I got sick of being a christian

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I was a battered child -- badly battered, nearly killed twice by my stepfather. And of course dragged off to Sunday school to learn all about how baby Jesus came to save me, and how God sees the little sparrow fall. And I realized that no matter how I prayed, God was ignoring me and my plight.

So I ignored God.

 

[ChristineM]

I was a battered child -- badly battered, nearly killed twice by my stepfather. And of course dragged off to Sunday school to learn all about how baby Jesus came to save me, and how God sees the little sparrow fall. And I realized that no matter how I prayed, God was ignoring me and my plight.

So I ignored God.

That shocks. I can't frube it. But thanks so much for the post

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I did much the same with the fundamentalist Protestant church I grew up in, largely because of their anti-science and racist attitudes. That was back in 1968 when my wife and I left, and we joined her Catholic church.

There are many churches that you might find more to your liking, and that might well include some of the mainline Protestant churches, such as United Methodist, United Presbyterian, Episcopalian (this one is at a crossroads between Catholicism and Protestantism), ELCA Lutheran, etc.

The service I like the most is the Quakers (Society of Friends). (My private school was run by Quakers, so I have attended -- including at the very beautiful Sharon Temple, which was only a few miles from my school. Essentially, the community gathers, pretty much nothing happens, somebody may decide they have something of interest to say, but usually not, then everybody shakes hands and leaves.

The nice thing about that is that you can do it at home...

 

[alsome]

The Nuns did it !

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and chsnged their lives, either positively or negatively?

Being queer, Christianity left some very deep emotional scars, gave me a very troubled and turbulent teens, and I grew tired of being suicidal and wanting to die while the more I learned about my faith the less it made sense and I more I realized Jehovah just wasn't there for me. Back then I was so anxious and fearful of god I often had frighteningly vivid nightmares of being sent to Hell. Today those are no more and instead I dream about snuggling in bed with handsome men and having a family of cute ginger babies. Amd those dreams are way better than dreams of going to hell.
Christianity also primed to later on basically cut all religion out of my life. Once I realized the only reason I had for believing was the comfort it provided, I left it behind.

 

[ChristineM]

Being queer, Christianity left some very deep emotional scars, gave me a very troubled and turbulent teens, and I grew tired of being suicidal and wanting to die while the more I learned about my faith the less it made sense and I more I realized Jehovah just wasn't there for me. Back then I was so anxious and fearful of god I often had frighteningly vivid nightmares of being sent to Hell. Today those are no more and instead I dream about snuggling in bed with handsome men and having a family of cute ginger babies. Amd those dreams are way better than dreams of going to hell.
Christianity also primed to later on basically cut all religion out of my life. Once I realized the only reason I had for believing was the comfort it provided, I left it behind.

I loath the word queer when applied to a person. And i have just realised why, its another church memory.

It was all "don't talk to him, he's queer". As a youngster i had no idea about any sexuality, yet alone alternative sexuality. So i thought they meant mentally ill. Why push away a mentally ill person, i thought church was supposed to welcome all. It had me very confused.

 

[Eyes to See]

I was born into a mildly christian (CofE) family. Began sunday school as soon as i was able, unfortunately my inability to read was the brunt of many jokes. But i stuck it out, made some god friends and generally enjoyed learning about Jesus and before.

Age 11, i was formally allowed to attend church. I was so proud to be there with the adults, enthralled by the vicars sermon.

Each Sunday one of the youngsters would be chosen to learn a passage from the bible that they had to read out from the pulpit the following Sunday.

Being dyslexic and a bashful adolescent didn't prevent me being chosen. First i tried, asking my mother to read and reread the passage until i knew it by heart. But the exposure of pulpit made the words fly away leaving be mumbling and lost.

Still they said i must read from the bible and began to ridicule my inability. Over a few years the ridicule turned to open mockery.

Until eventually i got sick of it, walked out of church and never returned for a service since.

And hence began my path to atheism.

Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and chsnged their lives, either positively or negatively?

That was sad to hear about your dyslexia. Reading your writting it appears to have gotten better? I had a friend that was dyslexic and I would read his papers before he turned them in for him, it gave me headaches.

I wanted to share an experience with the thread, and actually asked my wife if she wanted to share an experience and she said she would. And I pressed record and she related one about her childhood and I thought I would share it here with you:

 

[columbus]

People are often stupid and mean. What does this have to do with God?

"God" made us that way.

