Curious why you turned away from Christianity...

[Haiku]

I have never been Christian for two main reasons:

 

1) I don't believe in any god.

 

2) Too many Christians use their religion as a weapon against others. It's revolting.

[poppy]

I would bet good money we will see a why I am a Christian still thread soon!

 

Which is fine of course :)

Just a forum behavior observation .

[SeaConquest]

In short, I didn't believe 1) that Jesus was the messiah or the son of God (Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophesies or embody the personal qualifications of the messiah), 2) that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected, 3) that non-believers were not saved/went to hell 4) in original sin, 5) in the Virgin birth (the messiah must be descended from King David), and 6) in the Trinity. I also found a lot of inconsistency between the God of the OT and NT, such that it undermined the immutability of God. However, I don't blame Christianity for Christians.

 

(I was raised Catholic, but converted to Judaism in my late 20s.)      

[SadieMarie]

Yeah, I can't have a "personal relationship" with someone who died a couple thousand years ago or so. I can admire the example Jesus set and most of what he said, but that is as far as it goes for me. I mean, I don't even know what that would look like, a personal relationship with Jesus. I am not doubting anyone who feels that they have that themselves. I really am not, but I will never go to that place or state of being or whatever you would call it.

[Desert Rat]

Another PK here. (Preacher's Kid). 

Religion isn't logical. It's not logical to believe that hundreds (or thousands) of other gods throughout history are not real gods, but the Christian god is. 

A book is just a book. A story, just a story. Even if it has a good moral and teaches a good lesson. And the Bible is used as a weapon against people more often than note. 

I've seen too much of the inner workings of churches and churchgoers to believe the majority actually follow the teachings of Christ. Be kind. Feed people. Be kind. I just don't see a lot of people following those rules.

I remember as a young child being told to ask Jesus into my heart. I did. Repeatedly. I felt nothing. And I thought there was something seriously wrong with me and that I would be damned to hell. At 8. 

Shaming. 

Guilt. 

Patriarchy.

Misogyny. 

 

The death of my father. He is not in a better place. The best place for him to be is with us. Period. 

It's not for me. I came to atheism slowly, my religion falling away from me. I felt lighter, freer, and calmer without the baggage of my youth.

 

 

[AMJ]

First it was the hypocrites I saw throughout the attendees each Sunday at Mass -- you know the ones, who made great shows of casting their eyes up during the active praying, but spent the sermon glancing about to see who was not dressed as nicely as they were and discussing afterwards how "shameful" it was that people didn't dress better for church (as if the quality of one's clothes indicated one's piety).

 

Then it was the priest I decided to boycott after he got rid of the principal of my sister's school, and nearly drowned my sister.

 

Then it was searching for more answers, combined with my studies in anthropology and interdisciplinary religious studies.

 

What kept me in the Catholic Church for so long were all of the good people, and the music and certain rituals that provided a constancy and framework when life became so perplexing. My Catholic private school education was in many ways full of rare opportunities, and my classmates and I were always encouraged to look further, question and examine not just our beliefs, but everything. I have a great respect for the School Sisters of Notre Dame to this day.

 

But I cannot believe that a "book" made up of collected writings from different times and different places, a "book" whose parts were selected for political reasons and which have been translated in too many differing ways, is supposed to be the unerring Word of God. I can't believe in a god that is so petty as to act the way "He" is described to have acted, especially one who would turn his back on the majority of the people "He" is said to have made. There's just too much that is totally preposterous to be taken literally.

 

What I can believe in is the long-standing desire of humans to have a higher authority to take on some responsibility, someone to declare inviolable rules to keep society ordered. I can see people's need to explain what they themselves can't explain, so they can stop fretting over it and get on with life.

 

I can see the benefits over the millenia that societies have derived from having one or another predominant religion. I find the growth of religions and the effect of religions on societies to be utterly fascinating. And I have concluded that we all are trying to describe the same phenomenon, and we are just bickering over the details.

 

In short, I have become an anthropologist.

[AMJ]

Double-post. First one for me (that I'm aware of). Now if auto-correct will stop correcting it to "double-stitched"....

[Occasionally]

It's not so much that I turned away, it's that I realized I was running towards...nothing. Religion gave me nothing that I needed, no matter how fast and how far I ran towards it. When I stopped all the striving, it was far more peaceful than religion had ever been.

[Audrey]

The short version:

 

The more I read the bible and the more I thought about it, the more I realized there is absolutely no reason to believe in a deity. You specifically asked about Christianity, but once I decided Christianity isn't true I did explore some other religions and spiritual beliefs. I just found no reason to believe and no need to believe.

 

Unlike some people I wasn't sad when I gave up believing. I didn't feel like I was losing anything. In fact just the opposite. I felt much more free once I let go of belief. I'm perfectly happy as an atheist.

