Hello. Before I start, let me point out that I went to church faithfully, every Sunday (and most Wednesday nights) for 18 years. That’s birth to 18, so around 10 years of my own volition and interest. However, about 3 years to the end of that time, I began to try to philosophize my faith, break it down, and really see its causes, its purpose, its benefits and detriments, its associations, etc. This process led me to step away from my faith and reexamine it, and thus, after a few years of introspection, I abandoned it entirely for atheism. Here’s a short breakdown of the logic I used to accept this conclusion.
The Bible is full of contradicting commands, and anyone who follows the Bible must pick and choose from its various positions to support their idea of right and wrong. “Do I do all the good I know I can do, or do I take up the sword and fight for my faith?” Therefore, in order for me to connect the Bible to my own beliefs about right and wrong, I had to get my priorities in line.
What annoyed me most about other Christians was the idea of being evangelical with faith, i.e. shoving it down others’ throats. The reason this bothered me was that my whole life, Christianity had been teaching me not to judge, lest ye be judged, etc, and the idea of deciding for myself whether another person was going to Heaven or Hell was despicable to me. Therefore, I had to abandon that platform in order to be a better person.
Judging others was not the only problem, however. I was also judging myself. If it is God’s decision who goes where and it is truly not my own, then it’s no more my right to say, “I’ll go to Heaven,” than it is to say, “You’re going to Hell.” Any focus on my eternal salvation or damnation would likely lead to me basing my social actions on how I thought I could tip the scales. No, I must do good for good’s sake, and be kind and helpful to others because it was simply right to do so. In order to be the best kind of Christian that I could be, for God’s sake only and not for anyone else, I had to simply be a good person because it’s better than being a bad person, and for no other reason.
But… the Bible is explicit on one thing, perhaps, more than anything else. Spread the word. Let others know about the good truth that is the Lord and his teachings. I couldn’t do that, because having been around evangelical Christians, I knew there was no faster way to ensure that someone would not convert to my way of thinking than to force it on them constantly. Everyone (at least around these parts) has heard of Christianity. They’ve heard of Jesus. If they don’t want to believe, then they aren’t going to believe, and my lack of acceptance of that fact only showed disrespect for their intellect and their decision making, and knowing this, I could not ethically do so.
Therefore, the simplest solution for me was to simply continue to do good for good’s sake, and not do good for God’s sake. I realized I never needed religion to tell me what was right and wrong. In the end, I had to tell it to support what I already knew: that just because something’s in the Ten Commandments, doesn’t mean God came up with it, and it doesn’t decide its moral correctness as an action. My beliefs on this subject were railed against by fellow Christians; some who went so far as to tell me this was “dangerous thinking.”
I guess they were right. But as Galileo put it, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” And I don’t plan to.
Good stuff.
I don’t see how this abandonment of Christianity immediately leaps to atheism, however.
It seems to me that you really disliked the practice of Christianity for a varied amount of reasons that ultimately have nothing to do with the base stance of a divine presence existing or not.
Well first off, congratulations on abandoning christianity.
I’m surprised that’s all it took, though, especially to leap from christianity to atheism like Stumps said. Devout christians like you used to be aren’t often phased by the contradictions within the bible. The religious schooling builds in defenses of the contradictions making it okay even for a biblical literalist to interpret the contradictions away.
Keep in mind, the jump to atheism was only mentioned, not explained. I did a lot of exploration of other religions, but some of the things I had thought about during this period (which weren’t relevant enough to be mentioned) led me to abandon religion altogether.
The first 18 years to me was because it felt natural and I was accustomed to it. As I grew up and got more introspective, however, it became less acceptable to me that I just went because I felt obligated to. Although the last 3 of those years, I still called myself Christian, but I didn’t like other Christians and I went every Sunday just to argue. I felt like there should be a dissenting voice in the sunday school classroom saying, “Evolution is true!” and “Homosexuality is no more of a sin than murder and no less of a sin than lying!”
