Christians make me feel guilty?

Question

I have been a Christian by default my entire life. I am now almost 21 and I have been doing some studying of the Bible; I am questioning its validity. I am tired of my beliefs being spoon-feed to me, and I am tired of accepting whatever people give me in God's name. I want to find out what the real truth about God is, and what God wants for me, but it is so difficult because there are so many different religions with different prophets all claiming that God has spoken to them, yet their messages conflict! Everyone thinks that they are right and that everyone else is going to burn in hell...that just doesn't seem right to me! Plus, I am afraid that my extreme Christian mother in law and all of the other Christian people I know will tell me that "Satan is taking over my life and making me doubt the Bible".....I am desperate to know God and to know the absolute TRUTH about life, but my fear of going to hell is holding me back. Does anyone have any advice for me on what to do?

Answer 1

ask /Jesus into your life. or pray asking to bee shown the right way, God does answer prayers.

Answer 2

A real Christian would tell you that it's a good thing to question what you believe. If they tell you that you're possessed by Satan because you doubt shows that they themselves haven't really questioned what they believe, and therefore don't have true faith.

I must tell you, though, you don't have to look any further than the Bible. Read it all of the way through for yourself. You're hungering for truth, which is a noble characteristic. The Bible says that God loves those who love the truth and seek after it. "Knock and it shall be opened unto you, seek and ye shall find..." Jesus was speaking about truth.

You mentioned that every religion says claims that all of the others are wrong and if you don't believe x, you're going to hell. Don't let that deter you. If there is a truth, then it must be exclusive, because anything that is not truth is automatically a lie. Something is either true or it's not. Religions that validate other religions make no sense, because at the same time as they validate each other they contradict each other. If they both validate each other, and yet contradict each other, they must be wrong because by definition, there can only be one truth. It works that way in every other situation, why not with God? If I say the sky is blue and you say the sky is orange, I'm right and you are wrong.

Many people are deterred by this idea of an absolute truth. And yet, we live in a world of absolutes. There are absolute laws throughout the natural world which we must obey whether we believe in them or not, gravity, inertia, buoyancy, etc. Why is it such a foreign concept that there is one absolute spiritual truth? Most creations are a reflection of the character of the creator, why should nature be any different?

These are all questions you should ask in your quest. But if you are questioning the validity of the Bible, research the history of Israel. The Bible contains literally hundreds of prophecies that history eventually vindicated, and Israel is one of them. Before the children of Israel were ever dispersed among the nations, scriptures prophecied that they would, and that they would subsequently become a nation once again. The Old Testament prophecies numerous times about the Messiah, and Jesus fulfilled every one of them. There is no other explanation for this other than that the Bible is the words of an eternal, all-knowing God.

As long as you are sincerely searching for truth, you will find it, and I'm confident you will find it in the pages of the Bible.

Answer 3

I would stop worrying and learn the truth. It is normal to doubt - even the pope does it. I am no longer a Christian, but what you decide for yourself should be up to you. If you think your relatives are going to tell you that Satan is making you do this, simply do not tell them what you are doing, and remember it isn't up to THEM who gets into heaven, now is it? It is up to God, and God alone - they only think that they have a say in the matter, and they don't. Be strong and stop worrying about going to hell because somebody else says you are going there. And what the heck ever happened to God's universal love??? Your relatives need to learn "judge not, lest ye be judged". Good luck to you, whatever you decide.

For an excellent education on the early Christian church, watch "The First Christians" - a PBS special. If you "read between the lines" a little bit, you will find out whether or not Christianity is based on the truth. And I would like to remind everybody here that Jesus was Jewish, and did NOT worship himself. Also, science is NOT in the business of proving the unprovable, so if someone is telling you that they have scientific proof that Christianity is real they are..."incorrect".

Answer 4

The best faith is the kind that comes from within yourself. Some may argue it is the only kind. For that reason, you should question what you have been taught, so that you may make it your own.

