Life after leaving the church? Question for ex-Christians?

Question

I wish it was like leaving your job - forget about it and move on with your life. But what do you do with the feeling of guilt? And why the pain is so deep?

Answer 1

You can still keep the good things about Christianity such as the morals. Devote the time you would have spent at church to helping someone less fortunate than you for example, and maybe you can still keep in touch with people from your old church.

Answer 2

I'm not an ex. But I have moved to different churches.
A church is much like a family. It is as painful as being divorced sometimes. The Bible uses such words as family, brothers, sisters, to describe our relationship to each other.
Leaving a church is sometimes mistakenly seen as leaving God. They are NOT the same thing. I was in one particular church that somehow managed to get the members to think that they HAD to be there in order to maintain their salvation. Leave, and you lose. The line was blurred.
I saw what was going on, and I left. I felt pain, but also freed from an oppressive situation I could do nothing about.
As far as the guilt, try to determine if you are really guilty of anything. You may not be. Guilt is the only emotion we take onto ourselves irrationally.

Answer 3

I was raised Christian and finally saw the light and left it.

You are feeling guilty because Christianity is based upon absolutes that you must believe and adhere to or you are a bad person. The pain is so deep because you are doing the worst possible thing in Christianity - turning your back on it - and Christianity, for all it's faults, is very seductive because it provides a community of fanatics that you can feel very close to, and it provides all of these "answers" for you. No need to think. No need to figure anything out. Someone else does all the work and is responsible for everything. It's like leaving home, but the parents (in Christianity that would be God the father) are an illusion and not physical. But he is made to feel real through group think and psychological techniques.

It takes time. It was really hard for me for a while. I missed the illusion of God, of Jesus, of all of the Christian myths. I missed the ease of being complacent and not responsible for anything, the illusion of heaven/afterlife. Life is so much easier and more comforting as a Christian. But it is a life of illusion, not reality.

I slowly began researching and thinking for myself and I realized that I didn't want to live in a world of illusion and unreality, safe and comforting as the illusion was. People are put into mental hospitals and considered nutcases for every other unproven belief (ghosts, UFOs, etc). Hearing voices and seeing things that aren't there are considered bad - unless you pull out the religion card. If I shout God is real and here and my savior, I'm cheered and revered. If I shout an alien from planet Dwarb is real and here and my savior, I am jeered and locked up in a padded room. I was tired of the hypocrisy.

I realized that it was a cult and began to read up on cult techniques and recovery. Christianity, like any other cult, does the following:

(a) The group will have an ELITIST view of itself in relation to others, and a UNIQUE CAUSE. e.i. THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES RIGHT - everyone else is wrong.

(b) They will promote their cause actively, and in doing so, abuse personal rights and freedoms. This abuse can be THEOLOGICAL, SPIRITUAL, SOCIAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL (threats that you are going to hell or won't be saved if you leave, etc).

This is why you feel so bad. Because you have been brainwashed to do so. When you come back to reality, you will begin to feel better.

I am not bashing religion overall, we all want to believe in something grander than normal life or else religion would not be such a big business. What I am against is the brainwashing and abuse some religions use to make you feel scared or bad when you question or want to look into another way of looking at any possible divine/higher power. And the horrid teaching that starts so many wars: that any other god/goddess other than their god is fake at best and evil at worst, thereby justifying the abuse and murder of others for simply seeing divinity differently than they do.

Your best bet is to pull out of that world, shake off the illusion and brainwashing, and really look around out there at different belief systems and read up on cult techniques to help you recover.

Good Luck!

Answer 4

pain will always run deep on matter what kind of pain you're experiencing.

***YOU KNOW GOD HASN'T LEFT YOU AND DOESN'T LEAVE YOU/US. HE'S ALWAYS WITH YOU/ US***

but, i think you should look for some sort of support group(i know it sounds crazy but, you don't have to be alone or FEEL alone if you don't want to) their are support groups for everything. your on the only person that has left the church. I'm sure you had a reason to leave you ex-church.

are you quiting church all together, if so? find a new one start over FRESH. REDEFINE yourself? start dating more? take a community college class with you spare time.
***THE WORLD IS YOU OYSTER, EXPLORE IT***.

;)YOUR GUILT WILL GO AWAY, IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING ELSE TO FOCUS ON. good luck @~^~~

Answer 5

At first it was really painful, and there were alot of guilt feelings, but only because the church has been planting that seed in our thoughts. It was painful too because, when I left the church, I left a bunch of so called friends too. They were friends up to that point, and when they realized you're leaving the church, suddenly they turn their backs on you, call you a sinner, and like, what is wrong with you? But after all these issues, I realized the problem is not me, but them. I feel like a lot of burden have been lifted, and that I am no longer being bound by them, and free from their manipulations and hypocrasy.

Answer 6

Most of the time I would just be p***ed off that I had been lied to for so many years. What a waste of my youth being Catholic was!

The guilt, the emotional pain, and the anger eventually dissipate to nothingness; what's left is is a form of re-birth. To paraphrase someone, the feeling is akin to once being a bird in a cage, and then becoming a soaring eagle parting the clouds with mighty wings. Unyoked and free thinking!

Added: AJ, I love you! Well, actually, I love your answer. Very, very well articulated. I hope it gets "best answer" from our asker. Sincerely.

Answer 7

I left the church in large part because of the hypocrisy and a lack of answers. I did not lose my contact with God.

There was some short period where I wondered if I was really making the right decision, but the more I walked my Path, the more I was convinced of the rightness of the Path.

Answer 8

You must be brainwashed on believing that there is no life outside Christianity! Not So! I have enough solid Bible knowledge to know that there is a lot of crap written in the Bible... There are countless contradictions and errors of all sorts... and the miracle is tha most people believe he Bible to be the word of "GOD" === Christians do not seek for the ultimate Truth because they believe that they have the answer in the Bible... I feel sorry for you and some of my relatives who are still in the Christian ministry... They need to put the bread on the table so it is OK for them, I guess... They are totally unproductive members of our society. So it is far from their minds to question their source of income!

Jeremiah 6:13 (NIV) "From the least to the greatest, ALL are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, ALL practice deceit."

Answer 9

The pain is probably from leaving behind both aspects we liked and aspects we didn't like. The guilt is probably because values instilled in our hearts have a lingering emotional pull on us even after we realize they didn't make sense for us or seem reasonable. And maybe because having been there, we understand their worry in seeing us head down a path that is scary to them.

Answer 10

If you believe that's all that matters, I think. I think there is a something above us what it is??! I don't know... I haven't gone to church in a LONG time, I have no urge to. They tell us not to do this and not to do that but we have to make those choices. The church judges you, per the bible God is the only one that is supposed to judge... Right? Our judgement day or something like that...

BTW nobody is sin-free I read that on a post in here.. I don't care what flippen religion you are.. NOBODY...

If your pain is so bad, why don't you go back? I don't understand, if there was an issue at the church you went to, find a new one...