Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

What Made You Quit?


Guest sawitch

Recommended Posts

I started having doubts about the Bible's validity when I was in college. I never was a fundy Christian but still believed the doctrine of being saved by Jesus's crucifixion. One particular story that disturbed me was the one about David's newborn baby being allowed to die because God was angry at him for his affair with Bathsheeba. I couldn't understand why God would kill an innocent child over something his father did, even when some friends tried to explain it away by saying that it "rains on both the just and unjust."

 

Then it didn't help that the more devout the Christians were, the more hateful they seemed. My father disowned me just because I wouldn't stop going to church. While I was living with him for a few months due to discord in my mother's home, he gave me the ultimatum that I start going to his Jehovah's Witness meetings or leave his home . This guy had never done anything for me and always used religion as an excuse to not take responsibility. My pastor treated me worse than just about anyone I've known, either ignoring my pleas for help with family problems or breaking promises that he would. He was a narcissist who would be nice to me one minute and treat me horribly the next. Then a boyfriend dumped me for an ex-nun after she led him to religion and since he couldn't have sex anymore, I was of no use to him.

 

Christianity was supposed to be about love but I was encountering the exact opposite. The last straw came when I attempted suicide a couple of years ago and one of the parametics asked me if I went to church saying I would go to hell if I killed myself. I haven't stopped believing in a universal force, higher power or whatever it's called. However, there was no way my mind could get around the inconsistancies in Christianity and the doctrine about god sacrificing his son just so he could forgive mankind was ludicrous.

 

You can say I'm a deist who's still trying to find my way without religion. I appreciate humanity more since I don't divide them into "saved" and "hell bound" files. I just wish people would just love one another without using a middle man that just complicates everything, placing conditions on something that should've been free in the first place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Note: All Regularly Contributing Patrons enjoy Ex-Christian.net advertisement free.

For me it was a matter of just facing down all the social norms. The greatest pressure came from my wife, who really wanted me at church with her. I would occasionally skip but for the most part dragged my ass along, hoping I could salvage something out of it. I stopped singing hymns because I didn't agree with the words. The courage to stand in church and not sing or mouth the words out of fear of reprisal I think was a big step for me. I started to realize that what other people thought didn't matter. I didn't agree and that was that. I finally applied that reasoning to my wife and told her that I wasn't going to go anymore.

 

For about 6 years before deconverting I told myself and those around me "I still believe in Jesus, I just have some problems with the bible". I spent the last 3 years standing in church, disagreeing with everything, praying to god that he reveal himself to me. I literally sat there and at every prayer call, praying "Reveal yourself to me, make me believe, please." Accepting that I didn't believe anymore was the most invigorating and refreshing process I've ever gone through.

 

It takes a long friggin time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest sawitch

Thanks to everybody for your answers. Just as I suspected there are so many different experiences but all really interesting.

Just to update the original post, I'm going to see my minister/pastor on Thursday. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to broach these issues with her or whether I'll still be an elder on Friday?? :scratch:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure yet how I'm going to broach these issues with her or whether I'll still be an elder on Friday?? :scratch:

 

lol. If you're ready to lay all doubt to rest and just be done, check out the link in my sig.

 

As for me, I deconverted within 48 hours but I'm still playing along cause I'm pretty happy with my life. As to how long I'm gonna keep it up, who knows? The baloney becomes less and less palatable day after day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been reading that site im too page 15 it really makes you think about things.

Read part two it will make you shocked you could ever have believed in something so horrific really 1-15 should be read but part two really makes you think.

I would recommend the site to anyone wanting to free his or her mind from Christianity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

lol. If you're ready to lay all doubt to rest and just be done, check out the link in my sig.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me, it was a combination of things. It wasn't any one huge thing. However, I will list a few things.

 

1. In high school, my mom got breast cancer and died. Everyone prayed for her, including me. She was a fundy Lutheran, as religious as almost anyone could be. She had been in remission once, but this time she didn't get better. I held on to the remnants of my beliefs because I was too afraid to let go.

 

2. In college, I met people from different backgrounds. I dated an agnostic. We had quite a few good debates. I didn't deconvert entirely, but I rethought my views on a lot of things.

 

3. A couple of years ago, I was renting a basement apartment in a townhome. My housemate upstairs committed suicide and set the townhome on fire. Note that I didn't give up my beliefs immediately thereafter like a lot of Christians assume. It was a slow process.

 

However, I questioned those who said that I survived because it was in god's plan. What kind of god kills people and then tortures them to let others survive? Especially my agnostic housemate, who by fundy rules would be suffering in hell even if you don't believe that people who commit suicide go to hell. I couldn't accept the hell doctrine anymore.

