reprocess the grief of losing my real dad and my sky daddy all at once.  My mother never realized how crazy some of the folks I was running around with were and let me explore whatever I wanted.  I could have tried Wicca or Satanism for all she cared.  I never bought into the conservative doctrines or Creationism, even doubted the virgin birth and resurrection (which got me in trouble and I wasn't allowed to be a youth leader for my questioning).  I focused on the love and "relationship" parts of it all.

 

I didn't become any more Christlike than the next person, but my mother instilled in me compassion and tolerance.   I saw that in Christianity and it reinforced those teachings, even if it wasn't there in reality.  I was a good girl and didn't do anything that was seen as seriously wrong by Christians until college (smoking weed, premarital sex... oh noes!!).  What is being Christlike, anyway?  I think the ascetics of any religion are more Christlike than any mainstream American Christian.

 

I never had any major spiritual experiences... no feeling God close, no overwhelming feeling of love for god, only other people.  I figured it was all one in the same. I prayed randomly throughout my days and every night.  I loved some of the worship songs, but that is because I liked music.  The lyrics always seemed corny to me.  I always felt disappointed at retreats because I didn't get filled with the spirit (even in a tame non-tongues-speaking way).  I cried a few times at services, but I attribute that to youthful hormones and grief.  Evenso, leaving Christianity was painful for me.  I felt like I lost my best friend, that there was no one watching out for me.  I lost some very close real life friends, too. I truly believed all things worked out for the best because of God. I thought life was fair or that God would eventually make it fair.  LIfe gave me some hard lessons that proved that oh so very wrong.  Life is random, and if you make a bad choice, you could suffer enormous consequences that may or may not be deserved.  You make good choices, you could still get fucked.   You could be seemingly rewarded for bad choices.  It is unpredictable and it is bullshit, but it is just life.  No god or form of religion can change that, but some forms of spirituality (like Buddhism) help me deal with those realities.

 

I'm pretty well-adjusted now to life without God.  I sometimes miss the community.  It took several years.  My deconversion process started in 2001 and I completely broke free in 2006/7.  Lingering grief lasted a couple years after that, but like I said, I'm good now. 

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Thanks everybody for those replies. smile.png

 

I'm impressed by how devoted most ex-Christians were while they were Christians. Also I didn't realize the wide variations in Christian beliefs and practices.

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I was raised in the Episcopalian Church.  It was a fairly tame experience despite the frequent ritualization.  The music was nice.  However, it never really took with me.  I began questioning the indoctrination at an early age, often with simple questions and objections.  For example, I remember asking, "Is there anything I can do that would surprise God?", and "Why would God kill nearly everyone with a flood...did he make a mistake?"  Not surprisingly, this was met with vacuous and meaningless responses such as, "God works in mysterious ways.", "God is perfect...he cannot make a mistake.", and similar dogmatic assertions.

 

Once my brain became more developed, by early adulthood, I rejected the whole thing.  Rubbish.  Mere mythology.  Religious faith is for cowards.

 

But I still did not understand why so many people would fall into a religious trap.  It was in more recent years that the answer became clear - childhood indoctrination, peer pressure, fear of death, intellectual laziness, among other reasons.

 

So, I don't have the deep experience that many here have had.  On the other hand, I was never addicted to this particular religion, or any other.

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I was raised in the Episcopalian Church.  It was a fairly tame experience despite the frequent ritualization.  The music was nice.  However, it never really took with me.  I began questioning the indoctrination at an early age, often with simple questions and objections.  For example, I remember asking, "Is there anything I can do that would surprise God?", and "Why would God kill nearly everyone with a flood...did he make a mistake?"  Not surprisingly, this was met with vacuous and meaningless responses such as, "God works in mysterious ways.", "God is perfect...he cannot make a mistake.", and similar dogmatic assertions.

 

Once my brain became more developed, by early adulthood, I rejected the whole thing.  Rubbish.  Mere mythology.  Religious faith is for cowards.

 

But I still did not understand why so many people would fall into a religious trap.  It was in more recent years that the answer became clear - childhood indoctrination, peer pressure, fear of death, intellectual laziness, among other reasons.

 

So, I don't have the deep experience that many here have had.  On the other hand, I was never addicted to this particular religion, or any other.

It's interesting how people lose faith in Christianity for different reasons like:

- exposure to Christlike people who aren't Christians.

- discovery of flaws in the Bible or theology

- church scandals

- inability to experience anything spiritual

- disagreement with Christian morality

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Yeah what a shock... the reason morontheists claim for people leaving ("Want to sin!") is strangely absent from the entire list :fdevil:

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I was raised in the Episcopalian Church.  It was a fairly tame experience despite the frequent ritualization.  The music was nice.  However, it never really took with me.  I began questioning the indoctrination at an early age, often with simple questions and objections.  For example, I remember asking, "Is there anything I can do that would surprise God?", and "Why would God kill nearly everyone with a flood...did he make a mistake?"  Not surprisingly, this was met with vacuous and meaningless responses such as, "God works in mysterious ways.", "God is perfect...he cannot make a mistake.", and similar dogmatic assertions.

 

Once my brain became more developed, by early adulthood, I rejected the whole thing.  Rubbish.  Mere mythology.  Religious faith is for cowards.

 

But I still did not understand why so many people would fall into a religious trap.  It was in more recent years that the answer became clear - childhood indoctrination, peer pressure, fear of death, intellectual laziness, among other reasons.

 

So, I don't have the deep experience that many here have had.  On the other hand, I was never addicted to this particular religion, or any other.

It's interesting how people lose faith in Christianity for different reasons like:

- exposure to Christlike people who aren't Christians.

- discovery of flaws in the Bible or theology

- church scandals

- inability to experience anything spiritual

- disagreement with Christian morality

 

 

 

My take on that list. I tend to think people who actually leave Christianity do so because they become convinced it isn't true. Some become disillusioned with the dogma and what they perceive as legalism, but I think they seek out other forms of Christianity first as a way of solving their dilemma. That sometimes works but that doesn't work for everyone. Those that continue to experience doubt then attempt to validate Christianity as being true. If they are not successful then they walk away from it.

 

 

 

A true believer, and I think most Christians are true believers, is too deeply invested in it to simply walk away when problems arise. They’ve been indoctrinated and that prevents them from making a rash decision to reject all of it without deep contemplation, study, and research first. They have to regain control of their ability to override their emotional programming so they can rationally and logically discern what is and is not true before they can both emotionally and intellectually reject it.

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... 

My take on that list. I tend to think people who actually leave Christianity do so because they become convinced it isn't true. Some become disillusioned with the dogma and what they perceive as legalism, but I think they seek out other forms of Christianity first as a way of solving their dilemma. That sometimes works but that doesn't work for everyone. Those that continue to experience doubt then attempt to validate Christianity as being true. If they are not successful then they walk away from it. [/size]

 

A true believer, and I think most Christians are true believers, are too deeply invested in it to simply walk away when problems arise. They’ve been indoctrinated and that prevents them from making a rash decision to reject all of it without deep contemplation, study, and research first. They have to regain control of their ability to override their emotional programming so they can rationally and logically discern what is and is not true before they can both emotionally and intellectually reject it. [/size]

That sounds like an accurate description of the process (of course I'm still not through the process myself smile.png )

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I'm curious about your Christian experience while you were a Christian:

- What denominations did you try?

- What excuse can you give for being fooled?

- Did you become more Christlike at all?

- Did you experience anything spiritual?

- And anything else...

 

Also if you still are a Christian or have switched to some other religion I would be curious about that too.

- Church of Christ -- non-institutional

- born into it

- since it wasn't really a conversion, this may not apply, but I would certainly say that the teachings about being kind and about staying married for life have had a big effect on my life. And since my deconversion I have shifted some of my former giving to CARE, Doctors Without Borders, and the local PBS station.

- no so-called spiritual experiences, but my denomination wasn't into that and frankly taught that those things weren't real.

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...

- Church of Christ -- non-institutional

- born into it

- since it wasn't really a conversion, this may not apply, but I would certainly say that the teachings about being kind and about staying married for life have had a big effect on my life. And since my deconversion I have shifted some of my former giving to CARE, Doctors Without Borders, and the local PBS station.

- no so-called spiritual experiences, but my denomination wasn't into that and frankly taught that those things weren't real.

I wonder if people are sometimes better off believing in Christianity even if it is untrue.

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...- Church of Christ -- non-institutional- born into it- since it wasn't really a conversion, this may not apply, but I would certainly say that the teachings about being kind and about staying married for life have had a big effect on my life. And since my deconversion I have shifted some of my former giving to CARE, Doctors Without Borders, and the local PBS station.- no so-called spiritual experiences, but my denomination wasn't into that and frankly taught that those things weren't real.

I wonder if people are sometimes better off believing in Christianity even if it is untrue.

Well, who's to say I wouldn't have grown up with similar values even without the church? And all of that money I spent on weekly contribution could have been going to good causes all along,

 

Maybe if we went to humanist assemblies instead of churches the world would be a better place. We could get together on Sundays and plan civic-minded activities.

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