Skip to main content

Christian free thought and unbelief

By Webmdave ~

While living in Japan in the early 90’s, my family was deeply involved in an Assembly of God (AOG) Church catering to a congregation of resident Americans and local Japanese. My wife and I were part of the music ministry, led evangelistic outreaches in the local area as well as in remote rural areas, led weekly evangelistic English classes at a sister Japanese church, led a home group and ran the church bookstore.

I was hungry for “the truth™,” and believed I’d found it in Christianity. Like any “true Christian™,” I had loads of questions, so I immersed myself in studying the bible, systematic theology and apologetics.

One day the regular pastor was temporarily recalled to the United States and an administrative leader from the AOG hierarchy took over during his absence. This new man’s apparent claim to fame was a recently published book he had authored on the “Gifts of the Spirit.” Predictably, his opus magnus was the foundational basis of all his teaching and preaching.

According to him:

“All the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit emanate from the light of God's holy menorah. Each gift of the Holy Spirit sprouts from one of the branches of the sevenfold Spirit of God. Let’s consider these gifts and discover how they interrelate with God's menorah.”

Weakly supported doctrine, especially when authoritatively emanating from the pulpit, was a sticking point for me. His dogmatic sounding premise that physical Old Testament rituals were prophetic metaphors of New Testament spiritual truths seemed, well, extra-biblical at best. It concerned me, so I politely asked for a private meeting with him.

We met and I expressed my doubts about his teaching, stating I was unable to find any Biblical or historical support for what seemed to me to be a new doctrine. He listened and then instead of addressing my concerns said that since I had doubts about his teaching, it would be best for the entire congregation that I step down from my various leadership positions.

I wasn’t particularly surprised. Even then, nearly 10 years before I left Christianity, I sensed that expressing doubts of any kind might be seen as a challenge to authority. And, since in his eyes I was no more than a lowly parishioner, while he was a great denominational leader… Well, how dare I! My family soon left that church, never to return.

Today I am grateful to this gentleman. Thanks to his decision to quickly dismiss me for nothing more than harboring a few contrary thoughts, in spite of my having donated many hours of dedicated service, he unintentionally set me on the path of closely examining what I believed and why. In time, after much study, many churches, a wealth of contradictory doctrines and colorful religious characters, an irreparable fissure formed in the gray matter between my ears. Once free thought and reality was allowed to shine brightly in my mind, the clouds of magical and delusional thinking cleared, and I was ready to leave Christianity.

In practice, Christianity historically supports the tenant that those who challenge the status quo should be held at arms length and viewed with suspicion. Freedom of thought is not encouraged, because Christianity cannot exert control over its people’s minds without maintaining compliant obedience. In Christianity, holding the approved thoughts is really all that matters and thought control is of primary importance.

Any doctrine, teaching, history, etc. -- religious or otherwise -- that cannot tolerate questions and doubts is what should be viewed with suspicion and skepticism.

What do you think?


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

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro