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Rachel 4 weeks, 1 day ago.
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What was your dealbreaker? When you realized you could no longer continue going to church, or being spiritual in the way you used to?
Was there a moment? Or a series of them? A slow trajectory?
For me, it was when I began to question eternal conscious torment and the answer I was given was just to surrender to Godde. There was no dialogue about the implications of a theology that consigned most of the earth to burning forever. I’d been awakening as a feminist for years, which meant mentally re-humanizing large swaths of the human family that were dehumanized by the “System”, opening up to diversity. One day, I woke up and decided Hell in the way it is traditionally understood is bullshit. I couldn’t in good conscience be in a community that believed the worst about Godde, Jesus, or human beings. Adding insult to injury was the fact my pastor thought I was too “compassionate” and “emotional” to think independently…or that thinking for oneself was evil.
Never looked back, either.
The “deal breaker” for me was when I realized that Christianity was formed on a basis of fear not love. In addition I also awakened to the fact that my Christian beliefs never delivered what was promised. This was confirmed when I felt so much lighter and experienced a lot more joy in life once I stopped going to church. The longer I’ve been away the more clear the brainwashing techniques become and the more apparent the high level of fear within church culture. And this was after trying many different denominations and independent church groups. Since I was a musician for a number of years I had the opportunity to experience many different church cultures. Some are less fearful than others, but there is always that underlying threat.
It was listening to a Community Bible Study leader “teach” about Acts. She pointed her finger out into the audience and said, “Ladies, choose Christ or choose condemnation.” And I sat there thinking, “Did Jesus ever say those words? Did he say, ‘Choose me or choose condemnation? No. He wouldn’t say it. He didn’t say it. This is bullshit.” Other dudes said it but it wasn’t Jesus. And thus I left my leadership position as assistant director. I bailed on evangelical christianity.
@Richard, my spiritual director and I were JUST talking about christian brainwashing. So glad you’re finding happiness
I think religion is addicted to fear. It has an edge that makes the abominable seem…righteous, the “edge” as good, sound teaching.@Starfielder, seriously? What is it about ultimatums?
Mine, too, was eternal conscious torment–especially the Calvinist/Arminian idea that God knows ahead of time who will wind up in Hell, yet chooses to create them anyway because of “free will.” I’d already learned that I could be a feminist and I could have a more flexible view of sin. But the idea that some people were created despite the fact that they would end up being tormented forever and ever, and God was okay with this and not actively stopping it, was distasteful. Whenever preachers would say that God is “heartbroken” over people “choosing” Hell over salvation, it struck me that God is pretty impotent if God can’t stop that from happening.
AnonymousGreat thread topic Anna! After going to Evangelical churches my whole life, I just finally reached a point where it was no longer working for me. But the real deal breaker for me was 2 things:
1) Studying the history of Christianity (especially finding out the concept of hell was not introduced into Christianity until at least the 3rd (or was it the 5th?) century. That made me wonder what else patriarchal, biased men had added and deleted from the Biblical writings over hundreds of centuries???
2) Finally questioning the inerrancy of the Bible. Once I did that, it was like a house of cards that came tumbling down. (No wonder the first thing churches do is brain-wash people into believing the Bible is THE inerrant, inspired WORD of GOD – so they can manipulate and control people through fear. Fear of going to hell, fear of not being pleasing to God, fear of never having done enough to make it to heaven, fear if you don’t tithe to the church, fear if you question the pastor or the Bible in ANY way, fear of being shunned or ex-communicated, etc. (Excuse me while I puke!)
All I know is I wouldn’t trade the spiritual freedom/independence I have now for all that other churchianity/distorted Christianity crap!
I can’t say I had one particularly bad experience with Christianity. Went to Catholic school for 13 years, dabbled in Fundamentalism although I never really bought it and always questioned what I was being told to believe. For me, it has been the politicalization of Christianity that is cruel and heartless towards “the least of these.” Even if I don’t fall on the side of the Catholic Church most of the time, I do believe in social justice. I find Evangelical Christianity so focused on the afterlife that they can justify not helping people here. And many other aspects of Fundamentalism such as prosperity theology (more faith means more material wealth) go completely against what the Bible teaches.
I am also open to other ideas and like to explore other religions; which goes into my other pet peeve of Fundamentalism is that if a religion is not of God, then it is of the devil. The rigidity shuts off dialogue and understanding which causes so much strife in the world. I have decided if I must be labeled, I want to be called “miscellaneous.”
Long story short: I’ve been through all kinds of crap throughout my life, dating back to the time I was a kid, and I came to the conclusion that either
God is a bastard
or
God isn’t there because he doesn’t exist.
