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The past half year I have gone from being a strict fundamentalist Christian, to a progressive Christian, and now I'm wavering on the fence between that and atheism/agnosticism. There have been a number of factors that have led to this progression, but I've began to look back on the time when I first became a Christian and what I have seen is that most of the "religious things" I've done have been out of guilt from as far back as I can remember. And currently, guilt still holds me back from completely abandoning it. It's almost as if it is a burden that persists in the back of my mind. I have been raised in a family and community that is very far right and southern Baptist. I guess my confusion is that I'm not sure if my feelings of guilt are due to God speaking to me or everything that I have been raised to believe and think, or if it is just in my nature? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Any ex-Christians? All advice is appreciated.
as a former evangelical christian, the best advice i can offer is to follow your integrity...i guarantee it will be a confusing time when you're second guessing this belief system you held on to. Guilt is a very strong emotion.
For me what got me started was understanding god to be the source for unconditional love. If that were true then love is open and not contingent on me believing this unconditional love exists. As a parent i do not expect to love my son based on him loving me...this is something that is and i know it for me..no one else can take that knowledge from me. But on the other hand if god isn't the source of unconditional love then this god is insecure...and personally i can't believe in an insecure god...
and one more piece of advice is to do this for you. only you can satisfy the criteria you hold so close to your conscience.
I came out of a background that is not too different from yours (IFCA / Bible church). I have spoken with many, many other deconverts from similar backgrounds in recent years and I have come to the conclusion that what you are experiencing is part social conditioning, part nature, and not at all god.
As to social conditioning, you have been steeped in many taboos all your life, such as never seriously questioning your faith, being suspicious of reason and logic, and regarding biblical proof-texts as not only evidence, but all the evidence that is needed to take a position on something.
As to nature, it seems as if some deconverts -- I'm guessing a significant majority simply because of the selection bias in the types of people literalist / conservative denominations attract -- also carry a burden of guilt and shame that magnifies the power of the social conditioning. I am not part of that group despite being by nature a pleaser; somehow my parents did such a good job of making sure I felt loved and accepted and worthy that it inoculated me from a lot of the condemnation that gets casually tossed around in evangelical circles -- as a child I always assumed that it applied to Other People who had been especially naughty or something. You and many, many others, on the other hand, are plagued by guilt. It is probably a combination of upbringing and personality tendencies. It can be paralyzing.
My guess is that if you are able to write about your feelings so well as you do, you're probably going to work your way free and clear of it. You will be among the lucky; I sense some never get over it. I've known one or two who say they have ratcheted back and forth between belief and unbelief. I feel the most for them; the are unable to sustain belief anymore (unbelief is, after all, not voluntary; some things, once known, cannot be un-known) but are equally tormented living a lie or dealing with the guilt and terror of being an apostate.
I'm curious as to what made you waiver in the first place.
There is going to be a period of time when you feel empty. You will be abandoning your illusion and replacing it with wisdom. But, you might not find wisdom to be warm and fuzzy. Replaced with your hopes of being coddled by the great sky baby-sitter, will be the cold sobering reality that we are on our own. No one is coming to save us.
I hope you find the courage to break free from the shackles of 'magical thinking' and find a life that's honest and sincere. It's very liberating to be your unapologetic self!
I'm curious as to what made you waiver in the first place.
There is going to be a period of time when you feel empty. You will be abandoning your illusion and replacing it with wisdom. But, you might not find wisdom to be warm and fuzzy. Replaced with your hopes of being coddled by the great sky baby-sitter, will be the cold sobering reality that we are on our own. No one is coming to save us.
I hope you find the courage to break free from the shackles of 'magical thinking' and find a life that's honest and sincere. It's very liberating to be your unapologetic self!
What has made me waiver is the way the Christians treat homosexuals, sex before marriage, and stuff like that which seems a little ridiculous. Also, the more I learn about other religions, the more they all seem like the same thing essentially.
What has made me waver is the way the Christians treat homosexuals, sex before marriage, and stuff like that which seems a little ridiculous. Also, the more I learn about other religions, the more they all seem like the same thing essentially.
My "wavering" came through mounting personal losses contrary to the promises of god that I had been taught, and no fault of my own. Loved ones suffering from horrible diseases, dying, etc. The difference between the fundamentalist reality and actual reality, where prayer has no discernible effect, where people prosper or suffer pretty much independent of whether they are "wicked" or "righteous" in the Biblical sense.
After my departure from the faith, I also looked at the alternatives and found them as bad or worse. I make a sort of exception for Buddhism, as it doesn't promote a god to worship, its core teachings are quite pragmatic and helpful, and they push the idea that you should never believe something because they say so, but because it works for you. On the other hand, the monastic / guru system, the concepts of rebirth and karma, attachment to special archaic terminology, and other aspects of it are excess baggage IMO. Also, I have never really found meditation very helpful to me personally, not the formalized kind anyway. Many things in life can be a meditative experience, not just sitting on a mat.