 

Yes.  I was never really sad that I didn't believe.  I really did try to believe.  It's just not possible.  I, too, felt much more free once I let go of trying to believe.  It doesn't feel very good faking it just to make other people happy.

[AMJ]

 

Feed people.

Don't be mean.

 

That, I could get behind, because I did believe that what we did at our church was good and I enjoyed it and I still, to this day, believe that people deserve to be fed. Every human being. No one should ever have to wonder "will I be able to eat today?"

 

I still think of "Feed people. Don't be mean." as a pretty good guide to life. I'm not always successful with those things, but I try anyway.

 

 

Sounds to me like you went to a pretty good church. "Feed people. Don't be mean," is a pretty good motto for life, IMO.

[Truscifi]

I realized that if the stuff in the Bible and the stuff I was taught at church were true, I would not want to worship a god like that.

[Dory]

Too many contradicting beliefs about the same book. Makes it confusing and I got tired of trying to sort it out. I got tired of being blamed for not getting better fast enough for people. I got tired of getting guilted into thinking I must be holding onto unforgiveness and that was why I wasn't moving forward as fast as they'd like. I got tired of forcing myself to go to church when I never felt accepted on any level and the crowds made me uncomfortable anyway. I got tired of trying to make friends with people who had no desire to make friends with me. I got tired of being told at the ladies bible study that I thought to much about things and that I would just stop thinking so much and accept things I'd be happier.

 

I just stopped. I stopped trying so hard for something that was causing me pain and stress and helping me at all. I needed support in my life, not people constantly beating me down. I don't think I've completely rejected faith in God completely at this point, I just won't call myself a Christian or go to church. Maybe at some point I'll completely reject God, or maybe I'll discover options to explore my faith that fit, but for now I have had to just walk away. In my mind Christianity sucks and believers within that faith that are nice and genuinely caring seem to be rare gems.

[Dory]

Just to clarify. I don't feel leaving Christianity has solved my problems or made my life hugely better, it just took away one area of stress.

[LucyStoner]

Reading the bible carefully and a number of times over left me no longer able to suspend my disbelief. The more I read, the less I knew and all that. I found the bible full of contradictions and honestly, at times just plain troubling ideology.

[duckens]

Why I turned away from Christianity?

 

1) I read the bible.  It's pretty violent.   It's pretty abusive to women.  There's a lot of sex in it, too.  And a lot of contradictions.  It reads a lot differently if you read the whole thing and see it through the lens as an adult than as the whitewashed stories we read our children.

 

2) I value the bible as a historical document, not as the Word of God, and NOT as literal history.  It makes a lot more sense if it is read through the eyes of Bronze Age and Iron Age people, in the context of that time period and the historical and political atmosphere.  There is philosophical value in the bible, but the Christians I know are so far divorced from what I get out of the bible, I see their eyes glaze over.

Examples of philosophical value: 
After all the Adam and Eve have been through: getting kicked out of the Garden, the earth is cursed and they must labor, Eve suffers in childbirth...and now one son has killed another.  What a nightmare for any parent!  And yet, they had another baby.  His name was Seth.  And this shows that whatever they had been through, they still had hope.

 

Noah is told that all the creatures of the earth will be destroyed in a great flood.  God tells Noah that there IS a way that he can save himself and his family, BUT......he must also save all the animals, too.  That's the deal.  What lesson does this have for us as humans today?

 

3) An insistence by the denomination in which I was raised that the bible is superior in knowledge to our current medical, scientific, and cultural (example: equality) knowledge.   It's just not true.  The average 5yo knows more than the writers of the bible.  5yos know that germs cause sickness.  They know what penguins are.  They know where the sun goes at night.  They know that girls are just as good as boys, and that skin color is less important than one's character.

 

4) The level of oppression historically used in the name of Christianity and backed up by the bible to harm others, again and again, even in our country.

--against African Americans to justify slavery, and Jim Crow afterwards

--against women to bar us from everything from property/wealth ownership, suffrage, education, job opportunities, protection under the law, equal pay, and our own children

--and now I hear it quoted again and again against the gay community.  Do you really want to go there?  Do you really want your holy book used in this losing battle?
 

Christianity comes out looking like the advocate of discrimination and inequality of opportunity...and that is very unAmerican.

 

5) Whenever I espouse what one would consider to be a Christian value (because it was advocated by Christ), I get shot down my very Christian relatives.  Then they quote Paul to me, not realizing that Jesus and Paul disagreed on a boat full of stuff.  Why would I hang out with a bunch of people not interested in actually following what Christ said?

[Aelwydd]

Why I turned away from Christianity?

 

1) I read the bible. It's pretty violent. It's pretty abusive to women. There's a lot of sex in it, too. And a lot of contradictions. It reads a lot differently if you read the whole thing and see it through the lens as an adult than as the whitewashed stories we read our children.

 

2) I value the bible as a historical document, not as the Word of God, and NOT as literal history. It makes a lot more sense if it is read through the eyes of Bronze Age and Iron Age people, in the context of that time period and the historical and political atmosphere. There is philosophical value in the bible, but the Christians I know are so far divorced from what I get out of the bible, I see their eyes glaze over.

 

Examples of philosophical value:

After all the Adam and Eve have been through: getting kicked out of the Garden, the earth is cursed and they must labor, Eve suffers in childbirth...and now one son has killed another. What a nightmare for any parent! And yet, they had another baby. His name was Seth. And this shows that whatever they had been through, they still had hope.

 

Noah is told that all the creatures of the earth will be destroyed in a great flood. God tells Noah that there IS a way that he can save himself and his family, BUT......he must also save all the animals, too. That's the deal. What lesson does this have for us as humans today?

 

3) An insistence by the denomination in which I was raised that the bible is superior in knowledge to our current medical, scientific, and cultural (example: equality) knowledge. It's just not true. The average 5yo knows more than the writers of the bible. 5yos know that germs cause sickness. They know what penguins are. They know where the sun goes at night. They know that girls are just as good as boys, and that skin color is less important than one's character.

 

4) The level of oppression historically used in the name of Christianity and backed up by the bible to harm others, again and again, even in our country.

--against African Americans to justify slavery, and Jim Crow afterwards

--against women to bar us from everything from property/wealth ownership, suffrage, education, job opportunities, protection under the law, equal pay, and our own children

--and now I hear it quoted again and again against the gay community. Do you really want to go there? Do you really want your holy book used in this losing battle?

 

Christianity comes out looking like the advocate of discrimination and inequality of opportunity...and that is very unAmerican.

 

5) Whenever I espouse what one would consider to be a Christian value (because it was advocated by Christ), I get shot down my very Christian relatives. Then they quote Paul to me, not realizing that Jesus and Paul disagreed on a boat full of stuff. Why would I hang out with a bunch of people not interested in actually following what Christ said?

Hear, hear.

[TeacherZee]

The short answer is I read the Bible. I just could not believe after that.

[Pawz4me]

5) Whenever I espouse what one would consider to be a Christian value (because it was advocated by Christ), I get shot down my very Christian relatives.  Then they quote Paul to me, not realizing that Jesus and Paul disagreed on a boat full of stuff.  Why would I hang out with a bunch of people not interested in actually following what Christ said?

 

That about sums it up for me.  But I still consider myself to be a Christian, a follower of Christ.  As someone else posted earlier in this thread, what He said resonates with me.  But most of what passes for organized Christianity seems to place great value on what Paul said and on the OT, and relegates Christ to some very distant and rather unimportant place.

[Hoot]

Christians can be rude, nasty, vindictive, back-biting creatures.
They can be child molesters, rapists, thieves, liars, and pretentious.

But so can anyone else.

Christians are human and flawed just like any other people group.

I always knew that simply claiming Christ as one's savior didn't automatically make one a perfect person.  Oftentimes, it didn't even make one a good or kind or moral person.  
That, however, is a people problem, not a uniquely Christian problem.

And so, I did not leave Christianity because of its people.

 

I stopped believing Christianity because it is wholly unbelievable. 

 

I asked time and again why, in a world full of religions, ours was magically the right one.  The only answer I was ever given was, "because the Bible says so and we have faith that the Bible is right." 

 

I read mythology and the Bible and saw that one was no more or less plausible than the other. 

 

I read over and over about God being jealous and how our purpose on earth is to glorify him.  And I wondered why being jealous, pompous, conceited, and arrogant was okay for God but utterly wrong for humans.

 

I read the Bible and listened to sermons and saw how the confusing and contradictory things were explained away with twists of scripture and personal interpretation.

 

I was confused and disillusioned by the need for Christian-based sciences.  The sciences are supposed to be objective, and yet Christian-based sciences start with the supposition that God is always the answer and then work purposefully toward that end.  That is not science.

 

I personally prayed fervently to believe and understand but neither heard nor felt anything.  I then realized that prayer did nothing tangible besides comfort the person who was praying.  Praying does not feed hungry children.  Praying does not dig wells to provide clean water.  Praying does not clothe or comfort a homeless man.  People do those things.  Prayer has no power beyond that which we create in our minds.

 

I'm still working through my deconversion, but I think t is pretty safe to say right now that I don't believe in any god or gods. 