 

4. I tried going to a liberal church to make everyone else happy, but it was like trying to believe in Santa Claus again. Especially with liberal churches, it was a lot like trying to believe in Santa and cherry pick which reindeer I wanted to believe in.

 

"Um...yeah, I'll believe in Dasher but not Dancer, Prancer but not Vixen, Comet but not Cupid, Donner but not Blitzen, and not Rudolph, his nose is just way too bright. It's unnatural!"

 

5. I finally realized that I was trying to literally believe in a fairy tale to make other people happy. My happiness didn't matter to me. It was only theirs that counted. It was unhealthy.

 

6. I read up on lots of world religions.

 

7. I realized that there were many, many similarities to Christianity and other religions. It couldn't be just a coincidence. I had realized that most of the Bible was myth earlier, but I had hung onto some core beliefs, like Jesus' existence and divineness.

 

8. At first I stopped believing in hell, but tried to hang on to the Jesus/God belief and heaven, but I realized that I coudln't even believe in that literally anymore. It was like trying to believe in Star Wars literally and worship Yoda or something. It just wasn't possible for me anymore. And I was tired of trying to be someone who I wasn't, just to make other people happy.

 

So that's it in a nutshell. I have to be who I am. I am so tired of worrying about what other people think. I need to be myself. If I'm rejected by people for some stupid reason like my unbelief, then I'm rejected, and there's nothing I can do about it except release my frustration in a healthy manner.

 

Before you read on, note that I never was a fundie - German Lutherans are pretty liberal compared with what I know about the 4th reich cults...

 

:twitch: Which German Lutheran church would that be? I'm descended from a very long line of them. They're all German Lutherans on my mom's side of the family, Scandinavian Lutherans on my dad's, and Catholics on my stepmom's, and many of my relatives are fundies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What started the final exit was when my wife went full fundy. I was a quasi-christian until that point. I was wrestling with ways to rationalize some kind of christian belief that Jesus died for my sins etc. One day some sobbing lady asked me if I wanted what "they had". Meaning the arm raised, swaying chanting folks around me. See my sig for the answer.... :grin:

 

Then a few months later I was driving down the road, MMOB, when it just hit me. It's all B.S., a cult. I literally felt like a huge weight lifted. I feel like I got my mind back. :woohoo:

 

I believe it was the best thing that had happened to me in a very long time. Knowledge, my friend, is the answer. Look, read and listen. Do your own research, draw your conclusions based data and facts. Be skeptical of all things, religous or secular.

 

I still have a long, likely painfull, journey a head of me concerning my wife. No matter what happens, I'm free to make my choices as best as I know how. Right or wrong, no demon, spirit or xtian god had any influence on the outcome. I will learn from my mistakes and triumphs. They are mine, not anybody elses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought the idea of one right religion was stupid a little before I said fuck religion as I had become educated in other religions. I started going to an atheist chat room and one thing led to another ansd I no longer believed in God.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've always had a very strong tie to Asian culture and thought. I don't know why. Past life or something? I don't know. But over time I just couldn't live with the idea that God was so loving but would send people to Hell for eternity, just for not hearing His particular "Word". I always loved how Asian culture and spirituality was so well connected with nature and was so humble in terms of glorification. It was like there was such respect there, which I didn't find in the church. I was a huge animal lover, and animals were non-beings in the church. There was so much emphasis based on how we were the superior species, and yet we were still filthy rotten worthless sinners.

 

I got tired of living in fear of Jesus showing up and me not being good enough for him to take me to heaven. We were always told that we had to give ourselves and all of our lives to him. I found I wanted my own life. I wondered why I always did everything and enjoyed everything with such guilt. I was Lutheran, not Catholic, but I always felt like I was too selfish and I wasn't giving enough to God so God hated me.

 

I never had a problem with abortion or homosexuality. I tried, I really tried. I tried to consider it sinful. I tried to consider all kinds of things sinful and wrong, like for women to be in power, to have sex before marriage, to be sexy, to have fun with sex, to cuss, all of that, but I could never find anything wrong with it, not inside of me. I always felt it was alright but I kept trying to deny it for the glory of God.

 

To my church, the Earth was ours to exploit. We not only could do whatever the hell we wanted with it - including being heartlessly cruel to our fellow inhabitants ("animals don't have souls") to polluting the air with as much exhaust as we could force our cars to produce. It was our right, but it wasn't working out. I could tell because I live on the Earth, and we just can't take things for granted like that.

