My Evolution From Christian To Agnostic

[AgnosticExChristianTB]

The story of my life has not been easy and is not quite the type of “normal” life most people have. Before I begin my story, I should mention to say that at this point of life I am agnostic, with some traits very similar to what atheists have. I just don’t know if there is a god or deity, or Supreme Energy, but I am pretty sure if it exists, it has nothing to with the religious gods we all know about, therefore I don’t believe in the Christian, Muslim, Jewish or any kind of religious god or deity.

 

A CHRISTIAN THAN NEVER GOT ALONG WITH MOST CHRISTIANS

 

                As a kid, I went to the Disciples of Christ branch of the Protestant Church (Evangelical), but I never got really along most of the kids by that time, of course as a kid we are way too immature to know what’s right and what’s wrong, but the problem is that some adults also behaved in a way that concerned me. Many of the people of my extended family had a hideous competition in the church and I remember when my parents commented on the different incidents of gossiping around, and my parents left that church, taking us out of there in the process. In another Protestant church, when I was age 10, in a biblical school session, the teacher fell over my feet accidentally, and when I apologized to her (and I remember I was scared) she saw me with a look that I didn’t like and told me “I’m going to tell your parents”, and she did. That was just an accident, and yet my parents scolded me for the accident. That incident I think I will never forget. But the “fun” was just going to get started. Several years later, a pastor in the congregation interrupted my father in a service when he was talking, and humiliated him in front of the people, settling the end of us (finally) to go the church. Then we went to another one, this type Presbyterian, and the environment was a bit better but not without things that eventually led us out. In most churches we went it was the same- people who were very welcoming but eventually turned cold and distrusting.

 

                My father left the church and my mother returned to her previous Catholic beliefs, my sister was never into that but due to different experiences in her life she decided to join. I kept going to church on my own, but I was already suspecting that the environment was simply, generally hostile. I was invited to different churches as well, everywhere I went both in Puerto Rico my homeland as well as here in the United States, and the environment was hostile- people who were welcoming but never got the interest to know me. In different occasions I sat alone, nobody came to me, and when I tried to be social they were not interested.

 

                In the last years before turning non-religious, I met a friend who is a strong Protestant and befriended another one in Facebook and they seemed to be the exception of what I generally met. I forgot to mention that during all this time, a bunch of Christian people of my extended family began to gossip against me and two of them blocked me from Facebook, so my doubts on the Christian community began to materialize into “strong proofs” that the Christian community in general is a fraud. But again back to these two friends, one of them developed a strong attachment to me, in a period of time he even called about 2-3 times a week, but his wife (a daughter of pastors) heavily disliked me from the start. After I moved from town to Florida, our friendship kept strong for about two years, but then it began to fade away and today we are no longer friends. The other one was capable enough to trust me certain events of his life, very sad ones, and after that suddenly out of nowhere and for some unknown reason, he deleted me from his Facebook page. This incident along with some other things that I will explain below, since I was already non-religious, turned me into the agnostic I am today.

 

FAKE CHRISTIANITY

               

I cannot say that ALL Christians are fake, hypocrites or judgmental, but the truth is that most certainly are, and as per my description in the previous part, I can say that I have not met a single Christian soul that can be trusted. It all begins and ends in the same manner- very welcoming at the beginning, nice soon after that, eventually not so nice and finally rude and distrusting at the end. For me this means that most people who go to church are people who simply can’t go against their human nature. It’s all this “we need to be like Jesus” but at the end they just can’t be. They are what they are, and I realized that for that I better stick with seculars and non-believers- they are more authentic.

 

CONTRADICTIONS EVERYWHERE

               

Not only did my experience with most/all Christians in my lifetime went wrong, but I also began to analyze the content of the Bible and the Christian message and compare it to the real world. The Bible is full of contradictions, especially when we compare the Old and the New Testaments. So, the Old Testament God was wrathful, hateful, he sent his favorites (the people of Israel) to kill everyone in the already populated Promised Land so they could invade and take it over, he did not save Solomon the great wise man to slip to sin, and he established certain sins (absurd ones, like eating certain forms of seafood and the like) and allowed incest (Lot & his daughters), polygamy (all kings and even some prophets), adultery, and the like but then suddenly in the New Testament and our culture condemn them… Not to mention homosexuality. I already explained the fakeness of the Protestant Christian community, which is by nature contradictory to the Christian principle, and the Catholic community is not left far behind with all the scandal of pederasty and pedophilia, as well as some hypocrite traits that I described in the Protestant division.