 

 

 

[Night Elf]

In a nutshell, believing the Bible makes no sense.

 

I don't like that I'm told that God is all forgiving but that I'm doomed to fire and brimstone if I don't believe. But it's okay to say I've accepted Jesus as my savior and then never have another Christian experience in my life and I stil get to go to heaven because I said the password.

 

It's also nonsensical that if I don't like a particular religion, I can create an off shoot and declare my way is the only way.

 

I want to believe in Jesus but I just can't get past the rest of the stuff that doesn't make sense. I still believe in God and I still mutter prayers, but I think that's fear. I start every prayer off with , If you're there. Truly, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it because I can never come to any satisfactory concusions.

 

But i made a heck of a good Sunday School teacher.

[AMJ]

When I told DH about this thread last night he had a good point: "Who says you have to belong to just one religion?" This matches the stance I started taking college, in which I declared that freedom of religion meant not just that one can follow whichever religion one chooses, but can pick and choose whichever bits and pieces from several that meet one's needs. Turns out this is rather a common practice in the world.

 

I had started the conversation by asking him if he considered himself a Christian. This was actually a loaded question, as I know his views on organized religion ("an opiate of the masses"), and that he also considers any literal interpretation of the bible to be utter foolishness. He considered a moment, then said, "Yes," which surprised me. But again, he made a good point: one can consider values that Christ is said to have taught to be worthy and can choose to adopt them, without falling into the whole organized religion scene or insisting that Christ had the final (or only) say on what is right or good.

 

The words above are my rough summary of what he said, written the morning after our discussion. It may be that I have misstated something, or left out other salient points he would have added had he written this response, but these are the points he made that resonate in my mind, particularly since I agree with them and feel they are worth pointing out.

 

The labels "Christian" and "Christianity" are rather ambiguous, used very broadly in many highly varying contexts to mean different, sometimes contradictory, things. Before anyone gets saddened by the cases of those they feel "lost faith" please remember this. What exactly are you sad about?

 

The vast majority of people I have talked to or read accounts from still hold to the basic values of being good to each other. In fact, I've found that the values at the very root of it all are pretty universal, claimed by all religions of significance, and even held to by people who claim no religion at all. It was summed up quite succinctly in an earlier post: Feed people. Don't be mean. I don't know of any prominent religion that would argue with that, only people who claim to adhere to a religion but distort its particulars for their own ends.

 

These universal values, in my mind, are what that which so many call "God" is saying to us, "God's Word", if you will. It is at the core of humanity, what makes gathering into societies possible and viable over the long term. Any society that wasn't based on this has failed to thrive beyond a few generations. Those societies that appear to defy this and last a long time truly haven't, they are instead long successions of different attempts to dominate, interspersed with periods of upheaval and overthrow when the population being thus ruled got fed up with it all.

 

There is no need to become despondent about people leaving behind a church and dogma they feel does not work for them. Only be sad if they no longer hold to the basic value of being good to each other. Forget the labels, and look at what is underneath. We aren't so different after all.

[BarbecueMom]

I don't believe humans have a soul or spiritual essence that can exist apart from the physical body. The whole concept of salvation and eternity falls apart if there's nothing there to "save".

 

I'm agnostic and apathetic on the existance of a god. I actually believe if there is a higher being or set of beings, that they are NOT fatherly and all-loving. That's a human desire and construct, and I don't think the universe or anything above it operates that kindly.

[Lady Florida.]

 

 

The truth is that the Christian stories are as outrageous as Romulus and Remus, Greek myths, Norse myths, Native American legends. It's ok that you *believe* them to be true, but please offer grace to those of us who dismiss them altogether or see them as intentional hyperbole.

 

 

 

Religion isn't logical. It's not logical to believe that hundreds (or thousands) of other gods throughout history are not real gods, but the Christian god is. 

 

 

 

 

 

I also found the stories to be unbelievable and illogical. The stories in the bible helped a primitive people understand their world. We understand what they didn't. We no longer need the stories of magic and supernatural beings to explain away things.

 

 

 

I asked time and again why, in a world full of religions, ours was magically the right one.  The only answer I was ever given was, "because the Bible says so and we have faith that the Bible is right." 

 

 

 

Here's another answer: An accident of birth. You were born to a family (and in a country? I don't know where you were born.) where Christianity is the dominant religion. If you had been born in Israel to Jewish parents you'd be Jewish. If you had been born in any of the surrounding countries you'd most likely be Muslim. If you had been born in India to Indian parents odds are you'd be a Hindu. The UK? Probably Christian. Possibly Church of England. Italy or Spain? Quite possibly the specific brand of Christianity known as Roman Catholic. 

 

While people can and do leave the religion they were born into, most don't. While people do learn about other religions, most don't even carefully explore the possibility that another might be the "true" god or that none might be correct.

