I'm Leaving Christianity

[Lewis]

After 13 Years, I'm Leaving Christianity

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keay-...nity_b_8488624.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

 

[Christ_empowered]

There are problems with organized Christianity. Any individual church, any denomination is going to have problems. I think mega-churches are more prone to extreme abuses, but that could just be my perception.

The last line or so--where the writer talks about finding the answers "within ourselves"--is a real problem for me. I'm all about using critical thinking and analytical skills, no doubt, but answers to serious, moral problems require that we look to God for answers, while also using reason.

I dunno. Huffington Post seems to have some kind of a problem with traditional Christianity. I'm glad they put this article online--its made me think a little bit--but I also think they have a bit of an agenda.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

"Though I no longer consider myself a Christian, I'm still keeping a space for God in my heart. I didn't lose my religion. Instead, I'm creating my own."

Thinking about another thread I'm participating in, I was reminding myself yesterday of this fact among ex-believers. It seems most people don't apostatize as in leave Christianity utterly and completely. They retain a semblance of it and simply fashion it to their liking.
A gradual slip into unbelief, or not, it's still apostasy, nonetheless.

 

[Mike S]

"Though I no longer consider myself a Christian, I'm still keeping a space for God in my heart. I didn't lose my religion. Instead, I'm creating my own."

Thinking about another thread I'm participating in, I was reminding myself yesterday of this fact among ex-believers. It seems most people don't apostatize as in leave Christianity utterly and completely. They retain a semblance of it and simply fashion it to their liking.
A gradual slip into unbelief, or not, it's still apostasy, nonetheless.

Yeah, it's cafeteria Christianity, where someone picks and chooses what he likes, and throws the rest away.

 

[Obadiah]

As I'm reading this I come across the statement "Yet, as the church became more and more goal-orientated and obsessed with expansion, I felt that it had forgotten about its own people" and it makes me realize how true this is for too many Christian ministries today. I got involved in one a little over a year ago with high hopes that I was finally able to work again in the area God had called me to. But shortly after the upper leadership (essentially one person) fell into this obsession with expansion (on a world wide scale!) and is having some success at this too. But the original group of people I joined up with is having problems and dwindling, and the part of the ministry that I felt called to has ceased altogether. After waiting almost a year now to see if things would turn around, we have a meeting this afternoon and I am seriously considering withdrawing my name from their organization altogether since they no longer are interested in doing what I was called to do. Yet the upper leadership seems blind to these problems. It's truly a shame.

 

[KevinK]

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I used to practice karate. I was a card-carrying member of the Japan Karate Association, the largest and perhaps the most political karate organisation in the world. Despite its internal problems, it taught what I considered the purest and most effective karate style in the world (Chuck Norris practices what is basically the Korean version of this Shotokan karate).

I no longer participate in JKA activities, but I still do karate. I don't currently belong to a church, but I am still a Christian. Funny, but I still want to go to heaven, hell not so much.

 

[Obadiah]

Yeah, it's cafeteria Christianity, where someone picks and chooses what he likes, and throws the rest away.

Yeah, now that I've finished reading the entire article, this is exactly what the writer is wanting in his life. It's not real Christianity at all that he wants.

 

[Not_Now.Soon]

Sound like a very personal story, for who ever the writer was. Wish him or her the best on their journey. However, I think I can say I've had simular experience trying to be pure sexually, without being homosexual. Even to the points of turning back to God as if they were second chances and second winds, but still being drawn back to sexual temptation, and a teen with easy access to Internet pictures to fulfill the lusts.

I think parts of what was described in the article aren'tjust a gay issue, but in general a sex and temptation issue regardless of which gender a person is attracted to. Now as an adult I still have problems with lust in me, and the same pattern of the easy access of pictures on the Internet helps fulfill my lusts. There's no supporting community to say that is fine, and I don't think there should be. I'll admit that I'm on the fence about the value of a supporting community for homosexuals, but at least from what was described in the article, I think there's a portion that has an underlying issue of sexual temptation and lusts in general.

 

[Obadiah]

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I used to practice karate. I was a card-carrying member of the Japan Karate Association, the largest and perhaps the most political karate organisation in the world. Despite its internal problems, it taught what I considered the purest and most effective karate style in the world (Chuck Norris practices what is basically the Korean version of this Shotokan karate).

I no longer participate in JKA activities, but I still do karate. I don't currently belong to a church, but I am still a Christian. Funny, but I still want to go to heaven, hell not so much.

I'm kinda in the same situation now after leaving my last church do to internal problems that ruined it for me, and not being able to seem to find another local church that isn't just as disappointing. But unlike the writer of this article, I don't just pick and choose the parts of Christianity that I like and fit in with my desires. I still attempt as best I can to follow God's word, even the parts that my human self might prefer were different.

 

[KevinK]

After going through everything else the article delineates, the story ends in a puddle of Satanic, New Age dribble. I've seen people end up like this. Overwhelmed by organized faiths, they conclude that the true path is- New Agey types prepare to applaud- "within oneself". Braced by this amazing and completely original revelation, they proceed through life as though the entire universe revolves around their personal egocentricity. Basically, they set themself up as God, and thus ends the overt search for the real One.

