Obviously to have lots of sex, drink and do drugs of course.
"So 20 and 30-somethings are leaving—but why? When I ask church people, I receive some variation of this answer: moral compromise. A teenage girl goes off to college and starts to party. A young man moves in with his girlfriend. Soon the conflict between belief and behavior becomes unbearable. Tired of dealing with a guilty conscience and unwilling to abandon their sinful lifestyles, they drop their Christian commitment. They may cite intellectual skepticism or disappointments with the church, but these are smokescreens designed to hide the reason. "They change their creed to match their deeds," as my parents would say." from Christianity Today.
Intellectual skepticism is a smokescreen? You condescending asshole.
See, I want to have a rational conversation with the believers in my family about my apostasy, but this would be their default reaction. Pull your heads out of Jesus' non-existent ass and own up to the contradictions, the intolerance and the hatred your loving religion espoused and think for yourselves. If you have to consult the pastor, a Christian blog etc before you can react, you are not thinking for yourself.
The very beginning of my deconversion began when I read the Bible closely one day -- rather than skimming through the genealogy of Jesus I read it. His lineage to King David, a requisite for the Jewish Messiah came from Joseph. But Jesus isn't related to Joseph, so how could that count?
At the same time, I was spending time helping a Jewish friend of mine with her synagogues youth group. This lead me to investigate the reasons the Jews still reject Jesus as the Messiah and I was face to face with some really good reasons, including the lineage example and many unfulfilled prophecies.
I tried broaching this topic with friends in the church who only repeated what we had been told all our lives in church: that Jesus would fulfill the rest of the prophecies on his return. But no one could find a single reference in the Bible to back up that supposition. Later, I asked my step-mom about the lineage problem and she stubbornly claimed it didn't matter because Joseph adopted Jesus. When I brought up the unfulfilled prophecies, she told me I was getting awfully close to blasphemy and the conversation ended. That was the last time we spoke of, lest she risk eternal damnation by simply hearing my blasphemy.
It was through years of independent study before I could wade through these intellectual and spiritual problems by reading books and blogs from both sides of the debate. It was my genuine hope I would be able to reconcile these problems with my Christian faith, but that did not happen. I refuse to disable the amazing brain God gave me and just swallow something on faith.
My reasons for maintaining my disbelief in Christianity are rich and varied, but all are intellectually based. I never left the faith so I could feel better about premarital sex or getting drunk. I'm deeply insulted that this is the prevailing reason so many Christians believe I left the faith. It is this attitude which make it hard for me to remain respectful of believers.
I know you have to protect yourself from the same doubts that assailed me, but don't do so by insulting both of our intelligence.
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