Skip to main content

Final Walking Away

By Anthony C ~

JUNE 4TH 2011

Where do I start my discussion on my approach to the truth of Evangelical Christianity? There are many places I could start. So I have decided to discuss it from the approach of my experience of and with God.

Firstly, after 31 years, I have decided that I am no longer an "Evangelical Christian". When I examine the last 31 years of my spiritual pilgrimage, I was looking for an experience to encounter God. This was according to what the Bible says or pastors and teachers say the spiritual experiences of God should be. (we all want this). I had been a sincere, dedicated Christian, seriously trying to live a Christian life and understand Christian doctrine, basically having the correct beliefs.

"And as a result of doing just what I had been told to do -study and learn Christianity - I had discovered a spiderweb of cracks in the very foundation! In short, my faith was starting to slip away. I had no intention of walking away. Indeed, I fought. I kicked and raged over each millimeter".

Not my quote, but this reflects my sentiments.

All of the teachings regarding experiencing God have not come to be a "reality" in my actual life experience. I truly did believe, but only because I desperately wanted to believe, so I focused my attention on things that bolstered my faith, i.e. Bible prophecy which turned out to be controversial to say the least. (MANY false predictions), I turned to the historicity of the Bible to confirm my BELIEFS, ( based upon what "scholars said").

I also spent countless years trying to make sense of all of the divergent denominations that contradicted each other. I wanted to be certain that I had the "correct" beliefs to know that I was in right standing with God. Here is a list:

  • Prophecy: End times. What is the correct view? Pre, Mid, post rapture? Amill, Post mill, NO MILLENIUM?

  • Some say that Revelation has already been fulfilled in the first century. Many changes through out Christian History.

  • Once saved, always saved? Huge disagreement amongst Christians

  • Doctrine of HELL. Divergent views with Christendom.

  • Prophecy about the future of the world? Read Church History and the varying views will astound you.

  • Baptism: dunking, sprinkling or NO BAPTISM?

  • The Eucharist: NO, "in" "with", and "around" the element of the bread and wine. The belief in the Eucharist, where the bread and wine turn into the actual body and Blood of Christ This was a church belief and practice up until the time of the Reformation. Why did this belief change after 1500 years?

  • The deity of Jesus: Doctrine of the Trinity formalized at the council of Nicea 300+ years after the time of Jesus. ( Major controversy during the first 300 years of the church. Christians had different views about this. It was not a uniform belief).

  • Origin and transmission of the scriptures: Bible difficulties. Oh there are many. Why did I have to perform mental gymnastics to reconcile difficult verses? Better yet, I had a difficult time reconciling the character of God in the Old Testament vs the new Testament. There is a qualitative difference that's difficult to reconcile.

  • Decision making and the Will of God: Very confusing and elusive. (this was the main issue that commenced my questioning of the very faith I've been taught).

Greg Koukl a Christian apologist for STAND TO REASON, an apologetics organization, correctly identified the errors by Christians with this issue. If he is correct, why are Christians lead astray in this area? Don't you think that God would perhaps clear up the CONFUSION?


This approach of bolstering my " Faith" worked for many years, but ultimately I could not sustain it. 

This is just a partial list of beliefs/doctrines that I focused on to bolster my faith.

But here's an important question: If believers are in dwelt by the "Holy Spirit", and The God of the Bible is The True God, why do Christians struggle? We have to read countless " other books" to explain the Bible, or to explain Bible difficulties....

Well, So much for "ALL I NEED IS THE BIBLE". Why are these areas not cleared up by God?

Why must Christians resort to techniques of looking for "guidance," looking for "doors of circumstance to open or close," "the still small voice", casting lots, etc.) if the Holy Spirit dwells within them? What is the benefit of an indwelling Holy Spirit if he doesn't manifest himself in day-to-day living, and he has to be coaxed into revealing God's will in major decisions?

I'll quote Dallas Willard, (professor of philosophy USC) here:
" The Spirit who inhabits us is NOT mute, restricting himself to an occasional nudge, a hot flash, a brilliant image or a case of goosebumps". (Hearing God. page 22.)

It is precisely these subjective experiences that I believe that Christians seek to encounter. It is not a two way communication, where God and I have this two way communication where I speak to him and he SPEAKS to me.

Why did I have to spend countless hours seeking those more Mature Christians who claim to have the correct beliefs or the " right" technique on how to follow Jesus?

