By Neal Stone Image by Philerooski via Flickr All of us at this site either are at that point or past that point where we finally stopped doing the Xian thing. We feel that sense of loss, frustration and anger for what we have been through and given up or lost as a result. My time was 1998 when I had that breakdown and sense of frustration and anger over what I lost and gave up because of my life as an Xian. I went through a very dark period of my life as I gave into the anger and frustration of what I went through. So what is one to do at this point? After looking at my life then and now I feel I can point out some help and hopefully help someone avoid the same journey and dark place I went through. 1. Don't give in to the anger. The anger will eat you up inside. Xians love this as it makes them feel they were right all along about thinking you can only be happy with god. Do you really want to prove them right? Hell no! The anger will also take you down even farther and ...

Sent in by Brain User It was a long time coming. In Christian school I never really took religion seriously. All that prayer for things that never seemed to happen just didn't add up. God never talked to me and I never felt any sensations of his presence. But everybody else did, or so they said, so I went along with it. I felt emotions, for sure, but nothing that was obviously other-worldly. Like every youngster, I wanted to be accepted. Later in my early 20's I really wanted to believe and re-dedicated my life to Jesus, praying fervently for various things, including the gift of speaking in tongues , but it never happened. In my 30's I joined a church that believed in healing and miracles, and there seemed to be biblical reason for the belief, so I kept praying. I must not have had even the faith of a mustard seed because I never did speak in tongues. A lot of other prayers went unanswered, too, including fervent prayers from the very faithful. Prayers like "We ask f...

Sent in by Anonymous Image by Ann Althouse via Flickr As a relative newcomer to the life of parenthood, I debate many issues internally and with my wife. One of those things is the Santa Claus lie, or rather, "Should we tell our children they get presents from a mythological man who, lives forever, knows about everybody's deeds, and visits their homes one night out of the year to deliver gifts?" There are negative effects to perpetuating such a lie, but it's embedded in our culture. If you live in the US, it's unlikely you don't know about Santa Claus. So, what are the positive effects of the Santa Claus myth? I can't think of any. At some point, your kids will discover there isn't a Santa Claus and you've been lying to them. My parents never told me Santa brought me something, encouraged me to leave carrots for the flying reindeer, or took me to visit a fat man in a costume to tell him what I wanted for Christmas. This wasn't just beca...

Sent in by Maestra I know my story is not unique as I’ve been reading many others just like mine, but I know it will be cathartic for me to write my own. I am the granddaughter of an evangelist and I was raised in an evangelical church. I was a “ Missionette honor star .” I bet some of you on this site were too! I went to Evangel College (University now) and married the son of two pastors. My grandmother was into prophesy and prophesied when my sister and I were little that my sister would grow up to be a nurse and I would one day be an evangelist. My sister is a nurse…..dun dun duunnnnn. I LOVED my church growing up. My husband and I decided to “take a break” from church in January of 2009, and I miss it (the people). Growing up, I looked forward to every aspect of church; Sunday and Wednesday nights were definitely the highlights of my week. Our Sunday school teachers and youth pastors would always encourage us to bring our friends from school to church, but I never wanted to. Firs...

Sent in by Priscilla Image by Romy Schneider via Flickr “You know he may die during the surgery… the Bible says that the wages of sin is death.” My mother, hundreds of miles away, stung me with these words over the phone about a year ago. By then I had stopped going to church, although I wasn’t planning on leaving the faith. I was a backslider of sorts, a Christian without a church. In her comment she was referring to my then-fiancé -now husband- who had been experiencing health issues from a genetic disease and was about to have a very complicated and dangerous surgery. Our sin, according to my mother, was that we had purchased a house a few months earlier and ever since had been living together without being married. Apparently, this was punishable by death . Anything bad that happened to us was now because of this. At the time I thought that even though my mother did not agree with my living arrangements –as she had expressed very clearly in a previous uncomfortable convers...

Sent in by RandallScott Image by stevesheriw via Flickr My name is Randal and I'm currently in recovery. I'm a recovering Baptist. My sponsor told me to stay away from anyone who is condemning and judgmental, so I immediately quit going to church. I'm not really sure when my 'de-conversion' process reared its beautiful head. I would love to tell you a great story about an "A-ha!" moment, but I don't have it. I did, however, wake up one day and just kinda get it. But it wasn't, and isn't, an overnight process. For years, I've been tirelessly and religiously chipping away at my theological prison wall like Andy Dufresne . To be the person that I wanted to be, I had to dig as deep as I could possibly dig. Rest then repeat. Rest. Repeat. But if I had to pinpoint a time, in my life, I would say it was when I started reading. Reading "other" material. My dad was an intellectual student of theology and received his Master of Divinity a...

Sent in by Alexander Image by troismarteaux via Flickr I have just recently made a break with Christianity. Looking back on it, it seems to be the end of 4 7-year cycles. In my early twenties, I thought more and more about little things about Christianity that annoyed me. My entire primary school education, save grades 7 and 8 (thankfully) were spent in some sort of religious school. In the South , religion is as omnipresent as Crisco . Let me say now that Muslims aren't the only one with their own fundamentalist schools. Christians have them too, and they are just as bad. One thing that annoyed me was how in the Bible, there's a prohibition on eating pork which shows up in Islam and Judaism, but somehow Christians get around it. "That was the Old Testament" is what I was usually told. I took the "Islam method" to that and stopped eating pork in high school. Actually, it makes me sick today if I eat it. Heh, have a bout of pork poisoning on a flight down t...