My last church was a relatively new, hip, growing, Reformed Southern Baptist megachurch. Formerly affiliated with Acts29, still SBC, and tied in with Southern Seminary. Very friendly with Mars Hill in Seattle when I went there; some of the Mars Hill elders and pastors are currently involved.
Some of what I saw at this church concerned me greatly, but I was willing to stay because of the people.
What made me leave was the promise of community, and the reality of going to a different community group each year because the leaders moved “upward” into coaching or moved away; I heard of one longtime member who said he had been involved in 26 different groups.
How in hell can you have community when you keep jumping to a different group of people every 6 to 12 months?!?!?
And don’t get me started on community being limited to the group meetings, and having to
work for freeserve once a week each month, and being forced into “four man support groups” because the elders thought it was a great idea.Then there was the matter of me meeting with an elder, and for a while that kept me connected. I also volunteered, and that kept me connected.
But the church increasingly professionalized itself to the point where those who wanted to volunteer could only do specific things, and the elder was not only sick but put into a position where he was basically inaccessible – just like the other elders, high above the laity.
Jesus Christ, I’m so over that bullshit. I’d rather sleep in Sunday mornings – especially since I work past midnight Saturday nights – and wake up and watch a little NFL before going back into work.
For me it was when my vicar objected to my BoredWithChurch web site, and my referencing it on my facebook account.
I reckoned that if the church felt that it could tell me what do on my personal facebook page, because some people might be offended ( some of the young people whom I was teaching ), then I needed to get out.
If I couldn’t explore my faith either inside or outside the church, then hte church was the problem.
Mine was a slow progression of issues that I gradually changed my views on. Beginning with the list of “sins” my fundamental churches preached on which made no sense to me and did not bear out in the bible. Things like alcohol (because you know…Jesus ONLY drank grape juice) all things remotely sexual, etc. And then of course the biblical literalism and young earth creationism which made no sense. Investigating the Answers in Genesis group my church loved so much and recognizing how willing they were openly and knowingly lie about so much. An earnest study of biblical infallibility shattered that illusion for me. So many of my house of cards had fallen it was hard to keep up. I was also really at the point of challenging the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, believing it was not compatible in any fashion with a God of love.
Still in spite of all of these inconsistencies in the faith I had been taught I clung to the belief that the church was sound…just had allowed some bad teaching to infiltrate it. But then I encountered the bigotry over the homosexual issue and recognized how ugly it was. The same types of lies used by the young earthers were simply promoted as fact. Zero tolerance for a difference of opinion began to really ruffle my feathers. I think this issue got to me so much more due to the fact that so many victims had suffered so much at the hands of such a false teaching. This drove me headlong into a quest for love in my teaching ministry. I felt like it was my calling to return the focus back to the love of Christ and away from judgment and condemnation. (I still do…albeit from the OUTSIDE) But this only pacified me for a while when I discovered real human ugliness in the attitudes between believers and my 2nd pastor in a row with serious integrity problems. Eventually the dichotomy between the “Gospel of Love” I so embraced, and the church example so distant became simply too much. Deliberate hurts by pastoral staff towards any who dared to challenge them finally drove us out of the church completely. Yes of course there were good and loving people in church. But the overall theme of judgment and shame hung over the entire entity like a storm cloud.
We left completely 2 1/2 years ago. I have NEVER looked back.
I left a baptist church my wife and I attended for a few years simply because I didn’t believe all the stuff about being fallen, destined to hell, needing to be saved, and heaven and all. My God concept was so much different than what other people in the church had. It wasn’t a supreme being at all. Nothing like some judging perfect being dividing people into goats and sheep. I never viewed scripture as anything but the “bloggers” of 2000 years ago. I just got tired of playing along with things and walked away. Call me atheist or SBNR. I don’t really care about labels. For the ultimate questions of existence, I’m comfortable in simply saying I don’t know.
@BrianD “Some of what I saw at this church concerned me greatly, but I was willing to stay because of the people.”
That’s where I am at the moment. I don’t have many friends outside church and if I left I would be hard-pressed for community. The good thing is that our church isn’t fundamentalist in the strict sense and tolerates diversity, and I have a small group of like-minded friends. If we lost our current, very supportive pastor, that would be the deal breaker. I think my friends would say the same.
There are some really, really wonderful people in my family’s church. But I decided to leave, and the reasons I left boiled down to three things. One was fear. Fear of mistakes, questions, and diverse experiences. Another was a patriarchal system, where women aren’t allowed to hold a position or teach, where a wife’s place was at home with children, and where they consider feminism to be a worldly thing meant to disrupt the family unit. The last was the assumption that true Christians could only be republican and hold conservative values. Over time I realized that I didn’t believe any of these things or practice them. I’ll occasionally go back to visit but I doubt I’ll ever attend regularly again.
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