Christianity consumed my formative years. Faith in God filled my life with meaning and I aimed to "put God first" in all of my thoughts and actions.
The beauty of God drove my passion to learn about Christianity. I believed that I intimately knew the creator of the universe, the source of everlasting truth, and that this relationship would allow me to obtain a glimpse of that truth. I thought that I had found the key to all of life's questions. All that God required of me was to trust His plan.
Yet, what was this plan, I wondered? I yearned to learn more about God. How does the Bible describe God? Why did God send Jesus? How can God be Himself, His son, and a medium of communication between Himself and humans that Christians call the Holy Spirit? How does God treat those who have not heard of Christianity? What is Heaven like? How can I be sure that I will enter Heaven? I asked every question you could imagine.
Around fifteen or sixteen years old, I realized that I needed to study the works of Christian scholars to gain deeper understanding of the Bible. I asked for a concordance of the Bible and you gave me one as a Christmas present that covered the New Testament. I read a significant portion of that book and asked questions to those around me, notably, church leaders. It soon became evident that these people could answer some questions to a reasonable satisfaction, but that they would sidestep most questions by asserting that faith in God requires that we remain ignorant. Without ignorance, they told me, we would have no need for God. I could tolerate not receiving answers to all of my questions, because I knew that they were difficult, but I could not tolerate the apathy I witnessed. These people wanted to remain ignorant and they did not care to understand what lied behind their belief that ignorance is justified. I cared because I desperately wanted to develop a deeper relationship with God.
This did not dissuade me from learning, however. On the contrary, it ignited a burning desire to overcome my ignorance. Just as God is infinitely important, so was my curiosity infinitely unyielding.
My transition from belief to doubt encompasses a long, arduous journey, but I can summarize it as follows. The Bible states in verses like Proverbs 8:17 and Jeremiah 29:13 that God wants us to learn more about Him and that, when we do, He will reveal His presence to us. These verses inspired me. I understood them as statements of a single promise, not a potential. In other words, I understood that I could count on the fact that, every time I looked for God, He would find me.
These verses initially inspired me, but they later confused me. The deeper I searched, the harder it became to believe that the Bible would fulfill its promise. No one seemed to be able to answer most of my questions and, given that I continued to ask questions when others were answered, the net result was that nothing added up. This became unbearable.
I could cite a number of problems that overwhelmed me, but one stands out because of its prevalence in theological debate. This is the problem of evil. I could not account for God's allowance of, or responsibility for, evil and suffering in the world. Consider the recent tsunami that killed over 250,000 people. These people died horribly by drowning and other effects of this disaster. Why would God allow or, worse, cause this? The Bible contains several stories in which God punished one or more people for their sins. The story of Noah's ark is one. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is another. In the first, God drowned virtually all of His creation because He had grown tired of their continual wickedness. In the second, God explicitly told Moses that he did not care about the innocent, only about the ratio of innocent to guilty, and that he would destroy everyone if Abraham could not prove that a certain number of people were “righteous.†Abraham failed to do this, so God burned alive the entire populations of two cities. In both stories, God saved one small family, but killed multitudes.
In Romans 3:10-12, it states that no one is righteous before God. Psalms 14:3, Psalms 53:3, and Ecclesiastes 7:20 support this. God gave Moses an impossible test.
Moreover, the Bible states throughout that God is perfectly good. How can this be true if He indiscriminately and brutally takes lives? Why should babies and animals suffer for the sins of rapists and prostitutes? The Bible states that Jesus carried the weight of our sins for us, and that only he could, which means that not only do I not have to be punished for my sins, but that I also certainly do not have to be punished for the sins of other people.
As I mentioned, the problem of evil represents one of a host of questions that plagued me over the course of several years. All of these questions, however different, point to one inescapable conclusion, namely, that God cannot exist. I fought this conclusion repeatedly. I hated that my struggle to know God had led me to His absence. My struggle falls under two categories, the pursuit of truth and the denial of it. Under the first, my relationship to Christianity was supremely satisfying. Under the second, it was torturous. I cannot describe the pleasures and pains I experienced because of this religion.
Religion continues to pervade my thoughts and I continue to study Christianity as well as other religions. I study religion religiously, you might say, although, I am relieved to finally admit that I am no longer religious.
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Tue, 2005-07-12 14:27
i grew up with great parents with my mother and her
mother having great faith. there is something powerful about
that childlike faith and i would never put someone down for having
it. i don't think you would either. some people, some intelligent ones
too, my mom is high iq..she is not rigid and would be open to new ideas,
but her faith at this point won't change much and that i s great, i am
sure she will be in heaven if anyone else deserves (and according to
bible NONE of us are good enough, but get there only thru grace)she
will be there and i hope she will be waiting to to give me a tour !!
I have been kind of deconverted as well. In my opinion , the Bible has
been tampered with down thru the ages by popes, kings and other
power hungry ass-h&#@s. I believe in reincarnation and beleive
that Jesus had something to say about it too, but it was edited out..
gotta go dude, take care and God bless! yes, i still believe in HP (higher power, not Hewlett Packard lol)
Tue, 2005-07-12 15:08
Nice to hear someone who has explored the religious question from a basis of faith AND truth. It is an uncommon occurrence for most to seek answers about the meaning (and necessity) of religion rather than just blindly accept the words of their teachers.