 

I don't believe humans have a soul or spiritual essence that can exist apart from the physical body. The whole concept of salvation and eternity falls apart if there's nothing there to "save".

 

 

Yes, this too. When we die, we die. The end. So live a good life and a life filled with goodness. It's the only life you have.

[Scrub Jay]

Thanks for starting this thread, it has been an interesting read.

[BusyMom5]

Without going into a very long discussion I will just say that I tried so very hard to make it make sense.  It didn't.  I read the Bible- the whole thing, and tried to do so without the Christian-Glasses I was raised with.  It does not say what Christians say it says.  My way out was slow, but steady.  I read and studied a lot, the Bible, Judaism, lots of history- both Biblical and secular.  I read lots of apologetics- they talk in circles and make no sense.  I agree with many of the previous posters about inconsistencies and judgementalism.

[Onceuponatime]

I have hesitated to post until I could clearly articulate why I am in the process of turning away from Christianity. I was a very studious Christian, full of the desire to do things "right." I took the words "study to show yourself approved" very seriously. More and more I began to notice inconsistencies in doctrine and in some of the details of scripture versus historic and scientific facts. I noticed that people in my denomination were quick to fault other Christian denominations for not following "the truth."
It was said that if they would only dare to look outside their own tradition, they would see that they had been wrong and would see that we got it right.

In the meantime, very few (basically none) people I knew had ever dared to stand outside our tradition to look on it with the eyes of an outsider, even though this was what we expected others to do. So I decided to look around and see what people in other traditions had to say about us. I found people online who had left our churches and read about their studies and experiences. I read books of science, history, philosophy, and psychology, focusing on what they had to say about religion in general and Christianity in particular. I constantly reevaluated my beliefs as I learned, and considered whether what I read was reasonable.

I quickly came to the conclusion that the Bible was a human production, soon I no longer believed in a literal heaven or hell. I tried to hold on to the possibility that Jesus was divine, and attempted to retain a vestige of progressive Christianity in my reasoning but it all just faded away. Last year about this time all that was left was the notion that perhaps Nature/ the universe/ existence is God. This is appealing but one wonders, if that is so, why is it even necessary to call that God if it doesn't require anything of me or consciously do anything for me? So, the last of my beliefs in anything supernatural just melted away.

[Spryte]

I was raised in various protestant churches (we moved a lot - military), and attended 2 years of Lutheran school because it was the best educational choice at the time.  We attended church because it was the "right" thing to do, but the family focus was on ethics, and living a good life, treating all people fairly and kindly.  By the time I'd had 2 years of Lutheran school, we stopped attending church at all - we discussed it as a family, and decided that I knew the stories.  And yes, they were called stories in my family - as in, these are stories people use to illustrate how to live a good life.  They were never viewed as literal. As a young teen, a friend convinced me to join a methodist church for the youth group activities, then after only a few months she converted to mormonism and tried hard to convert me to that one, too (she lost me on the concept of women needing to be married to make it to a certain level of heaven, or something like that).  I attended an evangelical church camp with a cousin, with altar calls and angels singing when a soul is saved, and threats of hell.  

 

The basic message I'd received by the time I was a teen: there are many different types of religions.  None of them are right. The ones that I felt had merit were the ones that helped people live well, treat other people with kindness and fairness.

 

By the time I was a young adult, I knew christianity was not for me.  It was too inconsistent, the messages too mixed.  My sister converted to Orthodox Judaism.  I explored Buddhism, and had a bit of a love affair with A Course in Miracles, in which I substituted the word "universe" for "god" every time I saw that word.  

 

Then I went to school, and studied.  And studied and studied.  I am an anthropologist.  And I see the value that was in religions, and the order that they brought to people.  People need answers.  People created those answers, and I think it's fascinating to see just how many religions have similarities - so many cultures have stories of a virgin birth, or a flood (the virgin birth is perhaps not so surprising, after all, when women are afraid of being stoned or outcast or killed, I think a story of a virgin birth is pretty enterprising!). But religions also brought chaos and confusion, and incredible cruelty.  Ultimately, I see no reason to think that one religion is more "right" than another.  I don't think we need to create a "god" to answer questions about why it rains or doesn't any longer, I think we have those answers now.  And that we are finding more and more answers as we learn.  The answers we are finding are every bit as beautiful, as mysterious, as comforting, and as thought-provoking as any belief in a god.

 

For the people who still need to believe that they are right, that their god is the right one - that's okay.  People have needed that belief for a long, long time.  If it gives someone peace, I don't begrudge them that peace.  I don't fit the mold of the angry atheist, normally.  Unless I see someone behaving cruelly or unethically in the name of religion - and then, I suppose, I do fit that mold.  