 

I always had trouble with a male God. Why did God seem to dislike women so much? I loved mysticism and magic and fortunes, but I wasn't allowed to deal in them. I was always terrified of both God and Satan. Satan wanted me to be in Hell and God would never possibly think I was good enough for him.

 

I was just too spiritual, too compassionate for it. I felt more like a potential bodhisattva than some lowly lucky "saved" soul.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I started to think about leaving church after the 3rd time being kicked out of bible study after I started to debate the pastor on the bible. I guess they frown on that. I completly left the church after many bad things that happened in my life. I found out that god to me wasn't real so there was no more need to go to church.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me it was simple, and unexpected.

 

My life was going great, and has been to this day.

 

None of the "problems" with Christian teaching put me off the base religion, simply because I still believed, to the best of my knowledge, that what I considered the two fundamental and pivotal points (of God and Jesus being who they are said to be in the religion) remained.

 

I like non-fiction books, and have a decent collection of physics books and other non-fiction writings. I also had a book my mum gave me for my 17th birthday (I'm almost twice that age now), entitled Testament by John Romer. You may have heard of him, and/or the book. Anyway, the reason I didn't really read it till now is that it just seemed too big and hard. I've since amassed enough non-fiction to make reading this book a far less daunting task.

 

Reading it gave me a fascinating insight into the Bible and its making. I now understood far more about the people of the day and the Bible made much, much more sense (for example, how the Isrealites could switch deity so quickly despite the great works Jehovah had performed for them).

 

Then came the bit that changed me (and I know about the archaelogical findings since this book was written, but this has not changed the base understanding). Romer asserted that the Isrealites were probably the Canaanites, who made up a new religion because they needed something to unite them in their quest to take back their land from the Philistines. Besides being from different tribes, they had another problem in that the gods of the day were regional gods. They needed a universal god that would be with them wherever they went.

 

So anyway, this obviously caused me great consternation. Was it true? The main hurdle to accepting this was Jesus, who would surely have known this if it were true but who also could be seen as proof that it was not. As it happened I had another unread book given to me by a friend, called Honest to Jesus by Robert Funk. I didn't read this one because I simply could not see the point in reading something which would so obviously turn out to be a pile of rubbish. And so, while one book dealt with Jehovah, I finally had a reason to read Honest to Jesus and that dealt with who Jesus really was.

 

I'm not going to mention any of the hypocrisies of the church I have witnessed over my 33 years there, because that was irrelevant to my belief in those two fundamental points. But as I expanded my historical understanding (I was already very well read scientifically, so there were no hurdles there), it allowed me to reconcile some things that I had come to believe anyway or that were a cause for concern, such as the idea of the religion applying to other cultures (something the Apostles themselves were divided about).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I don't know, exactly, when my deconversion began but I guesstimate, roughly, around two and a half years ago.

 

I believe the catalyst for my change was natural progression, maturity, and a burgeoning college education. I've always been quiet and introspective. I'm a voracious reader and I love to learn things. So I take those factors into account...

 

 

But, overall, it was a number of things...

 

1.) The contradictions and inaccuracies in the bible...

 

2.) The hatred of the bible god. The bible god, for lack of a better term, is a creep. Infanticide, patricide, incest, animal sacrifice, war, death, and murder were all ordained by him at some point or another...How can I praise someone like that?

Even Jesus is jealous and tells us we will rot in hell if we don't worship him...Yet, he loves us to? What in the hell is love with a stipulation attached?

 

3.) My sexual orientation. I'm gay and I can't change it. If there was one huge unanswered prayer it would be this one. I prayed all the time for god to change my sexual orientation...I wanted to be the best Christian I could be and he hates gay man...Ergo I needed to change. It never happened. Now I don't want it to happen because I'm at peace with it...

Yet, people still condemn me with the bible because of it. Screw them.

 

4.) The 04 election...Enough said.

 

All of those things helped me learn to find strength and break away. Sure, I'm in limbo right now when it comes to religion and spirituality...But maybe I just need a break from it. Perhaps, I should start learning to stand on my own and believe in myself. I have a purpose in life and a place on this Earth...I don't need to follow a 2,000 year old rule book to be a good person. I still believe I'll goto heaven.

 

I don't condemn anyone who still chooses to be a Christian. If it helps you in your life, fine. But for me it isn't good enough. I think it is all lies.

Perhaps there is a god out there in the universe...I hope that he loves us all instead of declaring us as lowly craven dogs from birth just because we aren't under the Blood of the lamb.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i became an atheist because i learned how to use my brain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.