Jul 13 2009
The Beginning
To get to why I left Christianity, I probably need to start with how I became a Christian. I grew up in a suburban family, went to church every Sunday, attended vacation bible school, and participated in other church activities. When I was 8 years old, I decided to ‘pray the prayer’ and become a Christian. I remember asking my Mom how I could not go to hell, and I was told that I needed to accept Jesus into my heart. So I did. I mean, who wants to go to hell?? Not me!
I got baptized… and I remember being so proud of myself. I’d done what I was supposed to and now things would be good. I kept reading the Bible, learning verses and being the good christian girl. I would tell others about Jesus, and would invite my friends to church. I got stars next to my name for doing this (!!) and felt like I was really doing my job.
Even with all that I was doing, I still remember asking many questions. Usually at night when I was just falling asleep. I can still remember clearly, like it was yesterday, thinking about God, and who he was, and how he became God. My mom and dad told me that God just always was. In my mind, I would think about it like a ruler (yep…. my inner geek showed through at a young age!)… in my head, I’d keep cutting the ruler in half… and you can never reach zero… this is how I thought about God. He was like a ruler that could never go to zero, so he must have always been.
This was probably the earliest memory of questioning I can remember… and I answered my question by using some random, inanimate object as my answer. But, I think it was pretty good for a five year old who was afraid of hell.
What are some of your earliest memories of questioning?
6 responses so far
As I say on my blog, “happy are those who ask questions”.
My earliest memory of doubt came when I was about 8 years old. I was trying to understand why Jesus had to be horribly tortured and crucified. Why would a God require this act to pay for my petty wrong doings? And why would God send people to hell if he loves them?
Unfortunately it took me over 20 years to finally acknowledge the many flaws of Christianity. Child brainwashing is powerful stuff.
I’m an atheist. Have been for years. Not sure I ever really believed, though I went to church every Sunday for the first 18 years of my life. I think my biggest problem has always been the knowledge that most of the religious people in the world were not Christians. I had a hard time accepting the fact that I just happened to be born into the “right” religion and that all the poor souls in Africa and Asia were most likely not getting into Heaven. I never solved that one to my satisfaction.
My wife and children are Catholic. The story here is about my oldest son. At the age of 5 while coming back from his interview with the head of the local Catholic school, he asked out of the blue: “If God created the world, then who created God?” I was so proud.
I never had doubts until I was like 21. I was reading the Bible and came across the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, who supposedly heard the Holy Spirit say, “This is my beloved son…”
Later on, I found John the Baptist in jail and his disciples asking about Jesus. Something like, “Should we follow him?”
According to the account on the gospels, John didn’t even know Jesus existed, even though they were cousins and he had baptized Him. It was explained to me that, perhaps, John was using the situation to teach his disciples about Jesus. But I didn’t buy it.
I think my very first real doubt, and still to this day the one obstacle to faith that I’ll never be able to overcome, came when I was sitting in a ‘class’ on the nature of God. The class was just that- a class- it was a ‘college’ course, minus the actual credit, put out by Calvary Chapel’s college out in California. Basically, our local church could buy the curriculum, but since you didn’t get any college credits for it, it was way cheaper. So we were sitting in this class, maybe 5 or 6 of us, and they were discussing something from Romans about how Jesus was 100% God, yet 100% man at the same time. And everyone was tripping on it, slapping their foreheads, talking about how you could ‘practically hear the fuses blowing!’ in their minds. And totally reveling in their not being able to understand or make sense of this idea. I just remember sitting back looking at them all and thinking, ‘Why don’t you just ask God to explain it to you, then? Instead of sitting here slapping your foreheads and asking each other questions that none of you can answer, why don’t you just ask the guy who wrote the book if he’ll kindly explain it to you so that you can understand?’
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the first real doubt I had about faith, and it was also going to be the biggest stumbling block to ever coming back to faith once I’d lost it. One of the core teachings of Christianity is that we can know God- intimately; personally. Yet, we can’t even ask him to explain the tough passages of the book he supposedly wrote, so that we can understand them (actually, we can, he just chooses to never, ever answer). All the time you see apologists and ‘defenders of the faith,’ explaining stuff for God, speaking on his behalf. Never does he speak on his own behalf. For a lot of people, this is probably old hat, stuff they’ve had figured out since they were 12 years old or whatever. But not for everyone. I was a Christian for probably 8 years or so before I caught on to it, and then it was another couple of years before I left the faith completely.
So, anyway, that was my earliest memory of questioning.
Wow… so interesting reading everyone’s experience.
@theBEattitude: I completely agree about child brainwashing… it is powerful, and is also what kept me in the religion longer than I would have been otherwise.
@PaulS: If I had kids, and they asked the question that your child did, I would be extremely proud. Kids are so in tune, and when they question, it is such an innocent and real thing they are doing. It’s nice to know that there are some kids who question who are actually given the freedom to find answers for themselves.
@Lorena: While I started questioning at a young age, I suppressed it and didn’t really allow myself to start questioning and getting answers until i was about 21. College and having so many open minds around me definitely helped.
@10plus: I think a lot of people start questioning when they see that all of God’s words seem to come through men and books and not from him directly. For many it can take years to come to terms with this (including for myself).
The earliest doubt was questioning myself why I put up my hand to “receive Jesus into my heart”. I peeped around, and since everyone else seemed to be doing it, I did it too.
Now, I realise that some of them may have “planted”, though maybe unintentionally, because they were the children of the very people who organised the children’s bible camp.
Other than that, like Paul, it must have been wondering why people that are so noble in their actions, and whom I respect deeply, are not going to be in heaven, whereas I was.