New to FriendlyChristian.com? Check out the FAQ page to learn about the site. Wondering who the heck I am? The My Story page is a great place to start. Thanks for stopping by!
Click here to subscribe via RSS.
Click here to have posts delivered by email.
This message will automatically disappear after your 3rd visit.
by Jason Horton (hoverFrog)
I’ve been wondering about the origins of personal faith recently. Theists often tell me that they feel touched by God or, I suppose, have allowed God to touch them.
I’m not sure if the distinction is important or not.
I am an atheist. I am well aware of the path that led me to atheism. More accurately, I am well aware of the path that did not lead me to theism. I was raised in a household that did not consider God in any way. If it was not for contact with religious people through school and clubs I would have had no idea that the idea even existed. Born an atheist, I remain one.
I toyed with Christianity and with Paganism in my youth but, if I’m honest with myself, I never really took either seriously. It is really since the horrible events of 9/11 that I have paid much attention to matters pertaining to God or Gods. What I have seen has not filled me with confidence and has not led me towards any religion. Quite the opposite actually.
My view of religion had grown progressively worse as I had more contact with its proponents. I was getting closer to a “Christopher Hitchens” level of atheism than a “Richard Dawkins” level of atheism till I found the friendly atheist and friendly christian sites. The distinction may not mean a lot for those unfamiliar with their writing and public appearances. Hitchens is very negatively outspoken and very anti-theist whereas Dawkins is more polite about his negative view. It is still a negative view but I find that the latter manner is more conducive to discussion as the “other side” is more likely to listen when they aren’t being attacked.
This works in both directions.
I have found FC to be largely lacking in this kind of negative judgementality. I thought it would be a good place to freely share your own tale of how you arrived at where you are now. Theist or non-theist we can get to know each other better.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Loading ...
This is a fantastic post! I really hope many people will participate. If nothing else, it’ll be nice to get to know our readers (even the lurkers) a little more.
I was born into a Christian family. I was raised Catholic and went through all the Catholic traditions. At 16 years old my mother started taking us to a Pentecostal church. I hated it. Loathed it. Truthfully, I was scared of it. I had never seen anything as weird.
Scared of Hell, at 16 years old I raised my hand to receive Christ when the pastor gave his weekly “now is the time” speech. Although my heart was far from being involved, I noticed God starting to put little things in place to grow my faith.
Ten years went by. I spent most of those years pursuing anything but God. I lived it up. It was a ton of fun, I won’t lie, but I was very unfulfilled.
After 3-4 bouts with girls I shouldn’t have been seeking, 3 years of horrific anxiety, and more bad decisions than I care to remember, I had the cliché “fall on my knees” moment. “God, I don’t know what you’re capable or if you even care. But if you’re out there, I’ll do whatever you want.” I put all my eggs into this Christianity basket w/o really knowing what I was getting myself into. “I’ll rededicate my life to you every day for the rest of my life,” I remember telling God.
It’s been 2.5 years. My life is incredible. I love the challenges, peace, and relationships that have come along with my decision to choose God.
I’m passionate about changing 1. how Christians respond to their own personal faith and 2. the publics perception of who Christians are and what we stand for.
I’m convinced that verbally acknowledging Christ as your savior typically isn’t followed by a lifestyle change (and if it is, usually it’s a stressful one because you’re trying to follow the “rules” of Christianity as opposed to letting Christ take over and the lifestyle changes be the fruits of your pursuits). I believe it’s a revelation of Christ followed by a change in our hearts that produces fully devoted followers of Christ.
Wow, I wore out that soapbox!
Bill your journey started off very similar to my own.
I too was born Catholic. I received the Catholic sacraments.
It was Carl Sagan that sewed the seeds of my eventual apostasy. It is not a decision I took or take lightly.
Like hoverFrog, my views of religion in general were diminished even further after 9/11. It wasn’t just the Islamic fundamentalists who carried out the vicious attack on my country it was also the response of many of my fellow citizens, Christian fundamentalists, who felt the need to ram rod their faith into the collective consciousness and to paint anyone who didn’t share their narrow views as somehow less patriotic.
So I began to PUSH back at those who pushed me.
Any type of ‘ism’ or religion taken too far is a detriment to a civilized soceity. That goes for atheism too. I am not a Chris Hitchens, neither would I characterize a theist as under some delusion as Mr. Dawkins does.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again the moderates in this world have got to take back the world from those who would polarize and radicalize. If we don’t, we are in fact DOOMED. There’s no plainer way to say it. Moderate Muslims have to stand and fight against those who would use their children as walking bombs. Moderate Christians have to remember there are many voices in the West that don’t hold to the same views as their own. A majority does not have the right to trample the rights of a minority.
R.
Very early in my life, I was exposed to one of the largest churches at that time. My father worked as an audio engineer for a pastor that would end up getting busted for prostitution. It was the late 80’s so most would know whom I’m talking about.
That was my first experience to christianity. Needless to say, wasn’t a very good one. After three fallen pastors and a bad christian network. Christ was not a very big part of my family, my upbringing or my life.
To me church was what you did when some one died. For years the only experience I had was a Catholic mass when relatives died. Which scared me more than anything.
When I was in high school I studied different religions. Yes I was that nerdy, and yes I still am. I studied Buddhism, atheism,even native american thoughts and deities. I actually fell in to wicca. To me that made sense there where things I could touch, smell, and do. I could hold on to something that was tangible. Not some god that just floated above my head that others believed in. To me there was history behind it. There was substance.
But my life was horrible. After being in abusive relationships and being raped, beaten, struggled with alcohol, cutting, being anorexic and having an emotional break down which resulted with me being diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, I was at my breaking point. I snapped. There are six months of my life that I can not recall to save my life. Six months at the start of 2006 (yes not that long ago) that I dont know if I was in a relationship with someone, if I had slept with someone, or even if I had a job. Yes Bill I dont really remember meeting you the first time, but I’m sure I was pretty drunk.
