sent in by Lisa I grew up Catholic, following what my parents taught me, thinking Christianity was normal and universal to everyone. But even though I didn’t know anyone of a different religion (or none at all), when I was very young, probably around 7 or so, I started questioning religion. My parents always told me that one must know Jesus to gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven. I didn’t think that was very fair. I remember asking, “What if there was some remote tribe in the jungle somewhere that didn’t know about Jesus.. would they go to hell?” My mom said, “Well, that’s why we have missionaries, to tell them about Jesus.” But I would ask the question again, insisting that there must be some extremely remote tribe that missionaries couldn’t get to. My mom’s answer was, “No, they had no way of knowing about Jesus so God would probably be merciful with them and judge them on their character instead.” At first, it made sense to me but then I said, “Then WHY do we send missionaries ou...

sent in by Trudy My journey is like many of yours. I grew up in Christianity. I was born into a Baptist family. When I was young, my mom and dad taught Sunday school and six of us kids trailed behind. One of my sisters played the piano in church and the others I think sang in the choir. My brother and I were younger, so we just sat quietly in the pews with our parents. Our family was a mess, and as we grew older, our parents no longer attended church. When my brother was about 11 and I, 12 and our older siblings gone or at least one-foot-out-the-door, my brother and I were on our own, our parents only coming home to sleep for the night. I clung to the church. The pastor became a lifeline to me. While he wasn't perfect, I suspect that I would have killed myself had there not been someone who cared. Life was very difficult. To feel abandoned by my parents, and then having been sexually attacked by a friend's brother - I had no one to tell. (I never told anyone for about ...

sent in by Harry M Hi everyone. My name is Harry. I've posted on here a couple of times before. At this stage in my life I am very confused and feel like I'm in a paradox. Currently, I attend a United Church (you know, that church that some evangelists consider a church of the devil because we accept all people). Anyways, I'm involved in some activities there and even chair a committee. But lately I've been questioning my faith altogether. So what I'm doing now, I guess, is just writing out my thoughts so that I can get more clarity to figure out what exactly I believe. I am 26 years old. I've been a Christian since I was five. Went through some difficult times with addictions at the age of 19 and when I was 20 I attended a local Bible College where I became indoctrinated every day about Salvation and Hell and Evil this and Evil that, etc. I graduated with a diploma but after graduation I began questioning my faith and explored other religions (became a Muslim b...

sent in by Don Grab a snack and a beverage and settle in. This might take awhile. I was baptized and brought up as a Roman Catholic. My first three years of education were spent in parochial school. Here I first learned about Christian behavior when the nuns thought they had a right to administer corporal punishment. We moved to the suburbs and I started attending public school. This meant I had to attend Catechism, or CCD, we just called it "catecrap". The curriculum was heavily influenced by what I call the "1970's Folk Mass Crowd". I was b-o-r-e-d. At home, I was given the Baltimore Catechism to study. This of course, showed me that anything I may enjoy is a sin; and lead to feelings of guilt over the human emotions and drives that "God" gave me. That I was to avoid all the books and movies and "immoral associations" where I could encounter differing ideas. I took all the sacraments, (except marriage) for the laity: baptized as an infant...

sent in by Alan This is going to be slightly different from other testimonies, as I would like to talk about my experiences long after deconversion, rather than during deconversion. What really interests me is the change in my feelings towards Christianity since abandoning the faith. The actual loss-of-faith bit is similar to most other people's, anyway, in that it was driven by a realisation that Christianity simply doesn't work on an intellectual level: I read some Plato, and some Aristotle, and some Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, and I saw that human thought is far deeper and broader and richer than what passes for Christian "thinking," indeed far richer than what the deity himself is supposed to think. It all unravelled for me after that. When I first gave it up, I didn't really have any feelings one way or the other. If other people thought Christianity made intellectual sense, well that was ok, let them carry on, why not? That was about ten years ago. Since then ho...

sent in by Barb I went away to a Christian college when I was seventeen. It didn't take long to see that there were many types of Christians. I was most comfortable with people like me: people who didn't smoke, drink, dance,play cards, watch movies, listen to rock music or fraternize with the opposite sex. I was least comfortable with the Catholics I met-- my church had told me after all that papists worshipped Mary and therefore would be spending eternity in hell. But these Catholics, some of whom smoked, drank, and regularly had sex, were also involved in the community, working at soup kitchens and pantries, tutoring low-income children, etc, things that my church had never encouraged or emphasized. My church was comprised of middle- and upper-middle class people who were comfortably sedentary in the knowledge that they were saved, and except for the occasional "outreach" to save more souls, they felt no burden toward disadvantaged people. What was required w...

sent in by Smaugfrost I am a recent deconvert (last day or so) but have been in the transition for years. I will not bore everyone with the years of unquestioning servitude to this religion. I am not erudite in writing out my feelings yet, but suffice it to say, I was driven from the teachings of my faith by the teachings of my faith. My case is simple: Christianity presents the following dogma. 1.The path to destruction is wide according to the bible. 2.Paganism is an anathema to god and admonished as evil. 3.No-one comes to the father except through the son. 4.Hell awaits the sinner and Heaven the believer. 5.God is constant and unchanging. 6.Sin requires a blood sacrifice to be made for attonement. 7.Graven images are sinful. 8.No man is to be called father except god. My dilemma started years ago and grew until I could no longer accept the faith. My doubts stemmed from the following issues among countless others: (check these in reference to the above doctrines) 1.the exclusive nat...

