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Disillusioned with Christianity... by Marko Vidberg on December 22nd, 2001 (last updated in February 2002) Over the past few years I've become very disillusioned with Christianity and I would like to take the time now to explain five of my top reasons why. At this point in time I would consider myself an athiestic agnostic or free-thinker. Those of you that know me know that I was a Christian for a lot of my life, being raised in a fairly fundamentalist Christian family, giving my life to Jesus sometime in my early teen years and getting water baptized at sixteen. During my high-school and university years I was very much a conservative, narrow-minded and intolerant Christian, although I didn't think I was at the time. I did go through phases of dis-belief in both high-school and university but came through what I thought as being a stronger Christian. Now, at the age of thirty, I have come back to being a seeker, looking for ultimate truth... if such a thing is even attainable. My thoughts and opinions as expressed below will undoubtedly bother many people who call themselves Christians. Reason #1: Freedom with a catch Here is my main question... why did God create humans? If we look in the Bible for the answer it would seem that He is in need of more beings to worship Him. He has His angels but they were not perfect since a third of them rebelled. Humans are not perfect either but He figures He can filter out the bad ones by giving us freedom. Freedom to choose to eat the apple or not, to give in to sin or not. He gave us freedom so that we would not be puppets for Him, but actually willing to worship Him. So, is that real freedom? It is only freedom in so much as to whether we choose to live with Him eternally, eternally worshipping, or live in Hell being tormented forever. Nobody wants to be tormented forever. But what if we don't want to spend the rest of eternity worshipping a God either? Where is the third choice? That's right... there isn't one. Reason #2: Personality of God vs. personality of Jesus To me, God and Jesus are two very different personalities. Christianity teaches of the triun God, three beings, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in one. The trinity is a concept Christians have created because it would be blasphemous to have 3 Gods. I personally only see God as being God. Jesus was His son sent as a saviour and Jesus still answers to God. Same with the Holy Spirit. From my point of view, given my mortal brain, that is the way I see it. To me, God as portrayed in the old testament was a very proud, controlling, jealous and war-like God. Jesus was a peace loving, forgiving, self-sacrificing type. I don't understand why there is this difference if they are really the same entity. Maybe these are different stages God has gone through? What will He be like in another few thousand years? Isn't God supposed to be the same yesterday, today and tomorrow? Reason #3: Heaven and hell One of the rewards of being a Christian is eternal life in Heaven. The ones that choose not to follow God were cast into hell to forever be tormented. How will this make a person in Heaven feel if they know that some of their loved ones are in hell? It is written that in Heaven we won't be sad, but how can that be? Will the good Christians minds be erased or their feelings taken away? I my opinion we stop being ourselves the moment we are denied of having a feeling, be it good or bad. Is Heaven really that good of a place to be for eternity if your thoughts are controlled there? You will no longer be you. How can you be eternally happy knowing that there are souls being tormented somewhere? Maybe now we can start to see why some of the angels rebelled? Reason #4: Christians, western life and hyprocrisy I have come to a general consensus that all Christians who are happy living in our western capitalist society are hypocrits. This would probably include most of the people you see who go to their big fancy churches every Sunday, your typical western Christian. If Jesus were here today I am quite certain he wouldn't approve of his followers living it up with all our modern luxuries while a large portion of the world people are dying of starvation and live much below poverty lines. Our society is based on consumerism... it's all about "what can I do to make life better for ME". Although, we do like to pretend we care for those less fortunate in the world, maybe shed a tear for them once a while or give a donation. Yet we continue to feed the greedy capitalist machine and are happy with our little piece of it. It is very easy to not do anything and say that you are only one person... when in all honesty you actually hate those that are less fortunate because they make you feel guilty. You know you could be doing a lot more, pick up your cross and follow Him if you dare to call yourself a Christian. "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness" (1 John 1:9) Reason #5: Absense of the miraculous In all my life I have yet to see a miracle. First, I should state my definition of a miracle. Some would say that the sun rising everyday is a miracle or that birth is a miracle. The kind I am talking about it is the kind that Jesus did. Making the blind see, the lame walk and the diseased become healthy. A miracle to me is something that is not explainable by science. Coming from a Pentecostal background you would think that I would've seen a lot of this and yes, there were a lot of claims but never any good evidence or anything that wasn't easily explained by science or in some cases, with just a bit of logical christianity-filtered thought. Christians tend to put a lot of time and effort into seeing, presenting or desiring the miraculous but never getting it. At least not getting it in my opinion... people see and believe what they want no matter how ridiculous it may seem to others. From what I have see, God and Jesus have been fairly silent in the past few thousand years. The pentecostals point to being "slain in the spirit" as a miraculous sign of the presense of the Holy Spirit, the third entity in the Holy Trinity. Although I have seen much of this, people talking in gibberish, shaking uncontrollably on the floor, being in states of pure ecstacy, there is nothing that shows me that it is Godly in any way. Much of this type of phenominum happens after hot, long and repetitive prayer services... perfect breeding grounds for mass hysteria and mental breakdown. I once believed that these things were proof of the miraculous but after living and learning from people with mental diseases, you realize that the human mind is capable of many seemingly strange and impossible things. So, with the absense of anything other than a history of God and Jesus through the Bible, I find Christianity very lacking in miraculous substance other than what is created or fabricated by self-deluded followers. My foolishness I know the Bible brands me as foolish for thinking the way that I do... as seen in the verses below.
From 1st Corinthians:
But the brain that God gave me cannot come to terms with Christianity... if I had any kind of Christian faith, it
would need to be blind take-a-leap-in-the-dark kind of faith which I cannot sincerely accept.
Many Christians would like you to believe that it is not completely blind faith and offer entire books on the
subject (and yes, I have read some of them) and the arguements make me feel all warm and fuzzy...
like maybe there is something to it. But then I always step outside of my Christian mindset which has been
drilled into me all my life and I see the errors and false assumptions hidden behind what they preach. How then shall I live? Here is my own set of commandments to live by:
Some of my favourite Christian books I have read:
Some of my favourite skeptical books I have read:
Some links to investigate: |