I had a similar development some time ago and you stand before the question whether you abandon the faith or change it. I chose to change it because I discovered that Jesus and the Prophets had found something worthwhile, but which we only appreciate when we have come to know other traditions. The Bible essentially describes the movement away from idolatry to monotheism, through ritual and ceremony, through prophecy and sacrifice, to a transcendence of Monotheism and eventually to a spirituality of the heart. We too may have to go down this path, which is the Way of Christ, in order to find peace of mind.
The Bible does what you find in other traditions too, it leads you into the paradox of spirituality, calling upon you to be selfless and then, when you think you are doing reasonably well, confronts you with the question, “Why do you try to be selfless?” If you don’t realise that you are selfishly trying to be selfless, you continue in the paradox. If you see the light, it makes you humble and makes right and wrong irrelevant.
It is also a fallacy to believe that you can be any other person than the one you are. What would be more helpful would be to discover why you do those things that you don’t want to do. This is only possible by reflection and patience. I find meditation very helpful. Sitting concentrated on my breath and observing my thoughts, but letting them go and not reacting to them becomes a practise that slowly helps me change my behaviour, even though the thoughts that once initiated such behaviour are still there. I heave learnt that between a thought and my following its lead, there is a split second for decision. I am not a helpless slave of sin, but I can’t fight it either – rather, I need to learn how to let go.
Just as you can’t fight those thoughts that lead to inappropriate behaviour, you can’t say where you’re going after this life. Let it go, don’t bother with it. In fact, this is the advice you will find throughout the Bible. Very often the tendency is to hold on tighter, fight for something, resist sin. But the Bible say we should learn to “await” God, in whatever way he shows himself. It is this anticipation and being prepared that gives life a certain excitement, but we should be aware of tiring ourselves out by expecting short-termed results. The example given is that of the farmer who has to wait for his crops to grow (automatically). There is no reason for being “good”, it is just the way it is when you have found out why you have been “bad” and avoid inappropriate behaviour.
It is the good news that we are told to spread, and the good news is that it isn’t about a struggle, a fight or fulfilling a moral law, it is about letting go and seeing through those things that have unnerved us in the past. It is about not clinging to things, people, land, ideas, or even God. All of those things we cling to are only in our mind – God isn’t what we imagine him to be, nor is anything else we cling to. Clinging is normally the best way to ensure that we are no longer free. Jesus says, believe in God, but believe me too. Do not fear, you can let go …
Shalom
P.S. I’m away for a while, so don’t be surprised if I don’t react for two weeks …
I used to say that to Christians who complained about gays to remind them that the Bible teaches that no sin is any worse or better than any other sin. Lying will send you to the same place as murder, and garner the same punishment. However, many Christians (not all, but many) give an unnecessary focus to homosexuality as though it is the worst kind of sin plaguing the world today, and I feel that this viewpoint is discriminatory, ignorant, and vile. In my mind, the comment sounded clever; maybe it’s just confusing.
Certainly, one’s religion does make more sense when it’s been put into context, and I applaud you for bothering to do so. I too, tried for a few years to change the faith rather than abandon it. Abandoning it altogether was scary to me, and besides, I wasn’t done believing in God yet. But I grew too embarrassed of my own religion to not do something after a while. For example, I was walking around downtown with some friends and a traveling church group had stopped to distribute those little million dollar bills with the 50 word sermon on the back, and we struck up a conversation with the lady who gave them to us. It turned out it was her first time doing such a thing, and I asked her what she felt she was accomplishing. “We’re just trying to spread God’s message,” she said. “Don’t you think you’d be more successful in spreading it if you weren’t accosting random strangers on the street? Generally, I believe that one should foster a relationship with someone before attempting to spread God’s love to them. They aren’t likely to be receptive otherwise.” Her reply floored me. “Well what about 9/11?” “What about it?” I asked. “If you knew that the 9/11 attacks were going to happen an hour from now, wouldn’t you try to go save those people’s souls?” Momentarily stunned, I quickly regained my composure and replied, “No! I would try to get them out of the BUILDING before a PLANE HIT IT!” Thinking my logic was foolproof, I was not prepared for her rebuttal. “Aren’t their souls more important than their lives?”
