Skip to main content

Christians are Right – I didn’t “Do” Christianity Right

By Positivist ~

Well, I loathe admitting it, but they are right: I lost my faith because I didn’t “do” Christianity right.

I didn’t go to the right church. Now, I realize that my upbringing in the Presbyterian and Christian Reformed churches was way off base, which is why upon receiving my driver’s license I began attending a Pentecostal church—you know, where God “shows up” each week, and where the promises of God were apples on a tree and I merely had to pick them! I was a charismatic believer into middle age, increasingly overcoming the niggling doubts that plagued me. I realize now that this charismatic belief system was wrong. I probably should have instead attended a Vineyard church, a house church, no church, or a Presbyterian church…and if so, I’d still be a believer. But alas, I didn’t do these things. I thought I was following God’s leading in my life as to where I fellowshipped and worshipped, but I was wrong. I did it wrong. I didn’t go to Just The Right Church.

I didn’t pray right. Okay, I admit it. I prayed a couple of hours a day during my most spiritual years. Now, this sounds like too much/too little. It really should have been more or less. A pastor once shouted from the pulpit that daily each of us spends 8 hours at work, 8 hours sleeping, 3 hours eating, 2 hours commuting, and 2 hours watching TV, etc. etc.….but maybe only a few minutes praying—a travesty if there ever was one. Heck—we should be praying 3-4 hours per day! Yes, I fell short, and lost my faith. But I also prayed too much; I was too much in my head, and listened too much for God in all things. A more toned down version of spirituality would have been better, more sustainable, more grounded in reality. As well, most of my praying was not intercession but worship—I realize this was probably wrong too. I should have been asking God for specific things (things like “Don’t let me lose my faith!”). I did it wrong. I didn’t pray Just The Right Amount and Just The Right Way.

I didn’t fast properly. I fasted only when I felt the Lord encouraging me to do so, which I realize is problematic due to the nature of subjective experience, but I thought (errantly) that my subjective experience was subjected to God’s authority (oops). Fasting is hard for me, and once I even had to break a fast because I was too ill to continue and almost needed to go to the emergency department. My longest fast was 10 days, which I realize is too short/too long. A ‘prophet’ friend of mine fasted 40 days, like Christ; I could never do that and I realize now that I have failed. I realize now, in retrospect, that shorter fasts may have sufficed to incline God’s ear; I was overdoing it by fasting for between 3 and 10 days. A more moderate approach would have been better. I did it wrong. I didn’t fast Just The Right Amount.

I didn’t have the right information. I knew too much/too little to retain my faith. I have read a lot of apologetics books, hoping to close the broken circle in my brain, to make things make sense and assuage the growing cognitive dissonance that threatened my intellectual integrity (not to mention sanity). But I think I read the wrong apologetics books; I listened to the wrong pastors; I listened to the wrong spiritual people in my life. If I had read the right books, listened to the right pastors, and heeded the right words from the right spiritual people in my life, I’d have been better off. Instead, I had the wrong information, and lots of it. I didn’t have Just The Right Information.

I didn’t try the right way. Some say I’m an overachiever; I think I’m an underachiever, but that is neither here nor there, because I really am both. I tried too hard as a Christian. I bent my ear to the throne of God and relentlessly pursued truth and a righteous walk with God. But I tried too hard and it came undone; I tried too hard to make things make sense in my little puny human brain. I also didn’t try hard enough, or I wouldn’t have lost my faith. I should have tried harder/tried less hard. I didn’t try Just The Right Amount.

I didn’t wait long enough. I waited for the Lord on high, but he did not hear my prayer. Or maybe he heard it but is playing Game of Job at my expense. I liken my departure from faith to hanging white knuckled on the edge of a cliff, and finally, the last insult comes and it’s like a foot stomping on those white knuckled fingers and I lose my grip and fall. I should have pre-contemplated this eventuality and installed some climbing protection (a “Jesus Nut”) below me so that my faith would have been spared. But I didn’t, and it wasn’t. I expired before I officially stopped waiting.

I am too smart/too stupid to be a Christian. I guess this is what it ultimately comes down to. I am too clever to be a Christian because I can’t just let things pass that make no sense. My alarm bells go off at all the wrong times, like about how original sin was ‘injected’ into the human race: was it injected into H. Habilis, H. Erectus, H. Sapiens? Without original sin, the cake called Christianity is a bit of a flop. The virgin birth was tough for me too, being as intellectually bereft as I am: I know it should be obvious and/or irrelevant, but whose DNA are we talking about in the case of a virgin birth? And of course, stupidly I could not understand the Trinity, try as I might! Oh, the books I have read, the metaphors I have drummed up, and the prayers I have prayed, but still, the Trinity is a round peg that won’t fit into the square hole of my brain. I didn’t have Just The Right Amount of intelligence.

In a distant life I would go target shooting with my criminal justice boyfriend. We aimed for tight groupings in target shooting, and I used to get some really nice tight groupings at a few hundred yards. This lesson is one that I should have applied to my Christian walk: the need for precision and accuracy. Both high accuracy/low precision, and low accuracy/high precision are recipes for Wrong Theology which can result in losing one’s faith. In my decades of valiant effort at faith, I failed in either (or both) accuracy or precision, depending on the aspect of Christianity I was aiming to get right. With Christianity, one needs the rare combination of high accuracy with high precision to get those theological groupings right where they belong: dead centre of the bulls eye of faith. Without that, you’re simply not doing it right.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two