As Dallas Willard has said, "its the failure to" UNDERSTAND" Jesus!

Well, if God's children are struggling, and I don't understand, WHERE'S the COMFORTER? The Spirit of TRUTH?

PRAYER? When one prays can we honestly say that we experience God where one hears him respond to our prayers? Is there an "actual" " experience" where one can honestly say that they have experienced God? Can I say that God actually interacts with me during my daily Existence? Lets see? Is it my subjective experience or is it God the Holy Spirit? HOW does one distinguish whether its my own thoughts or God. When I look back over time, my conclusion is: it's my own thought life. If it were God IT WOULD BE CLEAR. So this whole aspect of prayer and interactive relationship is plainly not a reality.

In the area of experiencing his " presence", that is you know that he is there, I Mean, "KNOW", like really KNOW he's there.. The answer is NO.

My past subjective experiences have all been elusive. I.e. We have the emotive experiences that we want to be from GOD, and frankly, they're not divine in origin.

My experience tells me that in actuality I had "beliefs ", but an absence of God. In other words, It has been my experience that God does not interact with his creation in this way.

There was always these nagging questions about experiencing GOD and what is the spiritual life supposed to be like? From an evangelical perspective it has always been elusive. To say otherwise, I would not be telling the Truth.

There is more confusion than clarity. Where is God in all of this confusion? Look at all of the voices within the church. There are countless denominations that develop techniques in how to encounter GOD. Or what are the "correct" beliefs and doctrines one should believe?This comes from both Catholic and Protestant denominations. (especially Protestant). WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO ENCOUNTER SO MANY OBSTACLES TO ENCOUNTER GOD.

IF GOD Is OMNIPRESENT as Christians argue, why has he not revealed himself to all of humanity to remove all confusion and doubt? Instead we have Christians running around claiming to have the right technique or program to encounter GOD. They're all different and contradictory. This can't be from GOD. God is not the author of confusion?

IF GOD Is OMNIPRESENT as Christians argue, why has he not revealed himself to all of humanity to remove all confusion and doubt?What has prevented me from asking these questions in the first place?

FEAR! Unadulterated FEAR! I now believe that humanity has a mind to rationalize and reason. Humanity has the capacity to question the very beliefs we have been taught..

Belief becomes a habit driven by fear of the unknown or the fear of rejection if we doubt or question, so our questions are internalized, and we begin to feel guilt.

In the Divine Conspiracy pg:xiv in the intro: Dallas identifies an aspect of the church,
"It is the Failure to understand Jesus", I'll stop right there.

You see, that's one of the issues, "it's always the failure of humanity on how to get the spiritual life correct. We spend so much time trying to figure it out!

If we have not figured it out, than the response is, " it's SIN in your life" or you're not "doing it right"........... or you're not trusting GOD........ or it's your lack of faith.........!!!

There's Greg Koukl from Stand To Reason, who rightly identified that Christian's are running around trying to figure out Gods will for their lives:

"What is GOD's WILL for your life ?.....just name it....... occupation?..... Who should I marry?.....
What should I eat for breakfast? etc etc..... Something’s not right here..?

We have Christian teachers who say we need to "learn" to "listen" to GOD's voice. Dallas Willard would say "we have to practice the spiritual disciplines in order to "have an encounter with GOD".

It's always, the individual Christian that has to perform certain acts or apply certain formulas to have this encounter with GOD. If we are not successful, it's not GOD's fault, it's the Christian's lack of faith, or their spiritual "tuner" is broken!

Or we hear the phrase, " the LORD spoke to me", "I believe that GOD wants me to"............"
I prayed for this job and the LORD gave it to me. ….. two weeks later, he loses his job!!!

Is that God's will? Is God changing his mind? We spend time trying to figure out, maybe he's punishing me? Or maybe this was not God's will in the first place? When only two weeks ago it was his will!!!!!!!! There's something wrong here?

Think about this, according to Christian Theology, God is a " perfect BEING", and Man is corrupt, therefore imperfect. It's the imperfect creation that has to resort to all of these techniques to encounter a Perfect BEING. This makes no sense! If Christian Theology is correct regarding God's nature of all loving and perfection HE WOULD CLEAR UP THE CONFUSION!

I have decided that This world view does not correspond to reality, my actual life. If it were so, it would be obvious!

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

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

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