I officially quit.
I wanted to believe.
I thought I could fake it.
I tried to hold on to the smallest little smidgen of belief I could find.
I went back and forth a couple times to try to keep in the Church I truly love, but its not worth it.
I must admit I don't believe.
So that's me. I see a lot of the word "I" above, but it must be so. This is about me. Some guy didn't make me so mad that I wanted to leave everyone behind. My parents did not plant a seed of doubt. I did not see an inkling of hypocrisy in my father, the man that taught me to read, and gave me a love of logic and philosophy. I didn't doubt because of a college education, and I didn't walk away because I was drawn away by rock music or some stupid movie that made me desire a more exciting life away from God. It took becoming a father to realize my own faith was really a faith in my father, and not his God. When I tried to grow into my own faith I ran into my skepticism. I realized that to look past all the realities I saw that didn't mesh with the Bible I would have to have an internal sense that the truth of Scripture was greater than my doubt. I don't have that internal sense. A Christian might say that I lack the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.
Let me say it another way using the Genesis story of creation as an example. There is so much evidence in real life of an earth and universe that is so incredibly old most human minds are not able to visualize, and yet many Christians hold firmly to the belief that God created the earth and universe less than ten thousand years ago based on the chronology of events described in the Bible. So here's the rub- if, based on the evidence alone, I see that the earth is well more than a million years old, then I would have to assume that any story I heard to the contrary is false. Yet the Christian Bible states, based on its chronology, that the earth is 10,000 years old or younger. What am I to do with the contradiction? If I have no reason to believe the Bible I can simply state, accurately, that the Bible is the product of Bronze Age humans making their best guess at reality using traditions passed down to them to record their best creation myths which they tweaked over time as their culture changed. If I ascribe to the beliefs based on the Bible I look at the contradiction and go with my gut which tells me more truth is yet to be discovered and allows me to suspend disbelief in favor of what seems to be Bronze Age beliefs.
This is where I am splitting off from my former Sunday School friends. I don't have that gut feeling that tells me there must be a creator to build this complex system of physics that keeps our universe doing its thing. I don't have faith that a cosmic being who is both cruel and good has a higher purpose in mind. I don't have some whimsical sense that a better world awaits when my body loses its ability to maintain its survivability.
In short, I don't have faith.
Some would say that I have exchanged a faith in God for a faith in science, but that would be untrue. I don't have faith in science. Science is method of testing theories to come as close to truth as possible, but it is not a thing in which to have faith. Science would be the antithesis of faith in that any assertions made as a result of a scientific endeavor must be testable in order to be believed, and, as such, can be disproved at any juncture. Famous scientists are made from people who found a way to call accepted truths into question.
Some would say I have rejected God. Not really. I have rejected an artificial sense of the existence of any god. I had built up a mental image, in Christian terms an idol, of what I wanted God to be, and when I tested my theory of God I found that it was not reflected in Scripture, and, in fact, no one image of God was present in the Holy Writ I examined. All of religious tradition contains the opinions of men who seemed to have come to know different creatures they called "God".
Some would say that I have been drawn away by my own immorality to reject Biblical morality, but I counter that there is not one version of Biblical morality. This is why American Christians still argue for and against slavery, and why abortion is both acceptable and unacceptable within various factions of the Christian Church. I suggest that our cultural morality dictates how we interpret the Scriptures rather than the Scripture dictating our morality. This is partly because so many standards exist in the Holy Writ that almost anything can be justified based on how the verses are arranged.
I wanted that faith. I prayed for that faith, and studied to build the knowledge that would give support to faith, but the more I learned, the less I could believe. This is not to say that your faith is wrong, but that your faith is not based on words printed on special paper in a carefully bound book, but on some ethereal sense that your brain created to help you cope with things you couldn't explain. Or, you might say, the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.
So here I am as I really am. You can pray that God's voice will break through the darkness in my mind and bring me to your version of the light of faith. I welcome that. It is not fun feeling left out in the cold. Until then, paint me as honest. From here on, I will only admit to that which I can truly believe.
In short, I don't have faith.
Some would say that I have exchanged a faith in God for a faith in science, but that would be untrue. I don't have faith in science. Science is method of testing theories to come as close to truth as possible, but it is not a thing in which to have faith. Science would be the antithesis of faith in that any assertions made as a result of a scientific endeavor must be testable in order to be believed, and, as such, can be disproved at any juncture. Famous scientists are made from people who found a way to call accepted truths into question.
Some would say I have rejected God. Not really. I have rejected an artificial sense of the existence of any god. I had built up a mental image, in Christian terms an idol, of what I wanted God to be, and when I tested my theory of God I found that it was not reflected in Scripture, and, in fact, no one image of God was present in the Holy Writ I examined. All of religious tradition contains the opinions of men who seemed to have come to know different creatures they called "God".
Some would say that I have been drawn away by my own immorality to reject Biblical morality, but I counter that there is not one version of Biblical morality. This is why American Christians still argue for and against slavery, and why abortion is both acceptable and unacceptable within various factions of the Christian Church. I suggest that our cultural morality dictates how we interpret the Scriptures rather than the Scripture dictating our morality. This is partly because so many standards exist in the Holy Writ that almost anything can be justified based on how the verses are arranged.
I wanted that faith. I prayed for that faith, and studied to build the knowledge that would give support to faith, but the more I learned, the less I could believe. This is not to say that your faith is wrong, but that your faith is not based on words printed on special paper in a carefully bound book, but on some ethereal sense that your brain created to help you cope with things you couldn't explain. Or, you might say, the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.
So here I am as I really am. You can pray that God's voice will break through the darkness in my mind and bring me to your version of the light of faith. I welcome that. It is not fun feeling left out in the cold. Until then, paint me as honest. From here on, I will only admit to that which I can truly believe.
