Test your faith in the (Christian) God…

I grew up very much a Christian. I was so serious about my faith, that when, during a traditional school fair the school eldest kids jokingly asked everyone to kneel before them, I refused, on the grounds of not kneeling in front of anyone but one’s God. I didn’t mind them grumbling about being a spoil sport, but… I wouldn’t.

When at 19 I was asked why I still believed in God, I said; “Logically it makes no sense to, but I feel him with me. I FEEL him, therefore, I believe.”

At 25 I had read some things about the Bible that got me a little disturbed. I had dated an atheist for 2 years, and even though I braved the storm for the two years, out of stubbornness more than true faith, he had managed to make a dent in my faith, and when the pressure was off, I started asking questions. (Curiously, for the same reason, he turned to faith, did a 180 and turned from an Atheist to a true believer.)

These were the things that bothered me.

There is one God, but he gives conflicting information and expectations to people around the world. To some, he gives a ridiculous set of clothing to wear, arms them with a gun and say go kill those other people in my name, one group he tells absolutely nothing at all to, and some he gives some cushy instruction to wear orange and sit silently and think about stuff… ONE LIFE, and all of these different circumstances, and then he plans on judging us all based on what we wind up doing during that life? Is God just? Loving? Fair? Just one? No. Not by this standard he ain’t.

God gives us ONE LIFE, yet, he doesn’t bother giving us clear instructions on what we are expected to do, how we are expected to behave, and allows us to spend this short time on Earth on squabbling over details when he could have just given us instructions on how to go about it and let us simply do it.

Jesus warned us from believing false prophets. Who did he mean?

If you were Satan, the embodiment of evil, and you addressed the praying faithful of the Christian faith, would you call yourself Satan or God to gain their unquestioned trust?

If you were Satan, the embodiment of evil, wouldn’t you pretend to be a friend?

One thing that bothered me to no end, was the fact that the Christian God seemed like a bit of a twat, really. Imagine watching a Marvel Comix movie, and in it, there’s a character that gives people food and shelter, then calls himself their leader and demands loyalty and obedience for a reward in the unforeseeable future, then gives them tasks that he knows they’ll most likely fail, largely due to the unclear nature of the descriptions of them. He gives them free time, but forbids anything fun and demands these people to be grateful for having food and shelter and crap harp music, and when the people fail their tasks, he then asks these people to kneel in front of him and ask him for the forgiveness for disobeying or failing the tasks given, and if they disagree, he’ll send them to a torture chamber for the rest of their lives… For disobedience? If this was a movie character, would you call this the good guy or the bad guy if nobody had named him God on your behalf?

We know that the Bible has been modified over the centuries for a variety of reasons. Even if I trusted the first version to be the handiwork of an infallible God, isn’t it a curious thing the Church saw it fit to alter the message of AN INFALLIBLE entity it expects people to follow? We can assume that because this has been done over the years by human beings, we can expect there to be translation errors, spelling errors, deliberate tampering, and, then, the major work: the official canonization of the stories of the Bible, to make the eye-witness accounts match up. Sounds like tampering with the evidence to me.

When God first started addressing humans directly, science was in its infancy. He would have struggled to explain even the most basic stuff to a completely uneducated human being… Should we still follow the same information as given to us yonks ago, or should we ask for new information?

What also bothered me that if there was a question nobody could really answer about faith, there was this same worn out the lazy answer: God works in mysterious ways… “How could we possibly understand the workings of the mind of an infallible God?”

Now.. What I gathered from all of this is that… Well… Even if I didn’t doubt the existence of God… Even if I believed his son Jesus was conceived by supernatural means… Even if I didn’t doubt God, I would still have to question the teachings of the church. Even if I didn’t doubt the good intentions of the men of faith, I would still have to question their ability to deliver the message accurately and without distortion, and therefore…

Don’t we earn the right to ask around a bit?

So… This is what I did.

I left the church, as I didn’t like the association to it anymore, and I told God: “Please forgive me for doubting. I need some better answers than this. Even though I don’t really doubt you, I doubt the people who are now teaching in your name, their intelligence, their morals, their motivations… Their ability to do what they are trusted to do… Please know that if I ask to know the truth, I ask because I want to make sure my faith is based on what you wanted me to know, and not what I was told you wanted me to know.”

I am still not an atheist, but I am also no longer a Christian…

Subscribe to get a Daily Message