The Journey to Ex-Christian

sent in by RJ

Hi I have been a Christian since I can remember, there was the few years when I was a teenager when I departed from the faith and was a regular guy for a while, all the time in the back of my mind thinking I was sinning greatly.
So I guess you could say that I was a Christian for over 25 years, with the last 13 years being a well respected member of a couple different churches, even helping in the planting of a new church and leading the worship team over the years. I have seen it all from conservative Christians, to barking and clucking, speaking in tongues with and without interpretation, gold fillings in teeth, slain out deal, prophesy, word of knowledge, and the list goes on and on. Somehow I was able to keep my faith through it all.

A little over a year ago after reading in my Bible, yes it's true I was a Christian that actually read his Bible, I came to the conclusion that Jesus really wasn't God. At first I thought it was a devine revelation, but now I realize it was my own mind telling me to wake up and realize the truth. This discovery led me to start finding several other errors and contradictions. When I felt I had a significant list of issues ready I asked my Pastor to meet with me. I presented all the evidence I had gathered to him and asked him all the tough questions. My pastor has 2 degrees in religious studies so I thought he would definitely be able to answer the simpliest of my questions. He could not. All he could tell me was that I had to have faith and believe and that he avoided preaching on any of the contradictory scriptures himself. How comforting that he just avoided the problems by ignoring them. This was the typical pad answer that I was not looking for. I asked him to look into some of the things I had presented to him and he said he would not do it, he would only study topics that supported his faith. Since then I have discovered hundreds of errors and contradictions in the infallible word of God.

My wife was quite supportive of my research at first because she knew I was addressing everything with an open mind and she was believing that I was going to prove Christianity true but since it didn't work out that way she became angry with me and now resents the fact that I am an unbeliever. I guess Jesus was right when he said he would cause division between family. It is funny though that she doesn't hold the essential doctrines that makes one a true Christian and really doesn't know what she believes about some doctrines, yet she blames me for that. Outside of religious talk we have a good marriage.

Since my departure from the faith, I have spoken to a good friend of mine who is in the upper ranks of the Church of God organization. I also asked him the tough questions and again he could not provide any answers other than you just have to believe it.

The journey to ex-Christian has been a painful one for me, I have lost those who I thought were friends, and everyone around me will not talk about religion with me because they don't want to hear the truth. In reality I have gained nothing from this deconversion except my 10% and a lot of heartache from those around me. I hope things improve and the people around me start to really take an honest look at things.

I cannot return back to Christianity, I have left and now I know it is wrong. Once you know that red is red, someone can't convince you that red is actually blue if you believe it.

I ask myself how can anyone continue to believe in a religion based on the Bible after they have been shown all the errors and contradictions in the Bible? If the 4 Gospel witnesses accounts were used as evidence in a court of law the judge would have no choice but to reject the testimonies. Yet for Christians it is somehow the will of God to perpetuate the lies.

If there are any Christians out there that read this testimony I would like to say the following: Can you really be honest with yourself and evaluate what you read in the Bible without some already preconceived notions about known errors and contradictions?

If you can I will see your testimony of deconversion shortly.