To me, that's the real Problem of Evil. God continuing to make humans stupid and mean.
Tom

 

[ChristineM]

That was sad to hear about your dyslexia. Reading your writting it appears to have gotten better? I had a friend that was dyslexic and I would read his papers before he turned them in for him, it gave me headaches.

I wanted to share an experience with the thread, and actually asked my wife if she wanted to share an experience and she said she would. And I pressed record and she related one about her childhood and I thought I would share it here with you:

Soon after that event with the church I was (eventually) diagnosed and special filters and eye glasses prescribed. My problem is that red bleeds, most inks contain red the the sharp outline of letters just become a fuzz. Green filter or glasses make it right. Within months i had taught myself to read. The bible was the second book i ever read, cover to cover.

I could not watch the vid, my tablet won't support it and im in bed now. Will try on the computer tomorrow.

 

[Secret Chief]

The service I like the most is the Quakers (Society of Friends). (My private school was run by Quakers, so I have attended -- including at the very beautiful Sharon Temple, which was only a few miles from my school. Essentially, the community gathers, pretty much nothing happens, somebody may decide they have something of interest to say, but usually not, then everybody shakes hands and leaves.

The nice thing about that is that you can do it at home...

Two of the most regular attendees at the Buddhist priory I went to were Quakers. And the local Quaker House is used by Buddhists once a week.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

I was born into a mildly christian (CofE) family. Began sunday school as soon as i was able, unfortunately my inability to read was the brunt of many jokes. But i stuck it out, made some god friends and generally enjoyed learning about Jesus and before.
Age 11, i was formally allowed to attend church. I was so proud to be there with the adults, enthralled by the vicars sermon.
Each Sunday one of the youngsters would be chosen to learn a passage from the bible that they had to read out from the pulpit the following Sunday.
Being dyslexic and a bashful adolescent didn't prevent me being chosen. First i tried, asking my mother to read and reread the passage until i knew it by heart. But the exposure of pulpit made the words fly away leaving be mumbling and lost.
Still they said i must read from the bible and began to ridicule my inability. Over a few years the ridicule turned to open mockery.
Until eventually i got sick of it, walked out of church and never returned for a service since.
And hence began my path to atheism.
Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and changed their lives, either positively or negatively?

I can relate to the ^ above^ in the sense when I moved to this area (age 10) there was a classmate with a learning problem.
The teacher told her father that she was: stupid. The father thankfully did Not accept that and got her learning help in the city ( 40 miles away)
Turns out the teacher was the stupid one because the classmate was dyslexic.
Years later there was a good talk show by host David Suskind and he had a doctor on describing dyslexia.
I wrote down a much as I could to share with her because it described my classmate to a tee.
To me this classmate was spiritually void, but interesting she had a lot of spiritual qualities (such as found at Galatians 5:22-23)
So, she too attended church but neither her protestant church nor ridicule at school helped (especially that oral spelling bee) however she went on to graduate high school with good grades.
P.S. she is a talented artist.
To me what you both encountered was ' Christendom ' (Acts of the Apostles 20:28-30; 2 Thessalonians 2nd chapter)
So-called Christianity of the 'weed/tares' variety type and Not the genuine ' wheat ' Christians.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I loath the word queer when applied to a person

Its still sometimes used here, more often by older members of the LGBT community from when it was the norm, and sometimes those younger than them, often because it's easier, amd often roll our eyes at how many more letters they can squeeze and add in to the "GBTLMNOPeople" that they can (many of them not even repressed or discriminated against and not considered queer).
Amd because some of us are queer and some gay and queer and gay and are jolly, mirthful, and unconventional people.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

I was a battered child -- badly battered, nearly killed twice by my stepfather. And of course dragged off to Sunday school to learn all about how baby Jesus came to save me, and how God sees the little sparrow fall. And I realized that no matter how I prayed, God was ignoring me and my plight. So I ignored God.

So very sorry at such a young age to read what happened to you.
It is MAN (Not God) who dominates others to MAN's injury, MAN's hurt.
Although Job was Not a child, Satan's challenge includes all of us. - Job 2:4-5
' Touch our flesh....' (our physical/mental health) and we would Not serve God.
I don't think God is ignoring you because in Scripture is found the reasons why, and that Revelation promises a happy outcome for righteous ones.
There will be ' healing ' for earth's nations and that 'healing ' includes battered ones.- Revelation 22:2

 

[Trailblazer]

Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and chsnged their lives, either positively or negatively?