 

 

 

[Nemom]

Hooked up to an IV for the day. I am reading and so appreciate the honest answers. Will be back when i can type with both hands. 😉

[Luanne]

nm 

 

Edited August 1, 2014 by Moderator
That was rude. And unnecessary.

[Luanne]

It's not so much that I turned away, it's that I realized I was running towards...nothing. Religion gave me nothing that I needed, no matter how fast and how far I ran towards it. When I stopped all the striving, it was far more peaceful than religion had ever been.

 

Religion and Christianity are not the same thing.  Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  A lot of people who are very religious are not Christians at all.  They think they are, but they are not because they do not have that personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  You can be religious about a lot of different things, but it won't get you into heaven.

 

[Luanne]

In a nutshell, believing the Bible makes no sense.

 

I don't like that I'm told that God is all forgiving but that I'm doomed to fire and brimstone if I don't believe. But it's okay to say I've accepted Jesus as my savior and then never have another Christian experience in my life and I stil get to go to heaven because I said the password.

 

It's also nonsensical that if I don't like a particular religion, I can create an off shoot and declare my way is the only way.

 

I want to believe in Jesus but I just can't get past the rest of the stuff that doesn't make sense. I still believe in God and I still mutter prayers, but I think that's fear. I start every prayer off with , If you're there. Truly, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it because I can never come to any satisfactory concusions.

 

But i made a heck of a good Sunday School teacher.

 

I find your comments interesting.  Even if you don't want to believe in a god, the Bible is the most historically accurate book that exists. 

 

 

[Χά�ων]

Respectfully, Luanne, your posts are off topic.

[Luanne]

I have never been Christian for two main reasons:

 

1) I don't believe in any god.

 

2) Too many Christians use their religion as a weapon against others. It's revolting.

 

Number 2 is true of Christians and non-Christians alike.  I see a lot of non-Christians using all kinds of things as weapons against others.  And for your information, the people you are referring to as Christians, aren't truly Christians.  A lot of people call themselves Christians and have no personal relationship with Jesus at all.  They don't know the true meaning of Christianity, just like you.

[Mergath]

It sounds like you should have stuck with reading the Bible instead of trying to confuse yourself with so many different books from so many different perspectives.  You do realize you would find the same problem if you studied intently ANY other subject on the face of the planet?

 

She DID read the bible.  Read her post.

 

And no, that's not how it works with any other subject.  If I want to study, say, physics, the more books I read on it, the better and broader of an understanding I'm going to have.  With Christianity, the more some of us have studied it, the more the logic and theology falls apart.  

[AMJ]

I have hesitated to post until I could clearly articulate why I am in the process of turning away from Christianity. I was a very studious Christian, full of the desire to do things "right." I took the words "study to show yourself approved" very seriously. More and more I began to notice inconsistencies in doctrine and in some of the details of scripture versus historical and scientific facts. I noticed that people in my denomination were quick to fault other Christian denominations for not following "the truth."

It was said that if they would only dare to look outside their own tradition, they would see that they had been wrong and would see that we got it right.

 

In the meantime, very few (basically none) people I knew had ever dared to stand outside our tradition to look on it with the eyes of an outsider, even though this was what we expected others to do. So I decided to look around and see what people in other traditions had to say about us. I found people online who had left our churches and read about their studies and experiences. I read books of science, history, philosophy, and psychology, focusing on what they had to say about religion in general and Christianity in particular. I constantly reevaluated my beliefs as I learned, and considered whether what I read was reasonable.

 

I quickly came to the conclusion that the Bible was a human production, soon I no longer believed in a literal heaven or hell. I tried to hold on to the possibility that Jesus was divine, and attempted to retain a vestige of progressive Christianity in my reasoning but it all just faded away. Last year about this time all that was left was the notion that perhaps Nature/ the universe/ existence is God. This is appealing but one wonders, if that is so, why is it even necessary to call that God if it doesn't require anything of me or consciously do anything for me? So, the last of my beliefs in anything supernatural just melted away.

 

Very eloquently put.  Hear hear!

 

 

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

:svengo:

[obsidian]

It sounds like you should have stuck with reading the Bible instead of trying to confuse yourself with so many different books from so many different perspectives.  You do realize you would find the same problem if you studied intently ANY other subject on the face of the planet?

 

I do not think intent study on any topic generally leads to confusion. She did read the Bible. It sounds to me like you think many people on this thread would still be Christian, if only they had only gone about trying to retain their faith the correct way. However, many people here say they prayed, read their Bible, and earnestly sought answers. These things are all what I've generally seen recommended to those struggling with their faith. In the end, they simply could not believe, despite these things. It sounds to me like you're trying to dismiss others' experiences here. Either that, or you think the Bible is weak enough that reading other sources in an attempt to understand it will reveal it as false.