These people are the reason I spent almost 5 years answering the question, “What do you believe in?” with “I’m a Christian, but I have common sense.”
Right and wrong are not irrelevant though. They’re the reason for action. No benevolent God would ask us to act in a certain way, say it’s the right way to act, but then give no reason for its “rightness” other than “Because I said so.” If we take the Ten Commandments to be a good way of distinguishing right from wrong, we should ask the question, “Are these things right or wrong because God said they were? Or did God tell us these things because they are inherently true?” I believe it is the second. This means that right and wrong, while subjective concepts, are still the basis for all action, and therefore must be rationalized with faith, not the other way around.
True, I cannot be anyone but myself. But as you’ve agreed that one’s faith must be examined, what can be done if it is deemed unsatisfactory? As I see it, there are three possible responses:
-Ignore it
-Change the faith
-Change one’s affiliation
The first is hardly an option to me. I’m a truth seeker by nature. If I know that something is wrong, I won’t just pretend it’s okay. The second (which you seem to be suggesting as an alternative) is unlikely to ever happen; as I said, I tried for a few years to do exactly that, and I made exactly zero headway. When this failed, I tried to disassociate with the faith, but still practice it in private, because I was not ready to confront the extent of my belief. When I finally did, it slowly became obvious to me that I had mostly practiced the faith because I had been raised in the faith.
Exactly. Good and bad do not need reasons other than what they simply are. However, I believe that this is one of the contradicting message that we are given. We should not anticipate our own judgment, acting and waiting, but at the same time we are called upon to “spread the Word,” passing our judgment on others, and trying to convert everyone we know. (And a personal contradiction: I don’t think that evangelizing is right to do.)
I disagree with you on this point. The good news that we are told to spread is that through a personal relationship with God (i.e. devotion to God, his Word, and his teachings [size=85](Which are taught to us by biased, often discriminatory men and women, but that is another problem in and of itself.)[/size] This message is first and foremost what one, as a Christian, is supposed to impart. Much of Christian verbiage reflects this: fearing God, having a relationship with God, spreading the good message, etc. It is exactly about fulfilling a moral law: God’s moral law, which is outlined in the Bible, and is supposed to be the basis of the whole religion.
I don’t think that your leap towards atheism was necessarly caused by “Christianity” or it’s contradictions but due to unexamined opinions you never abandoned, despite your philosophical approach.
For example, you say: “The Bible is full of contradicting commands, and anyone who follows the Bible must pick and choose from its various positions to support their idea of right and wrong.”. The Bible is a creation, not the Creator, but it seems that your relation to the Creator was supported solely on the consistency of a work of several hands, over centuries which was edited by men with an agenda and finally, which left out a copius list of similarly “inspired” works. If that is all you had, and you could not feel God’s nearness, in prayer, in meditation, then you never really had much to abandon but a finite number of pages instead of the infinity of a personal relationship.
You also do not really seem to abandon Christianity as much as abandon a branch of Christianity and for very Christian reasons, so the question is did you abandon Christianity or did you abandoned evangelical Christianity in order to be a better Christian?
On your issue with spreading the Gospel, or spreading it, I can only tell you that it may not have been necessarly up to you at all, to change hearts, to convince people, but merely to shepperd the sheep that the Lord has placed in your vincinity. Jesus gives us an example of this. He simply charges you to finish what he started. As he approached it, he spend little time to convince his detractors, and he instructed those he sent to spread the gospel, during his time, to try, but to dust off their sandals and move on when they encountered resistance. Elsewhere he says that only those drawn by the Father heed his words. Some that call his name will be dispatched to Hell. My point here is that your mission was not to make them believe, but to build on a foundation that was laid by God Himself. The audience was already there and without the intervention of the Lord nothing else mattered.
You wrote that “as Galileo put it, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” And I don’t plan to”, so what is the basis of your atheism? You have presented a case against evangelical Christianity as you know it, but not against theism itself.
