yet another testimony

sent in by jennifer

I'm not going to bore anyone with the story of how i became a xian. I was a little kid and that was that. there were several things that pushed me (and I really mean pushed, because i was not eager to go) into unbelief.

1) knowing people in other religions whose faith systems gave them what they needed & wanted. I had several mormon friends before i moved and they were great women. i admired them because of their values, their lifestyles and their wisdom. it always amazed me that they could be silly enough to believe in the book of mormon, etc., but they depended on those books to give them guidance and counsel and those books did. they turned to the teachings of their church in times of trouble and when tragedy struck and it helped them through. yet regular xianity says they are going to hell for being heretics. and, of course, mormons do not believe that non-mormons enjoy the highest level of heaven...

2) my intrerest in history. practically every book i have is on roman or european history. the more i studied the history of xianity the more i began to see how the church that exists today is not even closely related to the church of the past. the development of different dogmas that we take for granted today were fought over with words and swords in the past, and each side could prove their case from the bible.

3) knowing xians. i have never met a xian and thought to myself that i want what that person has. their marriages and families are not better than mine in a long shot. their children are not smarter or more moral. their spouses are not more loving or caring. i have a fantastic husband and two boys that have faults but are decent, straight-arrow kids. most of the xian families i know are completely fckd up. a recent newsmagazine (i think it was us news and world, but i could be wrong) talked about the high rate of "porn addiction" that pastors have. porn addiction. what a crock. they like to look at naked women as often as possible and get a woodie and they call it an addiction. my ass. if they have the holy spirit living in them and all things are possible through christ, etc., why the porn problem?

4) jewish history. with european history it is impossible to overlook the horrendous treatment of the jews by the church since the earliest days. the pagans in europe let the jews live like everyone else while the xians burned them, overtaxed them, conscripted their children, etc. the nazis could never have done what they did in poland if there had not been 2000 yrs of jew hatred thanks to the church.

5) philosophy. again with rome, i have read the works of seneca, epictetus, cicero and m. aurelius and found that you can live a good life without the help of the holy spirit. i am not an atheist, or even an agnostic. i believe that there is a god and that this god is benign but pretty hands off. i believe that the way my life goes depends on my attitudes and actions alone. the older I get the more i see that 99% of our problems depend on how we think about things.

That said, i am not anti-xian or anti-any religion. i would never try to deconvert a xian. i would try to deconvert a muslim, however, but that is a different story. life is hard. children die, husbands stray, hearts stop beating, stock markets crash, corporations outsource... the list of pain is endless. so there is a need, in my opinion, for faith in someone greater. someone who cares and listens and can help. i just don't believe in the someone the bible talks about.


City: san diego
State: ca
Country: usa
Became a Christian: little kid
Ceased being a Christian: early 20's
Labels before: evangelical
Labels now: flotsam and jetsam
Why I joined: emotion
Why I left: lots of reasons