The best way to do that is to study the Bible, particularly the new testament. Pick a translation you can read like ESV, NASV, or NIV and go for it. Most of your questions should be answered in there.

People are conflicted, selfish, and often just wrong. If you base your faith on what people tell you, you will never see God in the same way as by reading his perfect Word.

I would also suggest that since you still fear hell, it is not faith in God that you have lost, but rather faith in the people around you.

Answer 5

You can't know the absolute truth. Think about it: no matter what source you're looking at -- no matter what text, or what teacher -- YOU'RE the one making the decision to accept or reject what it says. It's inescapable. You're never going to find the truth outside yourself -- only within yourself. All you can do is listen to the teachers, think and feel for yourself, and reach your own conclusions. And those conclusions are always going to be uncertain -- you might always discover something new that forces you to reconsider what you believe.

As for the Bible: I question its validity too. I used to be a minister. My study of the Bible led me to believe it was a human creation -- marked with a lot of sublime inspiration, but also marred by a lot of evil and perversion. Again, your own conscience is the only tool you have for separating the wheat from the chaff.

And finally, Hell... I've thought about this one a lot. I don't believe in Hell anymore. I don't believe a God who was Love would ever consign his creatures to a torment from which there could be no escape. If there were one person in Hell, there could be no Heaven... because how could all those holy people be happy knowing there was a soul in torment?

I don't have a home in any church right now, but I feel closest to liberal Christians like Episcopalians, and to Unitarian Universalists. I completely feel where you're coming from, and your desperation... I used to be there... all I can say is, listen to your own heart, make up your own mind, and find peace there. What matters most in the end anyway is how much we love, not what we believe. Remember, the Evangelist John says "Perfect love casts out fear."

Answer 6

It's totally natural to doubt the bible, i have been a steadfast christian for my whole life yet i still doubt sometimes. First, you must understand that different people wrote the bible, so they might have had different ideas about it. Second, the bible was translated from a different language so some of the images might be screwed up because of that. Thirdly, God is so complex, so different that it's impossible to entirely understand God. Explore God, read about him in the Bible, ask preachers at church anything that will help your knowledge of him grow. Don't let being afraid of going to hell hold you back. Go out there and live! hope this helps

Answer 7

I have been there and done that! I was a Protestant for 12 years, I did question everything about Religion!

First I had to decide if I believed that Jesus is the son of God and Divine, I found that Jesus was either a raving lunatic or the Son of God. I settled on Son of God. That left me eliminating Mormonism, Islam, Judaism and all other non-Christian groups.

I then looked at the roots of Christianity, and because of my background as a protestant, knew those teachings, so I decided to take a look at Catholicism, the very faith that I grew up with such destain for.

It took a LOT of study, I am very slow to change my mind, but after 20 years, I finally joined RCIA Class a little over a year ago to find out for sure what and why Catholics believe as they do and to see if it made sense to me.

Well, it did, and last Easter, I became Catholic.

My short experience, hope it helps, and may God Bless your Search! (You should NOT feel guilty!)

Peace!

Answer 8

You sound just like me 7 yrs ago. Get yourself a Strong's concordance and a Bible with Strong's notations (numbers next to words) and a dictionary printed before 1950. Begin your study with 'Who is God', look up God, this should lead you Due 4:6 which is a good verse to start with, also use the margin of the Bible, also look up every thing that you are told by anyone, demand all texts, and a plane 'Thus saith the Lord' for anything and everything that the preacher or others tell you. Another thing you can do is get a good computer program that searches for related texts. I hope that your search for God is successful, have pantients, be diligent, and pray each time before you begin you study of Gods word.

Answer 9

Here's how I perceive things. Religion has been around since the beginning of the recognition of healing back when spoken language wasn't around. Although not called religion, people knew to seek out the tribe's healer, the Shaman, for he had abilities to heal that surpassed the rest of the tribe.