Thats when I moved to charleston. A friend of mine from high school was living down there and I hadn’t seen her in forever,no actually I was running. I cant use that as an excuse. I was just running from everything that scared me at home. From everything that I had been through, if that meant having to go to church with her when I was there I could stick it out for what two hours?
It changed my life. I cried, like the hard ugly cry. I hadn’t cried in years. You could feel something. I didnt know what, or why, there was just something.
No that wasn’t my “God moment” that came later, after studying and testing what I found to be true. I found my God again. But, different then when I was very young. I always thought of him as the big kid on the ant hill. Ready to smite anyone in a heart beat. Its amazing to see him as a loving, caring, patient God that He is. Its great to see that to me, being a christian is not all about trying to change everyone to believe what you believe. There will be no hog tying and whipping people into submission, just love.
To me thats the groovy part. Because I can do that.
I don’t think I have really ever shared that before. So thank you for asking.
My mother was a Protestant and my father a Catholic. All the people I grew up with had religious faith. I went to a Protestant church until mother died, than to a Catholic Church because my father told me he would be excommunicated if I didn’t become a Catholic.
I had a troubled youth and often prayed to God for guidance. I never felt anything in return. I reached the point where I attempted suicide. After my failed attempt I decided that if I was going to live I needed to take control of my life and map out a plan. I turned to reason and logic and away from religious faith. This has worked for me.
Well, actually (and I normally don’t do this because it seems too egocentric) I’m doing a series about this subject over on my blog, but so far there’s only one part (here, if you’re interested). I’ll try to be brief.
I didn’t even really know what religion or God were until I got to junior high. One of my friends took me to her youth group, and I thought it was great. But, the more passionate I became about Christianity, the worse my life was. I don’t think that being religious caused my depression, but it didn’t help anything, especially the notion of Original Sin, which I beat myself up with while insulting myself in other ways.
Before my depression, I never really had a problem with anything related to religion. The people at my church are still some of the nicest people I’ve ever met (almost every sermon the pastor did was about love), and I remember being incredibly pumped up and passionate at rallies. (I sat in the front row of Acquire the Fire/Battle Cry one year, less than 20 feet away from Ron Luce, and at the time I was sooooo excited about that.) I was made the president of the youth group, and was planning on reading the whole Bible because I knew that it was something important. For my confirmation, the pastor gave me a Bible with my name stitched into it. (Hell, I almost decided to miss out on a major national science competition so I wouldn’t cause trouble with the confirmation schedule!)
I had the t-shirts and the purity ring; I memorized Bible verses like crazy; but, once I was done dealing with my depression, I took a good look at my world view. And, in the end, I found no good reason to believe in the God of the Bible instead of other gods.
Just the same as the people above who converted and found that their lives were better, deconverting has improved my life. Maybe I’m wrong (I’ll see when I die), but I’d rather be wrong and live a good life than be right and (intellectually) miserable (that is, if I could somehow bring myself to believe again anyway).
Jason thanks for sharing - also everyone else. It’s neat to read peoples’ stories.
I wasn’t a Christian for about 20 years, then I was for about 17, then I wasn’t again. That’s the very short version
There’s a longer one here:
Almost an atheist
There are others on my site also. I have a hard time condensing down all the reasons why I’m not a Christian any more.
It looks like we’ve all got tales to tell.
Helen I absolutely love your fifth point: Being a follower of Jesus even though I can’t say I’m a believer in him.
Thanks Jason. I hang out with Christians a fair amount still and I get along great with those who are more focused on ‘following Jesus’ than ‘right beliefs’.
I met Jesus as a child in Sunday School. Mark 10:15 Jesus said ” I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” The times in my life that I have been closest to God and experienced Him the most are when I return to the childlike faith that led me to Him. The problem with our society is that we have elevated human reasoning and trust in that more than God. I struggle with it even myself after knowing the Lord for a few decades. I am still trying to use my logic to understand God and His ways. The Bible reminds us that I Cor 1:25 “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” I had a display of what happens when we fully trust just this week. This is an account of what happened from an email I sent out:
Wow!
When I prayed last night that God would use us as a body of Christ to minister to each other I didn’t know how fast that would be answered.
For those of you that weren’t there-as I was leaving Adele’s I missed a step and twisted my ankle landing all my weight on the top of my foot as I landed. With the excruciating pain I was experiencing I was sure it was broken. Immediately after getting me an ice pack the whole group encamped around me and laid hands and prayed for healing. I was in too much pain to pray myself but prayed in the spirit in agreement. I heard your prayers through my pain I heard Kelly, Nicholas, Jessy, JJ ,Adele and voiced my agreement to the Lord. Within a few minutes the pain subsided completely and I was able to walk away. It was truly a miracle! I continued to feel a tingling throughout the night and even today as my foot is continuing to heal. There is no swelling or bruising and I can walk without pain and I was even able to go to my Pilates class today which helped realign my joints from the fall.
Thanks for being soldiers in the Lord’s Army-as we sang last night. Praise God!”
There is no logical explanation for what happened. It was the prayers of childlike faith that God honored and we saw His power at work.
God has recently challenged me Proverbs 3:5-6 to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will direct your path.” also in Proverbs 9:10 ” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
Be willing to be a fool in the world’s eyes to find true wisdom. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the light. No man comes to the Father apart from Me.” John 14:6 Faith in Jesus is the only path to God. Jesus is calling “Come to me all you that are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Julie Hiott
Administrative Assistant
881-2100, Ext. 1135
“Wherever you are, be all there.” – Jim Elliot