But I borrow ideas from Buddhism, Western philosophy, personal experience, science and elsewhere to improve myself. The beauty of not being attached to a particular prefabricated system is that you can craft what works for you. The ugly underbelly of not being attached to a particular prefabricated system is that you're on your own and are subject to being stuck, deceived, or both. The trick is to remain objective and free of preconceptions. It's both that simple, and that hard.
To SteelDragon's point of feeling empty for awhile, your mileage may vary, but that was a pretty short phase for me personally. The truth is that I had felt stressed and frustrated in theism to such a degree, that the loss of "fellowship" and the comforting lies was not that bad by comparison. Besides, my late 2nd wife had been unable to participate in church for some years due to her illness and the churches we tried to associate with had no real interest in (and a willingness to pre-judge) people who could not reliably participate. As a result I had not really been relying on affiliation with a local church for anything in my life for several years by the time I left the faith.
The past half year I have gone from being a strict fundamentalist Christian, to a progressive Christian, and now I'm wavering on the fence between that and atheism/agnosticism. There have been a number of factors that have led to this progression, but I've began to look back on the time when I first became a Christian and what I have seen is that most of the "religious things" I've done have been out of guilt from as far back as I can remember. And currently, guilt still holds me back from completely abandoning it. It's almost as if it is a burden that persists in the back of my mind.
Guilt and fear are normal human emotions exploited by the religious. Few people can say they fear nothing and we all share guilt of various things we have done in our past.
We can learn to face our fears, the most common one is the fear of death. Once you have made peace with your mortality and this is indeed a natural process in the cycle of life, the fear regresses. Our natural survival instincts will still override this rationalisation. Folk at deaths door, if you have witnessed death personally, they hold on to this frail life to the inevitable last breath.
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I have been raised in a family and community that is very far right and southern Baptist. I guess my confusion is that I'm not sure if my feelings of guilt are due to God speaking to me or everything that I have been raised to believe and think, or if it is just in my nature? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Any ex-Christians? All advice is appreciated.
It is not god speaking, it is your indoctrination working against your better judgement. All things of a religious nature are unnatural and have to be learned/taught. We are not born with an innate need of a god; simply put, we are born agnostic (w/o knowledge)
Even stuff like the anointing and perhaps speaking in tongues is a learned trait. After 10+ years our of the madness, I can still invoke tongues at will and the anointing. Just hold the urge to pee in and when you finally get the release, you will have a "religious" experience akin to the self induced anointing felt is a church.
The past half year I have gone from being a strict fundamentalist Christian, to a progressive Christian, and now I'm wavering on the fence between that and atheism/agnosticism. There have been a number of factors that have led to this progression, but I've began to look back on the time when I first became a Christian and what I have seen is that most of the "religious things" I've done have been out of guilt from as far back as I can remember. And currently, guilt still holds me back from completely abandoning it. It's almost as if it is a burden that persists in the back of my mind. I have been raised in a family and community that is very far right and southern Baptist. I guess my confusion is that I'm not sure if my feelings of guilt are due to God speaking to me or everything that I have been raised to believe and think, or if it is just in my nature? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Any ex-Christians? All advice is appreciated.
I don't know about advice, but I would suggest, don't sweat it. The possible worries about maybe slipping into modes of thought or belief that might not please God are lingering symptoms of various demoninations. It is they who are Jealous, not their God. I am sure that no god worthy of worship or even consideration would have a beef with someone genuinely trying to get at the truth. If there is a god, it is loving, forgiving, understanding and the god of all faiths or none.
Thus it doesn't matter, except academically, that you are confused about God, religion and the rest of it. You can take you time and think it through without it being a matter of life and death that you get it right.
That said, of course confusion bothers you as it does me. We like to know or at least have the best guess. You have taken the right steps of questioning, and of coming here to talk it over. I don't think you need any more advice other than 'don't worry', but talking it over with believers and non -believers alike will probably help with the bothersome questions.
The past half year I have gone from being a strict fundamentalist Christian, to a progressive Christian, and now I'm wavering on the fence between that and atheism/agnosticism. There have been a number of factors that have led to this progression, but I've began to look back on the time when I first became a Christian and what I have seen is that most of the "religious things" I've done have been out of guilt from as far back as I can remember. And currently, guilt still holds me back from completely abandoning it. It's almost as if it is a burden that persists in the back of my mind. I have been raised in a family and community that is very far right and southern Baptist. I guess my confusion is that I'm not sure if my feelings of guilt are due to God speaking to me or everything that I have been raised to believe and think, or if it is just in my nature? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Any ex-Christians? All advice is appreciated.
Sounds like you are recovering from your illness.
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