This also goes for the Celtic Druids, Pagans, Wiccans and the practice called Reiki (pronounced ree-key). Those groups of people bonded together and taught that they could use certain plants with natural healing abilities, such as the aloe vera plant, the asper-root (Used by the Voodoo tribes in Africa, the plant that is processed and turned into Aspirin), and many other herbs that were burned during a circle to invoke the God and the Goddess and people would ask for their spiritual guidance.

For thousands and thousands of years, this was all practiced.

Constantine, whom everyone knows was Catholic, was a lifelong Pagan and was baptized on his deathbed. The catholics of the time were responsible for fighting against the witches and other magickal practitioners which led into the Burning Times. People were forced to practice in hiding for fear that they would be burned at the stake.

I skipped something. Before the Constantine's Christians vs Lions incidents, females were the dominant sex. Men and women worshipped the female Goddess because of her ability to procreate and bring life to the world, with a man's help. Catholics thought this was ridiculous and tried to erase any forms of and valid proof that the Goddesses of their time were dominant by killing people and establishing the christian God as the one and only MALE diety who was responsible for the creation of the world.

This difference in aspects and the disagreements that are still available today are due to the fact that the catholics, all this time saying that "desiring power is bad for you", wanted so badly for the Pagans to begone and for the catholics to hold all the power of the world; basically, to rule the world is what they really desire; that they even took Pagan holidays like Samhain (Halloween), Winter Solstice/ Yule (Christmas); they "adopted" a Pagan symbol, the Cross, as their own and said that's what Jesus died on for our sins... All that happened, the massacres, the holidays... everything in the name of power and their single god.

The pagans and the Wiccans and all magickal practitioners don't worship and "devil" or "satan" because there is no pure good or pure evil. The japanese Yin-Yang, a circle representing life, and two halves, one dark and one light, representing good and evil. However, there is a white spot in the dark half and a dark spot on the white half... It means, basically, Darkness within Light, Light within Darkness, making void the possibility of there ever being a pure spirit.

Oh, and as far as heaven and hell go, the christians only give themselves two ultimatums, which in turn makes them (no offense) narrow-minded about the whole thing. They fear Purgatory, but that's still only temporary 1000 years then you have been punished. Heaven and hell are states of mind that for some reaon, people limit themselves to and are often times blinded by the fact that everyone does not share their ideas and beliefs and become irritated and refuse to open their horizons to other possibilities.

Blessed Be and good luck!

Answer 10

Good for you! You take the reigns and look for the truth. You go girl! The Bible says, "He who seeks for me finds me". I just have one point to make regarding all the choices available:
Of all religions, Christianity is the only one in which Deity (Jesus) humbled himself to the point of Death on a cross and was raised again. All other religions worship things or dead men or nature or self or ideas. Christians (are supposed to) worship Jesus and God the father. Most American Christians really serve self and call it Christianity. This may be what is causing you to chalange what you have been taught and that's good. But don't be too harsh on those who are hypocritical. If God can use and love the screwiest Christians then there is all that much more hope for normal people like you. And if you have serious issues that you need healing for - then what better than a risen savior that can identify with our mortality and our condition. **** luck on your quest.

Answer 11

When you read the Bible pray for truth and inspiration and then you'll receive it.
The biggest thing you should realize is that God is aware we are imperfect and that no human can follow all those rules and he loves and forgives us and is willing to help us become better people able to help others a little at a time.
Don't listen to "Christian's" listen to God's message especially to you. Though and because He is perfect He is much more understanding and forgiving than his followers and what He wants most is a relationship with you and for you to have a revelation of His Perfect Love.
Look how He loved and forgave David for his sins over and over because David was willing to have a relationship with the Lord not because He was perfect like some Christians would lead you to believe about themselves.
I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of really close to perfect Christians because my grand parents are like that but those people are full of love and even though you don't always do as they wish they love you and point out your problems in positive noncondemnational ways. You know love the sinner hate the sin.
Good luck and my prayers will join yours for peace and understanding about your faith.