[Luanne]

I would guess (and am probably on track) that a lot of you had already made up your minds to not believe in God before you even supposedly read the Bible.  If you read with a closed mind, you aren't going to believe anything you read. 

 

Another misconception that I see a lot of is not knowing what a true Christian is.  I have mentioned this before and will mention it again.  A true Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has nothing to do with going to church or researching tons of religions.  Christianity and religion are NOT the same thing.  I feel sad that so many people have made it this far in their lives and have no idea what true Christianity is. 

[obsidian]

Number 2 is true of Christians and non-Christians alike.  I see a lot of non-Christians using all kinds of things as weapons against others.  And for your information, the people you are referring to as Christians, aren't truly Christians.  A lot of people call themselves Christians and have no personal relationship with Jesus at all.  They don't know the true meaning of Christianity, just like you.

 

Oy vey. The "those people aren't real Christians" argument now.

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

I would guess (and am probably on track) that a lot of you had already made up your minds to not believe in God before you even supposedly read the Bible.  If you read with a closed mind, you aren't going to believe anything you read. 

 

Another misconception that I see a lot of is not knowing what a true Christian is.  I have mentioned this before and will mention it again.  A true Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has nothing to do with going to church or researching tons of religions.  Christianity and religion are NOT the same thing.  I feel sad that so many people have made it this far in their lives and have no idea what true Christianity is. 

 

No, the misconception is that you believe that YOU get to decide who is a true Christian and who isn't. Are you inside the heart and mind of every person who calls themselves a Christian? No? Then you don't get to have input on it.

 

This is really not the thread for this argument, Luanne. People are sharing their experiences, not looking to be relieved of their "misconceptions."

[Leav97]

I find your comments interesting.  Even if you don't want to believe in a god, the Bible is the most historically accurate book that exists. 

 

Which one and which translation.  The bible is the most edited book in the world.

[AlmiraGulch]

Number 2 is true of Christians and non-Christians alike.  I see a lot of non-Christians using all kinds of things as weapons against others.  And for your information, the people you are referring to as Christians, aren't truly Christians.  A lot of people call themselves Christians and have no personal relationship with Jesus at all.  They don't know the true meaning of Christianity, just like you.

 

In case your reason for posting these things is to show people how wrong they are because they just aren't Real Christians, and if your hope is to maybe plant some seed of doubt to save even one of the godless from eternal hell, you should know that what you're doing and how you're going about it is exactly the reason so many people are at least initially turned off from Christianity, and will likely have the opposite of the desired effect; meaning, it's very likely that someone is reading this thread right now, is on the fence, and you just pushed them over to the heathen side.

 

If that's not your point, and you just want to point out how wrong we all are, then your responses are just inappropriate in this thread.

 

ETA:  In fact, perhaps you could start a new thread to say these things.  Something like "If you've turned away from Christianity, click in here."  That would be a perfect place for you to educate the masses, should they be interested. 

[Dory]

I would guess (and am probably on track) that a lot of you had already made up your minds to not believe in God before you even supposedly read the Bible.  If you read with a closed mind, you aren't going to believe anything you read. 

 

Another misconception that I see a lot of is not knowing what a true Christian is.  I have mentioned this before and will mention it again.  A true Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has nothing to do with going to church or researching tons of religions.  Christianity and religion are NOT the same thing.  I feel sad that so many people have made it this far in their lives and have no idea what true Christianity is. 

 

The problem I have is that the supposed relationship that so many have told me they have doesn't seem to make any real difference in their lives, and I spent many years of my life trying and it never made any difference in my life either other then adding stress to my already stressed out world. True Christianity seems to come across as nothing more then semantics. I would wager that the extremely few nice Christians I've met would be nice people regardless of what belief system they were a part of.

[milovany]

I would guess (and am probably on track) that a lot of you had already made up your minds to not believe in God before you even supposedly read the Bible.  If you read with a closed mind, you aren't going to believe anything you read. 

 

Another misconception that I see a lot of is not knowing what a true Christian is.  I have mentioned this before and will mention it again.  A true Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has nothing to do with going to church or researching tons of religions.  Christianity and religion are NOT the same thing.  I feel sad that so many people have made it this far in their lives and have no idea what true Christianity is. 

