I am an Agnostic

Sent in by Rip Woodward

I remember at an early age thinking of Jesus as Santa Claus. If I pray to him ,and I am good, then I will get what I want. I contemplated becoming a priest at 16. I delved into the bible and really questioned what the verses meant. I got no greater pleasure than stumping a so called "bible expert". One thing that always bothered me was the notion of G-d not being accessible to me. I had to go through his mediator, Jesus, to talk to him. It did not fit in with my belief in a loving G-d. Later in life I began to experiment with drugs and eventually developed into what most people would call a junky. One thing that drugs do well is equalize people. When you are an addict there is no better than or less than, only who has dope and who does not. To make a long story short I used for too long and eventually got clean.

I joined a program for recovering drug addicts and was given some instructions, one of which was to turn my life over to a higher power. The catch was that it has to be loving, caring, and more powerful than me. Those three requirements had me to question who G-d was. Was banishing people to a burning pit loving or caring? Was requiring me to go through a middleman loving or caring? The G-d I had grown up with in Christianity seemed a bit like an ego maniac. Like a powerful person who was insecure so he threatened people.

After much more research, including bible study, I came to one conclusion. Christianity was not G-d. Jesus was not G-d. Christianity was nothing but years of subtraction and addition done by leaders who thought their ideas would be better than the ideas before them.

The New Testament was full of contradictions and the kicker was that the so called Christ did not even fulfill all of the prophecies that the Messiah was supposed to fulfill. He was obviously not the Messiah.

Ostracized from friends and family, arguments with strangers, and feelings of loneliness were the results of my decision to move away from Christianity. Whenever the subject of Religion or G-d came up I would excuse myself from the conversation because Christians tended to be very angry and judgmental to those that don't believe like they do.

I did find G-d. I asked him to reveal himself to me as he wanted me to see him. And he did. I didn't find him in Christianity. I did not find him in phony threats of a magical place of fire called Hell. I did not even find him in new age religions. I found him exactly where he had always been. Right here inside me.

The biggest hurdle in my leaving Christianity was my fear of Hell. Ironic huh? My fear was not in not knowing Jesus, it was burning in hell. I think that is called propaganda. Didn't the Nazis use propaganda? Christianity is a far cry from Nazis but their methods of scare tactics and pressure sure are similar.

I am so glad I have left the cage of Christianity. I do not need anyone to tell me who to believe, how to believe, or when to believe. Isn't G-d powerful enough to do that on his own? I think so.

I am an Agnostic. Literally translated it means without knowledge. To me, knowledge is the attainment of information based on evidence. No one has concrete evidence of G-d. So I am without knowledge about G-d. I have some theories but they are just that, theories.

Thanks for this site. It is good to know that I am not the only one who feels the way I do about Christianity.

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