Hey everyone, good to be here. First off, I never thought I'd posting in an atheist forum, growing up they were the boogey man. Let me tell you my story:
I was born and raised to be a Christian. My parents were..."lukewarm" believers however my grandma was a very devout Baptist and taught me at a very very young age. The ideas of eternal hell and an end time rapture were drilled in my head. I attended youth groups and youth summer camps. My first experience questioning my faith was when I was about 14 or 15. I went to a summer camp/seminar/meeting type thing in Duluth, MN(where I am originally from) and one of the seminars was "Demonic and Occult Media Influences" or something like that. It was basically about how all music that is not Christian is Satanic and could lead to demonic possession, etc etc. Well the breaking point for me was when he told us that he believed he knew who the Anti-Christ is. He said, very matter of factly, that the Anti-Christ is Alanis Morissette. Then in another seminar he told us that every false Christian would burn in hell and get it worse than anyone else. It soon dawned on me that he was talking about my parents. I mean, only really giving lip service to Christ, and all of that. But it seemed that it conflicted with the Baptist doctrine that all one had to do was believe to be saved.
I went home that night and cried out to Jesus to save my parents. And to guard me from weak faith. I just never felt that....moment...that "change" from the "Holy Spirit" that all Christians claimed to feel. It made me feel insecure in my salvation. I would go to bed at night and nightmare about hell. I would dream about watching my parents get condemned to hell by Jesus on the Last Judgment. Everyone said God and Jesus were love and all of that, but I was terrified of them.. I was scared to death of meeting Jesus, all I could envision was being ridiculed and sentenced to hell for not believing the proper way, and being good enough, though I was always taught no one was good, Christ himself said so.
I believe that emotional pain and trauma would set me off into my 3 year long neurosis from 18-21 years old. During the past three years I changed denominations almost daily, sometimes more than once a day. I was so afraid of having the wrong beliefs, after all there is about 1000+ denominations and each them claim to have the correct path to Christ. I would jump around from everything. I converted to Catholicism and left, and came back, tried Orthodoxy, almost all protestant faiths, even "new age" Christianity. None of it satisfied me, I was so afraid of God and hell.
Well about 4 months ago I found universalism, the idea that all people will be saved. I researched it and found most of their claims to be true. That opened the floodgates. Once I found that Christian Church was wrong on this, Christianity fell like a house of cards. I studied early church history with an unbiased opinion and found that almost all Christianity is borrowed directly from pagan religions.
I studied my way out of organized religions. I was tempted by atheism, however I just can't believe that all of this was an accident. I don't think it takes much faith to believe in a Creator.
I do have a lot of anger inside of me at the organized religious structure. I am trying to get it all worked out and be positive about what I have instead of bitter about what was.
Now I consider myself a weak atheist, I don't believe that God can ever be disproven, but I just can't believe in a god at this point in my life. I tried deism, but I don't know if I can take that.
I was born and raised to be a Christian. My parents were..."lukewarm" believers however my grandma was a very devout Baptist and taught me at a very very young age. The ideas of eternal hell and an end time rapture were drilled in my head. I attended youth groups and youth summer camps. My first experience questioning my faith was when I was about 14 or 15. I went to a summer camp/seminar/meeting type thing in Duluth, MN(where I am originally from) and one of the seminars was "Demonic and Occult Media Influences" or something like that. It was basically about how all music that is not Christian is Satanic and could lead to demonic possession, etc etc. Well the breaking point for me was when he told us that he believed he knew who the Anti-Christ is. He said, very matter of factly, that the Anti-Christ is Alanis Morissette. Then in another seminar he told us that every false Christian would burn in hell and get it worse than anyone else. It soon dawned on me that he was talking about my parents. I mean, only really giving lip service to Christ, and all of that. But it seemed that it conflicted with the Baptist doctrine that all one had to do was believe to be saved.
I went home that night and cried out to Jesus to save my parents. And to guard me from weak faith. I just never felt that....moment...that "change" from the "Holy Spirit" that all Christians claimed to feel. It made me feel insecure in my salvation. I would go to bed at night and nightmare about hell. I would dream about watching my parents get condemned to hell by Jesus on the Last Judgment. Everyone said God and Jesus were love and all of that, but I was terrified of them.. I was scared to death of meeting Jesus, all I could envision was being ridiculed and sentenced to hell for not believing the proper way, and being good enough, though I was always taught no one was good, Christ himself said so.
I believe that emotional pain and trauma would set me off into my 3 year long neurosis from 18-21 years old. During the past three years I changed denominations almost daily, sometimes more than once a day. I was so afraid of having the wrong beliefs, after all there is about 1000+ denominations and each them claim to have the correct path to Christ. I would jump around from everything. I converted to Catholicism and left, and came back, tried Orthodoxy, almost all protestant faiths, even "new age" Christianity. None of it satisfied me, I was so afraid of God and hell.
Well about 4 months ago I found universalism, the idea that all people will be saved. I researched it and found most of their claims to be true. That opened the floodgates. Once I found that Christian Church was wrong on this, Christianity fell like a house of cards. I studied early church history with an unbiased opinion and found that almost all Christianity is borrowed directly from pagan religions.
I studied my way out of organized religions. I was tempted by atheism, however I just can't believe that all of this was an accident. I don't think it takes much faith to believe in a Creator.
I do have a lot of anger inside of me at the organized religious structure. I am trying to get it all worked out and be positive about what I have instead of bitter about what was.
Now I consider myself a weak atheist, I don't believe that God can ever be disproven, but I just can't believe in a god at this point in my life. I tried deism, but I don't know if I can take that.
