How do people lose their faith in God?

Question

I have seen backslidden christians retain their faith in God, and on the other hand I have seen people give up on God completely. I think they never had it in the first places; What do you think?

Answer 1

I don't know of anyone who has a genuine relationship with the Lord Jesus can ever back-slide to the point of losing their salvation. I have backslid and believe me it was a painful place to be in! We may be unfaithful to Him but He promised to never leave us or forsake us! I would think that those who turn away from the truth are greatly and deeply deceived and perhaps blinded by sin in order to fully walk away from God.
Perhaps they never fully gave their hearts to Christ in the first place because if they did God would not allow the enemy to snatch them away from Him.

Answer 2

I don't think a single answer will address every situation. As people learn new information, their beliefs sometimes change. Sometimes people convert. Sometimes an atheist becomes religous and sometimes the religious become atheists.

As a child, I was a faithful Christian, but as I became a teenager, my religious questions weren't being answered by my church, and I became aware that I was never feeling His presense like others did. I was an atheist for a while, but that didn't address my understanding of the world either. It really felt like there was an empty place in my life. Eventually I found a religion that did make sense and whose gods I did feel the presense of.

Answer 3

I certainly believed that I had it. But what I came to realize was that I was believing things that were not true. If the Christian god were real, and as portrayed in the Bible, he is a god of contradiction. Christ told his apostles that they would do greater things than he; that signs such as healing and raising of the dead should follow believers. These happen little or none at all.

I've seen as many miracles from other gods than the god of the Bible. As a Pagan, I've experienced miracles just as I may have in Christianity. I've come to believe that it wasn't the God of the Bible, but the power of the universe that made things real.

When I see or hear of an individual being dead for days raised after Christians pray; When I see an amputee regrow a limb in a Christian healing circle; when I see the daughter of my friend able to walk again, after laying on of hands by some Christian minister .... after any such thing, I might reconsider. As yet, these things do not happen, which gives the lie to the words of Christ who said such things would.

Miracles happen to everybody; we call them chance, placebo, coincidence and such. Psychic abilities are present in any who don't close their minds to them. Reincarnation and Akashic records seem to have much more evidence supporting them than does the god of the Bible.

True, Christians will say that anything that tends to disprove the Bible is the work of the devil; that's quite convenient for a group that worships a god who has no proof. Now, the tale in the Bible tells us that when Thomas asked for proof, Jesus was forthcoming. Still, he has not repeated that performance. A person may be cured of cancer after praying for healing; still, people without faith experience spontaneous remission. People of non-christian faiths do so as well.

If you wish to convince someone who seeks the slightest bit of evidence, you'll have to go farther than recounting stories from the Bible, and much farther than pointing out "miracles" that might happen to anybody.

Answer 4

You stop believing by getting into the world and always thinking about what's going on around you like money, kids , family and other things that will distract you from focusing. Because in the end God had already handle the situation for you , you just needed to have faith in him.

Answer 5

People who lose their faith don't necessarily lose God. I lost faith in the Christian church but found God in more places than I ever dreamed of. You are wrong when you assume people like me 'never had it in the first place'. Maybe I just grew spiritually and had to move on. From a Christian perspective I am satanic and hellbound and that alone turns good people away from churches.

Answer 6

I think I was as real a Christian as you can get.
I was utterly sincere at the time.
And that includes praying for the indwelling spirit, and speaking in tongues.

It was studying the bible, in order to teach only what I ought, that that initiated the change, along with discoveries in church and theological history, and a web of other factors.

It's just too easy to to mark all those who turn from Christianity as the weak or unspiritual ones.
It works as a self-defence mechanism, but from the outside of course it's a self-fulfilling observation of little value.

Answer 7

They don't. They never had it to begin with.

What God begins, he finishes
Psa 138:8; Ecc 3:14; Isa 46:4; Jer 32:40; Rom 11:29; Phi 1:6; 2Tim 4:18

Of all whom he has called and brought to Christ, none will be lost
John 6:39-40; John 10:27-29; Rom 8:28-31; Rom 8:35-39; Heb 7:25; Heb 10:14

God's preservation of the saints is not irrespective of their continuance in the faith
1Cor 6:9-10; Gal 5:19-21; Eph 5:5; Heb 3:14; Heb 6:4-6; Heb 10:26-27; Heb 12:14; Rev 21:7-8; Rev 22:14-15

However, it is God who sanctifies us and causes us to persevere
John 15:16; 1Cor 1:30-31; 1Cor 6:11; 1Cor 12:3; 1Cor 15:10; Gal 3:1-6; Eph 2:10; Phi 2:12-13; 1The 5:23-24; Heb 13:20-21; 1John 2:29; Jud 1:24-25

Answer 8

At a moment of crisis, when they call on God for help or strength or intervention, none comes.

They wonder why they put their faith in a higher power when the faith does not come back.

Then comes the Big Question: "What if there is no God?"

Answer 9

The same way I stop believing in santa claus and the easter bunny as I grew up. I realized that god was just a fictional character. Once I was able to have my parent stop trying to shove their religion down my throath.

Answer 10

Reason is the main answer. However, a common misunderstanding is that God and good moral virtue are inseparable - if you abandon one, you must abandon the other. That is an irrational conclusion and completely absurd. When will people realize that we can be good people and live good moral lives without having to believe in things of the supernatural?