Hello.
Some years ago I was on a flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt and there was a group of Chasidic rabbis on the flight with me. I chatted with one of them who was sitted on the long middle row with nobody else but us. He was reading his Bible. So I asked him who he was, where he was traveling to and so on, and told him a little about myself. I asked him at one point, “Why do you believe in what you believe?” He looked greatly puzzled as if nobody had ever asked him that question. He was thinking intensely it seemed, and answered, “I’m a Jew, it’s what we do”. So his reason was, being born into the religion… Weather I like it or not, agree or not, it’s a valid reason.
Have you ever considered, why do you believe in what you believe? Truly. I’m not asking about the need or requirement for faith through a theologic prism.
I’m asking about why do you think you personally came to believe what you believe in today. Your honest and real answer.
“I found it true” is probably the best answer for any faith, but I’m asking to please provide more detail.
You needed to make sense of this world and your place in it? You felt God calling and found a practical way to connect with him? Was born into this faith and it spoke to you so you went along with it? It helps you in day by day life? You enjoy the music and circle of fellow Christians? You married a Christian and it’s convenient to remain in one faith to keep family unity? Reached a rock bottom of self-destructive lifestyle and was saved by Jesus out of it? Found Christian practice very useful so you follow it despite partial disagreement with its doctrines. Etc..
Maybe none of the above… Or could be more than one reason. I don’t know. We’re all unique.
Thank you
I was born into, and raised in a Christian home. So I grew up with that basic foundation of the Christian religion. But unfortunately I believe that much of the theology and my general experience of Christianity was also very harmful in a lot of ways.
The short of it is that from when I was born until I was 8 years old my family attended my mom's church, the church my parents also met in and got married in. It was a non-Charismatic non-denominational church. When I was 8 one of the elders in the church was having an affair with a divorced single mother, and he decided to divorce his wife to marry his mistress. If it came out that he had been having an affair for divorcing and remarrying for that reason he would have lost his position and standing in the church (and, subsequently, his businesses in town would have probably suffered, as he was a pretty wealthy member of the community with several high profile restaurants in the area). So he fabricated a story about his wife and my mom (who were friends in the church choir) had been engaged in a homosexual relationship in secret. The church's board of elders summoned my mom to to a church trial where my mom was not allowed to defend herself but was expected instead to simply accept the guilt and repent of something she had not done. She complied solely to protect my dad, me, and my little brother. That wasn't good enough for the elders, and the pastor was powerless to intervene because the way the church's politics were structured the board of elders essentially governed the church with their own whims and wants, even the pastor couldn't do or say anything without the board of elders letting him.
And I know the pastor of that church was against what happened, because of nearly 3,000 people who belonged to that church, he was the only human being in that whole church that ever once made any attempt to reach out to my mom, to my dad, and even to me when I got older. Right up until my mom's death in 2000 the majority of the people from that church's only interaction with me was to ask how I was after my mom became a lesbian degenerate or whatever.
We did get kicked out of the church after my mom's "trial", because even though she apologized in front of the elders, church practice there mandated standing in front of the entire congregation for each of the two services seating over 1,500 people each and "confess" and to ask the forgiveness of the entire congregation. They said it was based on what Jesus says in the Beatitudes, but I know very well that the purpose of this was to shame people in order to keep them in line.
After we were kicked out of the church for my mother's "crimes" of being falsely accused of breaking up a cheating elder's marriage. We found a new church that had people who accepted us and loved us. A very tiny Pentecostal church that met at the local YMCA because there wasn't any money yet to have our own church building (that changed years later when our church merged with another from the next town over). It was part of the Foursquare denomination.
I have nothing negative to say about anyone from that church, except maybe the mother of one of the kids I became friends with. She was very scary. But on the whole these were lovely people who genuinely loved one another. And that's where my mom was able to heal.
And as I grew up into adolescence, that was the Christianity I experienced.
I also, while growing up attended a very small private school run by a local independent Baptist church. Some things I learned there until corrected later was that the King James Version was the only real Bible because Jesus spoke King James English. Or at least that's what the teachers were telling me. Fun fact, when my parents bought me a children's NIV Bible when I entered the 1st Grade, I protested that it was a fake Bible. So my parents had to do a lot of extra work de-programming a lot of the things I learned at school. A school that treated students whose parents weren't members as second class students. I can think of quite a few times my teachers made a strong effort to ostracize both me and my brother, which led to quite a few of the students interpreting as free reign to make sure I knew that I didn't really belong.
Entering adolescence my raging pubescent hormones and my sense of religious moralism were in sharp contrast. And that moralism which had been hammered into me by my various teachers and pastors and other church folk over my childhood effectively led me to believing that the ordinary changes that happen during puberty made me feel especially evil. I have memories of being 12 or 13 years old and just thinking that I was imagining women naked, so that I was certainly destined for hell.
I figured that had I "really meant it" when I "accepted Jesus", then I should be reflecting that morality and "holiness" that all the church folk in my life were talking about. Sure, I was a sinner, and maybe I'll still sometimes mess up, but the basic shape of my life should be holy and upstanding. But here I was, just a regular kid with regular kid problems and struggles, and all I could do is convince myself that I must have never really believed in Jesus at all if I couldn't take Jesus seriously enough to stop having sexual urges.
That fear of damnation, that fear of not having "really meant it" wasn't a new one for me. And it wouldn't be the last.
When I was maybe seven going on eight years old I had a huge conversation with my dad asking him how I could know if I was truly, really, actually saved. I remembered when I was four years old and I "asked Jesus into my heart" like I had been told; I remembered my parents leading me through "The Sinner's Prayer". And my dad told me this, "Well, as long as you meant it, you're saved, did you mean it?" And that question haunted me, even as a child. I was a child, but I was now asking the question of, "How can I know if I meant it?" What does sincerity actually look like or mean? Could I have thought I meant it but didn't actually mean it because I don't even know what meaning it looks like? My dad asked if I loved Jesus, and I said that I thought I did. I mean I was pretty sure I loved Jesus, but like, what if I didn't and I just thought I did? What does it actually mean to love Jesus anyway? How can I know that I really, really, really, really, actually, truly love Jesus? Is there supposed to be some kind of special feeling?
Well, all the churches and schools and church people in my life told me that you can know you're really saved because you'll just "know" it. But I don't know how to just "know"; and so I didn't know if I knew. And that is why, in becoming a teenager this existential dread didn't go away, but really only continued to get bigger and darker the more involved with church functions I became.
In high school, all while doing my darndest to be the "best Christian" I could, based on whatever ways I thought that meant at the time; most of my various church friends would frequently talk casually about how spiritual I was. How close to God I must have been. And while I never felt truly comfortable hearing things like that (because I knew myself better than they did), I also didn't really actively do anything to dissuade people from the opinion. So at church I would put all my heart and soul into "worship", and of course I heard similar things there, the adults in my church talked about how full of the Holy Spirit I was, my pastor apparently told my mom that he thought I would become a prophet one day.
But when I was alone. When it was just me and God--and my own thoughts. I was terrified. Secluded away I would be 16 years old, laying prostrate on my floor, begging God not to abandon me because of how full of sin I was. By how full of hypocrisy I was.
I'm realizing here just how long talking about my "story" always takes, and if it's okay, I'd like to continue this in a second post. So I guess this is Part 1 of 2? Or the prologue, or something like that.
At this point I've really only provided a few of the reasons why, in a way, it makes no sense for me to be a Christian. But I promise to get to that.
-CryptoLutheran