You all make some interesting points which I will reply to later today, because I want to actually give detailed answers rather than quick ones that are of no use. As it is, I’m running short on time right now. However, it seems that there’s some confusion about my original intent of the post. I only meant to convey why I left Christianity (which I’ll expand upon) and not to make a case against theism, or why I chose to abandon theism altogether. I’ll write about that later today as well, since it seems there’s some interest in why I am now an atheist rather than simply agnostic.
Fair enough shirtninja. You said origianlly:
“This process led me to step away from my faith and reexamine it, and thus, after a few years of introspection, I abandoned it entirely for atheism.”
Based on what you wrote I can understand walking away from evangelical christianity, but not from christianity, nor do I think that you were moving away from christianity, but gravitating closer than evangelical christianity would allow you, so one could make the case that you actually did not abandon but on the contrary embraced christianity- it just happen that you no longer could find it in the evangelical medium in which you were raised.
No; the Bible is against absolutizing anything as right or wrong. So the contradictions you see; for example that God both kills and gives life; are not contradictions but are rather consistent with the fact that no action is right or wrong in itself. Just as giving life can be good, so too can giving death. Just as giving death can be evil, so too can giving life. What you need to see is that good is only good as wisdom discerns, and evil is only evil as wisdom discerns. Sometimes wisdom says killing is good. Sometimes wisdom says killing is evil. The thing about God is that God does the good that wisdom discerns, which doesn’t mean God acts in contradictory ways, but rather that God has an acute sensitivity to the situation, and what is right and wrong, and does what is right, even though it may have been wrong before, in a different situation.
Actions speak louder than words, I believe the Bible also says, quite explicitly. And I think its more overwhelming point is to love God (not to spread God’s word, unless we understand this in terms of loving God). To love God means to join God and wisdom in the creation of the good that wisdom discerns (and in the creation of wisdom).
What I meant by changing had more to do with changing ones approach towards religion, realising that it is only an attempt to describe something that you can otherwise only experience. “God” is less a name as a relationship and as soon as you use this word instead of Nirvana, Ruling Principle, Tao, or whatever possibilities there are, you define your approach and your Myth or Symbolism. It is all about what symbolism we use, even in the field of science – there too you have experiential reality and theory which needs symbols. Anything that you can point to and say, “Listen, watch and feel”, you don’t need symbols for, except when you refer to it abstractly. The same is with religion and especially Judeo-Christian-Moslem belief systems, when the experience called “prophecy” in the New Testament is common to a community, but you have the same situation with Brahman, Shiva etc. too.
Once we accept this, it is only a question of cultural convention or what you are used to. It may prove difficult speaking to people in the west of religious principles without comparing with Judeo-Christian-Moslem belief systems, but you must be clear and make it clear, that we do not have reality or even our perception of reality in our hands when we use these religious symbols, but only the theory of that reality. The question is then, how can we help people experience the reality we are theorising about and one method is to use a narrative or drama and thereby have people experience something in their imagination which you use as a reference point. It may be that the imperial majesty of Judeo-Christian-Moslem belief systems has lost its relevance in a democratic republic. Certainly the imagery of Jesus was critical of that kind of ruler and moved towards an unusual type of Paternal Ruler who was curiously compassionate, sympathetic and empathetic. Additionally these feelings were towards his “children” rather than his “people”. There is something decidedly anti-imperialistic about early Christian writings.
It is a question as to what is embarrassing – being different or not being able to explain it.
The problem with this is that here is an assumption that life is about getting the soul through life and over the other side. You and I do not believe that this is the case. The New Testament is also critical of this approach, which was similar to the approach of the Pharisees. Those who bury their “talent” rather than employing it are rebuked and thrown out (which is the opposite of what they intended) so we should cherish the “talent” we are given by employing it. The attitude you described, in my mind, doesn’t employ available abilities adequately but is a kind of alibi-occupation which avoids the alternative that you mentioned, by fostering relationships with people and thereby being instrumental in spreading God’s love by giving them what we already have.
