Some questions for ex-Christians please....?

Question

- Why did you leave your religion? And was it a hard decision to make?
- How did your perspective change about different issues? Do you find yourself more open-minded and accepting of others?
-Do you still believe in a deity?

Answer 1

I realized at five that I didn't believe in the crap they were telling me, it was wrong, I knew it was wrong. It wasn't really hard to decide. I was having trouble buying it, so much of it was so silly. My mom was very sick, and she wasn't supposed to be able to have kids. Any baby conceived was supposed to die from her medication, my mom and the baby were supposed to die in labor. Somehow, the doctors were wrong and my sister was born perfect, no disabilities, she was not premature, nothing was wrong. My faith in what they were telling me was already on shaky ground, then the stupid pastor told me that we were baptising my brand new baby sister to cleanse her of original sin. That was it, I was done. The story of Jesus was far-fetched and rife with flaws, then this.
I guess, I was always more open-minded, and have always been accepting of others. I do believe in gods and godesses, and I don't hate Christians. I am frequently annoyed with them for quacking nonstop abut my eventual damnation and their salvation. They don't get it, even if their God was real, I don't want him. If he needs to "cleanse" people of sins he created, he's not for me.
My mom says I was born not Christian, she said I fought my own baptism even (what babywants to be doused, I ask you) I don't know about that, but I know that as soon as I was conscious of myself and the universe, Christianity and I were through.

Answer 2

When I was a kid I went to church, and I really liked the sign on the wall that read, "God is Love."

Then I started to read the Bible, and in shock and dismay I read about an angry, murderous, misogynist, spoiled brat of a deity who is in seeeerrrrious need of a time-out. Or a spanking, for preference.

I could not reconcile the two in my head, and I decided that I really believe in Love over anything the Bible had to say. So, when the two clashed, the Bible lost. Later studies of the history of the Bible confirmed my hunch that it was a man-made document and not divine.

Over the years, my study of religions made me start to think that people's religious experiences had some interesting things in common... and perhaps all the personification of deities are mere metaphors for something bigger even than 'God', and are well-meaning but misguided attempts to define something indefinable.


So, no it was not a hard decision, it was the only decision that made sense. I believed in Love; I could not believe in, much less worship, something that was not so. Attempting to do so was like trying to tell myself the sky was green.

My perspective on issues hasn't changed because I was very young then and didn't have opinions on many touch issues. Ditto accepting of others.

I don't believe in a deity for the reason described above, but I do believe in Something.

Answer 3

1. The more I studied the bible the more I realized how malevolent the God in there was. I could not in good conscious worship a deity that demands subservience and tortures people in Hell for all eternity simply not believing in him. I have found Christianity to be severely lacking in its spirituality, social, and ethical teachings, many of its fundamental teachings strike me as innately harmful and damaging and its theology is flawed. To be blunt, I rejected the Christian God on moral grounds.

2. Oh perspective on everything just about changed. Saying that I am now alot more open-minded and accepting of others is an understatement. I was a very hate filled person as a Christian, both towards others and myself.

3. Yes, I'm an Asatruar now. I worship the Æsir and Vanir (Norse Gods).

Answer 4

"Why did you leave your religion?" - I realized that the Bible contradicted itself in numerous places and that there were other errors in it as well
"And was it a hard decision to make?" - I took a while to rid myself of my religious thinking, but when I did, it was quite easy to leave.
"How did your perspective change about different issues? Do you find yourself more open-minded and accepting of others?" Much more open-minded.
"Do you still believe in a deity?" - Not at all.
.

Answer 5

answering on behalf of my wife:

Leaving Christianity was incredibly difficult, it meant, in essense, a turning away from her family and what they had believed in life. However, between the "cut and paste" approach to the Bible in ALL Christianity and the fact that not a single part of it seemed real, and it was often just WRONG, it was the right thing to do.

She still believes in several deities...

However, like many exchristians, she was Christian-by-default. I grew up in a family that did not teach kids a religion unless and until they were old enough to get it. I find Christians raised like that tend to stay Christian.

Answer 6

- Don't know if I ever really bought it. I left at around ten. Yep, it is pretty hard at ten to decide that your parents and everyone else you know is delusional. I spent about three years trying to change my own mind.
- Hard to say. I think I am more open minded than most Christians I know. But I am also 41 and I notice that I am becoming more ridged as I get older. But I don't really fit into any group all the time so I can see that the thoughts are mine.
- Nope. Total atheist.

Answer 7

WOW - those are some really DEEP questions, Dude!
lmao @ them!!!

Here's the Solution:

"religion is Spiritual fraud"; "religion is the Worse invention of humanity" - Jesus Christ

Create a private, personal, direct, divine relationship with Our Creator and save your Soul from religion.

Only with Our Creator's Love and Peace will we be Truely Free!

Without God, there is No Love; Without religion, there are No Wars!

Answer 8

Shawn Mullins Lyrics > Salt Lake City 1973
Salt Lake City 1973 lyrics
Mormon's are everwhere
battalions of bicycling bachelors
with dark suits
and well cropped hair
we're Mormons too
have been since '72
I'm riding between my brother and sister
in the back seat of a '67 Buick station wagon
with red vinyl seats
we stick by each other
and to those seats
we've been eating cheese and bacon sandwiches
our mother made for thirteen days straight in the August heat
and both my siblings are wakin' on those eggshells
as I will soon learn how to do myself
they play their quiet silly games
with their peashooters
as I sip luke-warm Sprite from a tin can
sold to me by a hunchback silly bastard old woman
a hundred miles back
who is probably the only person with good sense
in this part of the country
I still don't know what to do god-awful bacon and cheese sandwich
but your body is your temple
God tells us so,
so drink up your milk
and reap what you sow
I mold the cheese and bacon sandwich into a ball in my hand
it kind of reminds me of Play-dough
I look around to see who is watchin'
and stuff it between the red vinyl seats
no one will find it
at least not for a couple of weeks
we're in this big place now
it's kind of like 1/2 of an blue plastic easter egg shell
and there's a hole in the top
where the sun cuts through
and lights up the room
and I hear all these male voices
telling me that black people are inferior
and it's ok to have more than one wife
and as the dry dry breath of the utah sun warms me
I stand before a statue of Jesus that is far too big
and has held these folks hostage for so so long
and I gaze up at the nostrils of the sandstone savior
and wonder if it
can smell all this bullshit
cause I sure can
and I'm only 5 years old
in Salt Lake City
in 1973...

This song by Shawn Mullins really spoke to me as I was close to the same age when I realized my parent’s faith was bullshit.

I was a huge hockey fan and was always trading hockey cards in Sunday School. The teacher would get upset with me and tell me that church wasn't the place for hockey. I was also really into dinosaurs at that age and was told that dinosaurs had no place in church either. Instead we were taught the usual fiction of God and Christ.

My teacher told us about cults and how they brainwash people and we needed to be careful not to get involved with them. The little voice inside my head went off that this smells like bullshit to me. How is this brainwashing any different than a cult brainwashing us?

We were then asked to draw a picture of what we thought God looked like. Some drew pictures of Jesus. Some drew pictures of a giant man with grey hair and a beard. I drew a picture of Daryl Sittler (hockey player) and the teacher freaked out. She said we are here to learn about God not hockey I asked you draw a picture of God. I said He is a God lady he got 10 points in one game. She dragged me by my ear out to the service and dropped me off at my parent and told my father that I was not welcome back in Sunday School.

On the drive home I was waiting for the lecture from my parents. What I found out was they only went to church because of my grandparents. they too thought it was a load and had been nonbelievers for years. I no longer had to go to church and that was the last time myself or my father have gone to service.