Why am I Agnostic?
Someone asked me why I’m agnostic and no longer a Christian, and I decided to go ahead and put it in a post since it ended up being so long!
Anne, can/would you please tell me how or why you think of yourself as an agnostic or atheist? (I got this idea from one of your recent posts.) Yes, I know that your home-life was not the best environment in which to be nurtured. I get some of what you must have lived through with a controlling, preachy adult in your life. But,you can’t let that example be the way of all Christians. Truthfully, in spite of it all, I thought that you were Christian. Have all your experiences with God or a church been so terribly negative that it has totally turned you away from Him?
I hope your question is serious, because this is a serious answer 
I hung on to Christianity for about a year and a half before realizing it wasn’t working. I couldn’t change the image I had in my head of a fearsome, capricious, tyrannical god for a loving god. I kept hearing stuff like “God is always there for you, especially when you need him most”, then thinking back to all the times I really needed him, and was trying ridiculously hard to feel like he was there, but that I never felt him. I kind of felt like I had hoped and wished and prayed my entire life for someone who wasn’t there.
I had so many issues with only seeing the stuff I was told about the bible in the bible, and even after getting a new bible in a completely different translation, stuff really bothered me still. Like anything written by Paul…all the “women obey” stuff. Following Paul’s advice for marriage leads to an abusive relationship within a marriage! How is that good? So then I went OK, I’ll stick to the Gospels. Jesus was cool, right? He still says stuff like “if you are my friend, you do whatever I tell you”. If I had a relationship like that with my friends, that would also be an abusive relationship, if being friends hinged on me obeying them!
I grew tired of pat answers like “God provides” and “God is always there” and “we can’t know that, it’s just one of life’s mysteries”. I felt like I was just being dismissed by religion, that Christianity was just patting my head and trying to mollify me and keep me quiet.
I still felt like my salvation was dependent on if I pleased god. I still felt stifled, like I had so many rules I still had to follow. So for a while, I said I was still a Christian, but that I was kind of putting god on hold…I was just not going to worry about what god thought of me. After all, the greatest commandment is love: love god, love yourself, love others, which I did, so I didn’t feel like I was lying.
When I stopped being worried about what god thought of me, it was the best feeling in the world. I lost most of the fear I had been living in. I began to look at Christianity from the outside, with an objective view. I weighed what I had been taught as a kid, and what I had learned since then. I realized that the only reason I HAD been believing in god was because I was terrified of hell. I decided that even if there was a god, forcing love out of fear of hell was a really poor way to have a relationship. I decided if I DID want a relationship with a god, it would have to be because I WANTED it, not because I was scared of what he would do to me if I didn’t. Even if hell weren’t in the equation (like Rob Bell’s stuff…I haven’t read his book but I still want to), that made even less sense to me…I should obey an invisible being just because…why? Because my life would be rainbows and roses? That would be a lie. Because my life would somehow be “better”? No, Christians still have troubled times. Because I would always have someone to “turn to” (figuratively speaking)? I have physical people in my life for that, people who can actually answer me. Because I would somehow be freer? I already was free without feeling the need to put (what I felt were) unnecessary expectations on myself by following an invisible being who had demands.
As it turns out, my core beliefs aren’t much different from the only commandment of Jesus’ that I think really should matter. I believe in:
* equality (no one person is inherently better or worse than another; all people deserve the same love, respect, and rights whether they are 2 or 102)
* respect (respect of property, boundaries, feelings, beliefs, etc) and
* love (love begins with loving yourself…and then loving your neighbor as yourself).
As it turns out, I don’t need a higher power to tell me to love. If I did, would it be fake love, for the power’s sake, or real love, because I want to? I don’t need a higher power to tell me to not kill someone, or to not cheat on my husband, or to not abuse my daughter. I don’t feel the need to voluntarily submit myself to someone else’s rules about life.
I am angry oftentimes at many Christians, for many different reasons which I won’t get in to right now, but mainly that so many refuse to look at facts and instead plug their ears and refuse to listen because it’s a non-Christian saying it.