As long as you are doing something because it is “right” and leaving something because it is “wrong” you are living by the moral law. Once you learn to love, you “do to others as you would have done to yourself” because our neighbour is one with you. You transcend duality and stop judging and realise that your judgement, even though morally correct, rules out love. Christ doesn’t judge in this way – why should you? We have ten million commandments in modern society because we can’t love our neighbour as we love ourselves and therefore do not act accordingly. The less we love, the more morality takes over – it is the original sin of desiring the knowledge of good and evil over trusting in the love of God.
The Law (or the Commandments) is only there until we fulfil it in love, which subsequently transcends and overrules the Law, because love was there first. This means that all the questions you mention above become irrelevant and love, not the law, is the basis for all action.
What do you do when you examine your faith? Do you check that your belief is correct? Do you check to see if you still believe? Or do you ask what you put your trust in? Do you place your faith as an object of reflection on a pedestal and circle it, looking for holes? Do you have a “goal” that you try to achieve as a sign that your faith is satisfactory? Or have you meditated or contemplated the Lords Prayer or some Psalms in silence, listening to your ego protesting and looking for the cause of your dissent? That is a way I have found to be very helpful when substantiating what I actually put my trust in and how I observe the reality of existence.
Sometimes I find that my dissent is just like the protesting of the Psalms, and I find that very soothing. God, then, has been complained at before. It is part of our tradition to petition against injustice and loss. But the psalms also have a turn in them, bringing those praying back to trust and love of God, knowing that reality is ruled by impermanence but that God remains the same. I just mustn’t cling to my idea of God, just as I cannot cling to people and things that come and go, or else I make them into idols and bring suffering upon myself. It is therefore my realisation of this reality that is wholesome, just as it is wholesome to merge into this reality, becoming one with it in trust and awe. It might not be pleasant, or I might have other ideas of what would be better for me or others, but it is the way it is and I have no other existence except the one I have been given.
OK, but what is the “Good News” or the “Word” that we are to spread? It is the proclamation of the Reign of God which has come into our midst. It is the New Covenant of love, put into our hearts. We are called to persuade people to believe this not least of all by showing that it has come to us. This is less to do with “doing” as rather with “being”:
[i]Mat 5:3-10
Blessed the poor in spirit! For theirs is the kingdom of the Heavens.
Blessed the mourning! For they shall be comforted.
Blessed the meek! For they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed they who hunger and thirst after righteousness! For they shall be filled.
Blessed the merciful! For they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed the pure in heart! For they shall see God.
Blessed the peacemakers! For they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed they who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake! For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Mat 11:29
Take My yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest to your souls." [/i]
I’ll repeat what I wrote before: It is the good news that we are told to spread, and the good news is that it isn’t about a struggle, a fight or fulfilling a moral law, it is about letting go and seeing through those things that have unnerved us in the past. It is about not clinging to things, people, land, ideas, or even God. All of those things we cling to are only in our mind – God isn’t what we imagine him to be, nor is anything else we cling to. Clinging is normally the best way to ensure that we are no longer free. Jesus says, believe in God, but believe me too. Do not fear, you can let go …
Where do you find this stuff about a “personal relationship with God” except in modern evangelism? This grows out of literalism and fails to note that the whole subject of Christian Theism is mystical and paradoxical, leading us to realise that not by correctness but by love is God right here. It isn’t by pedantically observing the law, praying on street corners, ritual washings and sacrifice, speaking with the tongues of men or angels, having prophecies, knowing all mysteries and all knowledge, having all faith so as to move mountains, giving away all my goods, or even delivering my body that I be burned that I experience salvation, but through the love of God which flows through me.
It is this love, given room to expand, that obeys the law. “Love has patience, is kind; love is not envious; love is not vain, is not puffed up; does not behave indecently, does not pursue its own things, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth; it quietly covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” It is our never ending task to fathom out those things that hinder us receiving and living in this love, patiently giving them up and surrendering ourselves to it. There is no other Way and this was (and is) the Way of Christ.