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I still believe in God...
.: posted 10/23/2003 ::: by webmdave
::: 
Neither my mother or my father were what you would call particulars strong Christians but when I joined the boy scouts both myself and my family ended up going to church every Sunday (along with the rest of the scout troop).
There I learnt about god and Jesus and all the other things a Christian should know about and I began to believe.
Now for something surprising, I still believe in God.
This begs the question of why I am writing a testimony on a site called excruciatingly
The answer is simple, I'm not Christian. I do not believe in Christianity, but I still believe in God.
I do not like Christianity as a religion, they assume that they are as infallible as the god they claim to serve and think that their service gives them the right to speak on Gods behalf.
My doubt first started when I heard in the news that it had been discovered that there was a priest who had been sexually abusing young people in his parish. This in itself did not shake my belief in Christianity. You can't judge a religion by the actions of one person or even several people. It was what the church did about the problem that shook my belief to the core. The covered it up, moved the guilty party from parish to parish and pretended that nothing had ever happened. How could anyone in the church say they believed in God and allow the abuse of innocent children just to save the church from embarrassment.
Next came the internet, I could learn about anything I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, in the comfort of my own home.
It may come as a surprise but all that I learned about other religions (including various forms of mysticism) on the internet did not effect my belief in Christianity at all, they were interesting perspectives and entertaining myths but that was all. But then I looked inward...
What about my own religion, did I really know all I could about that? So I looked, I searched for Christian perspectives on the net and what I found I did not like.
The things which people say on the internet may seem a poor source for deciding the validity of a religion but it is not what a person worships that make a religion, it is the people who do the worshiping.
I found that phrases like "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone" and "Judge not lest ye be judged" were completely meaningless to most Christians. They didn't take lessons from the bible, they just used the bible to force their beliefs on to others. Hate seems to come all to easily from these people, not despite the bible but because of it!!! I found that Christians didn't seem to care what they hated as long as they could use the bible to justify it.
If there is one think that truly disturbed me right to the center of my being it was what I found out about the true nature of Christianity (not God, Christianity). Things which I had come to believe in as fundamental aspects of a good life were simply not compatible with modern day Christianity. Tolerance, Acceptance, Curiosity, Personal Morality, Hope, Humor, Knowledge.
Christianity resents the previous concepts because they prevent the church using God for their own purposes.
The latest fiasco in the church concerning homosexuality has really put the last nail in the coffin as far as my being a Christian is concerned. Although I am not homosexual myself(at least I think so, I've never had the opportunity to find out) the fact that so many Christians argue against homosexuality seems like blatant use of the bible to enforce their own opinions.
There is obviously nothing in the bible that states "thou shalt not be homosexual" otherwise the church would just come out and said it years ago. In the end its just another example of Christianity being used to enforce personal beliefs, which have nothing to do with God, over others people.
So here I am, still believing in God as I always have done, nothing I have seen in my life has convinced me that God is any less real than when I first went to church. My faith in the church itself though is non existent. Christianity is obviously no more than a means for people to force their beliefs on others by twisting and corrupting the words of God and giving ignorant people an excuse to hate people who are different.
Thanks for listening.
Country: UK
Became a Christian: Ever since I can remember.
Ceased being a Christian: 19
Labels before: Not sure, what type of Christian I was never seemed important.
Why I joined: To young to notice the negative side of Christianity
Why I left: I started to notice all the negative aspects of Christianity
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