My mother and father were "fallen away" Christians, so the only time I saw the inside of a church is when I would sneak in with my older sister because they had a freezer that had ice cream bars in the lobby.

Oh, I almost forgot... That happened before my dad died when I was 12 years old. After that my mother and my sister and me moved back to where my aunts and uncles lived and I had to live with my aunt and uncle for a while till my mother got on her feet. Once or twice my aunt made me go to a Catholic mass, and that was enough to put the fear of God in me.... but I did not believe in God back then so I was just plain scared. I was also very shy, so having to go up for communion was no picnic...

Then later when I was in junior high school I was hanging with the wrong crowd and I got in trouble so my mom pulled me out of public school and sent me to a Catholic school for about a year.... I had absolutely no idea what was going on when they held their "assemblies" and those nuns scared the hell out of me, but I was into drugs back them so it did not bother me that much.

 

[Deeje]

I was born into a mildly christian (CofE) family. Began sunday school as soon as i was able, unfortunately my inability to read was the brunt of many jokes. But i stuck it out, made some god friends and generally enjoyed learning about Jesus and before.

Age 11, i was formally allowed to attend church. I was so proud to be there with the adults, enthralled by the vicars sermon.

Each Sunday one of the youngsters would be chosen to learn a passage from the bible that they had to read out from the pulpit the following Sunday.

Being dyslexic and a bashful adolescent didn't prevent me being chosen. First i tried, asking my mother to read and reread the passage until i knew it by heart. But the exposure of pulpit made the words fly away leaving be mumbling and lost.

Still they said i must read from the bible and began to ridicule my inability. Over a few years the ridicule turned to open mockery.

Until eventually i got sick of it, walked out of church and never returned for a service since.

And hence began my path to atheism.

Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and chsnged their lives, either positively or negatively?

I am so pleased to learn this about you ChristineM. Now it all makes sense. Your history is very much like my own but without the dyslexia. I learned about that from my husband and grandson.

Your story is not an uncommon one concerning the church system back in the day. It hopefully wouldn’t happen today because learning disabilities are recognized and acknowledged to have no connection to a child's intelligence....and certainly not something to mock...but we know how cruel kids can be....what is inexcusable is when the ignorance comes from adults. Not that the school system addresses it successfully even now, but at least they know what it is.

Your experience is a sad one because your enthusiasm was crushed by heartless humans who did not in any way reflect the attitude of the one whose “church” they claim to represent.

I am glad you left that situation, but saddened that you ‘threw the baby out with the bath water’.

I went looking for God elsewhere because I always knew he was there, but just not in the hypocritical church system.
I had a great love for the Bible as well and always wondered what it taught about everything....I had so many questions that never got answered....until I met JW's. What I learned from the Bible was nothing sort of amazing!.

I was glad I ditched the church, but doubly glad that I found God somewhere I never expected to find him...

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I was born into a mildly christian (CofE) family. Began sunday school as soon as i was able, unfortunately my inability to read was the brunt of many jokes. But i stuck it out, made some god friends and generally enjoyed learning about Jesus and before.

Age 11, i was formally allowed to attend church. I was so proud to be there with the adults, enthralled by the vicars sermon.

Each Sunday one of the youngsters would be chosen to learn a passage from the bible that they had to read out from the pulpit the following Sunday.

Being dyslexic and a bashful adolescent didn't prevent me being chosen. First i tried, asking my mother to read and reread the passage until i knew it by heart. But the exposure of pulpit made the words fly away leaving be mumbling and lost.

Still they said i must read from the bible and began to ridicule my inability. Over a few years the ridicule turned to open mockery.

Until eventually i got sick of it, walked out of church and never returned for a service since.

And hence began my path to atheism.

Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and chsnged their lives, either positively or negatively?

Doesn't this sort of thing just drive you away from the Church, though, rather than God?

I get that the two can be somewhat merged (particularly in the mind of a youth) and there is some very broad similarity in my story. But when I got a little older I did...I dunno...re-examine my beliefs to see if it was God I didn't believe in, or if it was merely the religious beliefs of those around me I wasn't in alignment with.

(turned out it was both, but still...premise holds, I think)

As you said 'hence began my path to atheism' and that certainly makes sense. But I'm assuming there's a little more to the journey right?