 

Luanne, from one Christian to another -- you're speaking from your own tradition whether you can see that or not.  What you believe about Christianity isn't what all ("real") Christians believe about Christianity.  I'm going to guess that you would think me religious but not a real Christian because I don't believe in a "personal relationship with Christ." This "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" (believe it or not) is a fairly new understanding/belief in the Christian faith as a whole, and the Bible itself never, ever mentions it.  The early church, the church through the centuries, the church in its entirety until much later in Christian time, didn't espouse what you're espousing, and yet it was still God's vibrant, growing, Christian church. Receiving Christ?  We "receive Christ" through receiving the Eucharist, which is His Body and Blood.  I know that wouldn't be your understanding, but that's what the early church and the church throughout time has taught.  You're welcome to a different belief, but please don't speak for Christianity as a whole. 

 

Same with the Bible.  I agree with others that it can be very confusing and even contradictory if read through one's own eyes and if read solely by itself.  I studied the Bible and the Bible alone on several topics and came to some very sincere conclusions -- but others did the same thing and came to completely opposite conclusions.  The Bible was never meant to be the foundation of the faith at all.  The Bible itself even says this. 

 

Real Christians don't concern themselves with whether or not others are saved.  Only themselves.  "Work out your salvation."  It takes a lifetime and I personally have found that I don't have time to work out the salvation of others because I have enough to do with my own heart before God. 

[Leav97]

It sounds like you should have stuck with reading the Bible instead of trying to confuse yourself with so many different books from so many different perspectives.  You do realize you would find the same problem if you studied intently ANY other subject on the face of the planet?

 

 

Religion and Christianity are not the same thing.  Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  A lot of people who are very religious are not Christians at all.  They think they are, but they are not because they do not have that personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  You can be religious about a lot of different things, but it won't get you into heaven.

 

 

 

Number 2 is true of Christians and non-Christians alike.  I see a lot of non-Christians using all kinds of things as weapons against others.  And for your information, the people you are referring to as Christians, aren't truly Christians.  A lot of people call themselves Christians and have no personal relationship with Jesus at all.  They don't know the true meaning of Christianity, just like you.

 

 

I would guess (and am probably on track) that a lot of you had already made up your minds to not believe in God before you even supposedly read the Bible.  If you read with a closed mind, you aren't going to believe anything you read. 

 

Another misconception that I see a lot of is not knowing what a true Christian is.  I have mentioned this before and will mention it again.  A true Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has nothing to do with going to church or researching tons of religions.  Christianity and religion are NOT the same thing.  I feel sad that so many people have made it this far in their lives and have no idea what true Christianity is. 

 

These are the perfect example of Christians driving people from the faith.

[AMJ]

I find your comments interesting.  Even if you don't want to believe in a god, the Bible is the most historically accurate book that exists. 

 

Luanne, perhaps you would like to start your own thread?  The OP asked for reasons and insight from a specific group of people, those turning away from Christianity.  You aren't addressing that -- you are merely arguing with the reasons people give and asserting your own judgement of those people, and without offering citations to support your arguments.  If you wish to take discussion in that direction it would be more appropriate to start a spin-off thread.

[Χά�ων]

I would guess (and am probably on track) that a lot of you had already made up your minds to not believe in God before you even supposedly read the Bible.  If you read with a closed mind, you aren't going to believe anything you read. 

 

Another misconception that I see a lot of is not knowing what a true Christian is.  I have mentioned this before and will mention it again.  A true Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has nothing to do with going to church or researching tons of religions.  Christianity and religion are NOT the same thing.  I feel sad that so many people have made it this far in their lives and have no idea what true Christianity is. 

Again, your posts are highly disrespectful and completely off topic. Please start another thread. 

[laundrycrisis]

Answering the original post - have not read the thread.  And I am not meaning to offend anyone, just answering the question as it was asked.

 

I came to see the views of divinity and truth as described in these particular scriptures and traditions as being very small, extremely limited, and frankly silly.  I let myself off the hook to embrace something that to me is much bigger.  I didn't turn away from anything, or lose any faith.  There was never any sense of loss at all.  Just moving on.   Like if a person had only shopped at one small store, in one small town, their entire life, and then they find out that there are different kinds of stores, in other towns, with all sorts of different things, and bigger selections, etc.   The person realizes that people who shop elsewhere are happy and doing just fine, and decides to check it out, and then decides she enjoys the bigger marketplace.  So I let go of the guilt and decided to be freestyle.  Feminism gave me the initial shove, but there was much more to it than that.  I realized I had been living in guilt and fear, and to me, those are indicators of a toxic relationship.  So I moved on.  I do not need to believe I have definite answers about big questions.   I find there is a lot to explore once I have let go of this.  I like it out here !   :D

[unfrumpable.]

Edited in retrospect to not be off topic of the OP and to not drag this thread down.

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

I an finding this thread interesting.

 

Thank you all for sharing.

 

 

Could we please refrain from criticizing a persons personal experience? If we need a thread on what a real Christian is then start one. But correcting a persons very personal experience us insulting and flat out rude.