What If I’d Known You All Back Then?

[servantgirlParticipant]

@ Honeyglow, you’re welcome.  It’s not easy explaining that I have true spirituality without a belief in gods.  It seems like such an impossible idea to most that they can’t accept it.  But I’ve journeyed on since I left the church.  The biggest issue seems to be where I derive my center, my sense of being and morality.  That it comes from within is apparently the wrong answer.  I used to pray Psalm 121, and Psalm 46 when I needed guidance.  God was my help, refuge, and strength.  However, as I started backing away from religion and slowly removing God from the equation, I found that I possessed within me the strength to accomplish things I’d previously accredited to God.  My center was no longer about the strength of my faith, but about my belief in myself and trusting that I was a decent human being without a belief system.

@ Richard and Jeff, I would also not change my experience because it has without a doubt shaped me into who I am today.  I would not trade a single moment of past pain for the journey I’m on now.  The clarity I’ve gained would not have been achieved had I not battled my way out of the church.  While I have no desire to return, I do wonder what my inevitable exit would have looked like if there had been more people around willing to acknowledge their own doubts.  I felt like I was on a deserted island, all by myself surrounded by a sea of disbelief and questions.  When I was having what I was told was a “crisis of faith,”  I grew to believe that the fault lay within me because no one else in my church struggled with the things I did.  Everyone had struggles, but when I started challenging the inerrancy of the Bible, the intolerance of the body, and the very foundational Doctrine of the church, I had crossed a line that supposedly no one else in my church ever had.  Through my blog, a few other sites, and this site I’ve grown to learn that my struggle was far from unique.  But when you’re going through it, or at least when I was, there exists a loneliness that makes me wonder what if I’d had one other person stand up and say they understood.

[Anonymous]

I would have listened to my sister and had a back up. I would have taken a marketable BA.

[AngParticipant]

“What if I’d known you all back then?”  Am I the only one?

I guess we will never know.  I see years in the church that I am thankful for.  And then I see the last ten years in the church as a time that I was brainwashed and deceived.  So was the problem them, or was it me for being so gullible to keep the package and not open the pretty package and see that the contents were rotten and stinky.  And would I have tried to talk you into staying with me, or would we together have opened the package together and found the truth?

[RichardParticipant]

 I found that I possessed within me the strength to accomplish things I’d previously accredited to God.

I found this too. It’s kind of like this cartoon by Russell’s Teapot that I saw. Russell made a robot and if that robot did good then Russell got the credit. If the robot did bad then it was the robot’s fault.

All this praising god for his goodness really started to wear thin when I confronted the real world.

[Author]

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