Has anyone else willingly walked away from the Church (atheist, bible, quote)
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I walked away from Christianity a long time ago. Not because of its rituals and beliefs, but because of a deep feeling of disconnectedness. No matter how hard my mother tried to help, I could never relate to it nor bond with it.
If you believe in God then why not ask God to guide you?
And then you start your research by reading other holy scriptures to see what talks to you?
Not trying to attack beliefs and I promise not to do so in my responses. You respect mine, I respect yours. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic grade school, high school, and college. We weren't super active church goers though. As I got older I took a step back and realized, most of this is just goofy and even worse, there's no explanation for anything other than " Have faith". I had this discussion with my mom I pointed out to her " So you believe that, in the sky, there's an invisible man who watches you 24/7 and essentially twists your arm with this idea of Hell, forcing you to follow his 10 rules".
You can argue free will, we have free will to disobey the 10 rules, but think about it, if we don't we go to the place with screaming and fire. That's like your dad saying " sure you can break curfew, but I'm grounding you until the end of the decade" Not so keen on breaking curfew now are you?" Back to my point, at 19 I finally said " I'm done" and haven't done anything religious since, no church attendance in almost 20 years, no pre-meal prayers, no anything. I'm happier now than I was when I was religious. While I'm sure not ALL people on here are like folks I've met IRL, they'll say " Oh yes, we follow the Bible to the tee." Ok, I know that the Bible promotes slavery, misogyny, and is homophobic. Yikes. They never want to address the certain activities that priests have come under fire for recently, as far as I know nothing has been done to fix the problem, I have a son( 19) and I would never let him near a priest if he were middle school age.
I suppose I walked away from the 'Anglican' church finally and definitively at 15 and have never regretted it, though ongoing apologetics requires me to 'look back' from time to time.
You and I, coming from proddy and Catlik sides may find that we now are considering the claims of the Booik on exactly the same terms and the validity of the Papal line or of the reformation is a matter more to do with human history than with divine realities.
The historical basis of the Bible - not the church, but the Bible - is where the debate is now, or so I feel. Organized religion is to me utterly irrelevant to this question.
=irishfan77;34958156]Not trying to attack beliefs and I promise not to do so in my responses. You respect mine, I respect yours. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic grade school, high school, and college. We weren't super active church goers though. As I got older I took a step back and realized, most of this is just goofy and even worse, there's no explanation for anything other than " Have faith". I had this discussion with my mom I pointed out to her " So you believe that, in the sky, there's an invisible man who watches you 24/7 and essentially twists your arm with this idea of Hell, forcing you to follow his 10 rules".
You can argue free will, we have free will to disobey the 10 rules, but think about it, if we don't we go to the place with screaming and fire. That's like your dad saying " sure you can break curfew, but I'm grounding you until the end of the decade" Not so keen on breaking curfew now are you?" Back to my point, at 19 I finally said " I'm done" and haven't done anything religious since, no church attendance in almost 20 years, no pre-meal prayers, no anything. I'm happier now than I was when I was religious. While I'm sure not ALL people on here are like folks I've met IRL, they'll say " Oh yes, we follow the Bible to the tee." Ok, I know that the Bible promotes slavery, misogyny, and is homophobic. Yikes. They never want to address the certain activities that priests have come under fire for recently, as far as I know nothing has been done to fix the problem, I have a son( 19) and I would never let him near a priest if he were middle school age.
DUH
Jesus became man which is BOTH a historical and a biblical truth. So that we COULD know GOD
You can choose to NOT believe now; but be assurrred you WILL believe later.
Not trying to attack beliefs and I promise not to do so in my responses. You respect mine, I respect yours. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic grade school, high school, and college. We weren't super active church goers though. As I got older I took a step back and realized, most of this is just goofy and even worse, there's no explanation for anything other than " Have faith". I had this discussion with my mom I pointed out to her " So you believe that, in the sky, there's an invisible man who watches you 24/7 and essentially twists your arm with this idea of Hell, forcing you to follow his 10 rules".
You can argue free will, we have free will to disobey the 10 rules, but think about it, if we don't we go to the place with screaming and fire. That's like your dad saying " sure you can break curfew, but I'm grounding you until the end of the decade" Not so keen on breaking curfew now are you?" Back to my point, at 19 I finally said " I'm done" and haven't done anything religious since, no church attendance in almost 20 years, no pre-meal prayers, no anything. I'm happier now than I was when I was religious. While I'm sure not ALL people on here are like folks I've met IRL, they'll say " Oh yes, we follow the Bible to the tee." Ok, I know that the Bible promotes slavery, misogyny, and is homophobic. Yikes. They never want to address the certain activities that priests have come under fire for recently, as far as I know nothing has been done to fix the problem, I have a son( 19) and I would never let him near a priest if he were middle school age.
Yes, exactly.
Ideas of traditional Christianity are somewhat messed up. "You have a choice. But if you choose the wrong thing then you'll be tortured. Oh, yeah, great choice. Makes a joke out of "free will". Who needs free will if these are the only two options? Honestly, God would have been more merciful if he just forced everybody into heaven. (But Christians are saying that free will is a gift. Why? Just so that some could "choose" to be tortured).
It's like a shot gun wedding. If you don't believe, you'll be tortured. So you better believe. Yes, God is so very merciful, he won't squash you like a bug just for being born (in sin), but only if you do everything he says the way he says it. But if you don't, watch out... there goes mercy out of the window.
Last edited by LoveWisdom; 05-29-2014 at 06:47 PM..
I absolutely do not believe in any religious God, and am uncertain of the existence of a nonchalant God.
It is not my fault that the world is evil, and I most certainly do not recall begging God to create me, and so to banish me to an eternity of torment when I didn't ask for the world to be constructed in the manner that it is simply is not right, nor is it moral.
Jesus became man which is BOTH a historical and a biblical truth.
Incorrect. The historical truth is Jesus was just a man. Nice guy too. And there is no such thing as Biblical "truth" any more than there is such thing as Harry Potter "truth".
Quote:
Originally Posted by IamACatholic
You can choose to NOT believe now; but be assurrred you WILL believe later.
Your peddling of the Pauline mythology in this thread is inappropriate. This thread is about walking away from the Church's practice of treating myths as if they were reality.
I have walked away from a "church" but not the Church of all true believers in Christ alive on Earth. There can be any number of legitimate reasons to leave a particular fellowship. I will never turn away from my Lord Jesus Christ.
an odd fact that I ran across a number of years ago struck me. Demographics of black mass and Satanists were 90% ex-Catholic. It was in a college library book debunking cultism and it's effects, so I believe that statistic.
Rebelling and running rather than walking away from religion is what I take from it.
I willingly walked away from "the Church" but I was raised protestant. Looking back, I think it's more that I walked away from organized religion and have chosen to follow my own path of spirituality. My beliefs are still very Christian based but there are many tenets of the organized religion that I simply choose not to participate in.
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