GodsChild a Few Quick Questions?

[Norfolk And Chance]

If you never chose Christ, do you believe you were a Christian? Now I'm trying to understand something.

I chose to accept Christ as my savior because I was taught by my parents and my community that it was real. That God was real, that the stories in the Bible were real. That Jesus really existed. Grown ups taught me this before I could even read.

I really believed in Heaven and Hell.

I don't want to be a bad person. And I'm not... I hope. I really do hope. Am I a jerk sometimes, well online mostly, but occasionally though extremely rarely in person? Heck yeah.

But am I a thief, a crook, do I make people feel bad, do I want to? Do I not call my girls beautiful and take them to do silly things that hardly any other dads do normally? Like take them to catch crayfish (crawdads for other hicks like me) on sunny Saturday afternoons with some string and bacon? Do I make my wife feel beautiful and loved every chance I can? Am I one of those people that when they get an unsolicited sales phone call, that I can't just hang up, I have to politely talk to them, tell them that I'm really not interested, thank you.

I don't want to be a bad person, I don't want to be scum.

If God existed, I wouldn't rebel against Him. Heck no. Never.

I was taught that God is love, that the Bible is real, and this is what good people do. You get saved, you go to church, you indoctrinate your kids to believe in the same for their soul's sake.

If I believed this, if I could really find some reason to take it seriously, yeah, I'd still be a Christian.

I was one once. For most of my life.

Then I decided not to take it on blind faith, but with the best of intentions, to just critically exam it to myself, quietly, in my own head.

For around six years I did that.

You can't really do that, I do not believe, if you are fearlessly intellectually honest with yourself, and NOT come to the conclusion that it's not real, my friend.

And half the time I have debated Christians online, I didn't do it to mess with them, but I was waiting for one of them to tell me what the heck I'm missing.

Tell me something that brings it all together for me.

But it's just empty rote verbage I get. It kind of depresses me sometimes. But at the same time, I'm really happy that I woke up. And life is still amazing without that belief in a god. Actually in a lot of ways it's better. Because you aren't waiting for the great hereafter. You savor this. This moment. This time with those you love. Because once they're gone. They're gone forever. Everything becomes more precious to you.

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I do not believe in those gods because I was taught in school they were myths, I was given what I considered evidence they were not real.

So if you were taught in school that the Bible and the associated god of the Bible was myth, that's what you would believe now as an adult?

I can see the sky is blue when there are no clouds, I've seen orange, yellow, pink skies at sunset, but I would never choose a green sky with orange polka dots, because I have seen the sky for many years and it has never appeared green.

Have you ever seen God?

I've never seen a green sky with orange polka dots nor have I seen Him. Why should I believe in either? Why do you believe in one but not the other one?

As we can see from your writing, essentially you are a good person, and all of this without god.

Why anyone would need a god when you can be a good person without one, is beyond me.

If god was real, I'd wager that it'd be pretty hard to be good without him, he'd surely make it so.

But then, according to xtians, you can be good or bad, with or without god - none of it even matters because all that matters is that you simply believe. What SHIT.