Thanks for your reply, hisleast. That was quite the insight. You put a lot of effort into your post. I appreciate it. My walk hasn’t been nearly as severe as yours was. Yours was one of doubts. Mine’s just been more a sense of burnout. I definitely believe in God. There’s no doubts in that regard. It’s just that it’s more of a sense that Christianity expects more of me than I can give. The requirements and standards are too high. I believe I can never live up to the expectations of what it means to be a “true Christian.” And that’s frustrating and exhausting to live with.
Well, I'm certainly not trying to lure you to my point of view. I will say, after years of watching you post, it *seems* like sometimes you look for reasons why you can't live up. For my money, I think you're way too hard on yourself.
There was a time I would have said "yes", but now I know this was something I told myself to deal with the fact that I felt nothing, heard nothing, and understood nothing.
I would never say you were trying to sway me to your position. That’s one thing I respect about you (despite some of the run-ins we’ve had in the forum) and I give you credit for that. You just say how things were for YOU and you answer people’s questions. You don’t come across as you’re better or more enlightened than others and we’d be so much smarter and better off if we just joined your “team.” I’m interested in you expanding more on what you mean by I seem to find reasons why I can’t live up to the standards of Christianity.
There are "standards of Christianity" in the man-made religion called "Christianity." There is only peace in having faith in Jesus. Two entirely different animals.
Yeah, one particular passage comes to mind... James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Yeah, I understand that. If the faith you have (and I don't have much, O ye of little faith) never reaches the heart then things get difficult on the long run.
HL, I'd like to echo thanks for posting so much of your story. Without the extreme lows it bears more than a passing resemblance to my experience of some within the church who reduce everything to a soundbite that doesn't work, only to then argue that the soundbite would work if you did it again but with More Faith. You know, when the theology stinks the options are to fix the theology or induldge in a spot of victim blaming. After abandoning the church completely and getting involved in the occult (again) it took over a decade before I was even willing to consider that the faith had anything useful to offer. For much of that time I'd have described myself as actively anti-Christian - although I opposed any organised religion I had a particular hatred of Christianity. But what I was rejecting wasn't Jesus, it was the people who claimed to represent Jesus yet had done such a poor job of actually doing it. Only one of my Christian "friends" from the time when I was actively involved in the equivalent of a Christian Union actually did anything I could call "walking the walk". Once it was clear I wanted nothing to do with God and nothing to do with the church a couple of Christian friends came round to try and show me the error of my ways. When I didn't drop to my knees and repent on the spot they left, and never came back. Others just didn't bother with me at all any more. Only one stayed in regular contact, and pretty much continued our friendship as before without the religious parts. That alone was pretty sad.
Of course the whole "feeling God" and "hearing God" are whole topics of spiritual weirdness on their own. When you get books and courses with lofty sounding titles like "the art of hearing God" and "how to hear God" and the like it's as if it's as easy as a formulaic matter of putting in the prayers and pulling the lever. But if God isn't speaking in that way you'll never hear. Right now my wife is physically about three feet from me and she's not hearing me. The reason is simple - I'm not speaking right now. There's nothing to hear. She could read books about the art of hearing your husband all she wants but right now she can't possibly hear her husband because her husband isn't speaking. As far as "feeling God" is concerned, it's another one of those subjective things that can lead to all sorts of silly places.
That type of religious indoctrination is extremely difficult to break away from, especially in circles who use a fear-based approach to ... well, everything. You are never going to ever be enough for anyone or anything. It's all about "Jesus is enough" and you ... well ... you're just not. Never mind that God (supposedly) created you ... guess He didn't do it right.
Ah, NO. We won't be playing the "you never had faith in the first place" game. Lets be absolutely clear about that. If I wanted to hear that BS I'd just call my dad, or walk into any church close enough to piss on. That kind of accusation rips open the wounds and undermines what peace I've made after giving up half a lifetime of effort. That kind of accusation makes me NOT want to move on, but go to war.
I get it. But you can't underestimate the net effect of the people. An *excellent* evidence of a belief systems veracity is whether or not it changes people. I'm not naive to think Christianity hasn't changed people. Christianity preaches life changing salvation, but there's as much evidence for it (fruits if you will) as there is for Buddhism, Judaism, and even Islam. Second, "naughty Christians" isn't the whole of the story. After all, who am I (a lecher) to look down my nose at an a**hole? No, a very VERY large part of it is that the system just makes no sense to me when I assess it on my own. To illustrate, think of the Islamic apologists, who basically tell you "you don't understand Islam because you haven't been instructed in how to interpret it". If I had been a hermit who found the book and read it on my own I wouldn't come to the conclusion that this the very word of God.
I would like to add my thanks here also HL. This right here is pretty much exactly where I am in regards to Christianity at this time.
Trust me, I don't. I spent 15 years away from God because of a cumulative effect of my questions being belittled and being surrounded by people who I increasingly decided I didn't want to associate with any more. As you say (and as Jesus himself once said) "you will know them by their fruits". And when you see people who claim the name of Jesus but are still just as petty, just as judgmental, just as hostile, just as abusive etc as those who make no claim to a religious faith it really does nothing to support the cause. Part of the problem here is the idea that if your parents were Christians and you went to church with them then you are a Christian. If you don't have any other religion "you are a Christian". If you attend church at Christmas and Easter then "you are a Christian". If you learned what the Bible says based on listening to someone else and not on reading it for yourself then you probably think you are a Christian but are also likely to totally miss the point of what Scripture actually says. If you're the kind of person who looks for a verse in Scripture to support what you already believe, you probably think that Christians are just like you and anyone who isn't can't be a real Christian. If you're more concerned with why Jesus would vote Republican/Democrat/whatever-you-vote-for than you are with loving people, chances are you've missed the point pretty badly. If you're in one of those groups you might be the one who hears the soul-crushing words "I never knew you" come Judgment Day. (Just to be clear, I'm not trying to say you are in any of those groups, but that at least some of the people who have caused you such deep hurt are probably in at least one of them) Who are you, a lecher, to look down your nose at an a-hole? Right here you're showing a better concept of grace than many who call themselves Christians. This is a serious question, coming from someone who has walked a path that is at least somewhat similar to what you have described. Are you reading Scripture starting from nothing to determine what it says, or are you still reading it through some of the lenses you've had inflicted upon you over the years? Man has an uncanny ability to take something that should be simple and make it endlessly complex - often as a means of gaining and retaining control over the less intelligent who can't understand the new-look something. But the gospel of salvation was something that first-century fishermen and farmers could work with. If you've spent all day up to your elbows in fish guts, or shovelling what might best be described as what comes from the south end of a north-bound cow, chances are you're not going to sit down with your wife at dinnertime and ask her for her views on the origins of evil, or whether Jesus died for everybody or only the preordained elect, or whether the tribulation would occur before or after the rapture. You'd just give thanks for your dinner, give your wife a kiss, and maybe give some spare food to the lame man at the end of the road.
Check out the "Mining" header of my anti-testimony. Everything I had believed up to that point of "what the bible says" was due to references and teachers who could interpret it on my own behalf. Luckily I was damaged enough to throw away all crutches and read the book with new eyes. I'm not a fisherman, but at the time I was just some rando IT guy. I picked up the book without a bible study group, without a pastor, without a commentary, and most importantly, without a prejudicial bias towards "everything in here points to jesus and is absolutely 100% true"
Sadly that also seems to be depressingly common. A guy I loosely know ended up in one of the kookiest ultra-charismatic churches for miles around because he said they were the only church where he didn't feel judged because he was divorced.