 

[JustGeorge]

I didn't like church as a kid, but I don't know if it scarred me. It was boring, and the kids that went were sometimes mean. However, kids at school were mean, too, so I didn't connect it at church. I think my greatest upset was that my dad wouldn't let us get doughnuts after Sunday school(he wanted to take off before anyone could rope him into going to the service).

I think Christianity somewhat bounced off me. I never internalized it. Jesus was great, died for us, yada yada. Sure. Do the wrong thing, burn in Hell. Got it. I did notice in general society, bullies often claimed Christianity, but I never reflected on it too deeply in childhood.

I think I had a more negative(but much briefer) experience with the UU church in adulthood. We attended for a few years, and while everyone was kind and pleasant to begin with, once we'd been going awhile, people there let their colors show.

We were quite poor by American standards, and I think a lot of people meant well, but they were always giving us food. It was embarrassing. Cooking was/is my main hobby, and when I'd talk about what I'd made that week, I'd get giggled at like I was lying. We were patronized frequently, with some just kind of poking fun snickering to each other, to being downright mean to my husband's face(I didn't have that trouble). I was always getting scolded at because my kid wasn't talking yet(he turned out to have apraxia of speech and autism). Everything was very catty and petty. My sense of self worth plummeted.

Honestly, it wasn't just us. Anyone who wasn't middle class, heterosexual, atheist, formally educated, and extremely liberal was kind of picked at. It was somewhat baffling, as these were some of the groups the church claimed to be working to help! There was an older gay couple we used to have snacks with after service that abruptly disappeared. We saw them soon after and asked where they'd been. Apparently, other men in the congregation had been openly cruel to them because they were gay, so they left. A shame, they said. They had been married in that church, but the congregation changed over time. There were other folks(all 'outsiders') we heard snippets from that had left, or were becoming sparse, and all were reporting similar experiences. We had an obligation to teach one of the youth classes there that year(the kids were great!) Once our time was up with that, we left.

This is the only UU church we had attended. I know this is not what they claim their values are, and I hope UU churches elsewhere are truer to what they teach.

 

[Vinayaka]

Church, people, American culture.... all of it. I could tell 5 stories each 5 pages in length, but I just think I was accidentally born in the US instead of Japan.

Lots of people figure they got the wrong address. I figured I followed a boyfriend between births to the west. It wasn't really a mistake, but part of my karma. Mother India is home.

 

[nPeace]

I am so pleased to learn this about you ChristineM. Now it all makes sense. Your history is very much like my own but without the dyslexia. I learned about that from my husband and grandson.

Your story is not an uncommon one concerning the church system back in the day. It hopefully wouldn’t happen today because learning disabilities are recognized and acknowledged to have no connection to a child's intelligence....and certainly not something to mock...but we know how cruel kids can be....what is inexcusable is when the ignorance comes from adults. Not that the school system addresses it successfully even now, but at least they know what it is.

Your experience is a sad one because your enthusiasm was crushed by heartless humans who did not in any way reflect the attitude of the one whose “church” they claim to represent.

I am glad you left that situation, but saddened that you ‘threw the baby out with the bath water’.

I went looking for God elsewhere because I always knew he was there, but just not in the hypocritical church system.
I had a great love for the Bible as well and always wondered what it taught about everything....I had so many questions that never got answered....until I met JW's. What I learned from the Bible was nothing sort of amazing!.

I was glad I ditched the church, but doubly glad that I found God somewhere I never expected to find him...

Reminds me of my situation. i left the church because of the emptiness, and it seems I saw through the cover, but I always knew God was there.. at least I knew someone was there for me, so I always read my Bible, and tried to do what was right from a Biblical perspective.
When I found the truth, it was like a man in a desert, knowing there was water somewhere, and coming upon a great deal of water, as though someone actually led him there. You could imagine the shine in his eyes, and the delight on his face.
That's what it was like for me.

 

[Mock Turtle]

As I've mentioned before, religion didn't play that much of a part in my early life, being a default Christian mostly from my mother, but the suspicions came quite early on so as to probably map out my path - which was to question this particular religion and then to question all. I think the greatest obstacle is often in negating the apparent authority that religions tend to present (having survived for so long and having so many believers) and this was possibly the moment when I became free of any sort of belief - realising that authority might not be founded on solid rock but from something else. Once this was achieved then it didn't take a great deal to see other beliefs in a similar light. So eventually it became more about analysing religion as a process rather than getting bogged down in any particular one, particularly when, for myself at least, I saw no need of such. My mother was a better teacher apparently than any religion, despite her early experiences.