42 scenes in the life of a former fundamentalist christian

This blog has been extra sparse, but that's pretty much how I've intended it to be - a journal I write in to document my gradual change in belief about Christianity.

I've gone from being an on-fire conservative christian evangelical fundamentalist republican participating in all things church to a liberal ex-christian democrat who thinks that Christianity is at best a nice collection of moral beliefs and at worst, a harmful establishment bent on controlling its congragents.

Here's a brief glimpse of various points of my life of faith.

Growing Up

• Grew up as a pastor's kid
• Got saved as a seven year old
• Did all the right christian things
• Rarely got in trouble, never drank or did drugs or say bad words
• Got saved, or "recommitted", over and over at every youth camp
• Went to high school and ignored all 'worldly people' in favor of my youth group friends.
• Joined the church praise band
• Attended countless bible studies
• Constantly felt like I was failing christ for the smallest of reasons.
• Constantly felt guilty for "sinning"
• Went to bible camp every year
• In my later years at bible camp, I started to draw parallels with some of the bible camp practices and cult practices. remained committed to the idea of christianity despite some of the practices of it.
• Believed that the 'Holy Spirit' would lead me in anything I did from the mundane search for lost car keys, to major life decisions about where to live and what career to persue.
• Started to question what the difference was between the holy spirit and intuition. could I believe in both?
• Graduated high school, switched churches to a less holy-spirit-centric church.
• Got married
• Rose in the ranks of the local megachurch social structure.
• Became increasingly frustrated by the 'subtexts' of all the sermons I heard. Despite what the subject matter was, I felt like pretty much every sermon I heard came down to a handful of actual advice. Be more christ-like, pray more, doubt less.
• Became frustrated with christian friends who would justify outrageously bad decisions with empty god-talk.
• When questioning this point, was told, and wholeheartedly believed that it was wrong to judge the christian belief based on the actions of a few christians.
• Wholeheartedly believed that no matter how bad any given christian acted, it was their fault for not understanding the bible well enough and by no means the fault of the bible's message.

On Healing

• Our family was hit with a major life threatening and life altering disease
• Watched friends become convinced god loved and cared for them because they found good sales on appliances and parking spots a just the right time.
• Questioned what was so wrong with me that god would answer a prayer for an appliance sale but wouldn't heal a disease in my family.

The Bible

• became a part of the emerging church movement since that was the only place i could find christians who were ok with questioning the sacred cows of christianity.
• started to understand that there was more than one way to interpret the bible (i'll go into this more in my next post)
• became convinced that the conservative and fundamentalist take on the bible had some serious flaws in it.
• learned that christ's story was far from unique. before christ, there were dozens of heros who were claimed to have been born of virgins, lived sinless lives, turned water into wine, rose from the dead three days after being murdered.
• questioned why paul (who wrote the majority of the new testament), knew next to nothing about jesus's life. he mentions only 3 of 27 significant events in christ's life.
• decided that the bible is filled with far too many absurdities and contradictions to be taken literally. though taken figuratively, it has a great wealth of wisdom and good stuff.

Homosexuality

• I once believed that it was impossible for a practicing homosexual to be a christian, live a ethical life (christian or not), or go to heaven without denouncing their "sin".
• Heard the stories of many christian and non-chrisitan gays.
• Began questioning my conservative beliefs that gays were sinners and must be converted "or else".
• Learned that the biblical evidence against gays wasn't all it was cracked up to be due to bad translation, poor understanding of ancient culture and just plain missing the point.

Hell

• Believed that because the "Bible just says it's so" and "God demands justice" and "We'll learn why later" that it was just fine if billions of people suffered eternal conscious torture without any hope of post-mortem redemption.
• Decided that there's no good way to believe in a God who destroys most of his creation.
• Learned that the fundamentalist view of hell is far from the only reasonable way to interpret the ancient texts.

Pro-life Pro-choice Pro-war Pro-peace

• Began questioning my pro-life belief once I realized I couldn't reconcile my, at the time, pro-war and pro-life beliefs.

Prayer

• Wondered why God doesn't seem to heal amputees.
• Became exhausted by trying to "discern God's will through prayer and supplication" and instead decided to rely on the logic and reason I believed God created. I can't begin to explain how much easier this one shift made my life.
• Decided that prayer is a great way to focus our attention on things that matter. just like meditation and a thousand other practices from all kinds of religions.

Atheism

• Picked up a silly little book at the book store that nonetheless contained some faith altering questions. decided that atheism might not be all bad after all
• Listened to Penn Jillette describe his life as an atheist in an public radio broadcast. I began to doubt that all atheist were raving angry heathens with no sense of morality.
• Learned that there were plenty of atheists who did good in the world simply for the sake of doing good while I did good in the world only to prove that I was really saved.

Nowadays

At this point of time I'd say that I am very much against the conservative and fundamentalist christian ideologies. I think while there are some great people in those communities, on the whole they get it wrong. In my life I have only seen conservative churches succeed by spreading doctrines of fear.

On the other hand, I see that there is a kind of christianity that I was never aware of. A kind that says that the bible doesn't have to be literal to be true, that other faiths might also be right, that a literal hell might not exist, that the devil might be a literary device.

So at this point I don't wish for a world without religion or christianity. I just hope for a world where logic and reason trumps negative religious dogma; where faith and hope are a means to peace not war; and where religion is allowed to evolve and support science rather than deny it.