 

PRAYERS DON’T WORK

 

All my life I though prayer worked, and perhaps because the process of realizing the falsehood of religion is tough and difficult especially when you are raised in a very strong religion as Christianity is, I did not dare to realize that prayers have the same effect as talking to a wall. When very young, about 18 years old, I prayed and prayed for a girlfriend, and even though I no longer want one, at 30 I never got any. Not even a date. After I lost my first job, I prayed and prayed for a better one- and it took one year and four months to land a job that was far worse than the first one and had me save less money, and I had to eventually quit before getting fired due to an extremely hostile environment and the seemingly unavoidable decision to have out. After that job I again prayed, and I have been unemployed ever since, although I landed some low-salary job in the airport which lasted one month because the company laid me and others off due to leaving the airport for lack of flights to attend. I have seen also other people praying with no results, and most people pray for a better economy, a better America, a better world, a better future… and we can see there are no results.

 

AT THE END, IT’S ALL ABOUT LUCK

               

I strongly believe everything is dictated by luck. There is absolutely no guarantee that trying and working hard today pays off. There are people who do, but if we see all people around us, and watch closely, there are many people who have done many things in order to have a better future and they end up in a bad shape- without their fault. At the same time, there are people who have done bad things in every possible way- cheat, threaten, lie, etc. and they end up very successful. Perhaps working hard may have a direct proportion to the POSSIBILITY to be successful, but if we believe that we have to try hard to BE successful, we are lying to ourselves. That’s what Christianity teaches, and it defends that good always pays off. We can’t recall the number of good people who have been wrongfully sent to jail, who have been murdered, who have been cheated…  so no, good does not always pay off. Also, evil is not always punished- can’t we realize that there are people with very dark secrets who manage to live up to 100 years and die peacefully?

 

My conclusions, at 30 years old, are solid. There is no Christian god, or Muslim god, there is no human-created/perceived god. I cannot say that THERE IS NOT A GOD, in a decisive way, like atheists do, but I understand their point of view. We have wasted millennia trying to take us away from the cruel, harsh and unfair reality we simply have to accept at the end. Evil and good are equally balanced forces that do not discriminate, they can happen to anyone, they don’t pay off nor are they punished. It’s all luck,and we cannot say how we’ll end up. Some of us will end up screwed up, some of us will end up “blessed” regardless if we do the right thing or not.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Welcome to Ex-christian.  I'm glad you made it out of the church.  I was also 30 when I finally got out.  It definitely gets better from here.

[kolaida]

Welcome to the boards!  Yes, luck has something to do with it, for sure. Also, just going out there and not waiting around for God to answer prayers as well (something I've been guilty of in certain areas).  You're out of it now and things will get better. Yes, being good does not always pay off, at least not in the way we are led to believe.  

[amateur]

Welcome!  You made some excellent points.  For me, it's much more satisfying just living my life and knowing that things happen just because they do sometimes.  I can't control everything by working hard or praying.  God isn't in control, making things good for "his people," or testing them like Job.  Things just happen.  Everything isn't for some ultimate good, and there is not always some great lesson that god is trying to teach us.  I know some people find it comforting to believe in god and believe in some ultimate good or ultimate reward.  To me that's frustrating because god's answers seem to have no rhyme or reason, things can stay bad or sometimes life is going great.

 

When I realized there is no god (or at least no god that any holy book or group of religious people has come up with) it actually all made more sense to me.  I know xians would answer that with "now you have no meaning to life" or "you just want to go out and do bad things."  No.  I still work hard, usually with no great results, and I treat people as best I can because it's just right and because we are all here together on earth right now and if we can be nice and help each other a bit I think it's helpful for all of us.  And for me, I find great meaning in simply that we are here, with our bodies and senses and consciousnesses, aware of ourselves and others, and it's just amazing that we are here getting to do what we do!

 

I am very sorry for the treatment you and your family received in the different churches.  That is a shame in any group of people to be treated like that.  I am indignant for you for getting in trouble for accidentally tripping your teacher, and am especially indignant for your dad for getting publically humiliated by the pastor.  Unbelievable adult behavior for any group -- being in a church doesn't excuse that level of rudeness and insensitivity.

[wanderinstar]

Welcome! Sounds like you have had a rough time due to christianity, as many others here have experienced too. Hopefully you will find some comfort and useful information from the many excellent posts on this site. Keep posting if you want/need to. 

[narrowgate]

It's hard to come to the realization that all that energy and time put into prayer ultimately didn't work. 

I never "got" praying. I tried to pray but found it so hard. The church people kept telling me the more I did it, the easier it would get.

I'm glad I didn't really believe them. It felt like such a mental strain to pray. I just couldn't do it. 

Prayer exhausted me, I found it completely exhausting.