I am agnostic, which means I believe there may or may not be a god, but that it’s not physically provable. I have atheist leanings, just because of how many Christians irritate me by plugging their ears and refusing to listen to any side but their own, and because of how I see religion and religious cults hurting and limiting so many people.
Just to clarify…these thoughts and decisions happened over the last almost two years, and were not knee-jerk reactions to what I was taught growing up, nor were they out of a spirit of rebellion — I WANTED, with all my heart, to have a relationship with God/Jesus. I think the reason many people are Christians is because they are looking to be a part of something more, and bigger, than just their individual life. That’s cool, but it’s also not me. I’m happy being with my friends and family.
Here are a couple blog posts I’ve posted along the way about my thoughts and questions regarding god and christianity (in the order in which I posted them, so I was still a Christian when I posted the first two)…
http://www.quicksilverqueen.com/2011/questions-about-hell-god-prayer-and-life/
http://www.quicksilverqueen.com/2011/god-love-and-my-beliefs/
http://www.quicksilverqueen.com/2011/thoughts-on-christianity/
I hope this answers your question. Thank you for actually ASKING me, instead of assuming what I believe and basing your opinions of me off that. Don’t hesitate to ask me any more questions…I’ll TRY not to be as long-winded in answering them!
Love this post. I understand, especially about hell and women’s roles, the two parts of the Bible that trouble me most. But I have found that despite how I don’t believe women should be suppressed or that hell exists (at least as I knew it), that I still believe in a God. Its one of those things — just because the Bible may be misrepresented or have errors doesn’t mean, for me, that God doesn’t exists or that a God didn’t create the universe. It just means that fundamentalism is wrong.
But hey, I am totally cool with your perspective, too. Just so you know. Good post.
And I’m cool with your beliefs
I read a few articles that tried to explain how Paul saying women submit to their husbands REALLY DIDN’T MEAN women submit to their husbands, but I never really “got” it. I asked some Christian friends about the Jesus thing (“if you are my friends you will do what I say”) and they never gave me a really satisfactory answer…just stuff along the lines of “he’s god, so of course he can say that and your other friends can’t and since he’s god that’s why it’s RIGHT for him to say that”. Ugh.
For me it was very easy. I just realised that not only did I not believe, but that I had no reason to believe. I looked around and saw that the world was beautiful and made sense with no need for anything supernatural.
It felt like escaping from being buried alive.
It sounds like an easy decision, and for you I’m glad it was easy…but for me I had years and years of brainwashing that told me if I STOPPED believing, I was going to be damned to hell. Then came Rob Bell (I still haven’t read his book but I want to) and the whole “is hell real” stuff, and it actually made a lot of sense and that’s when I stopped believing in hell. After that, it was a quick journey to “if I lose the REASON I’m believing (hell), why am I trying so hard?”
And yeah, it totally did. I posted on my Facebook wall once, something to the effect of (since I can’t find it right now), “I hear people say they feel free and happy because they found Jesus. Don’t feel sorry for me because I don’t follow him, I feel just as free and happy to NOT have him.”
I believe in Jesus, but not that the authors of the Bible were superhuman. They were inspired, but still very much human and their humanity fills their books- all sixty-six separate books. They mostly bear witness to the Divine, but some are so clearly written with a political/social/personal agenda that they should NOT be read without understanding that. We should use our brains when reading the Bible.
I believe Jesus was the Word made flesh, but the Bible is NOT the Word of God. It bears witness to Jesus, who was called the Word. Clearly they are two very different things.
When modern evangelical Christianity is a thing of interest only to historians, they will remark that it was the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, more than any other factor, that killed the faith. Of course true faith in God, and in Jesus, will continue until…well, until His second coming.
I just don’t think that means what evangelical/fundamentalist Christians think that means.
Your process sounds much like mine to from fundamental Christianity to agnosticism. For a few years after I left home I struggled with my faith and was scared to death of the prospect of not being a Christian after having undergone such intense brainwashing my whole life. But when I actually became an agnostic this past year, I had gotten used to the idea and it just made sense. And the longer I remain a non-Christian the more I see the flaws of my native faith and of religion in general.