I too have explored many facets of Christianity, attended many different services of the various factions, and have come to nearly the same conclusion as you have.
The idea that ignorance is bliss was contrived by those who wanted to hold and exploit power for power's sake. And by threatening the people with superstitions about heaven and hell (christianity, islam, and others) only serves to gain a firmer grip on said power.
Your post is thoughtful and intelligent, and you deserve applause for seeking the answers on your own.
Ken Grandlund
http://4commonsensenow.blogspot.com
Wed, 2005-07-13 05:21
Interesting post. I was a Sunday School teacher for the Lutheran Church in which I grew up and I didn't even understand the Bible stories that I was teaching.
I posted about this subject a little bit yesterday. http://jessikahjarta.blogspot.com/
Thu, 2005-07-14 17:30
This is a really good piece. You should consider submitting it to the Carnival of the Godless.
~I AM~
Thu, 2005-12-01 10:30
Congratulations for following where reason leads instead of hiding in faith like so many others.
Best,
Jeff Medina
Thu, 2005-12-01 11:15
Thank you for your inspiration, Jeff. I am proud to say that you have visited my website, and I hope you will return.
Also, I really like your blog, and I have added it to my list of atheistic blogs.
Thu, 2005-12-01 15:31
Saying there is no God, means you claim to understand all knowledge that exists. Yet, we know only a minute piece of knowledge that exists in this world. Until you have delt with every piece of knowledge, how can one make a conclusion?
Thu, 2005-12-01 15:55
Do you know everything about yourself? If not, then, by your standard, you must doubt your own existence. Dubito ergo sum.
I do not need to know everything about reality to know that a certain being, deity or otherwise, does not exist. And, actually, it is much easier to prove that a deity cannot logically exist than to prove that a natural being does not exist, since deities are defined as logically impossible with incompatible properties.
Mon, 2005-12-05 21:43
Look at the reality around you. Open your eyes. Creation cries out; it implores you to see the artwork. How can somebody look at the complexities of this earth (from the most macroscopic sun to the the most microscopic bacteria cell) and deny the existence of a Master Maker?? It takes more faith to believe it happened by total chance than by a divine Creator.
Tue, 2005-12-06 10:35
I rejected Christianity when I was quite young because it made no sense. I was an atheist for a while, but I then had a series of intense, spiritual experiences and embraced a more eastern/syncretic outlook.
I completely agree that the particular theological model adopted by monotheist religions generally, and christianity in particular, is very unsound.
However, I believe that there is nonetheless some truth to Christianity and the Bible, that amid the tall tales and savagery, that true spiritual lessons are recorded there, lessons filtered through the particular lenses of an ancient and primitive people.
Again, it is undoubtedly the case that the traditional Christian model does not work and is thus false.
However, maybe the model adopted of the Divine is just plain wrongheaded. Here's an alternative model, which may be wrong, but it at least illustrates that there is a different way to approach these questions.
First, abolish the notion of God as some being out there, separate and apart from you and the world. Imagine, rather than God is a systemic property of the universe -- that God is rather a principle of goodness and beauty that underlies the world. Then imagine that the physical universe is a few steps below that, that the physical universe is in some sense a degraded form of the true goodness which underlies it.
Still, we need to account for the massive amount of evil.
To me, the only answer is that there must be some countervailing greater good which justifies it. This is certainly where it gets complex, but if we imagine that, in line with Hindu tradition, all humans have a divine inner core and that the goal of life is to manifest, to realize this inner divinity -- self-actualize if you will -- it becomes a little easier. I view the world as being governed by a complex web of natural law, and its metaphysical analog, karma. Reincarnation complements this view in that it allows people repeated opportunities to self-actualize.
The point being it is very wrong-headed to think that some dude, named God, is somehow calling all the shots. Rather, humanity and natural law is what governs down here. However, all the suffering is justified in several ways. First, humans are partially responsible for it -- either via prosaic mechanisms or via past action, i.e. karma. Second, the promise of achieving self-realization is such a great boon to the universe, in Buddhist terms, the promise of attaining Buddhahood, that all the horror of this world is lessened in its light. And as for why we are in such a bad world to begin with, again we can invoke karma to some degree. And the good news about karma is that it works both ways. While karma may influence our current circumstances, we can set in motion new patterns of cause-and-effect to change this.
I don't purport to claim that why I have proposed is bullet-proof or fully fleshed out, but I tend to think it is not racked with the intractable problems that Christianity is.
Try as I might, I can't rid myself of the conviction that, despite appearance, that there is some higher principle, some good principle at work in the universe. My major point is that I think one should be careful of throwing out every notion of "higher good" just because one system which purports to explain it is horribly flawed. We don't look poorly on biology merely because Aristotle thought sperm contained muscle, or on physics because Aristotle invoked entelechies, similarly we should careful of not damning an entire metaphysical idea -- namely that there is indeed something transcendent and good which somehow undergirds the universe -- simply because we have very poor theories of it.
I see the horrors and perplexities of the world, but I still very clearly feel that something transcendent and beautiful is going on, something greater than mere material forces. As an artist, I'm sure you can relate to this. I can't quite put my finger on it, or understand how it works -- at least not in totality -- but I feel "something more" is going on.
BTW, I very much share your frustration with people who have no interest in questioning their beliefs or in figuring things out. Don't let them dampen your spirits or jade you.