sent in by SomeoneWithProblems I'm a Christian in lots of Doubt and Confusion. I believe God for quite a while now, but the churches, the people... are pissing me off everyday. Whenever I have problems, I talk to the pastor, and the believers there, and they all say the same shit "It's God's Will" "It's a Trial" "Pray about it".....and I'm not talking about just 1 church, but ALL the ones I've been to(11 different churches). Honestly those responses from them aren't good enough.... And I don't read the bible much honestly(yes, I'm terrible at being a christian), because the other christians happily read it to me anyway. I don't know....it seems like Brainwashing, and the bible was constructed and put together by a council who VOTED which verses and books will ultimately go in the Bible. Theres verses like "don't associate with non-believers(2nd cor 6:14-18)". Theres "Humbling(matthew something : so...

sent in by J.S. I have to say I made peace with my past, at this point. I was very angry with feelings of being deceived for the longest time. But now, I think I have come to believe error is truly human. And a genuine spirituality can and does exist. However, most people are not ready for that. And so, the masses tend to need a more directive, nurturing, organized, and infantile means of attaining partial spiritual awareness (ironically, a reality acknowledged by philosophical Hinduism). By genuine spirituality I mean a non-theistic belief in transcendant value (though to be sure, I hold to some minimalist notion of a naturalistic "god," the Tao or essential nature, present throughout the cosmos). A belief that certain values and principles beyond our moment to moment existence should guide our lives. Thus for me, it is important to leave the world better than I found it, making a better for future generations. Thus, political activity, charitable work, and providing directi...

sent in by Jess My earliest memories are of being in church. I remember being about three years old and looking through the hymn books at the pictures of birds. I thought that the priest was actually God and thought that "sins" were tangible...things. My other memories are of falling asleep on the pew being as old as six. After that, my dad always made me kneel with my back completely straight when the time came, etc. Being Catholic I had my first communion when I was seven. I hardly understood what was going on; it felt awkward being in a poofy white dress and having all these relatives so excited about me taking a wafer for the first time. That same year I remember wondering if heaven really existed and if we actually lived many lives on earth. Then I became fascinated with astronomy. I read everything I could about the planets, the galaxies, and the Big Bang Theory. Of course, the latter resulted in conflict. I was in the third grade when I was spouting off to my ...

sent in by Mark Have I believed a lie for 20 years? I’ve been debating with my Christian friends for months now, about the bucket-load of inconsistencies, contradictions and atrocities I continue to find when I read the bible. After 20 years as a Christian, I can’t pretend any longer and ignore all the stuff that I’m finding. I’ve spent hours on apologetics websites, spent pounds on books. I’ve gone to my friends to find out how they dealt with all this stuff. What’s the answer I’ve been met with? “Ignore all the inconsistencies and believe anyway”. WTF? I thought that Christianity trumpeted itself as the truth, as a belief system with weighty evidence. Yet no-one seems able to tell me why the bible disagrees with itself on literally dozens and dozens of instances. (E.g. Dt 24:16 & 2 Sam 12:14). I even posted a challenge on this website, twice, asking Christians to explain it all. Yet no-one could. I’m getting really frustrated with the glassy-eyed responses I’m receiving from my f...

sent in by Tim Imagine for a moment, if you will, the following: There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. (The Gospel of Luke 15:11-13) What if the son didn't squander his money? What if he went to college and gained his own reasoning? His own ideas? And realized he'd always had questions that had been tidely swept under the rug by those that were supposed to be his spiritual teachers? I grew up in church, from the time I was about 2. Around the age of 11 I began to take it quite seriously, and the more time that passed the more serious about being a Christian I became. I didn't date for most of high school, not that I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be tempted, and after all, the Lord would show me to my ...

sent in by Pablo I was born into a non religious family my father was raised catholic and my mother Church of England, her mother was and still is a scripture teacher, but we only attended church for weddings, baptisms and funerals. If Christianity was ever discussed my father always had the same catch phrase "it's all based on pagan myth" , I had no idea what he was talking about and continued to ignore him as it was blissful. When I was 16 my friends and I joined a church group as we saw it as being an opportunity to meet girls our age. The church group had pulled the chairs out of the top level of a double-decker bus and replaced them with bean bags. Every Thursday night it would fill up with teenage boys and girls. They would drive us around the streets and take us to parks to play games, take us to see Christian rock groups and even away camping for weekends. But at the end of every night the fun would come to an end we where asked to come inside and listen to an e...

sent in by David I’d been with the church for so long I still dream about it. Every Sunday, the same routine. But in the beginning I was all for it. As a kid it was easier to believe I suppose. I remember being a very devoted Santa myth believer as well, something I think should be shutdown right along with religion for what it’s doing to children! But back to my story. I believed it. I honestly believed it all. I was baptized and made a member of my church. I was a missionary at a (sorry about this) children’s summer camp. I followed all the steps, devoted all my time, and I always felt like I was the good Christian. But at the very same time, doubt was always lingering at the back of my mind. I’m an intelligent and rational person. I skepticize and nitpick everything. The further I got into the whole thing, the further I was driven away from it in my mind. Rationality kept asking the fundamental question, why? To what end? The more I asked questions, the more I came up empty, until i...

sent in by Gary This isn’t an extimony in the usual sense that you normally see here on this website. I have been a lurker here for a few months now. I have read many of the extimonies written by former Christians. With out a doubt I believe these folks are very sincere in there contributions here. As you can read from their posts you can see how sincerely they sought out the God of the Bible and failed to find this very elusive being. Of course we have a very diverse community of people who come to this website. I suppose most folks have become agnostics or atheists since their deconversion from Christianity. But we do have a sprinkling of pagan, wiccan, or similar types of beliefs. Nothing wrong with that either. Personally I don’t put any more credence to their claims that I would the Christian claims. But if a Non-Christian belief system works for you I will not argue with your results. Non-Christians seem to be much less annoying in that I haven’t been pestered by any to convert ...