The first "person" to make this mistake is even famous- his name was Lucifer, though most people now call him Satan. Unfortunately, he was far from the last one. Along eventually came Gautama, who architected a complex and well-meaning belief system intended to fill the gaps in his own understanding, and even provides a path to personal God-like awareness, while side-stepping reverence to, again, the real One. Buddha was a good man, but he was an athiest (note that not all Buddhists necessarily are).

Any time I see emphasis on "inner jouneys" or finding answers "within oneself", I throw down the false god penalty. They are invariably methodologies for self-deification. The whole New Age thing is spiritual cancer, falsehoods masquerading and spreading as truth. You want the truth? Don't look inside yourself for answers, you're an idiot. Read the Bible.

 

[PeteUK56]

My suggestion is to read So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobsen, and then follow that with Finding Church.

I love the way Wayne focusses on the good in every enciunter and discards the bad parts. If that is cafeteria Christianity I will take some, I am certainly tired of what is served up as 'church' in our society. We have lost the heart and focussed almost entirely on form and rules and attendance.

 

[smaller]

I had to laugh. My aunt and uncle were visiting with a gay former neighbor that stopped by their house, who had moved to San Fran that they knew since he was a kid, (and they love him, dearly, regardless I might add.) Everyone in town knew he was obviously gay since he was a kid. He said when he was growing up his mom was a baptist and his dad, a catholic. When he was a kid he decided he was going to be a baptist, like his mom. But that didn't work out too well. He said "I don't know what I was thinking, I could have been a catholic priest!"

 

[Obadiah]

I had to laugh. My aunt and uncle were visiting with a gay former neighbor that stopped by their house, who had moved to San Fran that they knew since he was a kid, (and they love him, dearly, regardless I might add.) Everyone in town knew he was obviously gay since he was a kid. He said when he was growing up his mom was a baptist and his dad, a catholic. When he was a kid he decided he was going to be a baptist, like his mom. But that didn't work out too well. He said "I don't know what I was thinking, I could have been a catholic priest!"

LOL! Good one!

 

[smaller]

I had my own faith test with LGBT community members long ago. I was taking their money for my produce without hesitation. And, besides that, I also had L&G friends and acquaintances. So, what's a believer to do? I'm not interested in being a religious hypocrite. Their "sin" is no different than anyone else's. Just don't ask me to "bless" sin. I don't bless my own sin.

It was issues like this that caused me to seek better understandings about sin. My obligation as a believer is the same to everyone, found in Romans 13:8-10. That is the beginning and the ending of any faith action that I might distribute. If "religious" people want to talk about "sin" we'll talk about "ours" first. And we should rightfully conclude that we're sinners too. No one escapes the contrariness in our own flesh in this present life, and that's all there is to it. But most would probably agree that were not going to put it on display, or religiously ceremonialize sin anymore than we'd put a murderer in the pulpit fresh off a murder conviction or a child molester as the head of children's church OR have believers performing "heterosexual blessed and holy sex" on the altar. This is just not a happening deal.

In the final analysis though, nobodies sin is any different than any others. An adulterer in "mind" is just as guilty as an adulterer in deed in Jesus' Eyes. Matt. 5:28. And on that count alone I could spend a very long time in hell myself.

Let's face that we are bombarded and manipulated in the flesh today by just about every conceivable angle there is, just by turning on the T.V. or the internet.

 

[Corn Pop]

The big church delusion. Its like peoples glasses are on there forehead and they are looking everywhere, everywhere they look they cant find them, then they go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and find out they were there head the whole time.

 

[smaller]

The big church delusion. Its like peoples glasses are on there forehead and they are looking everywhere, everywhere they look they cant find them, then they go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and find out they were there head the whole time.

I dropped a customer off at his house the other day. And drove slowly up the residential street. I heard somebody shouting behind me, HEY! HEY! STOP! I looked in the rearview mirror, and my customer was running frantically up the street, trying to catch up to me. I stopped, rolled down the window. He breathlessly put both hands on the window edge, and said he forgot his phone in my truck.

I looked at his hands, and there was the phone, in his hand. He felt rather foolish at that point. I said get in, I'll give you a ride back to the house. And had a good laugh.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

I think parts of what was described in the article aren'tjust a gay issue, but in general a sex and temptation issue regardless of which gender a person is attracted to.

I wish gay people would understand this.
They aren't the only one's who have to struggle with sexual temptation.

 

[Corn Pop]

I wish gay people would understand this.
They aren't the only one's who have to struggle with sexual temptation.

Hypocrites are too busy looking down on other peoples wrongs there to blind to see there own. Perfect description of a religious hypocrite.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

We have lost the heart and focussed almost entirely on form and rules and attendance.

I submit to you that it's always been this way.
We simply change what the 'form and rules'--the modus operandi of our tradition--are going to be.

 

[Christ_empowered]

I'm recovering former homogay, and I agree...the thing to realize is that, whatever your sin+lust pattern, God has certain standards for His people. I think that because homosexuality cuts across a number of lines--gender, identity, etc.--its a bigger deal, so more tolerant/progressive Christians want to ditch The Biblical standards and go "gay affirming" while more reactionary Christians come down too hard on the gays.